The Infinite Monkey Cage - The Infinite Monkey Cage 100

Episode Date: July 11, 2018

Monkey Cage 100!Brian Cox and Robin Ince celebrate the 100th episode of the hit science/comedy show, by inviting some very well known monkey cage alumni to join them. Brian Blessed, Eric Idle, Katy Brand, Dave Gorman and Andy Hamilton (to name a few) take to the stage to consider what has been learnt since Episode 1, back in November 2009. Joining them on stage, will be science royalty, including Alice Roberts, American Astrophysicist Neil De Grasse Tyson, Professor Sue Black and Prof Fay Dowker, to look at the big scientific discoveries that have happened in the time since Brian and Robin first hit the airwaves, from the Higgs Boson, to Gravitational Waves, to our understanding of how human evolved. What epic discoveries might be made over the course of the next 100 episodes? For the first time, You can watch the 100th episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage, recorded live in the iconic BBC Radio Theatre, on BBC iPlayer for 30 days from Wednesday July 11th, and on the BBC Red Button at various times for 7 days from Monday 16th July.Producer: Alexandra Feachem Producer (Vision): Michael Gray.

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. 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 for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. This is the BBC.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your hosts, Professor Brian Cox and Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. Welcome to the 100th edition of The Infinite Monkey Cage. Yeah, this has now been going so long. It started in 2009, a time when Brian Cox was so naive that he actually believed you could persuade people to believe things with evidence. Tragically, now he spends most of his life online, just there going, no, it's got to be a sphere, it can't be flat. Oh, shadows, eclipses.

No, it's not 6,000 years old, it's at least 13... Oh, you can't put that on the side of a bus. People will never believe it. So for the avoidance of doubt, this is a show where we assume our audience knows that the Earth is an oblate spheroid. The Big Bang was a hot, dense phase in the evolution of the universe 13.8 billion years ago. All life on Earth is related to a universal common ancestor.

And you can put that on the side of a bus and they will believe you. Right, so Brian's job in the show is to help explain the nature of the universe using theoretical and particle physics. And my job is to interrupt him every time I see the audience going, I don't understand what he's saying anymore. I mean, I think he believes he understands what he's saying, but I'm utterly, utterly lost. That's generally actually my problem with you. My problem is that when I first hear you speak,

I think I'm beginning to understand this, and then slowly it kind of drifts off into me hearing you doing an Alan Bennett monologue. And so it starts off with him just going, as we travel through the solar system, we see the still unexplained rings of Saturn. Mother saw the rings of Saturn the other day and she didn't think much of it at all.

She said she preferred the ring road around the Scarborough bypass. She once saw Roy Hood there having a ham and pickle lily sandwich in a lay-by. I said, Mother, how do you know it was a ham and pickle lily sandwich? She said, I've got a good eye for relish. I said, I'll try to explain the universe. She said, I haven't got time. I didn't understand Poirot last Sunday, so I'm going to try to explain the universe.

And anyway, foils wars on in a minute. I've got a thing for Michael Kitchen. So having failed to get through 99 episodes with any single subject from dark energy to the origin of life to the mortality of strawberries, we've decided to increase the entropy of the show by having three panels instead of one and attempting to deal with cosmology, biology, the future of humanity and pretty much everything else in under one hour. We've invited some of our favourite panellists, physicists, anatomists and Shakespearean actors to find out what we know about the universe that we didn't know when we began the series in 2009.

And to ensure that liturgical matters are not sidestepped, we will also be assisted by Theology Corner, in which we have two of our favourite clerics, the Reverend Richard Coles and the former Dean of Guildford Cathedral, the very Reverend Victor Stock, and they will be hosted by our regular religious correspondent, Katie

Brand. Now, Katie, I know that... I have a question. In their churches, do they have a physics corner? I just want to know the symmetry of this, or not. Oh, yes. The Anglican Church, you don't even need to believe in God. We're very soft on that kind of thing.

It's about the recipes first and the beliefs... We had a very interesting walking in Westminster Abbey next to Isaac Newton, who is just next to Charles Darwin, and all were buried with great honour by the Church of England, so there. Oh! Oh! How quickly the show changes.

I like it when Anglicans are angry. It's on. So I was going to ask you, Katie, you went to a convent school and you did end up in a point, didn't you, as a young person, where you went, I don't know whether to be a nun or an astronaut. Yes, it was difficult. I had NASA on the phone and the Archbishop of Canterbury beating down my door and in the end I thought, no, I need something that will satisfy my massive ego,

but also allow me to be really lazy. So I became a panel show comedian. You can become a vicar, actually, on the basis of that. That's true. Actually, there's a lot of crossover, apparently, psychologically, between being a comedian and a vicar. Don't you know that? We have a lot of crossover in the Church of England.

The bishops don't like it. So for our first panel, we are joined by a cosmologist, a theoretical physicist, a python, and an actor who makes us question the very notion that new energy cannot be created in this universe. And they are... I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist from across the pond. I'm based in New York City,

where I serve also as director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium. I'm Faye Dauker. I'm a theoretical physicist, and I work at Imperial College in London. I'm Eric Idle. I'm a theoretical physicist and I work at Imperial College in London. I'm Eric Idle, I'm a theoretical comedian and I'm available for weddings and bar mitzvahs. My name is Brian Blessed, I'm very humble.

I have great modesty, I'm a great actor. I've climbed Everest three times. I've been to the North and the South Pole. There's no end to my greatness. And this is our panel. Neil, we'll start off with you. So, in the last ten years, what do you think has been the most remarkable discovery about our understanding of why our universe is as it is?

There are tons of discoveries, but if you had to rank them, like picking your children, top one, maybe I'd say the discovery of the Higgs boson, I would say. I don't know how many people are familiar with this particle, but it was long hypothesized, and there were books written about it. In fact, one book was called The God Particle. Just let the theology corner know. If you were going to be a particle, this might be the particle

you choose to be, because as other particles move through its field, it actually grants them their mass. Now, that's a badass particle. You're just ranking what particles do in the universe. Now, if you want to know how it works, I have an analogy, if I may. I'll do this with Brian's permission, because you work in this, Brian, right? This is your field.

Yeah, I'm checking. I'm checking. You're checking. Thank you. Thank you. Brian's like, hangs out at the Large Hadron Collider of CERN. But thinking about how to get people to understand the Higgs boson, I think of a Hollywood party.

Okay? If you are unknown, an unknown actor at a Hollywood party, and you enter and the bar is across the way, you could just walk there with no impedance to your progress. You have a low party mass. Okay? If you are famous and you walk in, if you're Beyonce and you walk into a party, people crowd around you, and you cannot move very quickly. You have a created party mass. So the Hollywood party field granted the popular person more mass than the unpopular person. And this is a, when you want to think about why one particle has a higher mass than another, you can think of this sort of interaction with the Higgs field. And there are

other science comedians in the world, by the way. One of them is Brian Maller. He is the origin of this next joke. Higgs boson walks into a church, and the priest, by the way. One of them is Brian Mallow. He is the origin of this next joke. Higgs boson walks into a church, and the priest is a Catholic church. The priest says, I'm sorry, we don't allow Higgs bosons in church. And the Higgs boson says, excuse me, but without me, you can't have mass.

Ooh. That's good. Good one. Brian Mallow on that one. To me, that's top. That's one of the top few of the decade. I think in your list of descriptions of the Higgs boson, you omitted to mention that Eric has written extensively on this subject.

I did not know that, Eric. It's a little known fact. Would you like me to do it? I think I would. There's a little song I wrote about the Higgs boson. Not many people know this, but wrote about the Higgs boson. Not many people would know this, but there's the Higgs boson, and there's leptons, and there's gluons,

there's the Higgs boson, and there's positons and muons, there are photons, there are protons, there's neutrinos, positinos, there are quarks, and there's electrons, in the Higgs boson. There's neutrinos, angelinos, in the Higgs boson.

There are sauvignons and pinos, in the Higgs boson. There are bonos, yocoonos, brianinos, cappuccinos, both latinos and latinos in the Higgs boson. There are glue-ons, there are mu-ons in the Higgs boson. There are many, there are few-ons in the Higgs boson. There are gold-ons, there are blue-ons, there are old-ons, there are new-ons, and some we haven't got a clue on. It's in the Higgs boson.

I have to ask you, because you've written some brilliant songs about science, and do you find one of the problems is that when you write jokes about anything else, they don't have to be peer-reviewed? I know, Neil, you were on the science march. Were you in Washington? No, but I tweeted heavily while, you were on the science march. Were you in Washington? Did you go on that? No, but I tweeted heavily while it was going on. Because that's how we will always remember nearly all of the great things we did.

I was very much there with an emoticon. But this is when we did the science march. People were coming up with chants and then there was a guy at the front who would actually say, you can't use that one, I'm afraid, because it's a chant that misleads. And we ended up having to have...

A peer-reviewed marching sign? Yeah, we end up with things like, what do we want? Cats in a superposition. When do we want them until observed? What do we want? A time machine. When do you want it? It doesn't matter. I'm sorry,

there's an interjection from the theology corner. I sense that the Reverend Richard Coles has a question. This is a really stupid question. I mean, you look at CERN and you marvel at it. It's enormous. What I don't understand is why is the Higgs boson important? So, Matt, can I take this?

I got this. Brian, I got this. I'll check. I got this. I'm listening. I got this. Okay. Sir? I'm listening. I got this. Okay. Sir.

Other than it's important to physics, we have no idea yet how it will be important to our lives or to civilization. And your question was asked of the electron when it was first discovered. It was asked of quantum physics as a branch of our understanding of the universe when it was first discovered. It was asked of quantum physics as a branch of our understanding of the universe when it was discovered. Yet quantum physics today is the foundation

of the entire information technology revolution. It would take decades, but at the time, because it's a new discovery, if too many people are around saying, how does that put food on my plate, then civilization stalls in that moment. So as scientists, we have to be content discovering something new without regard to its relevance to civilization, because history has shown that give it some decades, civilization finds a way to tax it. So you mean my Wi-Fi is going to work one day?

Faye, what's your big discovery of the last 10 years? In cosmology, I would choose the direct detection of gravitational waves. Those are ripples in the fabric of space-time, predicted to exist by Einstein using general relativity over 100 years ago. Actually, Einstein thought that they were so difficult to detect that we would never actually directly observe them, even though the theory says that they must be there. But 100 years after the prediction, we now have the technology that enables us to build detectors that can actually measure these tiny oscillations in the structure of space and time.

They are created in the universe in huge events like the collision of two enormous black holes to form another black hole. This creates these ripples which move outwards into the universe and travel for billions of light

years, reach us and we can measure them, detect them. I actually cried during the press announcement because the experiment that detected them, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, was being planned while I was a student. And so that whole enterprise spanned my whole career. Many of my colleagues and friends have worked

directly on it and it was a very moving and exciting moment so yeah I burst into tears was it the discovery itself or was it the the possibility of observing things as you said like the collision of black holes that that discovery opens up it was all those things so to feel that you're witnessing this moment in the great arc of the history of science not just in the past but looking forward to the future these gravitational waves open up a new channel of communication that we can have with the universe so we can now it's as if we were only we only had sight before but now we can actually hear so there's just new information that we can receive from the universe in this way via gravitational waves so we look forward to a new

era of gravitational wave astronomy speaking of channels of communication to the universe, Brian, what is your take on these great discoveries, the observation of the collisions of black holes, the origin of mass in the universe? How do you picture those advances in our knowledge? Being a greenhorn, I must say that I get passionately moved by Horizon, by our own programs and the marvellous things that are taking place now in the universe. I think the Huygens Cassini project has been staggering and moving.

And now that we've suddenly found it, the smallest of the moons, barely the size of Britain, Enceladus, that little Cassini has found it, it's got geysers on board that go thousands of miles into the sky you know like Iceland but bigger ones giant ones and this little Cassini

I watched it on television a few months ago with the whole of NASA there and this lady from New Zealand and gradually it did its last recording and sent its last information back beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep, beep, beep, beep. And it got to Saturn where it would die. And everyone's weeping in the studios there at NASA.

And it goes, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, and dies. And it was the most moving thing I've ever seen on television. I rejoice in the fact that now we're going to have James Webb's telescope to probe deeply into your universe. Oh, what miracles are in front of us. Imagine what Jules Verne and H.G. Wells would do if they had a laptop. Can they imagine they could see Pluto? HG Wells.

Yeah, that's made you quiet. Erica, I know your name is now on Mars, on the Curiosity rover, but what would you like to see? We've looked back at the last 10 years, but as Brian said, there are things you'd like to see in the next 10. What would you like to see?

Well, I think the most important thing from a layman's point of view is the popularity of science has grown enormously over the last 10 years thanks to programmes like this. And bringing comedy into science has been very important. And I think that's because it's ongoing. It's happening at the moment. And we actually haven't heard anything from God for the last 2,000 years.

With the single exception of the controversy in the Vatican about whether or not God is present in gluten-free bread for communion, which is actually a controversy that's been going on so so that's that's what you'd like to have resolved i think yes i think we should know i think he should is he going to be in diet-free coke or is he you know what what relationship does god possess we should say we've actually we should just pop over to theology corner to say where is god i am i i i refer to myself satirically some years ago on the show as the resident theologian to try and cover up the fact

that I don't know anything about science and very little about theology. So I'm quite amazed to now have a whole corner with actual vicars. But I was going to ask the two of you just briefly, because we've said on this show before about religion being the sort of origins and the history of human curiosity in a way and that doesn't need to be so divided that humans in the early stages looked up at the sky and said what's that and because they didn't have a lot of scientific instruments or knowledge at their disposal there was sort of some way to try

and describe the universe but have you Richard for example in your career have you seen science and religion try and come together more recently and not be so divided for me it's never been a problem at all I've never had the slightest feeling that kind of being a faithful Christian has in any way interfered with being genuinely curious and fascinated by by science um that's not to say we don't have form we do have form and of course you don't have to go very far sorry galileo um you don't have to go but you don't have to go very very far away i'm sure that's done the trick that apology but seriously i mean what's much more interesting to me is rather than that very polemical idea of science and religion as being uh kind of competitors

for truth and and and the loyalty of people it's much more about how they are related in fact if you look at the history development of science if you look at the royal society for example and the numbers of people in the royal society who were there because of a certain way in which the church and the enlightenment had worked together in a way calvinism had opened up the book of nature it's a much more interesting story to see in terms of continuities that's not to diminish the sharpness of the conflict, and I would just like to say on the record, and I'm sure I speak for many church people here,

that I have absolutely no difficulty at all with accepting that Darwin's account of how we got to where we got to is absolutely sound and completely consistent with my understanding too. I also want to say just very quickly, Eric, at St Mary's Finden we offer both gluten and gluten-free bread. Picture, picture. Thank you. I wanted to say something else about Stephen Hawking

and his ledger stone, which we have placed over his ashes in Westminster Abbey. We have deliberately buried Stephen Hawking exactly adjacent to Isaac Newton and in Latin on Isaac Newton's ledger stone it says his name and then it says the mortal remains of the dean of Westminster John Hall rather cleverly has put on Stephen Hawking's ledger stone all that is mortal of. Because the place was packed, Brian was there, the world of education and science knows

there's something immortal about that man. And the Abbey has put that in stone. Thank you very much. A ecclesiastical corner yes i am beginning to think that attempting to do a panel in 15 minutes on what is ultimately the entire history of cosmology but also about religious conflict versus science may well have been more difficult than we imagine because you told me time may not actually exist and may be a construct and time's arrow. But I definitely felt time's arrow over that one.

I think we did. I've had in my ear for the last 20 bloody minutes, we need to move to the last question. So even though time is, may well be a fiction, we're in a block universe, everything's happening at the same time, that's fine, but it turns out Radio 4 follows different rules. Right. Thank you to everybody on the panel.

We'll be returning to Theology Corner later on. And thank you for our discussion of the future and history of physics. Thank you. It's now time for the next panel, and throughout our 18 series, we've had an ability to stir righteous ire among certain Radio 4 listeners. In fact, before we even went on air,

we received, I think it was 12 different complaints that said that our title was disgusting, and yet again, it was another Radio 4 show that celebrated animal cruelty. And we wrote back to each one of those complainants and explained that an infinite monkey cage was roomy. Very roomy. Arguably, I suppose the universe is an infinite cage, isn't it?

With monkeys in it. Yep, it's Hilbert's cage. Move the monkeys to the odd numbers. They don't want to do it. I don't care. Anyway, so... It is indeed. Anyway, our next panel, we're going to try and avoid an avalanche of emails

and, well, actually letters mainly. They love letters. They do love letters. When we get a nice letter, oh, I like that. An email's lazy. A letter, they're angry in Dorset. Green ink. Always green ink. Anyway, this is the biology panel,

and to avoid any emails, let me be very precise. We'll be looking specifically at hominin evolution as opposed to hominid evolution because we're focusing on modern humans and our immediate ancestors and excluding things like orangutans. So, now, let's meet our panel, and they are...

Oh, sorry. We haven't met you officially yet, but... Hominins are hominids as well. Plodistically speaking. I was going to say that. Oh, sorry. We haven't met you officially yet. Hominins are hominids as well. Oh, Brian. Pladistically speaking. I was going to say that. It's a specific mistake in order to see whether the Radio 4 listeners are listening

so they will write letters in. They need to write letters. It's the reason for their existence. And our panel is... I'm Alice Roberts. I'm an anatomist and anthropologist and prof of public engagement in science at the University of Birmingham.

I'm Sue Black. I'm Queen of the Dead. Because last time I got embroiled in the entire story of our strawberries dead. Can I say my life has never been the same since? I'm an anatomist, I'm a forensic scientist, and I'm at the University of Lancaster. I'm Dave Gorman, and in 1990, I dropped out of a math degree.

I'm Andy Hamilton, and I am the perplexed idiot on the end. Sue, before we go on, of course, not all strawberries are dead. I mean, the subtlety of the question... We've been there. We've been there. We're never going back. It's which one's dead? Just remember, they will never find your body and they will never be able to identify you. Does that speak to a true expert?

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Alice. Alice. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Alice, what has been the most important discovery in biology over the last decade? Well, if we're focusing on human evolution, there have been some amazing revelations. Ten years ago, we knew that the species originated in Africa. We knew that we'd spread around the globe way back in the Ice Age and the Pleistocene.

And what most of us working in the field didn't think was that we'd interbred with any other species along the way. There were a few people suggesting that there were fossils that looked like they might be hybrids between modern humans and Neanderthals. But most of us just didn't buy it. Then ancient genetics happened and the ability to extract dna out of very old bones to sequence it to recover whole genomes and in 2010 we had the publication of the neanderthal genome and suddenly we saw in the dna that there was this clear evidence for interbreeding with neanderthals so i'm about 2.7% Neanderthal. You'll have quite a bit of Neanderthal in you. Everyone's got a bit of Neanderthal in them.

And then there's other species. We don't really know what they look like. There's ones called the Denisovans. We just know them from a couple of teeth and a finger bone. But we've got a whole genome, so they're another population. And again, we interbred with them, and they interbred with some other archaic hominins so there was just we just really weren't clear about the level of shenanigans that went on in human evolution and now we are and that's a discovery that was

enabled by technology essentially so the the increasing availability and cheapness of dna sequencing yeah absolutely i mean it's it's got quicker and quicker and cheaper and cheaper to do it. It's also about how you then stitch it back together. So it's about the software. It's about the statistics that are then used to reassemble a whole genome from what actually

is very tiny pieces, you know, little stretches of DNA that can be just 100 base pairs long. And you've got to reassemble that until you get an entire genome. And it's just, we're getting quicker and quicker at at this so the revelations are going to come thick and fast i'm sure did we know that different species coexisted and we just thought they hadn't interbred yeah we did yeah that seems to me to be what proves you don't know my mate barry

because the minute you go yeah they were all around at the same time i'm assuming as a lay person and they were obviously getting it on because some blokes will anything well i think the thing is that this i don't think it's just blokes though well no obviously but the weird the weird thing is that this kind of came as a bit of a revelation and i think maybe we're just all a bit prudish about human evolution, but it came as a revelation for humans. And then, surprise, surprise, every single other species that we've looked at in this way,

where we've been able to look across the whole genome and go, right, did you interbreed with anything else along the way? They all did. So dogs interbred with wolves, apples interbred with crab apples so badly that they're more crab apple than original apple now. Here's the thing i don't understand about biology oh you've ruined cider haven't you you've made it literally apples got

crabs yeah is it something i don't understand about biology one of the many things i don't understand about biology so i thought the definition of a species was one that a group of organisms that could not breed with other organisms so in what sense are neanderthals a different species from homo sapiens if there could be interbreeding brian i know this is going to be tricky because you're a physicist and you like to have nice neat answers for things and equations that make everything work just consistency yeah Just consistency. Yeah. Biology is a bit messier than that. So we try and put things in boxes and then consistently what biology does

is break out of those boxes. So we can go, right, this is what a species is. It is a group of organisms that normally interbreed with each other. And when they try and interbreed with another species, they're going to be infertile. And I suppose the crucial thing is normally. Yeah, kind of normally. Usually that's what they they do but occasionally they can interbreed with other

species and have fertile offspring they might have subfertility so we think that's happened so we think that for instance lots of neanderthal dna has been cleared out of our genomes because it created some problems with fertility and they didn't have ivf clinics in neanderthal times so so we've got all of got all of these areas in our genome where that DNA's been cleared out. But yeah, it's just not as simple as we used to think. It's getting much more complex and I think a lot more exciting. See, Brian hates that.

Brian's like, oh, the universe has got life in it. Isn't it messy? Is it going to be absolute zero? Hurry up, absolute zero. Simple equations. Sue, I wanted to ask you about something that I was really... that sounds fascinating that you know about, which is, going back to Neanderthals,

using DNA to make, is it, organoid brains? This, again, seems to be an incredible change in the possibilities. We've been able to develop, within the last few years, the most incredible technology that allows us to target specific areas of DNA very, very specifically and to cut them out. So either to delete them or to add something new. Somebody said it was a bit like having molecular scissors with a sat-nav. So it's about being able to just very precisely cut the DNA and hone in to be able to do that.

able to just very precisely cut the DNA and hone in to be able to do that. If you can then take something like Neanderthal DNA, which we now can find, we can replace that gene with a Neanderthal gene. What we're then able to do, so this is into stem cells, what they're now able to do is to grow an organoid, which is just a small pea-sized group of cells. And it's developed into something that's almost like a mini-brain. It's like a mini neocortex, so that there are oscillating electrical signals in it. So what they want to do next is to see whether they can take those

electrical signals, link them up to a robot, and see if we can actually get Neanderthal genes orchestrating movement in another object. Isn't that just out of this world? Andy, you've got to admit, the Neanderthal robot paradigm that we're talking about there,

that's... It's going to be a bit of a shock for the Neanderthal, though, isn't it? His world would not have been full of robots, would it? I'm very excited by... What I love is the way this is kind of demolishing the model I grew up with, which was the model was that Homo sapiens had been this sort of cheeky, chappy ducker and diver,

and we had, you know, we had out-competed the Neanderthals, possibly by murdering them, which is textbook out-competed the Neanderthals, possibly by murdering them, which is textbook out-competing. But it now looks like presumably what we're saying is that there was a kind of absorption of populations, there was a lot of interbreeding, possibly in the face of a lot of parental objection. Your father doesn't want you going out with a Neanderthal.

He says they're grunters. But that is what we're talking about, isn't it? And it means there's no such thing... All those people who get so angry out there about racial purity, in a way, what this is illustrating is there is no purity. Everything's a mash-up. I'm probably fooling myself. They'll probably get more angry, won't't they they'll probably go marching around saying

there are people in this country walking our streets who aren't even our species that's probably what will happen but i think you're right and like because the this theory this um this theme of mixing carries on until much more recent times so i think we've been we've been kind of obsessed with the idea of species differentiating and growing out like a tree so the kind of tree of life and we've thought about that in terms of within species as well so thinking about human populations and how they've diverged away from each other but what we're finding is that the the history of more recently of human populations is a lot more fusion than we've thought of in the past so so race is biologically

meaningless it is completely biologically meaningless you can't divide up you just cannot divide up the human species in that way you describe a world in biology it's moved very very quickly over the last 10 years and if we look into the next 10 years i think some of the issues you raise i saw actually i was looking out into the audience and looking at handy when you were talking about recreating and regrowing a part of a Neanderthal brain. And there is something, I think, to many people unsettling about the increase in our knowledge and capabilities in the biosciences which you don't really see in physics.

Is that a conflict? I think it's where biology often comes into conflict, I dare I say it, with our theology corner, which is just because you can do it should you do it. Can I just add, I really like clerical corner. It's basically a Muller fruit corner. We're the yoghurt, and occasionally we stir a little bit of that jam in.

It's not a Muller fruit corner. No, no, no, they're not from that church. Whether these two vicars ever encounter genuine creationists now and what you say to them when you meet them yeah of course of course we do i i preach a sermon at westminster abbey recently we have a lot of americans in the congregation at westminster abbey which is a bit of a challenge sometimes. And I explained about Darwin being buried there and that sort of stuff,

and I said that in the 19th century, in the Church of England, there was absolutely no controversy at all about honouring this man and burying him here. And I said, I believe in some parts of the United States there's something called creationism, which I believe is taught in some schools. I said, it's not an alternative, it's rubbish.

Alice has been dying to say something. OK, I'm delighted that the Church of England accepts evolution as a fact, as does the Catholic Church, but that's the Church, and that doesn't filter down. We know that there's more and more creationism amongst vicars and there's more and more when you get down to a level of teachers in primary schools and C of E primary schools there's a lot of creationism so even though we think it's not a problem in this country it really is that's one thing and the

next thing is is that I appreciate the need to talk about science with the whole of society, and I think that we shouldn't be talking about science as one thing, and not doing it with morals and ethics in mind all the time. Of course, all scientists should always have morals and ethics in mind. We shouldn't be passing that over to somebody else to deal with.

To suggest that the morals doesn't happen within science, I think, is silly. We can't operate as a society like that. Thank you to our panel. Thank you. You're listening to the 100th episode of the Infinite Monkey Cage here on Radio 4 and wonderfully you can also

watch this special episode captured by the cameras on iPlayer throughout July or on your TV online. And you'll be able to find out that rather than having a portrait in his attic, Brian actually merely has a Radio 4 co-host that he sucks the life force out. Ah, we used to look the same age once, didn't we? We did. We did.

It's even worse, actually, because you can press the red button on your TV remote control from any BBC channel at various times from Monday the 16th of July until Tuesday the 24th of July. Various times? Yeah, they weren't very specific. It doesn't matter anyway, because we live in a block universe, notice things are present.

It's a reference frame specific concept. Right, now with barely any time left, we move on to our final panel where we deal with everything else that has been discovered in the last 10 years and everything else that might possibly be discovered in the next 10 years, so we should be able to easily cover that.

But as you always say, Brian, time is a reference frame-specific device. You'd be surprised, actually, how many people don't understand the difference between coordinate time and proper time. You're certainly right. Anyway, our panel are... David Spiegelhalter, I'm a statistician, professor for the public understanding of risk from the University of Cambridge. My name's Tony Ryan, I'm a professor of polymer science, that's plastics, Brian,

at the University of Sheffield and the director of the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures. I am Richard Wiseman, professor of the public understanding of psychology at University of Hertfordshire. I'm Katie Brand. You'll be amazed to hear I'm not a professor of anything, but I am an eager amateur and would like to learn. David, we'll start with you. Over the last 10 years, I think there's a natural thing that people do as they get older, which is to presume that the world is getting worse. As someone working in statistics, is that true? Are we seeing a world that is going downhill?

It's been a great period for statistics. It used to be a fairly low-profile profession, but now everyone's doing data science and algorithms and machine learning. So there's so much interest in data now. And even in this post-truth world, people are more and more interested in what the great Hans Rosling calls factfulness. And when we look at the facts, we can get some pretty good news. In this country, life expectancy has been going up about a year and a half over the last nine years, not as fast as it used to. We're getting happier, according to the Office of National Statistics measures,

by a little bit. Still, the most miserable time of life is between 45 and 49, and the best is between 65 and 69, so I've got something to look forward to. But there's other good news about young people. This is quite extraordinary. Drug taking's down. Smoking's down by about a quarter among 16 to 24s,

drinkings down, less than half of 18 to 24s had a drink last week now. And the best statistic of all, the most extraordinary one, difficult to believe that since 2009, teenage pregnancy rate has halved in this country in that short period. It used to be one in 30 15 to 17-year-old girls used to get pregnant every year, and now it's less than one in 60. I feel like there might be a correlation between that

and the statistic about less drinking. Exactly. Now, everyone asks why, and I have done some calculations. The correlation is 0.998 between teenage pregnancy rates and the proportion of houses without internet. Now, I don't know if there's any reason. I actually probably think there's a huge correlation

with avocado consumption as well, but I couldn't get hold of that data. Just if you unpack that statistic, because I don't really understand maths very well because I went to a convent school and I didn't do any maths until I was eight and we just did art and jesus so i'm struggling to catch up but are you basically saying that the correlation is that teenagers are just spending all their time on facebook pretending they've had sex rather than

actually going out and making babies yeah i wouldn't ever say what causes what i only collect look was that the correlation that you that's the sort of suggestion people have said because of the rise of social media. If you look at social media, it's just grown enormously over that same period. But there are other slightly sillier statistics. I was looking at baby names. I think it's found Oliver is still number one.

It was number one in 2009. It's number one now. Although, actually, if you add up the four spellings of Mohammed, they are now top. They've just beaten all of them now. And other names have come up. Jackson and Ezra and Arlo have really shot up the league tables. But there's some names that remain deeply unpopular.

David, Richard, Tony. Katie's gone down in the... Robin. But absolutely rock bottom is Brian. I, I, I... It hasn't changed at all. I blame... Statistically, across this show,

we've kind of, we've bucked the trend, haven't we? Because there are two Brian. Well, and also, I blame... Yeah, but that's in the past. Now, there's 100 kids a year given the name Brian. It hasn't changed. I blame Eric Idle. Sorry?

I blame Monty Python. I blame Life of Brian. That's when it started. You look, 1979, it falls up a cliff. It's Idle's fault. It's his fault. I have to admit, you really do dice with danger because when you said that about Brian,

I saw Brian Bless's face and it really went into my head. Richard, have we had any great change of understanding about why humans behave as they do in the last ten years? What has changed in terms of human behaviour? I think we have. Before I get into that, though, I should say I've actually carried out research into the effect of names on people's lives, and so I see particularly the first letter of their surname.

So the further down the alphabet you are, you're used to seeing the names in alphabetical order you're used to seeing your name come further down so the further down you are the least successful you are in life so as a wise man i find that quite upsetting as a cox doing much better um but i i might change my name to alan aardvark uh for later on so that um but i was uh focusing on on changes since 2009 and allegedly a big one is a rise in narcissism which i actually predicted brilliantly um in uh but if when you unpack that data and this is one of the reasons why I love psychology, you start to realise it's a bit rocky, because, again, your perception would be, oh, there's all these narcissistic teenagers out there,

and they're just posting selfies and not having sex and things like that. And you think, is that really true? And so you start trying to answer that question, because there's not been narcissistic surveys every year. So it's very difficult. All you can do is really take a snapshot now of how narcissistic teenagers are and compare them to how narcissistic people a little bit older are.

But it may be you become less narcissistic as you age, and that's why you get that kind of correlation. So we don't really know whether people are becoming more and more narcissistic. My feeling is they are. Tony, from your perspective, what's the most important change we've seen over the last decade? Well, over the 100 episodes of the Infinite Monkey Cage,

the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has crept up and up and up. So in 2013 at Moanalua, it went past 400 ppm for the first time. In 2016, in the middle of May, it passed 400 ppm at the South Pole. So this is having a profound effect on us and on future generations. And that, we're never going to go back. So in 1962, when I was born, it was 320 ppm, 0.03%.

Now it's 0.04%. We're back to numbers. But those numbers will pan out to climate change. And climate change will mean that we have to change the way we live. And the interesting thing for me about the next 100 episodes is how much inconvenience can we put up with? I've been a professor of plastics for 30 years, and now I'm a pariah.

Everyone hates me. You know, a single-use Tony. We want to get rid of him. Although, I have to say, the number of bags for life I've got, I'll have to be reincarnated 400 times. And the beautiful thing is is the biggest car in the car park has the most bags for life right and the most eco bags are always in there and you have to

use an eco bag 147 times to get ahead of using a fresh polyethylene carrier bag every time wow Richard what have we found out anything i mean it seems there's quite a few books coming out now which are talking about how things like social media affect us and i think when you know tony when you're mentioning things like climate change it's fascinating to see some of the opinions that get picked up by people which don't really seem to be based on on on any grounding and evidence what are we learning about how we should be approaching ideas and the tricks that our own brains appear to play with us to make us you know i suppose better human beings at judging ideas well i guess what social media means is that you can spread ideas and come into contact with more ideas and

so before if you've got somebody with an idiotic idea they could shout that out and it would sort of reach a relatively small number of people and now of course you can reach many many uh people and so i think there's just a need and this is what psychology does brilliantly to be very very skeptical and very critical i've always i've been very skeptical uh my whole life even when i was seven i only thought i was six um that's how uh far back that's how far back it goes um i loved your pause there by the way you went some of them are picking up on it no it was it turned into a war of attrition and they won uh so um so i think there's a need for skepticism but the other problem i think psychologically is there's an enormous amount of comparison going on people are always comparing themselves to

others people are posting how well they're doing how beautiful they look or whatever it gets back to the narcissism and we know that's one of the roots of unhappiness so comparing themselves to others. People are posting how well they're doing, how beautiful they look, or whatever, it gets back to the narcissism. And we know that's one of the roots of unhappiness. So comparing yourselves to others, particularly people who've got more in whatever it is, not a great idea. So I just think sort of dialling back on that would be a little bit better. Katie, we've had positive and negative discussions on this panel. Are you an optimist or a pessimist about the next 10 years or so?

Oh, well, I'm always naturally an optimist or a pessimist about the the next 10 years or so oh well i'm always naturally an optimist because i'm usually drunk um but i uh but no i am naturally optimistic and i'm glad to be that way especially in the current global climate um but i i feel quite optimistic and one of the reasons i feel optimistic and and and one of the things that's been really important for me and a lot of people over the last few years and I hope it continues is the acknowledgement of the role of uh non-white male scientists in the progress of humanity the the um the contribution of women over the years you know I watched a fantastic documentary about Cassini and all of the female engineers that worked on that and all this stuff about getting women into STEM and all the fantastic female

scientists that I have found totally inspiring and fascinating over the years that I've been able to be part of this show and you know I'm not a scientist at all I wasn't taught science properly at school as I said I wasn't taught maths at all till I was eight and so I really am very ignorant and I don't have a great knowledge base but I've learned so much about it and I think you know there's often this argument that there's sort of oh we had to let the great men get on with science over the years otherwise we wouldn't be where we are now but I always think but we'd be a lot further by now if we pulled everyone's knowledge throughout history we would be I can't begin to imagine how much further we'd be by now

in terms of our progress so I'm really excited by the fact that all these geniuses out there throughout history that have been ignored or dismissed or oppressed might now be able to join in and bring their knowledge and their genius insights and we can really start to motor now and get on with it i'm going to take the dangerous decision of throwing over to Ecclesiastical Corner without your chaperoning. No. They've worn me out, Robin.

I had to come over here for a refuge. Robin, I do need you to know something. They couldn't be here without plastic because their dog collars are made from PVC. They are PVC dog collar wearers. Ah, one use, Tony. How do you feel now, in terms of Percy, about the future? Does the book of Revelation change now that we have different levels of optimism, pessimism and possibleism?

I owe a great deal to the scientists, because one called Brian Cox invited me to cern and go and have a look at this extraordinary place which i didn't understand at all before i went and understood a great deal less after i've been here but one of the reasons I accepted the invitation from Brian was that it was in Geneva, and I'd never been to Geneva. When we got to Geneva, I discovered that there was a new museum of the history of the Reformation.

Now, can you imagine anything more boring? Actually, it was brilliant. And I took Brian and some other people who we were together, a group of scientists and me to look at this museum and I made the point going round that without the reformation we wouldn't be doing particle physics and without the enlightenment we wouldn't be having this program so all sorts of things so they shudder and creak move forward and that's now in some religious circles regarded in a rather bad light and people say oh you know that's a kind of facile optimism

i don't believe that i think that there's enormous progress for good and i see it every day in the council estate where i live with a lot of Muslim neighbours and every time something awful happens in London and I feel oppressed by what's happened and a bit helpless, I go and talk to the neighbours and somehow huge things for good happen, partly because they listen to programmes like this. Victor knows how to make sure he stays in the edit.

I'm very lucky. I was born in 1962, same year as you. And that's made me a very, very lucky person. I was born into a world where I had fantastic education. My parents paid for the first part of it, but the state paid for it thereafter. I couldn't have had a better education. My health was very well provided for,

apart from the years of HIV and AIDS. We got through that. I'm a gay man. I couldn't have picked a better time to have been a gay man an unimaginable positive change in that but i also have to say that now i look at the generation after me and i think it's hard to sustain that feeling of optimism for then that has been sustained in my life i think there's stuff on the horizon horrible populist politics dark things arising in east and west huge fundamental changes in the way we organize ourselves the economy of the world what we're doing to the planet that make me uh that tinge that optimism i feel about the present moment with um a little bit of uh prudent thoughtfulness

we should have done you the other way around then it would have ended upbeat thoughtfulness. We should have done you the other way round. Then it would have ended upbeat. I'm coming back on the programme. I'll have my fun. We have run out of time pretty much now. So we asked the audience a question. Normally it's the studio audience, but today it's the audience at home and we asked them, which

scientific advance do you hope becomes reality before the 200th episode of the infinite monkey cage and these are the answers we've received yeah i've got one from reese olwin who said a giant space hoover to clear pluto's orbit so it can be reinstated as a planet uh the oh neil will be on to that one the uh steve greenaway says the ability to scientifically explain what What went wrong with Morrissey? This one's complete nonsense from Dave Fleming. It says, the acceptance that chemistry is the most important scientific discipline.

Yes! Do you know what? I wouldn't have said that when we know a chemist is about to come out shortly with matches and fire. This one just says, this is from Al, it says, we hope they can identify the procrastination gene and... And then we've got... Terry Cartmell would like a cure for laziness or lightsabers. On second thoughts, lightsabers.

Vicky says, clones of Brian that never age. Hang on. I'm thinking that Brian that never age. Hang on. I'm thinking that Brian might have already secretly done that. It would explain so much. So smooth. So that's the end of the 100th episode, and on to the next 100. Yeah, but it can't be 100th episode, can it, on Radio 4 without a cake? But because this is an infinite monkey cage cake,

obviously ours will be an incendiary cake, highly flammable and potentially toxic, and probably inedible. But we're going to try and see what we can do with that by introducing our very special cake chemist for the day, Andrea Seller, and our beautiful cake wheelers, Brian Blessed and Eric Heidel. I know.

I've had some bloody jobs in my time. I'm glad they're back. Yeah, here we are. Back a bit, back a bit. There we go. We should sing happy birthday, shouldn't we? Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you Happy birthday dear

Ifna Monkey Kate Happy birthday to you Hip hip Hooray Hip hip Hooray Hip hip Hooray

Eric, is this the highlight of your career? I've always wanted to bring on a birthday cake for you, Brian Now you're 100. Oh, yes, and, you know, that painting is looking a little old in your attic. I think it is. Decaying away. Andrea, what...

What? What are you going to do? Chemistry. So the challenge is how to keep this flammable but edible. Tough challenge for a chemist. What we've got is a small palisade of fire. So we've got little cups here, which have got a little bit of methanol in them, and each one has some salt.

And I think what that's going to do is it's going to link my subject, chemistry, with the universe. By salt. I know you. You don't really mean just salt, do you? No, salt in the chemical metaphorical sense. So, I mean, amongst other things, we've got a nice British element. We've got strontium and potassium as well. We've got one that is poisonous. We've got barium. That should be fun. We've got a little bit of cesium. Can you tell us where that barium is, or have you just shoved them around so we're going to have cake roulette again? Around, around. Watch, watch.

I think we may be able to see. Well, let's have this final episode of Monkey Cakes. Shall we light? Go for it. It's the first time I've ever seen you back off anything, Brian. Can I just say, it's never happened before. I'm moving back. This beard could go up at any moment.

You climbed Everest without oxygen. Why are you cowering behind the desk? Because of Camus. And here come the colours. Yes, here we go. Here come the colours. We've got the yellow of the sodium. We've got the green of the copper.

The red of strontium is starting to appear. We've got the purple of the cesium and the lilac of potassium, and finally, somewhere hidden in all there, is the apple green of the barium. And that's the poisonous one, okay? That's the poisonous one, and notice how it's drifting beautifully towards the icing, which may actually reach its melting point. Have you got a wedding coming soon with a groom you don't like? Then book Andrea Sellar for your top cakes.

I think we're going to give this corner to Brian because he's indestructible. The Rasputin of Everest. So, that brings us to the end of this show. Thank you so much. It is an amazing cake. My skin on that effigy looks so smooth and I have so much hair. I like it.

Yeah, so thank you to all our guests. Welcome to the new series. We're now going to eat this severely singed and poisonous cake. But for now, I think it's probably a final from some of us. Goodbye. Goodbye. I find quantum mechanics confusing today Now science is all the rage

The neutron collider is banging away Trying to guess our age A particle here, a particle there In this weird quantum world Which can be any world Which might just explain Why I'm losing my health In the infinite monkey game You're listening to the 100th episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage. And wonderfully, you can also watch this special episode

captured by the cameras on iPlayer throughout July or on your TV online. And you'll be able to find out that rather than having a portrait in his attic, Brian actually merely has a Radio 4 co-host that he sucks the life force out. Ah, we used to look the same age once, didn't we? We did. We did.

It's even worse, actually, because you can press the red button on your TV remote control from any BBC channel at various times from Monday the 16th of July until Tuesday the 24th of July. Various times? Yeah, they weren't very specific.

This is the BBC. 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 for the 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