The Infinite Monkey Cage - The Infinite Monkey's Guide To… Murder

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

Brian Cox, Robin Ince and their guests will send a shiver down your spine as they sift through the science on murder, and hear some of the more creative techniques scientists use to catch killers. Apparently rambling through brambles is a great way to find buried bodies at the edge of abandoned fields and entomologist Amoret Whitaker says she relies on flies and fleas to tell her whether a crime has been committed. According to criminal psychologist Dr Julia Shaw, we’ve all got it in us to bump someone off, but it isn’t just humans who have this homicidal intent. The zombie wasp paralyses her cockroach prey, then slowly eats it alive, and we also hear about the murderous mushrooms threatening unsuspecting worms.New episodes will be released on Wednesdays. If you’re in the UK, listen to the full series on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3K3JzyFProducer: Marijke Peters Executive Producer: Alexandra FeachemEpisodes featured: Series 26: The Perfect Murder Series 12: Forensic Science Series 16: Will Insects Inherit the Earth? Series 27: Bees v Wasps Series 27: The Magic of Mushrooms

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. You're about to listen to an episode of The Infinite Monkey's Guide To. Episodes will be released on Wednesdays, wherever you get your podcasts. But if you're in the UK, you can listen to new episodes first on BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Brian Cox. I'm Robin Ince.

And welcome to a new series of The Infinite Monkey's Guide 2, where we bring you some of our favourite clips from the show, covering subjects as diverse as failure and the future. And there will be a lot of failure in the future by the looks of things, won't there? I mean, including, obviously, the sun swelling into a red giant and destroying us. Yeah, ultimately, heat death.

Entropy and failure. Faked in. Inescapable. Faked in. Over the last 15 years, we've talked many times about the birth of the universe and the origin of life. And don't forget, and the beauty of the colours of the rainbow. So, Brian, of course, will be saying the wonder of this and the origin of life. And don't forget, and the beauty of the colours of the rainbow. So, Brian, of course, will be saying

the wonder of this and the wonder of that, not as much as he does on telly, and at times you will actually be able to hear his smile as it cracks the sponge at the edge of the microphone. Listen, can you hear his smile now? You can't crack sponge. Oh, you can with your smile. But for every action, we have to know

that, of course, there is an equal and opposite reaction. So, though Brian will spend a lot of his time smiling happily, every now and again, he has that kind of smile of a murderer as his thoughts turn to killing. The reason I bring up Brian's occasional bloodlust after loving the universe perhaps a bit too much is that today's Infinite Monkeys Guide is an Infinite Monkeys Guide to murder.

Can I just interject there and say the BBC's ethics board would like to make it clear that we take no responsibility for any criminal activities that may be generated by this show and remind you that murder can seriously damage your health and other people's. That's a very good point, actually. Obviously, there's a lot of talk of death in kind of the world of physics, but, you know, the world of stand-up comedy, that's filled with the language of death.

A great gig, you've killed. On a bad night, you've died. So it may be no surprise that lawyer-turned-comedian Susan Calman is fascinated by the way people commit murder. Happens a lot, doesn't it? A lot of lawyers go into stand-up comedy, don't they? I could say a lot of lawyers go into murder via comedy. Well, I suppose it's a similar thing, isn't it?

If you think of someone like John Mortimer in the brilliant Rumpole of the Bailey, and the way that Leo McCurran played him, a lot of it is performance, isn't it? It's that kind of, you know, if you can get the jury laughing, you'll be amazed what you can get your client off with. And that's an accent from Rumpole of the Bailey. Yeah, yeah, Rumpole of the Bailey.

And, oh, God, here comes she who must be obeyed. I didn't know Richard Feynman was in Rumpole of the Bailey. And here comes she who must be obeyed. I didn't know Richard Feynman was in Rumpole of the Bailey. I love Rumpole of the Bailey. But it has that thing, that bit when someone's been won over by the charisma of a barrister. So that's the thing. Next time you're up for all those parking tickets for parking your limo,

just make sure you open with a couple of nice one-liners, then a shaggy dog story, you'll get off whatever. I don't get the tickets, it's my driver. Anyway, that is why we introduced Susan Kalman to psychologist Dr Julia Shaw and also forensic anthropologist Professor Sue Black. And this is what Susan had explained to her. There's the assumption that being psychopathic

is going to be good for you, which it might be because you're high on callousness and low on empathy, which makes it easier to hurt people. But most murders are committed by people who it's a fight that gets out of control. It's more someone who's aggressive, hot tempered, and it's not a psychopath. It's a passion, isn't it? Passion. It's a moment of passion. Murder is on television so much. And more often than not, the murders that we see on television in terms of in dramas is incredibly well prepared it's a you know half the show is about someone planning it is that thing again of you know someone puts an umbrella under the chimney and connects it to a record player that's playing the 1812 overture and coincides the murder with

the sound of the cannons but that must be I mean not just that example otherwise that level of preparation is very very rare most most murders are not anticipated so it is a moment of argument it's alcohol fueled it's drug fueled whatever it may be and suddenly you're faced with a situation which has gone beyond where you ever expected it to go and you're left with a body what do you do with it if i can give you a bit of advice should you ever find yourself in that position, don't dismember. Don't. It's awfully messy. I know. Can I borrow your pen?

Yeah. And then people think, I'll go and drop the body parts in different places. Every time you do that, you've gone from one potential crime scene to about six, so you're more likely to be caught. So don't. Do you know what?

One of the things I'm really enjoying about this conversation already, and it's just started, is I'm fascinated, because one day this might come in useful. I've never done a show where the audience are just going, oh.

Because the thing about it, I think, is that most people have at some point even fleetingly considered murdering someone. You've considered it. You've considered it. You've thought about it. More than once, Susan. We've all fleetingly, and most of us say

that's silly, but we have potentially thought about it and I think most of the people who think about it, and like the distinguished guest over there, have absolutely no knowledge apart from what they've seen on the television which would make them believe that they could commit the perfect crime because if you've watched all of these programs surely you have the the background

and for me genuinely people going well is that not true I categorize my friends it's interesting what you're saying Sue about your husband into would they help me if I committed a murder? I'd help you and you would do that as well I wouldn't we've got the same name this is strangers on a train already

there's a sleeper leaving tonight and if they've both got tickets can I just ask, do you also classify your Oxford colleagues in such a way? I couldn't possibly comment on that. Now, of course, 100 years ago, you could get away with murder by saying that the person found dead in the woods was probably killed by that dancing bear

that had escaped its leash in the middle of a tango. That, by the way, genuinely is a case, a dancing bear in the Forest of Dean. I don't know about the dance style, so I might be wrong about it being a tango. Were they acquitted? The human got away with it, the bear, far from it. But the first time that we met forensic botanist Mark Spencer,

we found out some just incredible details. You can be identified by brambles. Yeah. It's that whole thing of finding... It's not the bramble. You don't ask the Brambles. That was almost a children's book for you, wasn't it? A new version of Brambley Hedge,

mixed with a little bit of Agatha Christie there. What's that, Brambley Hedge? What kind of voice would the Brambley Hedge have? Oh, Brambley Hedge would have a voice like this, I think. So you'd go, who committed the murder, Brambley Hedge? Well, I can tell you now, it was the priest. Oh, it's very chilly, it's nearly autumn, where have my berries

gone? Yeah, yeah. Police are generally very familiar with the built environment when they see serious crime, you know, people's households, factories, offices, but you take them into the wider landscape with all this weird green stuff that everybody ignores and it's all a bit terrifying to them

and they can't see structure, context, time and space, which is potentially very helpful for understanding crime. So it will often be used, working with forensic anthropologists and archaeologists to locate burial sites, for example, by disturbance patterns, vegetation, and when we are lucky enough to find somebody, actually look at the vegetation disturbance patterns,

particularly things like my old friend the bramble, to actually give some kind of assessment for potentially how long somebody's been there. Usually the kind of casework I do, the people have been often either on the ground or in the ground for months or years, and the vegetation may well be one of the first clues to kind of help you assess who is that person,

how long have they been there. So you're looking for new growth. And why is the bramble particularly... Well, brambles are just one of my favourite plants, you know. Do you know what a person who studies brambles is called? A brambologist? A batologist. A batologist?

A batologist, which is a delightful word. From the Greek, I believe, for batus, berry. And why... It doesn't seem to me to be a particular... the wide or deep field, the study of brambles. Why... Indeed. Can you encapsulate the interesting thing? It's a specialist niche, it is fair to say, even for a botanist. But brambles often tend to grow, along with stinging nettles,

in places where people do bad things to other people. And as a consequence, if, for example... Stinging nettles are places where people do bad things to other people. And as a consequence, if, for example... Stinging nettles are everywhere. I know, but particularly in places where people do bad things. You know, they won't often be in the middle of a field, but they'll be on the edge of a field where, for example, somebody would bury somebody, you know, if they want to hide a body. So brambles, bless them, you see them as these big, horrible, messy thickets.

I see them as very tidy organized plants actually produce a lovely rhythm of cycle of growth which actually once you get to understand it can give you a bit of a sort of reverse chronology it's about a bit like looking at um tree rings psychologically but backwards in time from the outside so i can actually give an estimate or potentially can of you know if the brambles are over somebody's remains, they may well have been in the ground, say, from, say, 2010 or something like that. So if you look at a field, let's say, or a piece of woodland, you can see it almost in 4D.

You can see slices through time, the growth of that. It's fair to say that I look at vegetation in quite a different way to most other people. In terms of the entertainment industry, fleas are best known for their work in flea circuses. Yeah, well, of course, the classic flea circuses. That's where a lot of fleas run away to join the circus, but end up getting involved in crime drama, it seems. No, they don't.

Don't they? No. A flea circus is not real? No, they don't run away and get involved in crime dramas. Oh, OK. They do, actually. They do. And they don't.

I mean, that's the great thing about you, Brian. Every opinion you have is always in a superposition. It's open to... There is a change in my opinion when evidence is presented to me. And the evidence that's been presented to me in this case is the next line in the script. Yeah, that'll explain it. Which says that as well as forensic botany, there is forensic entomology.

Dr Amarette Whittaker told Dave Gorman how fleas can help you solve a murder, and that's why I changed my mind, because I saw that. So they do sometimes get involved in crime drama. Not crime drama on television, but real crime. Fleas like warmth, basically. So as soon as an animal dies, they will jump off that animal and find another host. So fleas are not generally involved in forensics.

But in fact, the first ever case I did, did actually involve fleas, which is a very sort of simple case. And it'd be great if all cases were that simple, but it did actually involve fleas. Well, I'm not going to let you stop there. That's far too enigmatic. It involved fleas, but please move on. If you can talk about it, are you allowed to talk about it? Okay. Yeah. So very, very simply, the police called me up because they had a house where they believed a murder had taken place. The people that owned the house had thrown out a carpet because they said that they had a very heavy infestation of fleas. And they had three dogs, so it's not impossible. So the police

wanted to know, is this a good enough excuse for having thrown out a carpet that you've got such a heavy flea infestation so I said well it's it's possible however these days we don't have quite such a problem because we all have vacuum cleaners and the immature stages of fleas actually live in kind of carpets and soft furnishings and basically the nest of the host so I had this really bright idea I said well why don't you find out if they've got a vacuum cleaner in the house? And if they have, then send me the dust bag out of it. And so that's probably the worst job I've ever done, is going through somebody else's vacuum cleaner. I did find evidence of a few fleas, not a heavy infestation at all.

So the police then went back to them and said, OK, we've consulted a flea expert she says you're talking rubbish you don't have heavy infestation fleas and so the couple then confessed and they said actually it was our son who did kill somebody and that's why we threw the carpet out so wow i mean anytime i see anyone taking a carpet out I suspect there's a body in there

It always looks like it doesn't it But for actually to be one Back in series 27 we recorded one of our most contentious episodes yet As many people will know for years The beekeepers have had very much the ear of the opinion formers using the deliciousness of honey and the attractive wax candles to brainwash the guardian reading liberal elite into believing the superiority of the bee while wasps have been seen as stripy malevolent villains of the picnic season yes but the guardian readers are wrong, again, because behavioural ecologist Sari and Sumner joined us to argue

that wasps are better than bees. To an initially sceptical, it has to be admitted, perhaps even cynical audience. You know, there were a few kind of wasp fans, but it was very dominant that people just felt, it's definitely going to be bees, it's definitely going to be bees. Because we're in the centre of London, aren't we? So they're all into the centre camp. Oh, of course, they've all got their bees on the top of the... Bees, it's definitely going to be bees. It's definitely going to be bees. Because we're in the centre of London, aren't we? So they're all into their centre camp.

Oh, of course, because they've all got their bees on the top of the... Bees, what's that stuff? Bees, honey... Bees, bees... What's that stuff that leaks out of bees, said the scientist Brian Cox. You know, there's all that stuff. It leaks out of bees and then they stick it on toast, don't they? I come from...

We didn't have honey in Oldham. I didn't know. We didn't have honey in Oldham. We didn't have honey in Oldham in the 70s. I think what it was with Sarian was her description of the zombie wasp and its paralysing ways that, well, it didn't win everyone over, but it was pretty darkly fascinating. Everybody loves the zombie wasps.

It's the emerald jewel wasp. She's very beautiful. She's very glossy. She's kind of iridescent. She's also quite small. She is a stinging wasp, and she's solitary. She lives on her own. So she hunts cockroaches. Cockroaches tend to be quite big. She's got the problem that she's got to find the cockroach. That's the easy bit. The second

problem is she's got to paralyse the cockroach. Well, that's kind of all right. She can do that. The third problem is she's got to get the cockroach to the burrow that she's prepared, her nest. And the cockroach is very big. So her solution, well, evolution has provided her with a solution, is this. She has two very precise stings. So one is in the thorax, which is the main body of the cockroach, which stops it squirming around, such that it's still enough that she can then inject right into its brain

with a neurotoxin which renders the cockroach still able to walk but has no will and so then what she does is she grabs it by i'm not actually this isn't gonna this isn't gonna be very good for the wasp what do you mean it's so cute she grabs the um semi-paralyzed cockroach by its antenna and she walks it like a poodle to its underground tomb. And it buries itself basically in the tomb and then she lays her egg on it and seals it up. And then that cockroach is paralyzed but remains a beautifully fresh living larder

because it's still alive. And also the wasp has put all these sort of antibiotics, antibacterial stuff in with it as well. And then the egg hatches into the larvae. And you know the story. The larvae eats the cockroach from the inside. Well, carries on eating it. And it's a beautiful story.

Everybody loves the zombie. Yeah, yeah, go zombie wasp. Just to be fair. Sorry, there's an even better one though. There is this wasp. It Yeah, go zombie wasp. Sorry, there's an even better one, though. There is this wasp. It's a spider hunting wasp. It doesn't build a nest, so it's quite unusual for a hunting wasp, solitary hunting wasp. It lays its egg on this spider called homonotus, and the spider is oblivious, and it goes about its business with this wasp egg on its bottom and then the egg hatches into a larva and proceeds to eat the spider from the rear forwards, only eating the bits that are just not necessary,

so the bits of chitin and bits of fat and bits of muscle. And meanwhile, the spider is carrying on its daily business, oblivious to the fact that its derriere is being nibbled up by a wasp larva and it carries on eating until it's big enough to pupate and only at that point so the last things it eats are the vital organs and at that point when it's ready to pupate the spider finally keels over and dies and all that's left of it is are its mandibles finally to the fungi or fungi is it fungi or fungi either okay finally to the fungi fungi merlin sheldrake mushroom expert and author of the hugely successful entangled life told us how

certain fungi or fungi both hunt and become hangmen for the nematode worm nematode is it nematode word there are fungi that do hunt animals in a way that is more familiar kind of predation to us. And they hunt nematode worms. And there's lots of different ways to hunt nematode worms. This is an ability that has evolved independently in different parts of the fungal lineage. Some are able to eavesdrop on nematode life by being sensitive to chemicals that nematodes produce to do basic things like reproduce and communicate with each other. And some fungi produce nooses, which lure

nematodes towards them, and then the nematode goes into the noose, and then the noose inflates in a tenth of a second, immobilizing the nematode, giving the fungus time to grow through its mouth and digest it from the inside. There are other ones that produce stalks. You said that so casually. The most horrifying thing any of us have heard all day. It gets worse. There are ones that produce stalks, oyster mushrooms. Many people might enjoy eating oyster mushrooms. But if they are hungry, then they can produce stalks with a poisonous droplet at the top, which attracts, like a beacon, attracts nematodes to hit the toxic droplet. They getysed, again giving the fungus time to grow inside it, but you have

perhaps the weirdest ones I find are the ones that they produce mobile cells, little swimming cells they swim through the watery soil films and they're attracted to nematodes and when they get to a nematode they stick to it and they harpoon it with a specialised kind of cell called a gun cell

giving the rest of the fungus time to grow up and to catch up with this site of this kill and make merry. So there's lots of ways to do it. After most episodes, we hope that the show has given you some ideas, whether perhaps about the fabric of space-time or sometimes there's something it's like to be a bat. But for once, we hope this episode hasn't given you too many ideas. Well, maybe some ideas, but don't mention us in court is the main thing.

Yeah, but to make up for this week's show, next week we're talking about love. Do you believe in the existence of love? I can't remember if you were programmed to. Because I know the first version we had of you, we did try and programme love in it, but that was just an absolute mess it was chaos and so we removed love for from your circuitry for about series two to nine i can't remember if we put it back in or not yeah what is this thing now all the episodes we took clips from are available on bbc sounds and you can find all the details of those in the program description

for this show. Bye! Bye! In the infinite monkey cage! Turned out nice again. Hi, I'm Kiri Pritchard-McLean. I'm the host of Best Medicine from BBC Radio 4, a comedy show that celebrates medicine's inspiring past, present and future. Cytosponge is a capsule on a thread. I'm saying a pill on a string. Have you invented being a drugs mule? A load of top comedians, doctors,

scientists and inventors try to convince me what's the best medicine every episode by showcasing anything from micro-robotic surgery, Victorian clockwork surgical sores, world first life saving heart operations and more than a few ingenious cures for cancer. So you're sort of aiming to cure cancer by mixing like olive oil and washing up the blitz I feel like you must be due a Blue Peter badge by now

You'll laugh, you'll learn, it will restore your faith in humanity you might even live longer Best Medicine, listen and subscribe on BBC Sounds.