Cycling is good for our health, good for the planet, and it can be an efficient way of moving around busy cities. But despite all the rational arguments for it, in most cities the number of people who get on their bikes is low. CrowdScience listener Hans wants to know whether it’s time to change our tactics. Could we persuade more people to cycle if we moved away from focusing on well-intentioned rational arguments and use messages that appeal to our desires and vanity instead? What does the sci...
Jun 20, 2025•26 min
Was there ever a time when life on earth was peaceful? Free of violence? No predators, no prey, just... vibes? Or has nature always been 'Red in Tooth and Claw'? Have we always been eating each other? Our listener Scott sent us on a quest to discover the origins of predators and prey, and to find out what all this ‘eat or be eaten’ stuff is really about. Taking us back to the very dawn of life on earth, Professor Susannah Porter from the University of Santa Barbara lets Alex peer into an extraor...
Jun 13, 2025•26 min
In the dead of night at his home in Machinjiri, Malawi, CrowdScience listener John can hear a small, but persistent, hum. Whenever it’s quiet enough, the hum is there – but what’s causing it? And is John the only one who can hear it? Reports of consistent, low-pitched noise have been popping up around the world for decades. No one knows this better than Dr Glen MacPherson, who runs the World Hum Map. He tells presenter Caroline Steel his theory for what’s behind these hums. And Caroline does som...
Jun 06, 2025•28 min
Listener Christine wants to understand one of the strangest phenomena in the universe. But to get to grips with it, she’ll need a crash course in the bizarre behaviour of the very small. Here, things don’t act the way you might expect — and it’s famously hard to wrap your head around. Anand Jagatia has assembled some of the sharpest minds in the field and locked them in a studio. No one’s getting out until Christine and Anand know exactly what’s going on. Or at least, that’s the plan. On hand to...
May 30, 2025•30 min
CrowdScience listener Saoirse is vegan and doesn’t eat honey. But she’s been wondering - might honey actually have environmental benefits, by giving bee populations a boost? To find out, presenter Anand Jagatia dons a bee suit and opens up some hives with biologist Dave Goulson, who reveals that there are over 20,000 bee species on earth – and not all of them need saving. Honeybee researcher Alison Mcafee talks about the importance of beekeeping for crop pollination, and why honeybee colonies ar...
May 23, 2025•27 min
Bulgaria is famous for its yoghurt, a fermented milk food full of ‘good’ bacteria that has kept hungry Bulgarians healthy for over 4000 years. Inspired by that, and a question from a CrowdScience listener in California USA, Marnie Chesterton and Caroline Steel are immersing themselves in Bulgarian culture with a programme about Bulgarian cultures, recorded at the 2025 Sofia Science Festival. So, are the ‘live’ cultures in fermented foods actually alive by the time you eat them, and how can you t...
May 16, 2025•26 min
You may have grown up hearing the saying “red sky at night, sailor’s delight, red sky in morning, sailor’s warning” - or maybe a variation of it. CrowdScience listener Alison, who sees many dazzling red skies from her home in the Yukon, Canada, certainly did. And now she wonders if the saying is a sensible prediction of coming weather or just another old wives’ tale. Alison and presenter Anand Jagatia run a little experiment, getting up at the crack of dawn and staying up until dusk for 5 days t...
May 09, 2025•28 min
Some people fall asleep almost as soon as their head touches the pillow, while for others it can take hours of tossing and turning. CrowdScience listener Assia needs at least 45 minutes to get to sleep: it's always taken her a long time to drift off no matter how tired she is, and nothing seems to make a difference. She asked us to investigate. Presenter Caroline Steel turns to experts to find out what happens in our bodies when we fall asleep, and why it’s more difficult for some than others. E...
May 02, 2025•29 min
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, 800 million people are going to bed hungry every night, but 2 billion people in the world are malnourished. Farmers across the globe produce enough food to feed 10 billion people, yet there are only 7.6 billion of us. We know there is enough food to go around, but filling tummies is only the start – we also need a varied diet. CrowdScience visits Nairobi during GGIAR Science Week, a hub for agricultural scientists. They are meeti...
Apr 25, 2025•31 min
CrowdScience listener Sid is running late, and he’s turning to science to find an excuse. He and his partner Steffi in Singapore have very different attitudes to timekeeping. They wonder if this is down to their different cultural upbringings, or if they just had very different brains to start with. Presenter Chhavi Sachdev puts her own time perception skills to the test to try to understand how subjective our sense of time can be. And we discover how the language we grow up speaking can influen...
Apr 18, 2025•26 min
What would you discover inside the stomach of a sea lion? CrowdScience listener Robyn found out first-hand when she volunteered at her local museum in Adelaide, Australia. The team dissecting the specimen removed around 30 rocks from the animal’s stomach, and Robyn wants the Crowdscience team to find out how and why they got there. Presenter Anand Jagatia uncovers a whole world of rock-munching creatures, from ostriches to ichthyosaurs. In search of answers we investigate Canadian sea lion resea...
Apr 11, 2025•30 min
On the banks of the St Lawrence River in Quebec stands a 100-year-old lighthouse. While initially built to help boats navigate one of Canada’s most difficult waterways, the Point-de-Père site now also holds a different responsibility: it is a key reference for measuring sea levels around the entire North America continent. But this is all set to change. With the development of new satellite technology, the tricky task of measuring sea levels is being updated - which could mean mountains around N...
Apr 04, 2025•26 min
Host Anand Jagatia tackles gravity - a fundamental force of the universe yet also an everyday mystery that has baffled several listeners. Can you outrun it? Or at least use it to get fitter? If it varies, does that mean that you weigh less, depending on where on earth you stand? And if it’s the force of attraction between any objects with mass, are you technically more attractive after eating a massive cake? Professor Claudia de Rham from Imperial College London explains the basics of gravity, w...
Mar 28, 2025•26 min
Are food allergies higher in the West than the East? UK-based listener Jude wants to know the answer. Her daughter-in-law Min didn’t know anyone with food allergies when she was growing up in South Korea and thinks that they’re not so common there. Host Alex Lathbridge investigates. Along the way, he finds out what makes us sensitive to food allergies and how much that depends on our environment. He volunteers to have an allergy test, learns what triggers food allergies and tries to discover wha...
Mar 21, 2025•30 min
CrowdScience listener Alina is in a relationship with a polyamorous partner and is very happy with this arrangement, which got her thinking – why is monogamy so often the norm in human societies? Presenter Caroline Steel goes on an anthropological odyssey to figure out where this drive to find a single partner - and stick with them - comes from. What can science tell us about how human relationships developed, and whether having one or many partners is more 'natural'? Evolutionary biologist Kit ...
Mar 14, 2025•27 min
The wetness of water seems blindingly obvious - but dive into the science and things aren’t so clear. CrowdScience listeners Rachel and Callum were washing their hands one day and it got them thinking about wetness. Why does water feel the way it does? And what makes a liquid wet? To find out, presenter Anand Jagatia takes a closer look at the behaviour of liquids with materials scientist Mark Miodownik, and finds out why they might not be as wet as we think. We learn what’s really behind the se...
Mar 07, 2025•26 min
It’s citrus season in the northern hemisphere, and fruit trees are bursting with oranges and lemons. But CrowdScience listener Jonathan wants to know what happened to the tangerines he ate as a child in the 1960s? He remembers a fruit that was juicy, sweet and full of pips, found each Christmas at the bottom of his stocking. Tangerines today, he thinks, just don't compare. Crowdscience tries to track down this elusive fruit. Presenter Anand Jagatia traces the tangerine's origins back to Ancient ...
Feb 28, 2025•29 min
Vermillion red, vibrant orange, golden yellows, even violet – we're enchanted by the colours that make up a stunning sunset or sunrise. CrowdScience listener Paulina, a lighting designer from Chile, often uses the sunsets she sees from her balcony as inspiration for her designs. And during the day and night, the sky can be all sorts of shades of blue. But Paulina wonders why, in the colour palette of the sky, she never sees any green. CrowdScience gazes skywards to investigate. Presenter Carolin...
Feb 21, 2025•27 min
CrowdScience listener Dorit has a problem. She wants the tiles in her new bathroom to be arranged randomly but, no matter what she does, it still looks like they form some kind of pattern. This has got Dorit thinking about randomness – what is it, how do you create it, why do we find it so hard to recognise, and is anything really random at all? And if nothing is truly random, does it mean that everything is theoretically predictable? Tiling your bathroom is a much more existential problem than ...
Feb 14, 2025•26 min
Some of our biggest achievements happen in the first years of our lives. Taking our first steps, picking up a complex language from scratch, and forming relationships with some of the most important people we’ll ever meet. But when we try to remember this period of great change, we often draw a blank. After losing his Dad aged four, CrowdScience listener Colin has grappled with this. Why can’t he recall memories of such a monumental figure in his life, yet superficial relationships from his teen...
Feb 07, 2025•27 min
Smartwatches are increasingly popular and many of us use these wearable devices to monitor our performance and improve our fitness. But how reliable is the data they collect, and can they actually make us healthier? CrowdScience listener Caitlin from Malawi is a big fan of her smartwatch. Her husband Fayaz, however, is much more sceptical of its accuracy, and has asked us to investigate. We meet up with them both at the gym, where Caitlin and presenter Caroline Steel put their fitness trackers –...
Jan 31, 2025•28 min
While watching a feisty cockatoo chase after a hawk, CrowdScience listener Alison saw the hawk catch a thermal and rise effortlessly into the sky. The cockatoo gave chase, but the hawk climbed higher and higher until it became just a tiny speck, barely visible to the naked eye. And that got Alison thinking: just how high can birds go? Are there altitude limits for our feathered friends? Could a cockatoo, a sparrow, or even a duck reach such dizzying heights if they really put their wings to it? ...
Jan 24, 2025•27 min
Carbon footprints are a measure of how much we each contribute to the greenhouse gases that warm the Earth’s atmosphere. The global average of carbon dioxide emissions is nearly 5 tonnes per person per year, although it can be triple that in certain countries. But one CrowdScience listener in Ghana is wondering about the bigger picture. After all, humans aren’t the only species on this planet. So which other animal has the biggest carbon footprint? CrowdScience presenters Caroline Steel and Marn...
Jan 17, 2025•29 min
In the past stout beer has been touted for its supposed health benefits. Is there any truth to those claims - and what happens if you take the alcohol out? CrowdScience listener Aengus pondered these questions down at the pub, after noticing most of his friends were drinking non-alcoholic beers. He wondered how the non-alcoholic stuff is made – what’s taken out and what’s added in – and whether the final product is better for you than the alcoholic version. It’s a question that takes us to Belgi...
Jan 10, 2025•33 min
When listener Diana fell on a run on her birthday, her first instinct was not to check her bruised hand, but instead to get up as quickly as possible and act as if nothing had happened. She felt embarrassed. Meanwhile, her son Marley loves to watch fail videos that, mostly, show people falling over. So why does falling – something that can cause serious injury – elicit both embarrassment and laughter? In the name of CrowdScience, presenter Caroline Steel trips, stumbles and falls. She spends a m...
Jan 03, 2025•26 min
Did you know that flies fly in rectangles, fish hide by lighting themselves up and the moon is lifting the ground underneath your feet? Anand Jagatia quizzes members of the CrowdScience team on the moments from the past year that had them scratching their heads in amazement. We hear Dr Erica McAlister’s attempts to calculate how many flies have ever existed, and about flies’ mating choreography, courtesy of Prof Jochen Zeil. We learn how to tell a mosquito’s sex thanks to Eggrey Aisha Kambewa an...
Dec 27, 2024•26 min
The Moon has always sparked human curiosity. It governs the tides and biological rhythms. It’s inspired myths and stories. It’s inspired us to reach out and explore it. And it's certainly inspired CrowdScience listeners, who have sent us a host of questions about it. And in a special lunar-themed episode we’ve brought together a panel of astronomers and planetary scientists to help answer them. What would life be like if there was no Moon? Would there even be life? Or what if we had two moons? A...
Dec 20, 2024•26 min
It seems bizarre to seek out experiences that are uncomfortable or downright painful. Yet examples abound: it’s common to eat painfully hot chillies, drink bitter coffee, or ‘feel the burn' when exercising - and enjoy it. CrowdScience listener Sandy is baffled by this seemingly counterintuitive phenomenon, and has asked us to investigate. Presenter Anand Jagatia turns guinea pig as he tests a variety of unpleasant sensations, and unpicks the reasons we’re sometimes attracted to them. He meets ch...
Dec 13, 2024•29 min
For their fans, jigsaw puzzles are a satisfying challenge, a focus, a chance to put everything else aside for a moment and be creative. But for other people they’re a frustrating jumble of random shapes and colours, a pointless task which is best left in the box. CrowdScience listener Heather is definitely a fan. She loves doing jigsaw puzzles and she wants to know why some people are so good at them. What skills do you need to find a pattern amongst all those shapes and colours? How do our brai...
Dec 07, 2024•32 min
Do you find your bearings quickly or are you easily disorientated? Do your friends trust you with the directions in a new city? Finding our way in the physical world, whether that is around a building or a city, is an important everyday capability, one that has been integral to human survival. This week CrowdScience listener David wants to know whether some people are ‘naturally’ better at navigating, so presenter Marnie Chesterton sets her compass and journeys into the human brain. Accompanied ...
Nov 29, 2024•30 min
