Our lives are full of music, from the songs we sing along to on the radio to the orchestral scores that bring a film to life. But why is it that humans love to make music, and how did it evolve in the first place? Musicologist Prof Michael Spitzer, author of the new book The Musical Human (£30, Bloomsbury), joins BBC Science Focus online assistant Sara Rigby on this week’s episode to explain. Let us know what you think of the Science Focus Podcast by filling out our survey. By submitting it, you...
May 03, 2021•27 min
In this week's episode of the Science Focus Podcast, we talk to the "real-life Iron Man" – not Marvel's Tony Stark, but inventor Richard Browning. He’s the creator of the ‘Jet Suit’, which can fly one person through the air at speeds of 135km/h. He’s also founder and chief test pilot of Gravity Industries and author of new book Taking on Gravity (£20, Bantam Press). He explains his quite literal rise to success – and the future of human flight. Let us know what you think of the episode with a re...
Apr 26, 2021•27 min
In this week's episode of the Science Focus Podcast, commissioning editor Jason Goodyer speaks to Dr Carl Strathearn, a research fellow at the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University. He's currently conducting research on realistic humanoid robots, specifically on more realistically synchronising their speech and mouth movements. He tells us about how to get robots out of the Uncanny Valley, why the way a robot looks is so important, and why Data from Star Trek is an inspiration for h...
Apr 19, 2021•30 min
In this week's episode of the Science Focus Podcast, editor Daniel Bennett speaks to Tom Chivers and David Chivers. Tom is a veteran science journalist and author and David is lecturer in economics at the University of Durham. As well as a surname, they share a passion for statistics, or more precisely for the way that numbers are used and presented in the media. Together they’ve written a new book: How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Statistics in the News and Knowing When to Trust Them. They talk ...
Apr 12, 2021•1 hr 6 min
What is your favourite animal? If you know anything about the mantis shrimp, it might well be your top pick. Dwelling in shallow tropical waters, these mysterious predators not only wield one of the strongest punches in nature, but also a one-of-a-kind visual system that scientists are only just making sense of. One of these scientists is Dr Martin How from the University of Bristol. He joins us on this week's episode of the Science Focus Podcast to reveal more about mantis shrimp and their rema...
Apr 05, 2021•22 min
In this episode of the Science Focus Podcast, we speak to Elliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat. If you haven’t heard that name before, then you might be surprised to know that Bellingcat is behind some of the biggest news revelations of the decade. They use social media and information freely available online to carry out what they call open source investigation. Their work has uncovered the use of chemical weapons in Syria, identified suspects in the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury and iden...
Mar 29, 2021•45 min
In 2017, the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii spotted an interstellar object passing by Earth for the first time. Shortly after, Harvard’s Prof Avi Loeb was met with a backlash from the scientific community for suggesting it could be of alien origin. Now, several years on, he has written a book, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, outlining why we still can’t out rule the possibility, and why scientists should always keep an open mind. We speak to Avi on this week's ...
Mar 22, 2021•45 min
Many of us have had a one-to-one interaction with artificial intelligence. Whether that’s through an automated chat service for customer service, or trying our hand at beating an AI built to play chess. But these experiences aren’t flawless, they’re not as smooth as our interactions with other human beings. One researcher trying to improve the language abilities of AI is Lara Martin, a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania. More specifically, Lara is trying teach AI to tell stories. Let us k...
Mar 15, 2021•39 min
Today is International Women’s Day, and in this episode of the Science Focus Podcast, online assistant Sara Rigby talks to science historians Anna Reser and Leila McNeill, authors of Forces of Nature: The Women who Changed Science (£20, Frances Lincoln). They tell us about the women who engaged in science throughout history but don’t always get remembered – the midwives, the astronomers, and the wives and sisters. Read an edited excerpt from the interview Let us know what you think of the episod...
Mar 08, 2021•40 min
As the UK enters its 13th month of lockdown restrictions and home-working, many surveys cite a slump in mental wellbeing and general productivity. But are there any scientific ways we can maximise our motivation and prevent procrastination? In this episode of the Science Focus Podcast, neuroscientist Dr Gabija Toleikyte, author of Why the F*ck Can't I Change, tells us all about it. Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts. Subscrib...
Mar 01, 2021•29 min
In this episode of the Science Focus Podcast, we chat through the February 2021 issue of the magazine, which is on sale now. Managing editor Alice Lipscombe-Southwell opens the episode by telling us why it's so important artificial intelligence learns how to tell stories. Next up is editor Dan Bennett, who tells us about the world’s first airport for drones and flying cars, which is opening in Coventry, UK. Finally, commissioning editor Jason Goodyer tells about the latest developments in the st...
Feb 21, 2021•35 min
In the UK, one in four people experience a mental health problem each year. The reality of living with common problems like depression and anxiety is increasingly well-known. But how much do you actually know about what’s going on in your brain when your mental health suffers? Neuroscientist Dean Burnett, author of the new book Psycho-logical, tells us all about it on this episode of the Science Focus Podcast. Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you list...
Feb 15, 2021•49 min
There are few places left on Earth that have been untouched by humans, and biodiversity is being lost at an unprecedented rate. Luckily, there are ambitious rewilding programmes around the world that aim to fix this by returning land to nature. In this week's episode of the Science Focus Podcast, we speak to Dr Andrea Perino, a scientist from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and an expert on rewilding. She tells us about the benefits of rewilding, whether it's acres of for...
Feb 08, 2021•27 min
2021 has got off to a strange start, with a surprising trend sweeping the internet: sea shanties. This ancient genre of music has exploded in popularity in recent weeks, thanks to people on social media singing them, sharing them and adding their own twists. In fact, they’ve become so popular that Bristol-based shanty band The Longest Johns have entered the top 40 in the UK singles chart. Naturally, we here at BBC Science Focus wanted to know what it was about sea shanties that makes them so cat...
Feb 01, 2021•22 min
In this episode of the Science Focus Podcast, we chat through the January 2021 issue of the magazine, which is on sale now. Editor Dan Bennett opens the episode by talking about new research that suggests that rather than following a pattern of spring, summer, autumn and winter, our bodies may have their own seasonal fluctuations that don’t match the calendar. Next up is managing editor Alice Lipscombe-Southwell, who tells us about how we can beat the pandemic burnout. Finally, commissioning edi...
Jan 25, 2021•31 min
Humans' ability to turn thoughts into actions has enabled us to change the world. But we've never been great at getting two things done at once. Understanding how our brain helps us achieve our goals through something called executive function, or cognitive control, can explain why we're so bad at multitasking. According to neuroscientist Prof David Badre, when we're armed with this knowledge we can begin to work together to become a better society. Badre's new book, On Task (£25, Princeton Univ...
Jan 18, 2021•48 min
In the New Year issue, we cover the biggest ideas that you need to understand in 2021, and in the past few episodes of the podcast we’ve been talking to the experts who will explain these ideas in their own words. For the next in the series, we speak to Daniel Freeman, a Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Oxford. Daniel has been working with VR technology since 2001 and is a founder of Oxford VR, a University of Oxford spinout company. He tells us about using virtual reality t...
Jan 11, 2021•37 min
In this week's episode of the Science Focus Podcast, we're joined by AIDS researcher Professor Steffanie Strathdee. In 2015, Strathdee's husband was infected by superbug that was resistant to every antibiotic that the doctors could throw at it, but she was able to save his life with an experimental treatment made of viruses found in sewage. In the New Year issue of BBC Science Focus Magazine, we cover the biggest ideas that you need to understand in 2021. This episode is one of a series in which...
Jan 04, 2021•48 min
In the New Year issue of BBC Science Focus Magazine, we cover the biggest ideas that you need to understand in 2021. Over the next few episodes of the Science Focus Podcast, we’ll be talking to the experts who will explain these ideas in their own words. In this episode, we talk to science writer Marcus Chown, who tells us all about the major problems in our current understanding of cosmology. We discuss the Big Bang, dark matter, inflation, and what we still don't know about the formation of ou...
Dec 28, 2020•49 min
It’s been a long and strange year, and most of our attention has been focussed on the coronavirus. So, in this bonus episode of the Science Focus Podcast, the team talks about this year’s most interesting science that has nothing to do with COVID. We start off by talking about our favourite scientific developments of the year, and then we discuss the books and documentaries that we’ve loved. Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts...
Dec 24, 2020•45 min
In this week's episode of the Science Focus Podcast, we talk to Prof John Drury, a behavioural psychologist based at the University of Sussex who specialises in studying crowds and collective behaviour. The UK recently came out of the second COVID-19 lockdown, and went into a new three-tier system, with much of the country still in in the strictest tier. John tells us about why people respond to the restrictions differently, how to ensure people follow the rules, and what the long-term effects t...
Dec 21, 2020•28 min
This week on the Science Focus Podcast, we're joined by Dr Pete Etchells, a professor of psychology with a particular interest how video games affect our mood and behaviour. Pete is also the author of the book Lost in a Good Game which explores why we love video games, and what they do for us. Today we’re talking about the relationship between gambling and video games: what we know and what don’t. We want you to help us with the research, so if you want to get involved in a real-life scientific ...
Dec 14, 2020•44 min
Started by Michael Faraday in 1825, and now broadcast on national television, the Christmas lectures bring a science topic to our screens over three nights every year. The series of lectures has always been held within the Royal Institution in London, but this year, of course, is going to be slightly different. In this week's episode, editorial assistant Amy Barrett is joined today by three expert scientists, Tara Shine, Chris Jackson and Helen Czerski, who are going to be presenting the 2020 Ch...
Dec 07, 2020•36 min
In this episode of the Science Focus Podcast, we chat through the December 2020 issue of the magazine, which is on sale now. The issue is all about the search for extraterrestrial life, so managing editor Alice Lipscombe-Southwell starts us off by telling us about the most promising places in our Solar System to search for alien life. Commissioning editor Jason Goodyer tells us about a new drug delivery system that draws inspiration from parasitic hookworms, and then editorial assistant Amy Barr...
Nov 30, 2020•35 min
For this instalment in the Everything you ever wanted to know about... series, we’ve sourced questions from Google, our listeners and the Science Focus team to put to experts and help you understand key ideas in science, in short episodes. This week, we're joined by geneticist Sir Paul Nurse, the Director of the Francis Crick Institute in London and one of the recipients of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with Leland Hartwell and Timothy Hunt. Paul has recently pu...
Nov 25, 2020•24 min
For this instalment in the Everything you ever wanted to know about... series, we’ve sourced questions from Google, our listeners and the Science Focus team to put to experts and help you understand key ideas in science, in short episodes. This week, we're joined by geneticist Sir Paul Nurse, the Director of the Francis Crick Institute in London and one of the recipients of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with Leland Hartwell and Timothy Hunt. Paul has recently pu...
Nov 23, 2020•25 min
In this week’s episode, I’m talking to Dr Douglas Vakoch, President of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or METI. We talk about whether we should be broadcasting messages into space to signal our existence to intelligent alien species. We also discuss how we could create a message that an unknown species of alien could understand. Subscribe to the Science Focus Podcast on these services: Acast, iTunes, Stitcher, RSS, Overcast Read the full transcription [this will open in a new window] Li...
Nov 16, 2020•30 min
Our guest this week is Dr Jon Copley. Jon is a marine biologist, specialising in the deep sea. He went on the first mini sub dive to the world’s deepest hydrothermal vents, 5km down on the ocean floor, and also took part in the firs minisub dives to 1km deep in the Antarctic. Jon is also a science communicator and writer, who worked as a science advisor on the iconic BBC series Blue Planet II. He is also an associate professor of ocean exploration and public engagement at the University of South...
Nov 13, 2020•30 min
Our guest this week is Dr Jon Copley. Jon is a marine biologist, specialising in the deep sea. He went on the first mini sub dive to the world’s deepest hydrothermal vents, 5km down on the ocean floor, and also took part in the firs minisub dives to 1km deep in the Antarctic. Jon is also a science communicator and writer, who worked as a science advisor on the iconic BBC series Blue Planet II. He is also an associate professor of ocean exploration and public engagement at the University of South...
Nov 11, 2020•36 min
Our guest this week is Dr Jon Copley. Jon is a marine biologist, specialising in the deep sea. He went on the first mini sub dive to the world’s deepest hydrothermal vents, 5km down on the ocean floor, and also took part in the firs minisub dives to 1km deep in the Antarctic. Jon is also a science communicator and writer, who worked as a science advisor on the iconic BBC series Blue Planet II. He is also an associate professor of ocean exploration and public engagement at the University of South...
Nov 09, 2020•42 min
