The Rest Is Science - Goalhanger

Latest Episodes:

Mathematicians Are The Canary Down The AI Coal Mine Oct 18, 2026

Show notes

OpenAI claims a swarm of AI agents has solved the Navier-Stokes problem, one of the hardest unsolved questions in mathematics, with a $1 million prize attached. Then it released more than 700 more mathematical manuscripts, including claims touching the Riemann hypothesis, faster than anyone can check them. Mathematicians are not happy, and the reason goes far beyond the money.

In this episode of The Rest of Science, mathematician and fluid dynamicist Hannah Fry takes Michael Stevens through the equations that describe everything that flows, from the blood in your veins to a rocket leaving the atmosphere. Then she tells him why this story has turned the vocation of mathematics upside down.

Ten thousand AI agents. Millions of messages. One tiny term in the equation that nobody wanted to look at, until it unlocked the problem. But did AI really solve a million dollar problem? Why are some mathematicians accusing the models of stealing their work? And how might a proof that is completely correct be the least satisfying result in the history of maths?

Along the way, Hannah un-mixes a glass of dye with nothing but corn syrup and patience, and the pair ask what happens to curiosity when the answers arrive faster than the understanding.

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For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit https://cancerresearchuk.org/restisscience

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Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠

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Video Producer: Oli Oakley
Animator: Sam Benson
Video & Social: Bex Tyrrell
Assistant Producer: Lucy Lipscombe
Producer: Simona Rata
Senior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter
Chief Digital Officer: Samuel Oakley
Exec Producer: Neil Fearn

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Right Way To Open A Shaken Soda Can Oct 14, 2026

Show notes

A can of fizzy drink has been violently shaken. The pressure is building, the bubbles are ready to erupt, and Michael Stevens is about to open it. But Hannah Fry has a trick up her sleeve. Can a few taps really prevent an explosion?
This week on The Rest Is Science, Hannah and Michael begin with the surprisingly complicated physics of carbonation before tackling a much bigger question: can we really trust science?
From the replication crisis and scientific studies that fail to stand up to scrutiny, to the strange incentives that shape what gets published, they explore why even respected scientific discoveries can turn out to be wrong...and why that might not be such a bad thing.
Along the way, they investigate whether Archimedes really could have moved the Earth with a long enough lever, why aircraft are designed to withstand enormous pressure changes, and what happens when we lose our curiosity.
Plus, an unexpected discussion about nuns, the dangers of absolute certainty, and why asking questions might be one of the most important things we can do.
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"For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit https://cancerresearchuk.org/restisscience
Cancer Research UK is a registered charity in England and Wales (1089464), Scotland (SC041666), the Isle of Man (1103) and Jersey (247). A company limited by guarantee. Registered company in England and Wales (4325234) and the Isle of Man (5713F). Registered address: 2 Redman Place, London, E20 1JQ."
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Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠
-------------------
Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli Oakley + Jack Meek
Animator: Sam Benson
Video & Social: Bex Tyrrell
Assistant Producer: Lucy Lipscombe
Producer: Simona Rata
Senior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter
Chief Digital Officer: Samuel Oakley
Exec Producer: Neil Fearn

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Something Weird Is Going On With Placebos Oct 11, 2026

Show notes

For the past few decades, something strange has been happening in clinical trials. Painkillers aren't getting worse, but the placebos they're tested against appear to be getting better.

In one landmark study, the advantage of pain medication over placebo shrank from 27.3% in 1996 to just 8.9% in 2013.

Even stranger? This trend was found almost entirely in American trials.
In this episode of The Rest Is Science, Professor Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens (Vsauce) investigate the extraordinary science of the placebo effect;

how our expectations influence pain, why belief can change the way our bodies respond, and what this means for the future of medicine.

Why does the way a treatment is presented matter so much? And how can simply expecting something to hurt actually make it hurt?

But the placebo effect doesn't stop at medicine. From pedestrian crossing buttons that do nothing to the surprising psychology of road safety, Hannah and Michael explore just how easily our expectations can shape our experience of the world.

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"For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/our-research/rest-is-science
Cancer Research UK is a registered charity in England and Wales (1089464), Scotland (SC041666), the Isle of Man (1103) and Jersey (247). A company limited by guarantee. Registered company in England and Wales (4325234) and the Isle of Man (5713F). Registered address: 2 Redman Place, London, E20 1JQ."

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Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠

-------------------
Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli Oakley + Jack Meek
Animator: Sam Benson
Video & Social: Bex Tyrrell
Assistant Producer: Lucy Lipscombe
Producer: Simona Rata
Senior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter
Chief Digital Officer: Samuel Oakley
Exec Producer: Neil Fearn

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What Was A Mammoth Doing At The Bottom Of The Sea? Oct 07, 2026

Show notes

Hannah surprises Michael with a mammoth bone from Doggerland, the lost Ice Age land that once joined Britain to mainland Europe, and now lies beneath the North Sea. Who lived there, what roamed it, and how did an entire landscape disappear under the waves?
Then it's your questions: where did "cool" come from as a word for style, and how did it stick around for so long? What on earth is "skank face"? And what are Hannah and Michael reading right now?
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For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit https://cancerresearchuk.org/restisscience
Cancer Research UK is a registered charity in England and Wales (1089464), Scotland (SC041666), the Isle of Man (1103) and Jersey (247). A company limited by guarantee. Registered company in England and Wales (4325234) and the Isle of Man (5713F). Registered address: 2 Redman Place, London, E20 1JQ.
-------------------
Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠
-------------------
Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli Oakley + Jack Meek
Animator: Sam Benson
Video & Social: Bex Tyrrell
Assistant Producer: Lucy Lipscombe
Producer: Simona Rata
Senior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter
Chief Digital Officer: Samuel Oakley
Exec Producer: Neil Fearn

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why Do We Turn on Innocent People? Oct 04, 2026

Show notes

Why do we turn on innocent people? A convincing story, a suspicious glance and suddenly everyone’s an armchair detective. But what happens when the crowd gets it completely wrong?

Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens explore the psychology of false accusations, witch hunts and mob mentality, starting with Richard Jewell, the security guard hailed as a hero after the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing before becoming the target of a media storm.

From the Salem witch trials and the Satanic Panic to internet detectives and social media pile-ons, they investigate how a hunch snowballs into certainty. Along the way: confirmation bias, beliefs that refuse to budge, and the famous Asch conformity experiments that show how easily we join the crowd, even when the crowd is obviously wrong.

Plus, Michael tackles accusations that Vsauce’s Mind Field was faked, Hannah shares her own brush with conspiracy theories, and they ask why we’re so convinced we can spot a liar when the evidence suggests we’re barely better than a coin toss.

It’s a journey through outrage, misinformation and our very human enthusiasm for pointing the finger. Because once people think you’re guilty, even defending yourself can look suspicious.

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For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/our-research/rest-is-science

Cancer Research UK is a registered charity in England and Wales (1089464), Scotland (SC041666), the Isle of Man (1103) and Jersey (247). A company limited by guarantee. Registered company in England and Wales (4325234) and the Isle of Man (5713F). Registered address: 2 Redman Place, London, E20 1JQ.

-------------------

Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠

-------------------

Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli Oakley + Jack Meek

Animator: Sam Benson

Video & Social: Bex Tyrrell

Assistant Producer: Lucy Lipscombe

Producer: Simona Rata

Senior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter

Chief Digital Officer: Samuel Oakley

Exec Producer: Neil Fearn

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hacking The Kendama With Physics Sep 30, 2026

Show notes

Michael hands Hannah a kendama, the Japanese cup-and-ball toy, and asks her to land a single catch. Then he brings out one built for him by Adam Savage of MythBusters and explains why a heavier kendama is a completely different physics problem.

A kendama looks like a children's toy. It is really a pendulum, a lesson in angular momentum and a catching problem borrowed from spacecraft docking. Michael and Hannah get into why the swing timing barely changes when the ball gets heavier, why the trick is to match the ball's velocity rather than grab at it, why bending your knees on the catch is doing real work, and why the paint finish on a kendama changes how it plays.

Then Hannah and Michael take on your questions: what would actually happen if you flew into Jupiter and kept going, whether there is a mathematical way to swim faster, and which books they'd hand an adult who wants to get back into maths after school ruined it.

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For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit https://cancerresearchuk.org/restisscience

-------------------

Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠

-------------------

Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli Oakley + Jack Meek

Animator: Sam Benson

Video & Social: Bex Tyrrell

Assistant Producer: Lucy Lipscombe

Producer: Simona Rata

Senior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter

Chief Digital Officer: Samuel Oakley

Exec Producer: Neil Fearn

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why Do We Like Staring Into Fire? Sep 27, 2026

Show notes

What is fire, and why does watching it hold our attention in a different way from scrolling on your phone?

Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens start with the science of a flame: why it glows, what its different colours reveal, and why fire is a series of chemical reactions rather than a single substance.

Then they travel back to a time before wildfires could burn on Earth, and ask how early humans learned to use and make it.

Could keeping a fire alive have helped our ancestors learn to plan and cooperate? And what happens when we replace the quiet pull of a hearth with the endless pull of a phone?

From candle flames to early human history and the psychology of attention, this is the story of fire, the space it occupies in our history and lives.

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For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/our-research/rest-is-science

-------------------

Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠

-------------------

Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli Oakley + Jack Meek

Animator: Sam Benson

Video & Social: Bex Tyrrell

Assistant Producer: Lucy Lipscombe

Producer: Simona Rata

Senior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter

Chief Digital Officer: Samuel Oakley

Exec Producer: Neil Fearn

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Fluid Dynamics of Fountain Pens Sep 23, 2026

Show notes

The wait is finally over: Hannah Fry introduces Michael Stevens to her beloved fountain pen collection and the beautiful physics behind how fountain pens work.

From a £20 Lamy Safari to vintage Waterman and Montblanc pens, Hannah explains how capillary action, surface tension, air pressure and carefully engineered feeds control the flow of fountain pen ink. Michael tests the collection, chooses his favourite and discovers why the most expensive pen is not necessarily the nicest to write with.

Then Hannah and Michael answer your questions: which words are terrible at their jobs, how do aeroplane wings actually generate lift, and which moment in history would they most like to witness?

-------------------

For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit https://cancerresearchuk.org/restisscience

-------------------

Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠

-------------------

Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli Oakley + Jack Meek
Animator: Sam Benson
Video & Social: Bex Tyrrell
Assistant Producer: Lucy Lipscombe
Producer: Simona Rata
Senior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter
Chief Digital Officer: Samuel Oakley
Exec Producer: Neil Fearn

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dying In Space, Trapped Water, and What's Hidden In Pi? Sep 20, 2026

Show notes

Almost every human who has ever lived has one thing in common: they were born and died on Earth. Except for three people.

Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens uncover the extraordinary story of Soyuz 11, the Soviet cosmonauts who became the only humans ever to die in outer space, and what their deaths meant for the future of human spaceflight.
But that raises a bigger question: what exactly is trapped on Earth, and what can escape?

Is the water left inside discarded plastic bottles being locked away forever? Is Earth itself slowly leaking water into space? Can you really trap a monkey simply because it refuses to let go of something shiny? And are your phone number, your name and every other possible sequence of numbers really hidden somewhere inside the digits of pi?

From space exploration and the Soyuz 11 disaster to Earth's water, animal behaviour and one of mathematics' biggest unanswered questions, Hannah and Michael investigate what gets trapped, what escapes, and what might have been hiding in plain sight all along.

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For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit https://cancerresearchuk.org/restisscience

-------------------

Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠

-------------------

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How Codes Were Used To Hack The Telegram Business Sep 16, 2026

Show notes

What if a single strange word could save you a fortune?

In this episode Michael opens up a Victorian telegram code book and explores how users compressed long messages into brief coded words to outwit the per word charge of the telegraph system.

Coded language turned everyday phrases about everyday events into something that looked like nonsense to outsiders, and why that secrecy was often a side effect of economy rather than espionage, and how operators learned to live inside this clipped new dialect of distance and delay.

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For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit https://cancerresearchuk.org/restisscience

-------------------

Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠

-------------------

Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli Oakley + Jack Meek

Animator: Sam Benson

Video & Social: Bex Tyrrell

Assistant Producer: Lucy Lipscombe

Producer: Simona Rata

Senior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter

Chief Digital Officer: Samuel Oakley

Exec Producer: Neil Fearn

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices