The Infinite Monkey Cage - Science and Comedians

Episode Date: November 30, 2009

Former cosmologist Dara O'Briain and Dr Alice Roberts join physicist Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince for a witty, irreverant and unashamedly rational look at the world according to science. They'll be asking why so many comedians seem to start life as scientists, and begin their quest to put science at the heart of popular culture.

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Thank you for downloading this programme from BBC Radio 4. For more information, visit bbc.co.uk slash radio 4. Hello and welcome to the very first Infinite Monkey Cage, a programme about science. I'm Brian Cox, physicist. And I'm Robin Ince, English and

Drama BA. Robin, could you just tell the listeners why Robin Ince, BA English and Drama and comedian is presenting a science show? Basically I think because I am what I would classify as a keen idiot which I imagine some of the other Radio 4 audience are which is that we're very interested in science but at the same time we don't know much

about spontaneous symmetry breaking in the electro-weak sector of the standard model and to be honest we're slightly scared of it Well don't know much about spontaneous symmetry breaking in the electro-wheat sector of the Standard Model and to be honest we're slightly scared of it. Well don't worry about it, by the end of the series you will be fluent in spontaneous symmetry breaking in the electro-wheat sector of the Standard Model. And just to reassure listeners, this show is also available in the form of a graph. Over the next few weeks we'll be talking about everything from the search for alien intelligence, science conspiracy theories,

religion versus science, overlapping magisteria, non-overlapping magisteria, slime mould communities, and hopefully, if we've got time, the sub-aquatic ape theory, which is my favourite theory, with professors, PhDs and people off the telly because they don't put enough professors on the telly. But in this week's Monkey Cage, we're joined by anatomist and broadcaster Dr Alice Roberts. Hello.

And it says here, someone whose early career showed so much promise but has gone drastically downhill since then. That's a bit harsh on the script. I was going to be a new research. Apologies for that. No, what you've done there, Brian, is you've misread that one. That's not referring to Dr Alice Roberts.

I can't believe we only wrote this script one hour ago and already you've forgotten the meaning of this script. And cosmologist and comedian Dara Overeen. And the shocking thing was I actually recognised myself from the description of someone whose career started promisingly and has gone hugely wrong. I cannot be described as a cosmologist, by the way. Let's get that straight right from the start,

because I never actually worked as a cosmologist. But you did study. I did, yeah. I did four years of a theoretical physics and mathematics degree with a specific leaning towards differential geometry and cosmology. So why is it that there are so many comedians that seem to have started life as scientists? You know, there's Ben Miller, Dave Gorman, Richard Vrench, Harry Hill.

I have a theory that the way you come up with ideas in comedy isn't dissimilar to the way you come up with ideas in mathematics because you compare things to other things, basically. You compare the properties of one thing to the properties of another thing and from that hilarity slash mathematical illumination lie, right? Depending on what of the two things you're comparing, right? The foundation to mass civilization, all those things. Exactly, or a very good joke.

But there is also the other thing that even though there are people who have a science background, there are also a lot of comedians who don't have a science background but are very passionate about science, but then actually trying to do stand-up comedy about science you must have difficulty when you try and tackle cosmology in stand-up. Well I don't as a rule try

to tackle cosmology in stand-up that often I'm a little bit close to it, to actually to be able to bring that what's all this about? I mean the best stance in comedy is to be the intelligent alien. To have, unfortunately, had the door opened a little bit for you, by way of doing a degree, means that I'm a little bit too close to it.

Now, Alice, I was thinking, because I think that's why physics is hard in any way to do in comedy is because it's kind of counter-instinctual and most people have no background in it at all. Whereas evolutionary biology, you see, I think that's quite an easy one to do gags about. So, I mean, do you have... When you're doing a presentation...

The journey of mankind out of Africa, that's just funny. No, I'm talking about the other... Once you get to evil, is the purpose of this show to classify all the sciences depending on how easy they are to make jokes about? Yes, that is exactly it. I didn't realise that. That's good. I'm on board with that project.

That's the one, too. So, Annalise, this is what I love, is finding out when... I didn't realise that. That's good. I'm on board with that project. That's the one too. So, Annalise, this is what I love is finding out, when I've sometimes been to conferences, there are gags that I don't understand at all. And you must have when you're doing a lecture. Do you have your kind of opening gag? This will get people into the idea of mitochondrial leave. Watch out.

I've had some very, very funny answers to things when I've been marking medical student exams over the years. And there was this one bit where I was asking them what a feature that stabilised the ankle was. And somebody wrote down Spanish ape. And I was really foxed by this. And then eventually a colleague said, oh, God, I know what it is. And I said, well, have you been lying to them? And he said, no, I said that the two bones at the ankle grip onto the talus,

which is the top bone of your foot, and they form a sort of spanner shape. And obviously the student had just written this down. And it kind of, you know, it's like esoteric knowledge. And of course, what's nice about anatomy and the stuff that I do is it's not actually esoteric, it's quite accessible. Well, that's what I found difficult, is when I found out that the song about the head bone connected to the neck bone actually does have some inaccuracies in it,

which is one of the reasons that I didn't do very well in anatomy. This is the problem with a lot of 30s songwriters. It's not an mnemonic for an exam, that particular song. I don't think that's how it was invented. It wasn't passed from anatomy students to anatomy students. Because why would you put a chorus in?

If you've got a mnemonic, why would you have a bit that goes Dem bones, dem bones, in the middle of it? That was one of the problems. I think I was marked down for racism in the modern age. That would slow you up during a viva. If in the middle of it. That was one of the problems. I think I was marked down for racism in the modern age. That would slow you up during a viva.

If in the middle of it all you had to pause in the middle of the ribcage and go... And then start again. It's all right. We've talked about the fact that... Sorry, we're not mainly going to be talking about how science and comedy mix, but it's just because it's the first one

and we've just intrigued as to... Because we were... In the beginning we were talking about the fact that bonobos are a fantastic ape to create humour from because they're the only ape with a fashion sense. Not merely the fact that they rub genitals together to ease a fight

situation but also if they find a dead rat or a cockroach, they place it on their head and march around, and that's true, they parade around showing off their hat. Really? Yes. So that's why again,, my physics, I find much harder. This one's television, because there's three people just staring at you completely blankly. I just want to report that because it's radio.

Yeah, anyway, Alice, you recently did a series about the out-of-Africa theory, the fact that the whole of humanity actually began from Africa. Now, it's an amazing human journey, isn't it? A great human journey. The incredible human journey. The incredible human journey. I found it great and amazing. Can I make it quite clear? I said to the BBC, you can't it's an amazing human journey, isn't it? A great human journey. The incredible human journey. The incredible human journey. I found it great and amazing.

Can I make it quite clear? I said to the BBC, you can't call it the incredible human journey because the incredible journey is a story about, I think, two dogs and a cat trying to find their way home. Yeah, it is. That would be fantastic if it was two dogs. Basically, what you're saying is that humanity's family moved

and humanity followed them. Did you think that these programmes have been in any way controversial? Because I know that you got a lot of letters. Did you expect that anthropology, the human journey, would be a controversial programme? I don't think so, because we were presenting something which is very much the consensus view

that most anthropologists agree about, but it was quite strange, actually, and it almost seemed that some of the criticism of it or some of the responses people were bringing about it were more to do with the fact that they felt uncomfortable with the idea that humans had actually evolved, which I found quite shocking, because I kind of started off with the, you know,

that's kind of a given. At what point? Because we're all hearing this debate going on and on and on and on and people who just essentially ram their fingers in the ears and go la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la, and at what point do you have to go, fine, go for it, knock yourselves out. The rest of us are going to carry on looking up stuff and finding stuff and learning things.

Is it important, this particular debate, or is it just time-wasting at this stage? I don't think it is time-wasting, and I think that it's still important to engage with people, even if they're starting off from the point of view of really not wanting to believe you. And I think that if you lay the evidence out on the table, and certainly when it comes to the evolution of our own species,

we've got such a lot of evidence now, and also we've got a lot of evidence from different branches of science, and you kind of think, I can't believe that people can look at all of the evidence I've kind of laid out here and not engage with it and start to think, maybe there is something to it after all. Maybe the fact that you've got a story coming out of genetics

and fossils and archaeology and it all seems to be coming together. Surely there's something in it. Oh, but it'll never come together as there are two chapters at the start of a book which explain this very neatly. Plus, how often do you need to hear the words

well, you said it's only a theory, without having to go through the definition of what a theory means? I mean, of all the sciences, paleontology is one of the ones. I mean, somewhere between when I was in school and when I grew up, the brontosaurus died out again because it was around. And I remember being in all the little books of dinosaur when I was a kid. And then when I became an adult and had to buy the book for my own kid, suddenly no brontosaurus anymore.

Well, the brontosaurus is gone. The brontosaurus is gone. Is it? Yeah. The brontosaurus is gone. I didn't know that. It's the only animal to have become extinct twice. Feathers is a new one.

Oh, feathers, yeah. When I was growing up, dinosaurs never had feathers. In my day, dinosaurs didn't. And now they do. I've got a friend who works on feathered dinosaurs in China. He's shown me a feathered dinosaur about the size of a chicken. It looked a bit like a chicken.

I'm sure it wasn't just a chicken that he dressed up to look like a dinosaur though. It was fossilised for a start. But I really like the idea. He said, do you know that some of the Tyrannosaurus Rex family actually had feathers? That's the best, that's age, because that's now my favourite dinosaur because my favourite used to be, you know,

when we were, at least three of us, when we were young, they still didn't know why dinosaurs had died out. And there was a maverick scientist who had the belief that there was a plant which had special properties which would help the dinosaurs go to the toilet. And the plant died out, and then the dinosaurs actually died out from constipation. That was in the early 70s. That was one of the theories.

But feathered Tyrannosaurus rex wins, Brontosaurus models get thrown out. Waste of time that was for that whole week. People cling to say that science is dogmatic, that science tells you exactly. They don't realise that, like, I mean, that physics itself threw out all physics twice, at least, in the last century.

And just went, oh God, we've been wrong with this all along, let's go with the new paradigm. And it does it all the time. New ideas come through. How do we as a culture educate people to respect the scientific method? To understand that that's the best

view we have at the moment based on the current evidence and whilst it may change it's very difficult to get to a better view by, as you say, belief on reading it in a magazine. I think there's two problems you face, right? And I don't work in these industries,

so they're not problems I necessarily face. But two problems that you face, he says, pointing to us and to Brian here, which is that people inherently dislike people who are smarter than they are. And that goes back to school. And people like their own opinions and like the fact that there are many things

in which their opinions are extremely valid and dislike being told there are topics in which your opinion doesn't actually count for anything. And people don't like to hear that.

We live in a culture where people are constantly expressing their opinions to things. I have a right to my opinion. I have a right to my opinion and my opinion should be heard. My opinion should be regarded

as equally valid as anyone else's opinion. And there are certain topics which that is nonsense. There was a thing on the Daily Mail website and the Daily Mail website, nonsense. There was a thing on the Daily Mail website, and the Daily Mail website, this isn't actually a comment

of the Daily Mail website, bizarrely. They had a thing about a story that processed meat can cause greater instances of colon cancer. This is the idea. They've eaten too many sausages, basically, that you'll have some certain percentage increase in the risk of colon cancer

over the course of your life, right? And it was a perfectly reasonable study, mapped out, and they alerted people to the findings of this. And underneath it, there was a quiz saying, do you think sausages cause cancer?

And underneath the story which said sausages cause cancer, 80% of people had said, no, sausages don't cause cancer. And you're kind of going, well, I'm sorry, there's literally nothing you can do in that situation. Do you think people had just turned to the quiz, though, rather than actually reading the article?

Well, partially, they read it as just somebody... Oh, this is fun. Oh, sausage quiz. People were Googling sausage and quiz, and I forgot it, and scrolled down to find the button they could press, rather than that. I just think, this isn't Jedward.

You're actually, your opinion isn't right. It can be dangerous, can it? Particularly childhood vaccinations, for example. That's a very dangerous thing to have an opinion on. You need to trust the experts. It's like getting on a plane and saying, I don't think the wings should be like that. I just don't like those wings.

I want cubic wings. You know, you trust the aerodynamicist. Or you don't go to the cockpit on a plane and say i think i could do this better can i the power you don't get that do you don't get aeronautical you're doing medicine don't you where are you aeronautical quacks i think science is the art i suppose of of teaching yourself to look at evidence and remove your prejudice and it is very difficult but it's not because common sense is overrated? Because common sense, I think, may be... I think science is the...

We've learned as a species to remove our filters as far as we can. Science is the art of looking at evidence dispassionately. And you have to be taught it because you react to things. We're all irrational at heart, I suppose. We're irrational beings. And so I think that's the value of science. I think there is an element of people complaining about scientists being, and even this discussion, I'm sure there are people who will hear this and go,

oh, look at that, how smug. They all agree with each other. Where is the dissenting voice? And that's not necessarily because two of us aren't scientists at all. I certainly come from a very humble position of knowing just how much work those who actually work in science do to keep up with all this kind of information and how long it takes to train for this. And that drives me to say on behalf of people who do all this work

that somebody can just make up stuff. So it seems to me, the consensus at least around this table, that science is valuable. So given the importance, how much would you guess that we actually spend on scientific research in this country given that it underpins our economy our future as a civilization how much how much would you guess what does that when you say what is that what research what's that include so so all the universities the medical research council the physics chemistry biology

engineering space exploration cernERN, absolutely everything. I mean, there's a famous example of when the Apollo programme was on and people asked American citizens, how much are we spending going to the moon? It was like half of our GDP, you know, billions and billions and billions. And in fact, it was a tiny percentage. So, I mean, how much do you... If you had to guess... As a percentage of GDP?

Yeah, how much would you think the whole lot costs? Four, five. I'm going to give it ten. Yeah, I'd say ten, twelve. Really? It's 0.4% of GDP. It's about six, six and a half billion pounds a year, which pays for everything.

And then the proposal is that funding decisions for scientific projects should be 25% based on impact so what do you think impact is? Impact is that business let's say automatically understands the implications of it and can sell it that's what I'm presuming impact means

or not necessarily business but let's say that it is a very specific it's a new type of MRI machine, something very commercial or very obviously marketable. How do you measure that? Because, I mean, is it impact in terms of number of lives saved or amount of money that that technology then generates?

I think how quickly it can be put into production or sold. James, an awful lot of scientific ideas come from a place which is much more blue skies where actually we cannot predict what the impact is going to be. This is assuming that you're going to be able to predict exactly what the impact of some kind of scientific discovery is going to be before you'll decide whether to fund it. Presumably the parallel to this would be

if they said to comedians, not that we're publicly funded, but if they said to comedians, if you could just do jokes about topics we already have because we like these topics, these topics have worked in the past, if you could just do new jokes about these exact topics again and again

and again. Or it's the immediacy of the laugh would be the graph. I mean, that routine was great, but we were seeing that it was nine seconds before the laugh and I feel it would actually benefit the audience more if they could get a laugh within the first four seconds. That means the routine could be over within nine minutes and then they can leave, whereas the way we're looking at the moment, we're waiting for 23, 24 minutes before you get to the conclusion of your set.

So therefore, what we need is a far more immediate laugh and therefore an immediate exit. But Daryl wouldn't even get to the point of trialling any new material? Yes, he wouldn't. Because he wouldn't have the funding to do it? No, he wouldn't. I mean, the process that you go through at the start of a show where you basically sit in a room and go bananas and throw ideas at a wall and then go in front of an audience with a sheet of paper and go, is this something? Is there anything in this? That's all gone, presumably, onto this current scheme.

I still find it fascinating, the whole way that science tries to get funding. And because I'm not in science, I don't necessarily have a great comprehension of it. So I've attempted to learn more this week by I went to eavesdrop at the pros from Dover Laboratory. Oh, Morris, you're back early. I think I may have had a breakthrough with our gel electrophoresis problem. Oh, Desmond, what's the use? Well, it just means that we... I'm afraid the Research Council has refused to renew our funding. What? Damn it! Do they not see the importance of sizing and quantification of proteins

during purification or protein expression experiments? No, no. They're funding a self-ironing shirt. Not Thompson over at UCL. I'm afraid so. They saw him on The One Show with Adrian Childs. Why can't we be on The One Show? And why do our funding applications always fail?

It's as if success is in inverse proportion to long-term importance. Go on. Well, if S, success, is a product of P, populist appeal, and the inverse of long-term importance. Go on. Well, if S, success, is a product of P, populist appeal, and the inverse of long-term importance... So one over I. Correct. And factoring in a telegenic front person like Thompson,

let's call it the Vorderman effect, V, we have P times one over I to the power of V. May I? Oh, yes, of course. Oh, that's good. Interesting. Now, what's A? Attenborough.

We know that if he's just had a series on, all funding moves away from the arts and humanities to sciences. My God, Morris! We may have discovered the formula for successful funding applications. Steady on, old man. We'll need exhaustive trials, and for that, we'll need funding. So in order to fund further research into successful funding application, we'll need to be successful in our application for funding.

Dan. Hold on, Desmond. If we're unsuccessful and the Research Council turns us down, we'll be in an even stronger position to apply for funding in order to discover exactly why they refused us funding. Which could take decades, but which will need funding. A strong argument, then, for being unsuccessful in our application. Precisely.

Let's not apply at all. That will guarantee that we're unsuccessful and ensure further funding. Thus beating the Research Council at its own game. Excellent. This is very exciting. By the way, we have to be out of here at four. The lease on the lab runs out then. Right-o. And they want our microscopes back.

What time does the job centre open? I've got no idea. I've got a job in a pub. Ooh, bar work. Well, that seems perfectly logical to me. Obviously, level of celebrity plus product equals likelihood of funding. Well, you know, I mean, it sounds funny in a way, but actually there is a

genuine amount of concern in the research sector or the university sector about his proposal. So I went to speak to the current science minister, Lord Drayson, to put our concerns to him. What's he like? I've always wondered. He's lovely. I think whilst our sketch is meant to be funny, as a working scientist, there is often a feeling that you listen to what the government says, which is quite often in some difficult to understand management speak.

Are you saying I speak in management speak? No, but you're not the person that talks to us it gets filtered down through a lot of people in the art of management and and then and then what scientists tend to do is try to work out try to optimize their strategy in order to get the money for the research that they're going to do anyway well scientists are very good at that well this is a great opportunity right it's the science minister speaking here and i'm telling you just do excellent science that's what it's about it really is the government sees that the success that we've had in the past is because we focused on excellence it's about the quality of the science so the most important thing that all scientists need to focus on is the quality of what it is that they do i look at the science budget

and i think perhaps you do as well and i won't put words into your mouth but i look at it and think it's ludicrously low not not in britain but just in general i mean let's say say Britain's around the average. Then these levels of funding set against figures like 6.4% of UK GDP is physics-based. Or like the studies of the economic impact of Apollo, which is something very near to my heart. I mean, the Apollo program was one of the reasons I went into science. Yeah, absolutely. The numbers are astonishing. You have, for example, for every dollar spent, $14 came back into the US economy. That's the chase study of the impact of Apollo.

Or CERN. I mean, the World Wide Web, which Tim Berners-Lee says could not have been invented anywhere else, has made an incalculable contribution to the world economy. How am I to understand the fact that we spend, as a world, so little on scientific research when it delivers so much to our civilisation? Well, I agree with everything that you've said. And I think that, for me, the most pragmatic

argument for why this economic impact in research assessment is so important is that future science ministers who come after me need to be able to make a stronger case in government to say exactly what you've said and be able to point to the data and being able to stand in front of the treasury and say look it's indisputable proof from this economic assessment from the impact assessment that we do of scientific research that the more we invest in science the better impact that we have for our country and those two therefore are linked if we want to be able to spend more more on science in the future which we absolutely need to be able to do we have to show the way in which that happens so so alice you were shaking your head at points

there but it seems reasonably sensible. I mean, what the science minister is saying is that he wants to be able to make an argument to the Treasury, presumably. I always wonder why it's not possible to just go to the Treasury and say, look, right, science is really good. It delivers economic impact.

But it appears you can't talk in those words. So he's saying that the scientists themselves need to provide the data that tells the Treasury that our whole civilisation is built on science. But you were already providing examples of how science did that without having to bring in a whole new bean-cating mechanism. When he says the best benefits for society, I want to know, as being a non-scientist, how many scientists are working deliberately for the detriment of society?

How many are looking for funding? Because that's the main scientists we know. You can't discount the amount of good work evil scientists have done in just moving, say, weapon systems along or armies with scubas on their back or funnelling out of volcanoes to put rocket systems into. I mean, that kind of stuff, a lot of work was done by bad people. Ebola virus licorice, which didn't get funding for the British government,

but has done very well abroad. And, of course, Werner Von Braun. Well, Von Braun is a very interesting example, actually, because he was the father of Apollo. Yes, of course. So the whole wonderful adventure of going to the moon was built on the back of V2 rockets. Yeah, so, you know,

let's not discount evil too quickly in this situation. But the... Evil is a force for good. Can we measure the impact of evil as well? Maybe we should take that into the equation. Apparently you can, absolutely. God, you're probably more easily, to be honest. That's the slogan, election slogan, isn't it?

Evil is a force for good. After all your stuff there there where you've gone on and it's really underfunded and the other thing actually which would have been fantastic for our GDP has been evil even better than science if we can combine the two

Perhaps scientists should look at as they're writing their hypotheses down they should go well what would an evil me do? This is what I would do here but maybe evil me would take a... Maybe you just need that little different viewpoint on it. And that could be a 10% kind of weighting in the research.

Absolutely. Evil people tend to be much more goal-oriented, much less blue sky. So the next time Brian puts up a grant application and if he attaches a little photo of himself on the front stroking a long-haired white cat, he's going to have a much better chance. If it's a two-headed cat, look what I made,

then it's even better, isn't it? On the level of evil, I think we've actually got to the end of the show. We started off as a force for good. We've actually ended up promoting evil. Dara O'Brien, Alice Roberts, thank you very much. Next week, we'll be discussing UFOs, science conspiracies,

and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence with Seth Shostak, who is indeed from SETI. That is their job, to find extraterrestrial intelligence. And John Ronson, who has been out in the deserts with Robbie Williams to find UFOs, so he's got his own personal take on UFO hunting. If you know what Infinite Monkey Cage means, because we're still a bit uncertain, get in touch with us.

We're not going to tell you how because that's exercise number one. Goodbye. If you've enjoyed this programme, you might like to try other Radio 4 podcasts, from Friday night comedy and daily drama from the archers to a range of news, discussions and documentaries. For a full list of available podcasts, visit bbc.co.uk slash radio4. only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long.

Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving. Using lessons learned from nature. And good news. It is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers. Wherever you get your podcasts. you