Instant Genius

Latest Episodes:

Adam Rutherford: Can science ever be rid of racism? Feb 06, 2020

Show notes

Adam Rutherford is a geneticist at the University College London, which has one of the most prestigious population, genetics and evolution departments in the world.

However, the university was also the home of ideas such as eugenics and race science.

Times have changed, and although our current understanding of genetics and biology should have consigned them to history, these insidious ideas are making their way back into the mainstream.

In his new book, How to Argue with a Racist (£12.99, Weidenfeld & Nicolson), Adam wants to show his readers that what we understand as race doesn’t really hold up with the genomic data, why professional sport is not a particularly good data set for studying race, and whether we can ever truly remove racism from science.

He speaks to our editorial assistant Amy Barrett.

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Ross Barnett: Why should we be interested in prehistoric animals that aren’t dinosaurs? Jan 30, 2020

Show notes

In this week's episode of the Science Focus Podcast we’re investigating long-extinct animals. No, not dinosaurs, they get plenty enough coverage already. Instead, we’re going to look at creatures that lived in the Pleistocene era, a period of time that covered the last known ice age.

During this period enormous creatures roamed the Earth, with some surprising animals making what we now know as the British Isles their home.

What makes these often-enormous animals so interesting is that they lived side-by-side humans and other early human species, which means we have more than just fossilised bone fragments to learn from - we have cave art, sculpture, tools and even cooking utensils that we can use to build our understanding.

Ross Barnett is a palaeontologist, whose recent book The Missing Lynx: The Past and Future of Britain's Lost Mammals (£16.99, Bloomsbury Wildlife) explores the story of Britain’s lost megafauna.

He speaks to our online assistant Sara Rigby about Britain’s biggest beasts, humans’ role in their extinction, and what they can teach us about the future of conservation.

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Samantha Alger: What can we do to save the bees? Jan 23, 2020

Show notes

We all appreciate the buzz of the humble bee in the garden, however, not a summer goes past without hearing news that our bee population is under threat, with the finger usually pointing at habitat loss or chemicals containing neonicotinoids.

But in reality, there are a whole host of reasons why our vital bee population is in decline.

And given they provide pollination services for every one in three bites of the food we eat, their survival is critical to our very way of life.

In this episode of the Science Focus Podcast, University of Vermont environmental scientist and pollination specialist Samantha Alger talks about her work uncovering the secret life of bees, what is causing the decline in bee numbers, and what we can do so save them.

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Marcel Danesi: Why do we want to believe lies? Jan 16, 2020

Show notes

We all love a good story, and sometimes a lie is more interesting to hear than the truth, but there is more to it than spinning a good yarn.

According to Marcel Danesi, linguist and author of the book The Art of the Lie (£11.95, Prometheus Books), throughout history certain ‘Liar Princes’ have perfected the art of lying to gain fame, fortune and notoriety.

In this week’s podcast, he explains what makes them so effective at this so-called ‘Machiavellian intelligence’, what happens in the brain when we twist the truth, and why we’re all liars in one way or another.

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Dr Becky Smethurst: How do you actually find a black hole? Jan 09, 2020

Show notes

By day Dr Becky, is an astrophysicist, unravelling the mysteries of supermassive black holes, but by night entertains science buffs like us on her YouTube channel.

In this week's episode of the Science Focus Podcast she explains how to find a black hole (and why they’re actually incredibly bright), what an astrophysicist does all day, and why flooding YouTube with scientists is the best way to counteract disinformation and bogus theories.

Her book Space: 10 Things You Should Know (£9.99, Orion), is out now and you can read an extract from it here.

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Hannah Fry: How much of our lives is secretly underpinned by maths? Dec 26, 2019

Show notes

Hopefully by now the last crumbs of mince pie will be wiped clean and Grandad has woken up from his Christmas day nap.

If you’re anything like us, that period between Christmas and New Year means only one thing – lazing in front of the TV and watching the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. This institution has been sharing the wonders of science and entertaining children and adults alike for generations, and this year’s host hopes this year will be no different.

Our editorial assistant Amy Barret sat down with Hannah Fry, only the fourth mathematician to deliver one of the lectures, who’ll be showing the audience how maths secretly underpins much of the world around us in her lecture series called Secrets and Lies, broadcast on BBC Four on 26-28 December at 20:00.

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Adam Kay: Is Christmas really the most wonderful time of the year on labour ward? Dec 19, 2019

Show notes

If you’re stuffing your face with mince pies this Christmas Day, spare a thought for the hundreds of thousands of people working in the NHS providing vital medical support over the festive period.

One person who has seen his fair share of Christmas shifts is comedian and writer Adam Kay, who in a previous life worked as a junior doctor. His new book, Twas the Nightshift before Christmas (£9.99, Harper Collins), is at times, a graphically intimate diary of what happens on a labour ward over the holidays.

Our editorial assistant Amy Barrett spoke to Adam over the phone about whether Christmas is more dangerous than other seasons, some of the issues facing healthcare at this time of the year, and life after medicine.

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Kathryn D Sullivan: What is it really like to walk in space? Dec 12, 2019

Show notes

Kathryn D Sullivan made history on 11 October 1984 when she became the first American woman to make an Extravehicular Activity, something most of us will know as a space walk, and in this episode of the Science Focus Podcast, she explains how maybe ‘walk’ isn’t the most appropriate way of describing it.

She also reveals the importance of planning over plans, the influence of the Hubble Space Telescope, and whether this year’s news story about spacesuits for women was really as problematic as the headlines suggested.

Let us know what you think with a review or a rating wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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Brian Switek: How did bones evolve? Dec 05, 2019

Show notes

Brian Switek, the pen name of science writer and fossil fanatic Riley Black. This year she released a book called The Secret Life of Bones: Their Origins, Evolution and Fate (£9.99, Duckworth), which as well as explaining how and why we evolved bones, explains the relationship us humans have with these sturdy struts of osseous tissue.

In this week's episode of the Science Focus Podcast, she helpfully explains what a bone is and how they turn into fossils, as well as how they revealed Richard III’s diet, were historically used to justify scientific racism, and why Hollywood is getting aliens all wrong.

Let us know what you think with a review or a rating wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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Chris Lintott: Can members of the public do real science? Nov 28, 2019

Show notes

We’re living in the age of big data. Scientists can collect and store more information than ever before. So how can they manage it all?

That’s where citizen science comes in. Members of the public can log in to the Zooniverse, the world’s largest citizen science platform, and do the hard work of sorting through the data.

Whether that’s searching for alien planets or spotting penguins, the project’s co-founder Chris Lintott says that the public aren’t just helping out, but doing real science.

In his new book, The Crowd and the Cosmos: Adventures in the Zooniverse (£20, OUP), Chris explains how, in just a few minutes in your lunch break, you can contribute to fields from astronomy to zoology.

He speaks to BBC Science Focus online assistant Sara Rigby.