The Infinite Monkey Cage - Science Museum

Episode Date: July 29, 2013

Brian Cox and Robin Ince transport their infinite cage to the more finite proportions of London's Science Museum to discuss wonder in science, and why children seem to have it, but too many of us lose it as adults. Joining them on stage are comedian Josie Long, US astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director of the Science Museum Ian Blatchford and author and historian Richard Holmes. There's also a special performance by comedian and rap artist Doc Brown, in tribute to his childhood hero.

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 podcast. On my left, a man who first became fascinated in the wonders of the universe when he was only 38 years old and offered some money by the BBC to do a series with that name. Though there was a clever backstory about the fact that he used to work at CERN,

might have been a keyboard player for a chart band. All of that is false. There is a possibility, in fact, he may only be six years old and a clone, hence the curious smooth skin. It is Professor Brian Cox. On my right, a man who first became interested in science when he stuck a pin into a plug socket and was hurled across the room. And he's been doing that ever since because he never learns, hence his hairstyle. It's Robin Ince.

Today we are looking at wonder, and so we are at one of Britain's great buildings of wonder, which is the Science Museum in London. The Science Museum originally began its life in 1857, after the British realised that we couldn't just keep filling museums with stuff we'd taken from other countries, and had to start making some stuff

and filling museums with that instead. The three museums of Exhibition Road, which are the V&A, the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum, are a tribute to Victorian ambition. The corridors, as I'm sure you know already, vibrate with the excitement of ideas and artefacts. And, of course, in our own lifetime, we had the Millennium Dome built, which now vibrates with the wails and thundering tears

of disappointed Justin Bieber fans. Where is our 21st century ambition? As usual, we have four great minds to help us discuss scientific wonder. Our first guest started his career at the Bank of England, but left long enough ago that we can't really blame him for anything that's happened of late. He is the director of the Science Museum, so when he's not poring over balance sheets,

once you've all gone home, you'll find him running around the corridors, climbing up and down rockets and going, Whee! It's mine! It's all mine! He is Ian Blatchford. Our next guest is a biographer who used to write about Shelley, Coleridge and other poets until he realised that following Isaac Newton through strange seas of thought alone, exploring the wonders of the cosmos was more exciting than making things rhyme.

It's the author of the acclaimed The Age of Wonder, How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, Richard Holmes. Our next guest has been described as an experimental comedian, not merely because she creates wonderful and award-winning shows, but because in the act of doing those shows, she frequently burns her eyebrows off and leaves a smell of burnt sulphur on the stage. She also insists on a controlled comedian to ensure that the results are repeatable.

It is Josie Long. APPLAUSE And finally, and this is genuinely true, I got a phone call earlier today from the Royal Institution just down the road from the Science Museum saying that one of my heroes, one of the great communicators of science, was there filming, he's filming the sequel to Carl Sagan's Cosmos. It is Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson. Ian, we start with you as the director of the Science Museum. And at a time when I know that you're often having to fight to say science museums, and indeed museums as a whole,

are very important, what is it that museums provide for children, adults? What is it, how is it that they engender the sense of wonder? Well, I think first of all, museums are not a classroom. And I think that's really important because people are very literal about how you inspire children with science. And when I talk to all the children who come here, all the teachers, they love the fact that actually it's full of stories and also old things. Because the thing that's quite surprising is that it shouldn't make sense, should it, in the age of the internet. The museum should be empty. So why is it that

we had last year the highest attendance ever? It's incredibly easy to understand, partly because historic objects, actually you can understand the technology and the science is still relevant. But also they're surprising. We're working on a project at the moment to tell the history of communications. And when you show young people, you know, the original telegraph laying across the Atlantic or manually operated telephone exchanges or what a dialed telephone is,

they're really as amazed by that as by some amazing space discovery. Richard, your book, The Age of Wonder, it starts with the voyage of Joseph Banks aboard the Endeavour with Cook to Tahiti, this wonderful expedition, the Apollo programme, but it's time in many ways to see the transit of Venus. Now, you came to science late, didn't you,

through the Romantic poets? Yes, I did. I mean, many people here will have their conversion experience in science, which usually happens quite young, and we're going to talk about that, I mean, even six or seven or so. I was 57. And the true story is I was giving a lecture about Coleridge

at the Royal Institution, and it was called Coleridge Among the Scientists. And two things happened. The first was, just as I walked in, the director said to me, we have an atomic clock. It goes off, the klaxon goes off at 50 minutes. You will have finished by then.

This is not what happens in literary lectures, all right? So I learned him. But the second thing that happens, the response to that, I suddenly realised, talking about Courage and Davy, they're a poet and a chemist, and as young men, their communication, the way they work together on the nitrous oxide experiments, quite extraordinary, and they both left records of them.

And I suddenly thought, wait a minute, this is a whole new area. And the interesting thing for me which happened, it suddenly reminded me that I'd had a scientific childhood which I'd forgotten about. So up to the age of about 10 or 11, I'd learned to build radios, I learned to strip a motorcycle, I was taken by an RF uncle in airplanes. Completely, and it was all lost because of the educational streaming. It went literally. So at the age of 57,

I started bringing that back. Neil, when did you first really feel that, you know, that sense of love and awe of wonder for science? I was nine years old. I went to my neighborhood planetarium, which is the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, where I was born and raised. And New York City is another big city, like London, except our buildings are taller. And so when you want to look up, you see a building. You don't see the sky. So New Yorkers have no relationship to the night sky at all. So the Hayden Planetarium, or any planetarium in such an environment, becomes this jewel, this, it's an almost spiritual encounter with the cosmos. Because the lights dim, the chairs are comfortable,

you're looking at this oddly shaped round ceiling, curved ceiling, and then the stars came out. And when I first saw that, I said, that's an entertaining hoax. There aren't that many stars in the night sky. I know. I've seen them from the Bronx. There are 11 stars in the night sky. So, but I'll just play along with this because it's kind of fun to watch these people make this stuff up.

And it would be a couple of years I would go west of New York into farmlands and I'd look up at the night sky. And to this day, I go to the finest observatory sites in the world and I look up and see the gorgeous night sky. And I say something embarrassingly urban. I say, it reminds me of the Hayden Planetary. But I was hooked ever since. I was nine years old. And by 11, I figured out you can make a living off of studying the universe. So that was the age that I had the answer to that annoying question that adults always ask children. What do you want to be when you grow up?

And from then on, I would say, an astrophysicist. And then they would just shut up and walk away. Josie, just listening to that what is it that stopped you becoming a professional scientist do you know i was listening to that and i was getting so sad in my heart because i was thinking yeah and i remember when i was that age i was like i really like showing off yeah it's not as noble or beautiful what stopped me from being a professional scientist is it's very sad um and it's to do with how modern culture forces subjects apart and is like, that is that subject and that is that subject.

And for GCSEs, I loved art and I loved drama and I wanted to do art and drama and we were only allowed to do one art and one humanity and we had to do three separate science GCSEs and I was so infuriated by that control over my prospects as an adult that I took it out on chemistry, although we did have a supply teacher who taught us how to make explosives, who had previously worked in prisons.

But I was so angry at chemistry that the day after my chemistry GCSE, I took all of my chemistry notes and ripped each individual page, scrunched each one up hard into a ball, built a pyramid and set it alight. But I measured how quickly it burns, so it still counts. I was going to say I did that as well, but it didn't stop me becoming a physicist. I should say, by the way, during all of the things Josie was saying, Neil's face was going through many different gesticulations of confusion and fury. It was the first time I ever heard of the sentence,

I took it out on chemistry. That's an extraordinary sentence. Richard, Josie echoed what you said, I think, this separation. And what strikes me about it, if you go back to the time you wrote about the 1760s, 1800, it seemed to me, anyway, that that separation was not really there. You had the romantic poets in particular mixing with these scientists, Davy and Banks.

Yeah, that's true. I have to instantly finish the story of the chemistry master, right? Because I, too, had... I collected magnesium for the rest of the class and I built a magnesium bomb and I blew it up, and I can see it today. It's true. It's absolutely true.

Behind every arty person, there lies some story like this, and violence in their souls because they were prevented from being scientists at a young age. They're dangerous, these arts people. This is how the villains to superheroes get made, you know? Let's go safely back to the 18th century.

It's true. It is true that in the Romantic period, you've got the literary Romantic revolution, which is always taught completely separately from what's going on at Herschel's Astronomy, Davy's Chemistry, and then Faraday and so on, and Banks going out, that first great, the Global Circuit of Navigation, and collecting, bringing about 50,000 botanical specimens and so on. And all these people knew each other. I said that Davy and Coleridge

were great friends, and Banks produced, in fact, he produced some of the opium that Coleridge smoked, very interesting. Barron was a member of the Royal Society at that time and delivered a wonderful letter against vivisection, he'd heard a paper on vivisection at the Royal Society amazing letter against that, so these exchanges, Herschel, Shelley was reading Herschel's

papers about astronomy, he wrote a letter which would have delighted Richard Dawkins, which was that the Herschel's demonstrating that the galaxies existed outside the Milky Way, separate galaxies, and the kind of distance that this implied meant, to Shelley's wonderful logic, that Christianity, therefore, would have to produce a saviour for every single intelligent civilisation out there.

And as Shelley put it, his works have borne witness against him. And we're still arguing about that, I think, right now. So those kind of exchanges were going on all the time. So it's a wonderful period. And I feel now, maybe with any luck, we're moving into a similar period now. Ian, talking there, we were talking both about art and science, Natalie Angier in her book The Canon about an introduction,

reintroduction to the sciences, she said that she found it interesting that people would often say you take your children to the science museum and then when they get to a certain age they don't have to go to the science museum they take them to the art museums instead because they've grown up and they're going to look at paintings. And I wonder how do you feel when you wander around the sciences? Is there still that clash? Is there still that idea that science is the fun thing for kids

and then once you're grown up, you look at the existential angst of some 19th-century painter? Well, I think there is a bit of that still. Even within the science world, it gets irritating when people say that they take their very young children to look at butterflies at the Natural History Museum and then they move on to Watt and steam engines. Of course

it is pretty bizarre. But you know, the thing that I think that's breaking down, because especially in this part of London you've got probably the world's greatest science museum, the world's greatest design museum, and you know, probably the world's greatest natural history museum. And what you discover is that actually people move between those museums in a very fluid way.

So in fact it's not quite as rigid as it used to be. Do you think that science is valued culturally as much as it should be? We've talked about these great museums. It always seems to me that colouring in and shouting in a shrill voice is valued. It seems like higher culture than science in certain circles. There's a reason you're never going to do a show called The Wonders of Art, isn't there?

I have a kind of obscure answer to your question. I'm old enough to remember the 1960s where there was a lot of dreaming about what the future would look like. And that coincided, I think not by accident, with the fact that we were going to the moon. And the moon was so unreachable for all of human history.

And then all of a sudden it was there, and we were headed there, and there were funded programs that would make it happen. And I think that opened a lid to our contained imagination for what kind of future we might invent for ourselves. And so I remember seeing images of monorails, right, and helicopters and planes in the sky, and this was before jets were common. And, you know, there were motorized walkways. And I said, I want to live in that future. And then recently I was at the airport and there were motorized walkways and there were flying things. And I said, I am living in a large part of that future,

but why am I not taken by every moment of it? It's because when it comes on, it comes on sort of gradually, and then you grow accustomed to it. And it's the growing accustomed to it that I think prevents us from waking up astonished by the level that science has impacted our daily lives. And so either science has to keep being astonishing on that frontier, knowing that what it has already created for us is just part of life, or we need some way to reacquaint people with why the science that has influenced our lives is astonishing.

Just bring anyone from the past, from 100 years ago. I think about this all the time. Suppose I had Beethoven right next to me, and I just put headphones on and listened to him. I said, you know, I got all your nine symphonies here. I was going to delete them this afternoon because I had to fit something else on. What would he say to that, right?

He's listening to it, and where is the symphony? Is it in there? How do you fit people in there? Just think about, his mind would explode. And so something's got to explode our minds every day, otherwise I don't see how we can continue to appreciate science. If you do make the machine that brings back someone from 100 years ago,

that would be pretty exciting as well. That would be a good starting point. That's more exciting than watching what happens to them when they think about it. But it's just too harsh if it's Beethoven because Beethoven was deaf. Early Beethoven, right? So he'd just be like, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. This is where you come from.

Early Beethoven, right. But, you know, I don't agree with this view that there's a unique problem now with the pace of change because, you know, if you went, I know, to London in 1860 or 1870, for people living then, they were experiencing incredible change. But actually, you know, you were talking about a time when the belief in science in America and Britain and France and, you know, the developed world was incredibly strong. So I think it's really quite anachronistic

to think that we uniquely live in an age of great change, that so many centuries have experienced that. No, we live in a unique age of blasé. Yeah, but I think what we have lost is that a sense that, which maybe Brian is getting at, that there was a time when there was equal respect for art and science. And I do think that's true. I mean. The example I always give is that if you go into the garden of the Victorian Albert Museum, there's a wonderful set of doors you have to go through to get into the cafe, and they were built in the 1860s. And what's very interesting, on one side you've got Titian,

Bramante and Michelangelo, wonderful statues of them, but on the other side you've got Newton, Davy and Watt. And my point is that we're so used to that old cliche about two cultures, we've forgotten it's unbelievably recent. That, in fact, for the whole of the 19th century, in fact, right up to the First World War, the belief, the boundless optimism about science was shared really at all levels in society.

And the wonder, Neil, you said that we're perhaps becoming blasé about the achievements of science and engineering, the airplanes, etc. Do you think that therefore we're losing that childish word in a way, our childlike word, wonder? Yeah, I think you put two words very important there together, wonder and childhood. I think a scientist is a child who simply never grew up. So something happens between childhood and adulthood when you don't become a scientist. Your curiosity is not rewarded anymore. Your boundless energy for climbing trees and jumping into puddles

and doing things that could be destructive to your environment are not valued. In fact, they're suppressed because you're a misbehaving child at that point. If you survive that, I think these are the people who become the scientists because they still wonder about everything that you encounter. And so I think it's there innately within us, and it's not a matter of fostering it where it never was. It's a matter of preventing it from being wiped out from those who don't know any different or any better.

That's another interesting thing, though, which is sometimes... I wonder, Josie, as someone who's, you're not a scientist, but I do know that you like jumping in puddles and climbing trees. We've worked together a long time. And igniting paper. This is what I was thinking about when I heard you talking about what makes people into scientists. I was thinking, but that's how I feel about art, too. That's how I feel about being an artist.

Like, being creative is about being playful, and creative thought and critical thought are so, you know, in terms of examining things asking questions about things trying to push things out in different ways like it's just about the medium and about how rigorous you are testing your ideas against reality Ian we've got some of the great artefacts from your museum here in front of us. Would you like to... Any of your favourites here,

would you like to single out a couple that you'd like... How does it work on the radio? Well, we're going to describe them. Oh, OK. A bit through the medium of speech. We're going to pick each other's one up. Ian said we could just shake them near the microphone and then the audience are going to guess at home.

What have we just broken now? This is going to be like snooker in black and white TV, isn't it? Yes, it is. Well, I mean, first of all, remember, we've got 7.3 million things. So you're very honoured to see this selection, which I think is just fun, really. Can I just ask you, when you said that, Ian, what percentage of the science is generally unseen?

Most of the time, when people come and see, how much of it is in the storerooms? Well, the overwhelming majority is never seen, of course. You can book research visits, but that's a bit of a meaningless answer, really. And there are things that I can tell you, Robin, you will never see, like the controlled drugs collection that I have the key to because I don't think that would be...

And every year we get an inspection from the Home Office to make sure we haven't been having wild parties. Can I just ask, are you ever really tempted just to get all of that and then get in the space pod room? Hey! What is all of that? Well, I like this grey box here, going back to what Neil was talking about,

about going to the moon, about the space exploration. So this is a computer from the Mir space station, one of the Russian space stations, which I think was around in the 1970s, wasn't it? That's right. And it's a... Is that it? Is that your answer? All right.

Well, also, more interesting than that, well, there's also an artefact here, wonderful, one of Faraday's original pieces of experimental apparatus. Can you talk us through that? Of course not, because I'm the director. I couldn't possibly have any idea how it works. Oh, actually, that's why you said yes. No, this is the point where I confess the terrible thing

that you know secretly, which is, in fact, I'm an art historian, not a scientist. I know, that's why I'm trying to... Well, in fact, the mention of Faraday there... Yeah, I think there's a man at the end there who knows. You've just been filming... Yeah, Faraday is one of the heroes that we are profiling in the upcoming Cosmos. He taught us how to tame electrons.

These are things that would come as a bolt of lightning out of the sky, shocking people, not revealing the fact that if you tame them, you can create an entire new culture and civilization for having done so. And what it looks like you have there on display are coils of wire, a magnet, and the relationship between a wire and a magnet moving relative to one another is how we today generate electricity. So, in fact, can we just move it over so that Neil can see it? Well, Brian is right there. He's a physicist. He can tell you.

No, I don't. He talks all the time. Josie, if you can use your art experience to just express what you see, and then Neil can actually explain what it is, and then if the audience at home would like to sketch it, and then you'll see if it will... I'd like to say that, as a coil, it has very beautiful lines and good shape, color to it.

There was a day when we knew about magnetism and we knew about electricity, didn't know that they were, in fact, different sides of the very same coin, which led to the invention of the word electromagnetism. They became one word. And when you start moving magnets in and around wires generating current, you get the direct understanding of how this is not only something interesting to tinker with on a tabletop, but in the hands of clever engineers and creative people, you create the very foundation of the electrification of culture and our

society. And so what we have here are wires wrapped around coils, and the more wires you wrap around, the more you can generate current by moving a magnet through the opening of that hole and it's fascinating that we still make electricity to this day by this method and you can ask you'd like to ask the question what would the world be like if nothing today existed that was traceable to faraday and and we'd still, you know, it'd still be horse and buggy and string phones, you know, to communicate with. It's an interesting story because Faraday,

he was working in the wrong institution just down the road from where we are now. And, in fact, Richard, that was an institution that was set up with banks. That's right. He was one of the first trustees. And the idea, it was partly a communication idea, which in 1799 was radical, wasn't it? So it had research,

and the research gave us the modern world in a sense. That's absolutely right. 1799 is when it started out by Banks and Thompson and various people. And Davy was one of the very young lecturers invited there. And the thing to add to this, which is as well Faraday as well, and Davy was one of the very young lecturers invited there. And the thing to add to this, which is as well Faraday as well, is that they started this great tradition of public lectures. And indeed the theatre, the lecture theatre,

is exactly the same as it was now. The heating is slightly improved, but that's all. And the upholstery is purple. Yes, that's right. And they had mixed audiences there, women as well as women, which did not happen in the Royal Society. And that tradition, they were so well attended. The Albemarle Street, at the end of Albemarle Street, it became the first one-way street in London because the traffic was so heavy.

And Faraday, I mean, this continues to this day because the Christmas lectures, which are now televised, are direct tradition of that, explanations and so on. And the thing that I always love about Faraday is that he then also began lecturing to young people. And he gave this series, which was called The Chemical History of a Candle. Just that, a candle. And from a burning candle, he unpacked the whole idea of combustion and the chemistry. And that lecture still reads very well. And talking about arts and sciences,

the text of that lecture was then published by Charles Dickens in his magazine called The Household Worth. So that was the first edition of that, 1849, I guess. But that tradition of popularising science, which continues, you now do it, and you use different instruments, television and so on. But that seems to me an additional thing, and it bears on this idea of wonder that the job of science is not finished with research and discovery.

It also has to be explained and put out. It's an educational tool. It's a tool of enlightenment. And that seems to me the third impasse that must drive science. And it began there at the Royal Institution, I think. And just to clarify a point you made, the Christmas lectures, which have been going on continuously since 1825 and continue to this day, they are specifically tailored for children yes

that's right so it's not just the lecture to the adults of the evening you know after you have a drink they understood explicitly that this science is for everyone yeah not only with women but with children as well especially when you were young i mean the uh was there anyone who inspired you before you kind of went off science for a little bit? Were there any teachers or any things that you saw on television, any science communication that did excite you? Do you know, I was going to ask, how long have you been the

director of the Science Museum? Because I was thinking about Launchpad, which is in the Science Museum, which is the bit where you're allowed to hit things and jump on things and play around. Set things on fire. It turns out you're not allowed to do that but it didn't stop her i had a great time and it was free so they lost um no i but it was absolutely a fantastic thing because it was so exciting and so hands-on and i really liked puzzles and uh

that sort of problem solving things like, things like that, tests. So anything that was practical applications of science I thought were really fantastic. So I have a really, really great memory. And also what we did when we went on a day trip to the Science Museum was we were taken to a gallery and there was an actor dressed as someone like Florence Nightingale. And they were there to answer questions. You know I get letters from the public saying,

we came to the Science Museum and you gave my child the impression that these great figures are still alive. Honestly, I mean... Also, there was a wonderful occasion when we had done celebrating 50 years of Yuri Gagarin's space mission and the actor did such a convincing Russian accent that all the school groups that I was sitting with had no idea what he was saying at all.

I mean, it was really a complete disaster. He's probably now going to phone up tomorrow and say, you know, I'll see you in court. But I find this conversation fascinating because I'm a real late convert because I really hated science as a kid. And now I feel, you know know I'm at the stage in life where I should be buying a sports car and having the male menopause and I'm really starting

all over again because I've discovered with both joy and bitterness what I've missed out on for years and there's a particular object on that table there which we might talk about in a minute because the thing that I find with hindsight was the big turn-off for me is that my science education was typical of a lot of schools, which is that science is taught as if it's a car owner's manual. And the reason I say that with feeling is, you know that thing when you buy a car and you're driving away feeling very smug and suddenly it starts raining and you cannot find the windscreen wiper control?

And the problem is that you have the sense that actually science is incredibly neat, and particularly it's on my mind, because when you think of an amazing period in the past two years with particle physics and what's been happening in CERN, if someone told you that, in fact, the journey to discovering what atoms are has been one of the greatest journeys of human intellectual discovery and actually show you what we have here, which is some of the early work of John Dalton, then you realise that scientists have actually struggled enormously

to understand the universe. So if you're struggling with your exam homework, maybe actually that's just fine. And I wonder if we can look at these objects here. If we can take them to Josie and she'll describe them using her arts thing. So, Josie, you're not allowed to touch them, but what do you see there? And then Ian's going to explain, actually, what they are.

OK, these are three small... I think they're wooden... ..spheres that have little... They look like gooseberries, wooden gooseberries, and they've got holes... Oh, no, one has holes in it, one doesn't. One looks like a tiny miniature bowling ball, and they're made of wood.

And I'm available to do this service for anyone. So, Ian, there we go. The miniature, possibly wooden gooseberries are... ..are John Dalton's atomic balls. Did I really just say that? Did I really just say that? Did I really just say that? So he used them to demonstrate atomic structure, ideas about atomic structure.

But actually, a long time before we knew anything about, well, very much about atomic structure, actually. He used them in Manchester. But actually, the nucleus, the structure of the atom, was discovered in Manchester, but it's a 20th century discovery. And when you think about that, for me, that's so audacious and moving, the idea that someone can spend their entire life having a construct in their mind,

but the scientific method takes many decades to catch up to actually prove something. And that is pretty spellbinding and astonishing. Yeah, it's... Yeah. There are also on the table... Everyone's kind of mentioned at some point as well the importance of the space race and... But what are his balls made of? Just...

Atoms. Always comes down to physics, doesn't it? I just thought we'd have a little more detail than just his balls. I just thought maybe... The rest of him is in the bin. We're in England. We're in England now and there are limits to... There are limits.

We're getting towards the end, but we have one final question. I want to go along the panel and just ask... We're in one of the great museums of the world here, but in your ultimate museum, the Museum of the Mind, if you could imagine anything, any artefact, any object, historic or present day that you could have in your museum, one object, what would it be? We'll start with Neil.

I've thought quite a bit about this. I think the most potent exhibits are those that are bigger than you are. Because then you just simply never forget them because you look around and it consumes your visual senses. Often there's a smell. And if you ask anyone what exhibit do they remember most from a museum that they attended, in their top five, most of those will be huge exhibits that they walked into. top five, most of those will be huge exhibits that they walked into. One of the famous exhibits in Philadelphia, New York, that everyone remembers in the Franklin Institute is the Living Heart. And it's a room that you walk into and they have these subwoofers on and you hear the low

frequencies. Everybody remembers that. In the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, there is a live coal mine and you go down into coal mine, and you look around, you smell it, you taste it, it's there. That is what everybody remembers. And abandon any attempt to try to give a lesson plan, because you're in a museum for a couple of hours, and you spend your life in school. To try to learn something tangible in three hours? No. Use those three hours to light flames inside the soul of curiosity of us all. Josie, what would you like to see in that museum? Well, I would like to see something natural and huge.

I was thinking about the fact that in Vancouver Airport there is a waterfall and it's the most brilliant thing in the world because you come off the plane and then you're like, waterfalls exist. This is amazing. That's what I would want is something that was so powerfully... But then you don't need to go in a museum for that. You could just go to a waterfall. But then I was thinking about this.

The problem is, whatever I pick is not what people are going to focus on. People are going to look for what looks rude... LAUGHTER ..and they're going to go to that. So even if I'm like, well, you know, I think any work of art that really makes the soul swell is the most beautiful thing, people are going to be like, over there, there is a statue with really big boobs.

Let me get this right. So Neil said something that ignites the fires of curiosity in the soul. That's what I want, yeah. And you said a statue with boobs. No, I didn't say she wanted it. No, I wanted it. To be fair, what she's saying is she wants the giant heart, the incredible model of the human brain.

What she's worried about is that the human beings go, it's all very well seeing this enormous model of the human brain, there's a statue with big boobs. I was making concessions for human frailty. Richard, what would you have in, again, if you could take any artefact from the universe? Well, I would think it would be something biographical, but not what you think,

because I think biography is one of the great ways of finding out about science. And somebody said it was as if the great figures of science were still alive. Well, to my way of thinking, they are. So my object in that museum would be a way of approaching this and it would bring together literature and science in this way. What it would be would be, wait for it,

HG Wells' time machine, but it would work. That would be my object. Ian, now you've got to opt for my time machine, the statue with the boobs and the big mouth. I'm going to win this competition because, first of all, how do you know that I don't have the key to the store in which HG Wells' machine actually sits? But actually, I want to choose something really quite provocative.

And you just said I could choose something that's been lost or may never have existed. I would choose the Holy Grail. And the reason I would choose that is because, you know, we're talking about trying to get people on... The Higgs boson? The Holy Grail? Now the real reason of course is all part of my evil world domination

plan and I'd be drinking from it every morning but my serious point is that there are some of my colleagues here they know that is so true that really is what I would do but my serious point is that if we're talking about art and science having common territory, the thing that I love about the idea of the Holy Grail

is that just having experimental results doesn't mean that people accept a new technology. It's so much about belief, and to use a word we heard earlier, stories, and also personalities. So it would be a wonderful, provocative reminder that evidence is wonderful, it's the foundation of science, but it's not enough if you really want to change society. You really also have to have trust as well

and a whole series of other values. Well, we have a special guest tonight, and someone who at least three of us on this panel are enormous fans of, of course, Carl Sagan, who had a tremendous way of making ideas and generally being interested very very infectious and perhaps sometimes we've lacked ways of celebrating these people but I'm very glad to say that we have tonight a songwriter comedian and rapper who's going to talk about one of those great science communicators someone who was an icon in his childhood please welcome to the

stage Doc Brown. APPLAUSE Never give up on your dreams Never give up on your dreams Never, never, never Cos everybody's got a fantasy A mad scheme, a crazy plan A dream that we could make reality Maybe my plan's sad But since I was a, I wish David Attenborough was my granddad.

You look at me like this man's mad. Get a CAT scan. You're one horn short of a jazz band. Yeah, I know it seems strange as a rap fan to wish for Attenborough's voice on my sat nav. He'd be my guide. I'd be Robin to his Batman. I'd help him research wolf cubs in Lapland. I'd be like, Grandad, I saw another one.

He'd give me a hand clap cos that man's a living legend. The best yet, he was flipping old when I was little, still isn't dead yet. And when he pops his clogs, I'll be crestfallen. He never sat me on his knee for a bed story. Wish I could just put him on as a very special vocal guest on my song I'd have him do a little cameo feature Saying, Doc Brown's an incredible creature Imagine that

Of all my crew, I wish Attenborough had my back And we could spend a beautiful future together He could dumb it down for me I could get clever Tell him all about rap and girls He could tell me all the facts of the world Yeah, but what's the chances he'd be listening to some little rap He probably thinks it's all bitches and stuff

But Dave is so much more I aspire to have lyrics like yours I'd love to rap about panthers that ran fast Damn, I wish Shattenborough was my grandpa Yeah, I wish Shattenborough was my grandpa man I wish Shattenborough was my grandpa never give up on your dreams

never give up on your dreams never never never never thank you very much applause applause applause applause Never, never. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Dr Brilliant. Fantastic. So, we have audience questions. We asked our audience who came to the Science Museum a question.

This week we asked them, what question of your childhood remains unanswered? And these are the answers we got. So, why does the law of conservation of energy seem not to apply to six-year-olds? That's from James. Miss Veronica said, are we nearly there yet? Is it true that time travel is only possible forward and not backwards? Yes.

Oh, yeah. You've been wondering that for many years. forward and not backwards. Yes? Yeah. That's not completely true. We need exotic structure of the space-time continuum, and then you can actually have a space-time path that puts you into your own past. I don't believe that.

Well, I mean, it requires stable wormholes. Yeah, so you make them stable. We just don't know how to do it yet. Just because we don't know how to do it doesn't mean you can't. Some alien didn't figure it out. It's an interesting debate, actually, isn't it? Because I know a lot of scientists, I think Stephen Hawking has said this,

that he thinks some kind of chronology protection principle will be at the heart of a quantum theory of gravity. Because there's no way to build a universe, I suppose, is it, to be able to go back and prevent your grandparents from meeting, for example. Yeah, it's a universe we don't know anything about yet. That's why I like the your natural pessimism

with the optimism of America. We just haven't worked out how to make the wormhole stable yet. Come on! We've got top people working on the stable wormhole, right? This is America, Jack, where we come from. I'm telling you, you're going to waste a lot of money working on the stable wormholes in my view.

We're good at that. I want to offer this question to the panel. Richard, we'll start with you. Richard, what remains unanswered for you? What would you like to see an answer for? I need to add that you've forgotten in this time of scene discussion HG Wells, which is your solution to that particular problem. There was a pretend...

It was just a fictional story. Well, fictional story, that's an interesting concept, actually. I think that's my question. What is a fictional story? Answer that, please, in terms of science. And by the way, we've got six months off air, so do write in. I've got the answer. Stable wormholes. Ian, what is the question that remains unanswered for you that you hope you see answered?

The question that's haunted me for years is, did the crew of Space 1999 ever get home? I'm beginning to worry that this show has never before created such a chasm between arts and science that we've now reborn the two cultures again. I remember my question. Wait, can I do mine first, cos it won't be as good? I would just like to know, like,

the whole life on other planets thing, that would be helpful. Life after death, that one. And just any... all of the supernatural, obviously they're all nonsense, but, like, could some of those please happen? Life on other planets. Oh, no, sorry, not the first two. Those aren't just anything to do with, like,

I don't want you thinking that I'm like, oh, yeah, ghosts are real, psychics are good. I don't mean that. There can't be life after death by definition, though. Oh, yeah, psychics are good. I don't mean that. There can't be life after death, by definition, though. Oh, yeah, no, I know. What I meant by that was... The strawberries. What happens when you die. I'd like to know what happens when you die. I would also like to have direct contact with creatures from other planets,

as long as it's in a positive way, not in a being-lasered-to-death way. And I would also like it if some stupid psychic phenomena could also be true. I appreciate those aren't questions, they're more requests. And so, Neil? No, I had these sort of terrifying thoughts that our measure of our own intelligence is insufficient to actually deduce

what's going on in the universe, and that we presume that we just have to work a little harder, have some smart people get born, and you sort of ascend our way to a deep understanding of how the universe works. But, you know, can a chimp do trigonometry? Well, no, I don't think. And so why should we believe that we, who are just 1% different

in DNA, somehow have magical powers to figure out what is necessary to truly understand our place in the universe? So I lay awake at night, not being able to sleep, worried that humans as a species are too stupid to

understand our actual plight. I thought you were going to finish that with, can chimps do trigonometry? Bothers me. And we can't talk to chimps, and they're that close to us genetically, yet we somehow presume that we can find intelligent aliens and have a conversation with them? We have no DNA in common, and somehow our intelligence is the measure of the intelligence elsewhere? I think there are intelligent species out there that don't have to be that much different from us where their simplest conversation would be inconceivable to us. What does a chimp do?

It can do finger painting and stack boxes and reach a banana. And we roll them forward as being smart. So get another species as different from us as we are from chimps, what would we look like to them? The smartest of us. They'd roll Stephen Hawking forward and say,

Oh, this one is slightly smarter than the rest because he can do astrophysics calculations in his head, like little Junior over here, right? So maybe we are a zoo for more intelligent species than we. The good news is, because of commercial radio and television and sending those signals across the universe, no-one wants to visit us anyway. They have no sign of intelligent life on Earth. We've already put them off. and television and sending those signals across the universe. No-one wants to visit us anyway.

They have no sign of intelligent life on Earth. We've already put them off. That is the end of the show, that is the end of the series. We're back in November, but now, finally, let us thank all our guests who've been Josie Long, Ian Blatchford, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Holmes. See you in November. APPLAUSE Thank you. 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