The Infinite Monkey Cage - Special Bonus Edition

Episode Date: August 9, 2018

Brian Cox and Robin Ince reminisce about their favourite moments from 100 episodes of The Infinite Monkey Cage.

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This is the BBC. Welcome to the Infinite Monkey Cage extended special edition high value special for subscribers only podcast. That was said with real chutzpah, wasn't it, eh? Well, it's very special because it's a special, it's our top ten moments because we're celebrating the 100th episode. We're looking back over, what is it, 2009, was it? Yeah, November 2009. All that worries me, though, is if this is meant to be a trip down memory lane, but you recently were telling me about the block universe and the nature of time.

So can we actually take a trip down memory lane? Well, if memory lane is referring to your world line, then no. Right. Okay, so we're not going to be taking down a trip down memory lane? Well, if memory lane is referring to your world line, then no. Right. Okay, so we're not going to be taking down a trip down memory lane. Actually, you can't take a trip down memory lane anyway. I mean, all, I would say any theory of space-time, certainly Einstein's,

but any future theory of space-time will prevent trips down memory lane because all theories of space-time, I think, whatever they may be, will be causal. And if you could walk down memory lane, because all theories of space-time, I think, whatever they may be, will be causal. And if you could walk down memory lane, that implies going back in time, and then... Time itself doesn't exist then, does it? If there's no past, then there's no...

So anyway, let's look back at just 100 of the episodes that are yet to come from a few years ago. That covers it, doesn't it? As long as I don't have to walk down memory lane, because I think that violates really fundamental physical principles. No, we're just going to stay here in this particular part of the block universe, in the dimension of the block universe. And the first thing that I remember happening sometime in the future

a few years back was when we did that one in the astronauts going to Norway and meeting, amongst others, Charlie Duke, who Apollo 16, remarkable, beautiful stories. In fact, I don't even think some of the things that we didn't get around to talking about, that lovely story of when Charlie Duke was obviously just so obsessed with going to the moon, just the excitement of going to the moon

that every one of his dreams involved going to the moon in the days building up to go to the moon, just the excitement of going to the moon, that every one of his dreams involved going to the moon in the days building up to going to the moon. And he had a dream where they landed on the moon and then they're driving around in the moon buggy and eventually they see tracks from another moon buggy and they ask Houston if they can follow them. And eventually they follow them and they come across a moon buggy and on that moon buggy, they're on it as well.

And it was just like having this Twilightilight zone episode in his in his mind and then the fact that because it was the olympics back down on earth they decided to do some fun olympics uh on the moon and fell backwards and uh nearly smashed all the equipment and he smashed his visor into the lunar surface and then realized that that was probably not a wise thing i think it was hoosten in particular he said that's enough of the Olympics, lads. The other wonderful thing I remember about that episode was Charlie saying that his dad had seen the Wright brothers fly and then saw his son walk on the moon. So his dad had a memory of the whole of the history of powered flight,

which I thought was a wonderful thing. Yeah, I think it was Charlie Duke who said that his dad just couldn't believe that a human being stood on the moon and his son thought yeah whatever just that generation change i always think in in the kind of early ones one of the one of my favorite moments actually was when we had monica grady on and we also had patrick stewart and monica grady had bought a piece of meteorite and i remember when she put it in my hand it's surprising at how heavy it is because it has just a mass that you wouldn't expect for something of that scale. It was an iron meteorite. Yeah, and it just didn't feel like anything I'd ever felt on Earth.

It was unexpected in its weight. And I thought, how amazing. This has travelled across the universe here, this incredible object. And just as people were wowing at that, Patrick Stewart went, this is my communicator badge. And everyone went, oh, including you. And they were oohing more at one of his probably many communicator badges made in a factory in Burbank than they were at a piece of meteorite that had travelled through the universe.

And I think when we were discussing the size of space, and Patrick Stewart said, yes, it's very, very big indeed. I remember that many of the star trek episodes we filmed we went to planets where there was really nothing interesting at all and we just didn't broadcast those the ones that you see at the times when we did find something interesting to do which i thought was a wonderful thing yes there were also the i think the first time we did oceans interest me because i i genuinely hadn't been aware of the fact that 80 percent of the you know we know far more about the moon than we know about the oceans and once you start

to get oceanographers explaining some that we are still finding life that is again it's that old richard feynman line isn't it the imagination of nature is far greater than the imagination of man that you just see these creatures that are so perfectly evolved to live in those high-pression environments, strange, flat, you know, almost gelatinous creatures, and you just go, that's far greater and far more intriguing than anything we've seen made by Hollywood in terms of aliens. Yeah, and I think one of the things that no-one will have heard,

because I think we've deleted the tapes, haven't we? We don't have the sort of tapes that we use to edit the programs together. But Bramley, what was Bramley's last name? The oceanographer. Bramley. We're just looking it up now. We're Googling it. But my favourite thing was you had to repeat his name for some reason

because of a micro technical problem didn't you pick up the first bramley yeah can you do can you just do some bramley yeah so we can start it in different ways bramley bramley bramley bramley yeah we never used to yeah sometimes we wouldn't say their I also particularly enjoyed one of the reasons

we had to start making sure we said everyone's names when we had John Ronson on the show some people wrote in they found it so unusual that two northerners should be on the show that they couldn't tell

the difference between your voice and John Ronson between me and John Ronson yeah I know and I'm definitely I'm not as enthusiastic as you but I'm certainly more enthusiastic than John Ronson than John Ronson. Yeah, I know. And I'm definitely, I'm not as enthusiastic as you, but I'm certainly more enthusiastic than John Ronson. Than John Ronson, yeah.

I'm trying to remember one. There was Sue Black, I think, when she was talking about the forensic investigation. I mean, one of the things that I always find intriguing is when you have people who are now able to, in a kind of nonchalant way talk about things that in some way that they still know are emotionally uh devastated terrible but they also have that amazing mix of the human mind and then what i would call that that scientific that genuinely as a forensic scientist she also has that forensic mind that

says i can now here i can distance in terms of this is about the evidence and the facts, and then I will bring in the emotion later on at the end of the workday. Those kind of, like, who was it who said quite recently, I think, in fact, it may even be in the future from this podcast, because I think it's going to be in this particular series, when we're talking to someone and she just went, yeah, Ebola's cool. and she just went, yeah, Ebola's cool. And then I went, I think we're going to have to just do a little bit of a retake on that because I know you're not actually saying that Ebola, people die from it, is cool. It's an interesting organism. You're saying it's a very fascinating thing, but it's accidentally come out as, try to call this thing Ebola. I always enjoy the ones where the panel is particularly unusual.

And I think my favourite guest in that regard is probably Brian Blessed. Brian Blessed was, yeah, because he scared the hardest edit. No one will ever hear the actual, the first time he was on the show, no one will ever hear what happened with that because the amount of swearing. And if you hear it,

there's almost kind of a secret morse code going on with just the little little gaps you can see in trying to tighten up things that sentence is almost usable apart from just one of those words if you've never been to an infinite monkey age recording then you probably think it's very proper very very bbc radio 4 it's very polite but it isn't really is it not a prime blessings there in particular no and there was i think also the first time we've done glastonbury a few times but the second time we did it we did one uh and i can't remember which particular part of theoretical physics it was but we had fay dalcron who is it was quantum quantum cosmology i think was it quantum because because that hearing the sound of 3 000 skulls just cracking

open a little bit as they'd all been in Glastonbury by the time we came to record there I think most people have been on site for two to three days there'd been a lot of hot cider there had been a lot of general relaxation going on and then suddenly at midday on a saturday there's quantum cosmology and and it was a there is a very interesting sound i think of of skulls just splintering a little bit and faye faye's description of it's like the first time faye described uh general relativity and and and the nature of gravity and and the fact that calling it a thought and that moment as she talked about when you sit down on a chair and you kind of think that you're the pressure on the chair but if you really sit in that chair for a while you can actually feel that the chair's pushing up on you and once you do that there are

moments where if you get overly involved in thinking that you fall out your chair and that's a good way to learn and most of the things I've learned the show has been by thinking too hard about the nature of things and falling off my chair and every time I see that particular bruise it will remind me. If you'd listened to what Faye said though she would have said that according to Einstein you don't fall out of the chair

when you leave the chair the chair accelerates away from you Oh that happened as well I splintered the door You enter an inertial frame of reference when you leave the chair. So the chair and you together, when you're in contact, is not an inertial frame. It's accelerating upwards.

That is one of the reasons I never take you to A&E when I've had an accident because you spent so long explaining it, I've lost about two to three points by then. Yes, you have to get the facts. So you see the inertial frame of reference. Yes, but why is he bleeped? I'll get to that. But let me first refer to Minkowski.

But I think all of the Glastonbury ones have been a lot of fun. Yeah, my favourite, the Christmas shows are often my favourite because I enjoy the mixture, the wonderful mixture. Again, it was actually Brian Blessed. the mixture, the wonderful mixture. Again, it was actually Brian Blessed, Brian Blessed, Chris Hadfield, Richard Coles, and Francesca Stavrokopoulou, yeah. Yes.

Who I think Francesca Stavrokopoulou was one of the many guests that you very quickly handed over to me to introduce because you got worried you'd get tired. And of course, we'd also like to welcome Francesca St... Oh! Robin, you do that introduction. It's wonderful, though, the atheist Bible scholar. Yeah, and she is very passionate about both things,

the Bible and... But what was beautiful about that episode was, one, seeing the very calm Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield sat next to Brian Blessed. But, two, there was a lovely thing that day where, sadly sadly on the show we never managed to have patrick moore who's obviously someone that you you did work with and you want to go at night with but um brian read out a very beautiful poem that he'd meant to read

to patrick moore and hadn't had the opportunity hadn't had the chance to do it and so patrick moore had only very recently died by the time we were recording that show and and and Brian read it out absolutely straight and very you know that reminder that he is both a brilliant character but also he's a wonderful performer and can and that that was a very moving moment I think yeah also the uh Los Angeles shows we do we did the four shows in America the Los Angeles show stands out because of the Cheeky Monkeys, the band that we introduced, the young band. We've got a young band to come on stage and perform our theme tune, which consisted of Eric Idle, Jeff Lynn, and... Jeff Davis.

Jeff Davis. And we didn't tell anyone in the audience who it was, and I thought it was... Eric's recognisable, isn't he? Jeff Lynn, though, I think it was Eric's recognizable isn't he Jeff Lynn though I think it's a cognitive dissonance occurs because if Jeff Lynn wanders on stage and starts playing you can't really compute that that might be Jeff Lynn I don't think we ever actually said that that was Jeff Lynn but that that was I think that was one of the scariest shows in terms of how do we

follow that so we haven't even started the show jefflin and eric idol and jeff davis have done the theme tune live but even before that because it was at the ricardo montalban theater ricardo montalban of course as uh fancy island and khan and uh even though he is no longer with us there is still before the show an announcer goes please turn off your cell phones before the show starts and everyone started like laughs and applause you think they're laughing and applauding at a recording of an actor who isn't even alive anymore and now they've seen eric idol and jeff lynn and now we have to take them through this world of and that was a lovely one because sean carroll uh who's written some wonderful books about physics sean carroll we were talking about different hollywood films that he'd worked on,

and Sean was a science advisor on the film Thor. And we had to talk about exactly how science-y a film about a Norse god is. And he looked like he took a little bit of umbrage and explained that they wanted the wormholes that the gods of Asgard to travel through to be as authentic as possible. And in many ways, you might think, first of all, well, you won't be having the gods of Asgard

travelling through them. It's also the things that you don't see. The backstage events that happen. One of my favourite images from Infinite Monkey Cage was you turning up at Los Angeles airport in a duffel coat in the middle of summer. Yeah, about 30 degrees then, wasn't it? Trudging through Hollywood with about two plastic carrier bags

full of books and a duffel coat yeah and then sitting by a swimming pool in the shade in your very english way with people excuse me mr paddington could you sign this for me yeah i love your movies uh but yeah that was uh with that reminds the final one that we did out in america which is san francisco where uh carolyn porco was on that of course carolyn porco had been involved in uh creating some of of the most incredible images that we've seen well the cassini cassini is amongst other and and quite remarkable um then when we had her back uh in a uk show and again she was on with monica grady and there was a wonderful art joe brown was on that episode as well he was very much a peacemaker between the two of them

because there was a sudden, like a flaming row about the likelihood of where we're first going to find extraterrestrial life. And it was Enceladus or Enceladus. Enceladus is the moon of Saturn. Or it was going to be the caves of Mars. So subsurface of Mars. And it's a live debate because you're talking about funding. You're talking about

where do we send the next spacecraft? Where do we put our efforts? And so Carolyn's having been very heavily involved in the discovery that this tiny moon of Saturn, which is only about 300 miles in diameter, has got an ocean below its surface and therefore,

and hydrothermal vents, and therefore could be possibly a home for life. She's very heavily identified with that discovery, so she wants a spacecraft to go back to Saturn, whereas Monica believes that life will be more likely found in the caves or subsurface on Mars. So that was a lively debate, wasn't it?

I also remember, again, something that people won't have actually seen, but I remember the Christmas recording where just before the recording started i had a terrible attack of diarrhea and i took an enormous number of imodium till i was nearly nothing less than dust and you then uh before the show started i told the audience that we were doing an experiment and uh you deliberately opened and uh and re-corked a bottle of sherry next to a microphone over and over again, believing that might create some kind of psychosomatic effect. And it did.

Yeah, well, no, I got through about 50 minutes of it and then I left, I think, Faye Dowker. I think I asked her a lengthy question about the change in the nature of science fiction since our understanding of it's no longer space and time, but space-time. A very, very long question. A classic Inns question.

It was a really long question to just basically give us, you know, I feel like answer this for ages, and you have as long as you want to answer that, and then I ran off. And I came back a minute later, and you were now talking to Victor Stock, the former dean of Guildford Cathedral, about the workings of the General Synod.

So I think what a lot of listeners don't know is that really the only person who keeps it on track in the physics is me, not you. You normally want to talk about ecumenical matters. Is that enough? In the Infinite Monkey Cage Without your trousers In the Infinite Monkey Cage

In the Infinite Monkey Cage Turned out nice again. If you'd like to hear any of those episodes of the Infinite Monkey Cage. Doing that nice again. If you'd like to hear any of those episodes of the Infinite Monkey Cage, then you just need to go to the BBC website and you can search online. In fact, you can search anywhere online. Put in the Infinite Monkey Cage. Currently, we are still the only one. Why did you say that?

What? Well, why are you telling people to search online? Because what are they listening to? How did they find this? Oh, I don't know. If they don't know how to search online for the infinite monkey cage how is it possible that they're listening to this now i don't understand do you know what this might be that example that i sent up on that golden record that i made on the voyager yeah well it's my version of i don't know how far it's got so far some of the bin came off when it blew up but the rest of it seemed all right. If you're one of the listeners who's listening to this online,

who doesn't know how to find this online, you're part of a paradox. We should do an Infinite Monkey Cage on it. Yeah. If that exists. Yeah. Sort of like Esherian. Esherian?

Esherian. I'll have an Esherian. What's that, Frank? I'll have like Esherian. Esherian? I'll have an Esherian. What's that, Frank? I'll have an Esherian. Whatever you're having. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart 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. 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