The Infinite Monkey Cage - The Infinite Monkey’s Guide to... Audience Favourites

Episode Date: November 8, 2023

There’s no shortage of surprising science in The Infinite Monkey Cage and this episode is dedicated to you, the audience, as we hear some of your favourite clips from the past 14 years of the show. Palaeontologist Susie Maidment explains why licking rocks is the best way to determine their age, but you were just as interested in whether Robin is older than Brian, who also admits Jon Culshaw’s impression of him is surprisingly accurate. Entomologist Erica McAlister explains what to do if a fly lands in your wine, but be warned, it might put you off drinking! And actor Brendan Hunt gets excited by the prospect of chatty trees.Episodes featured: Series 24: The Wood Wide Web Series 23: A History of Rock Series 5: What’s the North Ever Done for Us? Series 20: Dinosaurs Series 23: In Praise of Flies Series 21: Science of LaughterNew episodes will be released on Wednesdays, but if you’re in the UK, listen to new episodes, a week early, first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3K3JzyProducer: Marijke Peters Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem

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 with a small coffee all day long. Tax is extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts.

Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. After nine episodes of us being in charge, controlling the horizontal and the vertical, not that you'd have actually noticed because of course we're an audio show, we've handed this episode over to you. So this is the Infinite Monkeys Guide to, well, whatever you want. What does controlling the horizontal and the vertical mean? I'm glad you asked that, because I knew a lot of people wouldn't get that reference.

It's the opening of outer limits. The outer limits. We control the horizontal. We control the vertical. We are going to take you into the outer limits, which was like kind of the Twilight Zone. Do you not remember that? The vertical and the horizontal. I'd be interested in the next series that we do,

where we have, again, an audience favourites, audience questions show. I would like people to write in, and I would like them to say that they understood and recognised that reference. I'd love to know how many people got that. Now, you've sent in hundreds of suggestions of moments of the show that you found enlightening or perplexing over the last 14 years that we've been,

I was going to say on air, but that's rather old-fashioned, isn't it? Because we're not really on air now, are we? But are we on air or are we through air? Because it's on air itself, I suppose. I think we're mainly through optical fibre now, aren't we? Anyway, the wonderful thing about all your suggestions is that it definitely took us back to stories

that we'd forgotten and ideas that excited us. New ideas and wonderful stories, I thought. So I'm glad you all enjoyed it. Well, the first thing we're actually going to hear about is from an episode not that long ago, maybe a couple of years back, which was about the chattiness of trees.

I loved it that you did that in a perfect 80s DJ voice. The chattiness of trees. You very loved it that you did that in a perfect 80s DJ voice. The Chattiness of Trees. You very much enjoyed it. Well, rather than The Chattiness of Trees, really, it's the astounding discovery of communication via mycorrhizal. Is it mycorrhizal? Mycorrhizal.

Mycorrhizal. There we go, networks, which is an incredible discovery. And indeed, the person we had on the show first became fascinated in it when her dog fell into an outside toilet and they had to dig it out but that's not the discussion you're going to hear so thank you to hazel pearson to martin mccauley uh joanne mcconnell and quite a few other people you wanted to hear more of this discussion between well someone from one of your favorite tv shows oh yeah from ted lasso brendan hunt and professor of forest ecology

suzanne simard they communicate in resources, water, nutrients and carbon. So think of that like a language. If you think of carbon, photosynthate is a bunch of like six carbon molecules hooked to six oxygen molecules hooked to, I think, eight hydrogen molecules. And that's like a word, right? It's a compound. And then there's a whole bunch of other compounds, a bunch of amino acids, which are other words in the language. So you can think of the language of carbon. And then nitrogen, there's different amino acids like glutamate and

alanine and, you know, there's other ones too. I just can't remember what they are right now. And so that's the language of amino acids. And then water is just water and things are dissolved in water. That's another part of the language. And then there's a whole other stream of words. It's just about information. So I'm just using these metaphors of words and language because basically they're communicating with the things that they need. They're communicating with the things that they need. And some of the other information they communicate is about their relationship with each other. For example, do you want to marry me, Coach Beard? We've only just met. And I'm not saying no. It's very forward of me, it's true.

Or, you know, if you're my brother or if you're my sister. Well, sidebar then, when they communicate that with each other, do they say, I think you might be my brother because I've recently been on a genealogy website called Ancestry.com? I know their leaves are all over the fingerprints. No, that doesn't make sense. Is this communication, though? Are they just reacting to concentrations of various molecules and so on,

as you said, water? Or can it be defined as real communication? It's real communication because one that's talking to the other one, it's a back-and-forth conversation. So it goes back and forth. And then the tree or the plant that is sending the communication, there's a response of the receiver, and then the communicator, or the donor we call them, also changes its behavior according to the messages

that are going back and forth. So there's an actual receipt of information and then a conveyance back again, and a change in behavior. So yeah, it's not just a transmission of resources. It's actually this conversation going on that changes how they behave. Is this only between single species, or is it a communication across species? No, all across species.

And they communicate through these, as I said, these fungal networks. So all of the plants in England and the UK and where I'm from in Canada, almost all plants form these mycorrhizas. And mycorrhizas is a symbiosis between the plant and the fungus. They can't survive without joining in this togetherness. And so when you're in the forest and you see all those herbs in the understory,

they're all linked together in this network. I have a question about these messages. So they send each other warnings. Do they ever send each other just like compliments? Hey, Larry, Larry the elm tree, you look great today, buddy. Kind of. Like if you were my sibling, for example, and I knew you were my sibling, because I can detect through these chemical messages that you're my sibling, what we're finding is that they'll send more carbon, more water, and my sibling will create bigger networks,

they'll take up more nutrients, and they'll be like, hey, I'm doing better. More confidence to generally carrying themselves better as a tree that's great that's how it should be there's a bright golden haze on the matter right brian question for you have you licked any rocks lately yes which rocks did you lick a sandstone a granite and an igneous rock and was that blindfolded as usually in that version of nine and a half weeks that you make with geologists yes it was what an ugly image beautiful depending on your take on it turns out

that even i'm not a trained geologist but i've picked up enough geology over the years on Monkey Cage that if I lick sand and then I lick granite and then I lick a volcanic rock, I can tell the difference. I reckon I could as well. Yeah. Let's do that now then. Ow! Yeah, I don't like pumice. Pumice is too harsh, but I do feel like I've got a lovely smooth tongue now. Anyway, Brian was somewhat aghast originally to discover that geologists

really do lick rocks to ascertain their properties, a skill he now has. Yeah, we don't do that in particle physics. It's very hard, isn't it, to taste a quark and go oh, there's an uppiness to this, isn't there? But there's also a little bit of charm, a bit of uppiness, a bit of charm.

Although I suppose technically everything you taste is licking a quark. Yeah, it's just telling which quark's which I suppose. Yeah, it's very hard to tell between them. So, please after you've heard the next clip, do not lick rocks until you've been properly trained. The Infinite Monkey Cage takes no responsibility

for any rock licking accidents that you experience after hearing this clip, which was requested by Neptune, which I don't think is the Roman sea god, as far as we know. How do you know that? Well, I don't know for sure. I'm merely being marginally sceptical. So here are paleontologist Susie Maidment,

geologist Chris Jackson and comedian Ross Noble, and that rock licking. We talk about the story of geology, the story of a rock. Let's say you go outside, pick up a rock. How do you begin to characterise it? How do you begin to tell its story? How do we know how old it is, how it was formed? So how do you tell that story? Well, geology is a discipline in which you kind of use all of your senses. So obviously looking really closely at a rock is really important. But one of the things that we often teach our students and we try and encourage them to do quite a lot,

and they often don't believe us, is to bite a little bit off it to chew the rock. That tells us how... That doesn't work. For any children watching, I don't think you should do that. No, you definitely should. Definitely should chew the rock. Probably think a little bit about where the rock is before you chew it. Like, if it's on the side of a road, maybe don't chew it. Don't chew the rock.

Sorry, I just need to, just for my research, is it a chew or a lick? Can we just nail that down? Oh, it's a chew. It's a chew. I mean, if you've got a hay light like salt rock, you can legitimately lick that and not draw strange stares from your friends. So, no, I just... You're making geology sound really strange.

So is that the first thing that you do? If you go through a rock formation, you lick it. You lick the rock formation. It is one of the tools available to us to determine some aspect of the texture of the rock. Yeah, it's all about the texture. So sometimes, unless you've got a little hand lens, a little microscope, to look at what the grain size of the rock is, it's very hard to tell.

And actually, if you just bite a little bit off, if it's a bit grainy, then you'd say it's a sandstone. If it's got a little bit of texture to it, it's a siltstone. And if it just turns into mush in your mouth, it's mudstone. So they are legitimate. Stop laughing. These they are legitimate. Stop laughing. These are all legitimate. See, all I've got in my...

Me and Susie have trained for years and years and years. Sorry, I know you're trying to get back to the science, but this is really going to help me out. Do you reckon, and it's just a new game show I'm working on, if I was to blindfold you and line up a load of rocks, do you reckon you could identify the rock just with your tongue? How long do we have? How long are you going to leave us with the rocks for?

You know what? We can fix it in the edit and you're playing for a car. I think some of them, Susie. Do you think we could? I mean, if it waslite, you'd nail that one straight away, right? Yeah, totally, totally. It tastes like you're licking a salty chip, right? I think it depends what level of accuracy you want, really. We could get you down to sandstone straight away, couldn't we, really?

Yeah, and if you licked one of the garnet mica schists that Susie talked about at the start, and if your tongue passed over a nice bit of garnet... You'd know that, wouldn't you? Yeah, that would be nice and smooth across your tongue. And then as you lick some of the micaceous minerals, they might come off. I've genuinely not thought about this that much.

You're grabbed now, and you've won a holiday! One thing that seems to have continued to amaze our audience throughout all our series is that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, I am older than Robin. Yeah. I think one of the reasons is because when we tour, you get up and then you have a morning nap

and then you have lunch and then you have an afternoon nap. And then after your afternoon nap, you quickly have an early evening nap. And then you go to bed. Yeah. Whereas when we get anywhere, like, you know, whether it's Pittsburgh or Indianapolis, I immediately get off the tour bus and go, I've got to see everything immediately. I've got to find every weird bookshop and I've got to find every single strange art museum.

And so I think there's something about, you know, your docility has led to a fantastic mental agility. Yeah, I love some of these emails here. This one. You have managed to make 26 series and Brian Cox still looks exactly the same. Yeah. And another one here. Robin Ince is younger than Brian Cox.

Never heard a scientific explanation, though. Yeah, there's something about my frame of reference, isn't there, I'm sure. Yeah, I think there is. I think there is. But anyway. Yeah, Brian is older than Robin. Other people have said Brian Cox is a real person

and not just Robin Ince doing his Alan Bennett impression, tried to explain the event horizon to Mother the other day, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And talking of impressionists, there you go, there's a segue. Oh, that is a proper segue, yeah. In 2011, I was replaced by John Culshaw. We did a show in Manchester and most of it was John. It was great.

In fact, a lot of people don't know this. Actually, 17 out of the 20 shows a year are voiced either by John or myself doing Brian's voice. So if every now and again you listen to the show and you go, that doesn't sound very much like Brian Cox. It's because it's Brian Cox. Let's see if you can tell the difference then so here is John doing an impression of me and this is back in series five what's the north ever done for us so Brian can you explain neutrinos and what their superliminal travel may mean for causality well neutrinos are really wonderful and... LAUGHTER And they're really beautiful and amazing. The amazing thing is that they're so small

that they can't even be seen with the human eye or even by the eyes of things that are really small, like a vole, like a flea or even an ant. And the neutrinos are faster than light because when observed, they appear to be weaving teeny, tiny, wonderful little rollerblades that mean they can go through the universe like it was a disco. And in the year 2000, there was a band called Oxide and Neutrino who did Bound for the Reload, but it wasn't very good

and it was quite hard to listen to. When you hear your voice being done by impressionists, what do you make of it? I don't think it sounds like me until you play a recording of me. So it is exactly the same as when you were a kid and you first hear a recording of your voice and you're in utter shock. Yeah, it is. I mean, it is true that my accent has got less pronounced over the years.

So if you go back now, if you listen to some of the older Monkey Cage recordings, then I do actually sound like your impression. Well, you used to sound quite like John Ronson as well. I think I did a bit, yeah. I remember when we had John Ronson on the show, and people went, I can't tell which bit's John Ronson and which bit's Brian Cox. No. Anyway, John went off and did a few more impressions for us.

Here's one. Welcome to the Sittin' Under Sky Night, where we shall be talking about the fountains of Enceladus. They shouldn't exist, but they do. What I love about John is that he can do every single Doctor Who. I love him doing John Pertwee, but here is his Tom Baker.

Well, yes. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. I have reversed the polarity of the neutron flow so the monkey cage should be free of the force field now to introduce my son to science by using star wars i used to an impersonation of richard dawkins turning into c3po and vice versa oh for heaven's sake r2 how many times must I tell you? Yahweh is a fictional god. Well, unsurprisingly, dinosaur revelations frequently came up in our inbox of requests. In the 14 years we've been on air, the Brontosaurus has been rejected as being an amalgam of multiple dinosaurs.

But the debate remains, actually. Yeah. And I think it's safest to say, in a scientific sense, that it's a synonym for an apastosaurus. A pastasaurus. A pastasaurus. A pastasaurus, yeah. That restaurant's not going to... Oh, the restaurant went extinct. It was too big to survive. A patosaurus.

So we've done the disclaimer now. Well, Zoe wrote to us to tell us that she'd learned that a T-Rex is more distant in time from a stegosaur than from an iPad. Here's actor Rufus Hound, a former employee of the Science Museum, and paleontologist Susie Maidman again, who are talking about the wonders of dinosaurs and indeed the fact that they've discovered a new species just before this particular show aired. I say they've discovered, I should say that's not Rufus and Susie. Rufus was not involved at all. Also, another paleontologist, Steve Brissett, as well, on how this is actually a more regular occurrence than you might expect.

A couple of weeks ago, we announced that we'd found a new stegosaur from North Africa, and it's the oldest stegosaur in the world, and it's also the firstosaur from North Africa. And it's the oldest stegosaur in the world. And it's also the first one from North Africa. And by oldest, so what are the timescales? How old is that one? And what's the span of time that stegosaurs were present on the Earth? Well, stegosaurs weren't around for that long.

Now, you know, this is a really, really common misconception about dinosaurs, that they were all kind of living together in the same ecosystems. But dinosaurs dominated terrestrial ecosystems for 170 million years. So that, you know, by the time that Steve's T-Rex was alive, Stegosaurus was already a fossil. And in fact, T-Rex is closer to an iPad in time than it is to a Stegosaurus. So we're talking about vast swathes of time.

I had not realised how many, like you were talking about discovering a new species. This is something that's very regular, isn't it? Is it approximately one species a week on average? It is, and last week was Susie's week with the stegosaur, and this week, I don't know who it'll be, but it is. It's about 50 new species a year. Hang on, let me just look under this desk. No, it's not my turn.

That's Nicholas Parsons. So 50 new species a year. 50 new species. Yeah, it's incredible. And that's been going on for about a decade. So that's not just a blip. Oh, now this. I have no surprise that people wanted to hear this particular clip.

In particular, it was Elaine Hood who asked about this. But you remember the episode we did about the flies? Yeah, in praise of flies. Oh, Erica McAllister was quite remarkable on that and I highly recommend looking at her books as well about flies. In praise of flies, where Elaine basically said after she listened to this, I used to scoop the fly out of my rosé wine and continue drinking, but not anymore.

The whole glass full is jettisoned. I mention this to many friends and they all now do the same. I hope it doesn't come out that we all own shares in rosé wine. And that's why we put it there. Here's entomologist Erica McAllister and comedian David Baddiel talking about those flies. When you're sitting in a pub and you've got that fly flying around your glass of wine or your pint of nutty ale.

It'll be a drosophila. It'll be a Drosophila. It'll be a Drosophila. Drosophila are known not only for their amazing genetics, but because they have mega sperm. OK, and the fly, it's... I feel inadequate. I have to finish. Oh, you will, you will.

Their sperm is about 1,000 times bigger than yours. I haven't measured... There's really no need for this. Well, you keep making it personal. I'm trying. So, Drosophila, the Melanogaster, it's a three millimetre long fly. Its sperm is about one millimetre. It's amazing.

But it's not as good as the biggest sperm, which is in Berfurca, the Drosophila berfurca, whose sperm is 5.8 centimetres long, which is massive. It's huge. But they only have a few and they don't have teenage years. But their sperm is bigger than they are. Yeah, it's massively round up. Round up.

And they kind of like a pea shooter as a genitalia where they... Out it comes. But one of the last... Why? Why is it that way? A sperm competition. So she's trying to kill it as much as possible

and his sperm keeps evolving to be bigger and bigger and bigger as she makes it more and more complicated. Plus he's fighting... That sperm is fighting other sperm that's already in there and they've found that the longer the sperm, it's easier to push out other sperm. And now, yet again, David Atenborough's walked over to his radio and she's done it again oh god that's the end of the week for me two knighthoods but not very big sperm

but but one of the last things that you do one of the last things that flies do is they will uh so if there's a female and she's pregnant, because some flies do carry larvae, so she is pregnant. If she's in a last ditch situation, she just lets all the larvae go. All the eggs go. And some males just let all the sperm go as well. So when it falls into

your pint or your drink and it's dying, one of the last things it might be doing is ejaculating into your nutty owl. Which is just a nice thought. please can we end the programme now, please Brian we can't end the programme now because Julie Helen Turner wrote to us to say that she learned that laughter boosts the immune system and is essential for social bonding

that was again a fascinating episode. Finally getting Frank Skinner on the show and psychologist Richard Wiseman and also cognitive neuroscientist Sophie Scott who regular listeners will know has spent a great deal of her career tickling rats. Hello I'm Frank Skinner I'm a comedian and what makes me laugh is fireworks. is fireworks. See, it made you laugh too. I don't know what it is. I've been to many fireworks displays.

As soon as they start going off, I crack up completely. I was once accidentally next to Brian Ferry at a fireworks display and I laughed so much that he moved away. My grandfather was arrested, bizarrely, for stealing fireworks. Is that your... I was hoping you'd make a more professional contribution

to this discussion. It worked out well because the police let him off. Before we move on, Richard, do you have any comments on... ..that idea that people laugh at just strange things that are not funny in themselves well we have to separate humour and laughter because they're slightly different things and and so laughter is is very much a social signal you do laugh on your own it's just you laugh much more when you're with other people you're 30 times more likely to laugh if there's somebody else with you than if you're on your own and that's that's science does that

provide any insight as to the evolutionary origin of laughter the fact there's some kind of crowd like behavior it seems to so the first appearance of laughter is in interactions with babies normally something like tickling so tickling works across wherever you find an animal that laughs it will laugh at being tickled um now that's already a social situation. You can't just walk the streets tickling babies. The babies are only going to let certain people tickle them. Everyone really don't. But also, you can't tickle yourself. So it has to be somebody else involved.

So it's from the very, very outset, laughter is something that is completely being driven by social factors. Thank you for listening to The Infinite Monkey's Guide To. All the episodes we took clips from in this series are available on BBC Sounds and in the Infinite Monkey Cage back catalogue. We have a greater back catalogue now than either of your recording careers with Dare or D-Ream. So I think that's a good thing. It's true. The Naughty Monkey in the Infinite Monkey Cage. Without your trousers in the Infinite Monkey Cage.

Turned out nice again. And if you enjoyed our show, here's another podcast that you might enjoy. Hello, I'm Dr Michael Moseley and in my BBC Radio 4 podcast, Just One Thing, I'm investigating some quick, simple and surprising ways to improve your health and life. Which will you try? Maybe a cup of tea to help your heart health. Or breathing through your nose to fight off infection. Breathing through your nose to fight off infection.

How about a walk on a rainy day to boost your immune system? So to benefit your brain and body in ways you might not expect, here's just one thing you can do right now. Subscribe to the podcast on BBC Sounds. 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 Ans answers wherever you get your podcast