The Infinite Monkey Cage - The Infinite Monkey’s Guide to... Strawberries

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

Robin Ince and Brian Cox are still struggling to decide when a strawberry dies as they trawl through the archive to ponder where we should draw the line between life and death. Katy Brand kicks the debate off with her thoughts on whether strawberries have souls, which leads her to wonder whether it might be possible for people to be resurrected. While it’s theoretically possible to bring someone back to life, it’s not looking likely any time soon. Instead, Rufus Hound talks us through how he’d commit the perfect murder, right down to the use of a woodchipper to destroy any DNA evidence. Little does he realise that this fingerprint of life gets everywhere, including down comedian Susan Calman’s pants.Episodes featured: Series 7: Improbable Science Series 8: What is Death? Series 12: Forensic Science Series 26: How To Commit The Perfect MurderNew 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/3K3JzyFProducer: Marijke Peters Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem

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. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Brian Cox. And I'm Robin Ince and welcome to to An Infinite Monkey's Guide to Strawberries. We finally got there. Yes!

Finally to the strawberries. This is it. This is what I've been waiting for all these years. This is my last ever infinite monkey cage. There are five more episodes of this afterwards, by the way. Oh. So, we have tried to interrogate numerous scientific ideas over the last 14 years. Questions of temporality, quantum complexity and genetic manipulation. As we know, science doesn't necessarily answer questions

so much as create better questions. Well, it does both. Well, by answering the question, then we generate new questions. It's very rare we reach some kind of grand conclusion, though, as you've already said, perhaps today will be a grand conclusion because one question has perplexed Brian

more than any other. if some think of the apple as the fruit from the tree of knowledge then the strawberry is the fruit from the bush of ignorance yeah for once and for all in this episode we will answer the question and for just one time and one time only i give you permission to do an impression of me. The question is... When is a strawberry really dead though? Because I ate some jam and I had all ghosts in my tummy. Now this began a long, long time ago when we were talking about the Ig Nobel Prize. Now the Ig Nobel Prize is awarded for some of the more eccentric studies in science.

Winners have included in biology, work between British and Chinese scientists for scientifically documenting fellatio in fruit bats. In literature, the US government general accountability office, there is such a thing. awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for issuing a report about reports about reports that recommended the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports. And in physics someone in fact from Brian's own university Andre Geim he won the Ig Nobel Prize for using magnets to levitate a frog. And then subsequently won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of graphene. And we should say that he did turn up to both events. So he did turn up to receive his Ig Nobel and he did turn up to receive his Nobel. Well here is where we scaled the pinnacle of 21st century philosophy and biology when we invited the inventor of the Ig Nobel Awards, Mark Abrahams, onto the show with zoologist Matthew Cobb and comedian Katie Brand.

Improbable to me means it's not what you expect. And again, that to me doesn't mean it's good or it's bad. It's just you don't expect it. You probably don't know what to make of it. And the basic question of scientific research, why do people do it? What are they doing? If you throw away the fancy words, anybody who's doing research

is just trying to understand something nobody else has managed to understand. This could include how you interact with your kids or your spouse or anything, but that's all they're trying to do is understand something that nobody else has managed to. So, Matthew, going back to levitating frogs, that is, again, that's a piece of research that when you first see it, if you see the headline about that, you just think,

oh, there we go, there's some scientists just mucking about and we're giving them money. Can you tell us a little bit about that research? I think he just got a frog because it was alive. He wasn't actually about frogs. It's about the levitation. It's a quantum mechanical effect. There you go. So it's the quantum mechanical effect. There you go. So it's the quantum mechanical effect using living things.

Yeah. But they don't have to be living things. Yes. They also levitated drops of water and dead strawberries. Aren't that... No, I want to ask Matthew. I'm interested in this. Because what qualifies as strawberries being dead?

It's dying, I guess. As soon as you pick a strawberry, it's dying. But one of the reasons why what we like is like with meat, when it hangs and it's gradually decaying, it's going to taste nicer. Similarly, a fruit, as it decays, it's going to increase its sugar content and then eventually it's going to become disgusting. But it's dying. I should ask Katie, actually. You're a theologian, aren't you?

You did a theology degree, right? I did do a theology degree, yes. When does the soul of a strawberry leave? If I can put it in those terms. Well, there wasn't much call on the theology course I was on for investigating the soul of a strawberry. I know in your mind, Brian, that is what all theology is. It's the same thing.

It's trying to attribute souls to any old thing. But, no, I i mean i'm happy just to eat strawberries and not give them a second thought i don't uh it seems to me to be a much more religious thing to try and levitate a strawberry so why did you call it a dead strawberry is that important why did you call it a living frog because it was alive yeah i've not had a satisfactory definition of when a strawberry's alive It's when it stops growing, isn't it? It has no longer taken nutrients When it's not able to grow

or give any sign of doing things Matt, what is? It's changing colour so you pick them and you buy those things in the supermarket that are going to ripen in the bowl, which never do and they're always really hard. But those ripen in the bowl things, they're changing,

but that's, I guess, part of a decay. So no longer respiring. I mean, from your point of view, there is localised negative entropy is breaking down. And that's... Now that I understand. When we're on tour, gifts are sometimes left at the stage door.

For Brian, it's usually a magnum of champagne and perhaps a truffling pig. For me, it was a small wooden box with a knitted strawberry inside it. But this was no ordinary strawberry. This was a special box that contained Schrodinger's strawberry, which is a wonderful gift. So anyway, here are Katie Brand and Matthew Cobb discussing this new take on quantum theory. The gut reaction for many people would be, you know, the narcissistic way of human beings.

Why are they experimenting on flies? Why aren't they doing things about human beings? Yes. How do we cut them? They're not only doing it on flies, they're doing it in Paris, France. Paris, France. A lot of those flies and those people my friends because i used to work in paris france and i knew a lot of the fly people who work there

and i think the way you explain the fly people that's what they're called the fly people i'm no they're just flies no they're fly people you speak to them it's all right as long as they don't speak back to you. It's when they speak back to you, you've got to start worrying. I know, I get that from a lot of scientists. Putting out the dead strawberries to attract them. Yeah, exactly. That's how you capture a theologian.

A trail of dead strawberries. We've not defined whether they're alive or dead yet. I object to this. Look, I'll tell you what, we'll put the strawberry in a box and we won't observe it and it can be both. This might be... This might be my route to the Nobel Prize. But we're not going back to strawberries,

we're trying to deal with flies! I love the idea of having a Schrodinger's strawberry. The whole of Wimbledon changes. Robin, I bet you if you leave it in the box for quite a long time, the odds of it being alive or dead are going to change. No, according to the accident. Eventually, we found ourselves going from Schrodinger's strawberry to Frankenstein's

strawberry. It's alive! Now, of course, as we pondered the possible eternal existence of strawberries, Brian himself started to wonder if he should add maybe two tablespoons of strawberry preserve to his fountain of youth. I actually decided that I would spread the strawberry preserve onto my crumpet of youth. Oh, fair enough. Yeah, because I know that when you put it in your fountain of youth, it gunked up the filter, didn't it? You were really annoyed about that.

Yeah, it kind of exploded in my face. It built the pressure up in the fountain of youth and then just exploded jam everywhere. Anyway, we decided to explore death a little further and invited Katie Brown back to join Professor Nick Lane, who's an expert on the origin of life and also forensic scientist Dame Professor Sue Black. As we asked, what is death and can it be reversed? Semantics, isn't it? That because if death is defined as the end. Then you can't reverse it.

Can you? I would argue that if you could reverse it you wouldn't be dead would you well that's what we're trying to yeah yeah well is that the point yeah i think so should i shut up and let the clip play yeah let's see what they say about it we talked about the fact that when a strawberry died the seeds around etc that may well then grow to some of the strawberries so equally now we can talk about as we begin to look at the ability of replicating uh creatures through taking cell samples etc and cloning do we therefore go there is still the potential of life within a dead being yes thank you did you actually understand the question not

really effectively what you're saying is can you take a single living cell from a dead body and somehow create a new living person from that? In principle, yes, you could do that. In principle, if you're able to convert that back into some kind of an oocyte and kick-start it again, it will go off and it will form... We're basically talking about the beginning of Jurassic Park, right? Yeah.

Have I got the science broadly correct here? Pretty much. You could take a cell of a dinosaur from the blood of a mosquito preserved in amber and make a theme park where everyone dies? That's roughly science, isn't it?

In principle, you could probably do that. In practice, you almost certainly couldn't because you're not going to be able to get that DNA out properly and so on. So the practical difficulties are immense. To take a cell from a dead person, the practical difficulties are much less, I would think. You would know much more about that.

No, no difficulty at all. Providing the cell is alive. The obvious question, we've started to talk about single cells. It's a good place, I think, to start. They get complex organisms for a while. Single cells die. So the obvious question is, why is it not get complex organisms for a while. Single cells die. So the obvious question is, why is it not possible for at least a single-celled organism to be immortal? What's the

reason for it dying? Well, in a sense, it can be immortal, but it's statistically going to get eaten by something, or it's going to get hit by UV radiation and fall to pieces. You know, statistically, it's going to die, even if it's potentially immortal. And so you'd better get through your life cycle in that time. Statistically, if you've produced a copy of yourself before you died, then you're doing better than someone who just swims along merrily and then gets hit by lightning. That's really the whole basis of death in biology,

is get your sex in quick, really. Before you die. So, had we actually answered the question? Well, it's certainly the question that never dies. Here are Nick Lane, Katie Brand and Sue Black again. Before we end the programme, can I just ask, is a strawberry dead? Which strawberry?

Is a strawberry dead? One word. Nick. I think which strawberry was a good answer. Yes, partially. So we've accomplished nothing and I've had a wasted journey. Sue, is a strawberry dead? Only if you kill it. What would constitute killing it? Boiling it, freezing it, anything that doesn't allow the seeds to grow.

Suddenly I see jam makers as evil. The WI have been killing strawberries all these years. What about you, Katie? So have we got you any further to believing that the possibility of a strawberry's soul or indeed a strawberry's death? Does the strawberry have an afterlife or does it live in limbo forever or see nothing more? Or is it merely jam?

I guess to the answer to the question, is a strawberry dead, is it depends how you perceive death. Because I'll tell you, we've got an area in our garden where the previous owners had chickens. And at some point, they'd obviously fed their chickens some old strawberries and taken their chickens with them when we moved in. And a couple of months after we moved in, we had a lovely load of strawberry plants where the chickens

used to do their business. So I don't know, is that the immortality of the strawberry? Coming back and just sort of, you know, waving at me and saying, put me on a pavlova. It has its answer. What came first, the chicken or the egg? Neither, it was the strawberries. We were very lucky.

I thought you were going to say, and on cold November nights, I can hear clucking or something. That was a knock, knock, knock at the door. It was more of a peck, peck, peck. Chicken's beak. I love it when you turn into an Alan Bennett play.

Mother came round to get the strawberries and died. There's a strawberry and the sugar. It was then that I knew Trevor was the most sensitive of strawberries. Are you coming out, Brian? I don't know. From death, the discussion led us to the idea of murders. And is there such a thing as the perfect murder? Something Rufus Hound has clearly been plotting,

and forensic anthropologist Sue Black gave him a helping hand. So what you're saying is, imagine a world in which I had planned what I believe to be the perfect murder. Yes. And this is the moment where I reveal that on national radio. Yeah. Well, I mean, I suppose, I don't watch a great deal of that CSI stuff or Dexter, but I have watched some of it.

And so I always thought that the idea was basically that everything you do, you work backwards from and destroy. So you start with the body. That goes straight into a wood chipper. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Why is that a mistake? Oh, cos you make a wonderful mess. a wood chipper. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Why is that a mistake? Oh, because you make a wonderful mess.

You spread the body into as many pieces as possible. You've got DNA everywhere, you've got blood everywhere, you've got bone fragments everywhere. Don't go for the wood chipper. But what about his, in terms of what's left from him shoving the person into the wood chipper, in terms of the evidence of Rufus? Because he's probably bought the wood chipper in terms of the evidence of of rufus because he's probably bought the wood chipper under another name so you know that's what i'm saying i'm with you on this one

yeah this is so we are not gonna win oh we will we will don't give up okay well when he pushed the body into the wood chipper because it was on farmland he was wearing his boots he left his footprint in the footprint was the soil that he took from his own garden and carried all the pollen and all the necessary spores with him. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. This is the thing where you work backwards. So the body goes into the wood chipper. Next, everything I'm wearing, into the wood chipper.

You're going to get arrested for something entirely different. You shall. Not for the first time. Then you put on one of those decorators suits, right? Those sort of thin paper things and slippers, you know, cheap like Converse or whatever.

And climb into the wood chipper. That are, you know, cheaply bought and available everywhere and easily disposed of. And then you set fire to the wood chipper and everything that went through the wood chipper. Then you get in the car, you take off the things that you were wearing in the car with the hood and all of that,

you set fire to those in the car and the car. Then you swim through a river. Upstream to where you yourself were originally spawned and you spawn again. And we hope Rufus will join us when he finishes his prison sentence in 2048. Actually, he's back in the next series, so he got off. Now, murders took us on to the importance of DNA generally and how this fingerprint of life gets everywhere even in places you might not imagine. What places can you imagine Robin that

DNA might not get? Well there are places that I cannot imagine. I see. So I'm trying to imagine what I cannot imagine but it's really created quite a wall. In that case, the introduction is correct. You can't imagine it. As Susan Calman revealed to Sue Black. If you are in a bar, for argument's sake, and it's a loud bar, and you shout to be heard, so literally around you,

you're spraying everybody with your DNA. It's a lovely thought. And you're taking away Susan's DNA with you. You're welcome. Thank you. It's very pretty. You're very welcome. It's very well behaved DNA. And you take it away with you. You go home and you commit a crime. Susan's DNA can now be at that crime scene. She's never been at the crime scene, but her DNA is there. So the interpretation of the DNA is what's important.

And we understand very little about transfer, so how it gets from one person to another, and sometimes even beyond a two-person contact, facts to a third or a fourth-person contact, and then how long does it persist? We don't actually know. I'm quite notorious for terrifying crew members on the shows shows i do because the one thing that always stuck with me when i did forensics briefly was low cards theorem and i love it i love it i love it i love it i love

it every contact leaves a trace i love it i think emotionally it's true as well i take it emotionally every contact you make with a human being leaves a trace, but physically, it's always stuck with me. And I always say to sound guys and sound people, because they're sometimes in my bra. And if someone's making me up and I go, do you know if something happens to me, your DNA's in my underwear. is making me up and I go, do you know if something happens to me, your DNA is in my

underwear. I say, no, it's fine, it's just a forensic principle of every contact leaves a trace. And they go, uh-huh. Because they literally, and if I was found, if something happened to me and I was found and I work with a lovely guy called Jamie,

salt of the earth, but if you swabbed, I did a dance at the end of the Christmas cruising special and he had to put the microphone inside my underwear. Right? Yes. Well, he didn't need twos. He had to, for the line of the dress. What exactly were you recording then? So it wasn't voice. So I had... So the mic didn't show in a low-cut dress

and so he had to basically gaffer tape this mic into my pants. Now, at that point, if something happens to me, literally his DNA is saliva's on my back. He was just breathing. But... Heavily. saliva's on my back. He was just breathing, but heavily. Brian, you've had, well, not eternal lifers yet, but so far you've existed for approximately 13.6 billion years in some form or other. I love the inaccuracy of your question. Well, you've not had eternal life yet. So far, you've lived for as long as the universe in some form. That's true.

We know that, but we don't know if it's eternal yet. I mean, something terrible might happen. You're right, actually. In a deterministic universe information is conserved. I mean, that's the foundation of the black hole information paradox. So, I suppose in a sense... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not this again. Not this again. No, no, no. Anyway, after all this

why do you even want immortality? So you can learn more physics, that's why you want to be immortal. Well, we asked the audience and they were emphatic about the pitfalls of eternal life. Because time may have eroded all of the mountains and there'll be none left for Brian Cox to stand wistfully atop. Gazing heaven. Thank you. Gazing heaven.

I am too scared that bacon won't exist in the future. Oh, the dystopian, soylent green visions. Why wouldn't you want to live forever? At some point, Doctor Who will be cancelled, and then what's the point? I like this. Well, I think my chemicals could be put to better use than me. Now, we still don't have a definitive answer on when a strawberry is actually dead.

So I'm sure we'll return to that as we continue to hear from both sides of the debate in future series. Next week, we are going to some places that brian loves going to because we are going to be throwing matt lucas into a black hole and eric idle is going to sing a song about the higgs boson in the infinite monkey's guide to building a universe boson oh what did i say the higgs boson is someone who sort of does a dance on a ship in the 17th century oh i thought the whole theory was about the idea that it was a subatomic particle that did a kind of shanty motion.

No, it's Boson. Boson. After Bose, the famous Indian theoretical physicist. Boson, Higgs Boson, Hermione Boson. Yeah, yeah, got it. Remember, the Infinite Monkey Cage episodes we took all of these clips from are available on BBC Sounds and the Infinite Monkey Cage back catalogue. Goodbye.

Bye. Turned out nice again. Oh, by the way, before you go, just point you in the direction of another podcast that you might enjoy. Hello, it's Chris Van Tulleken here. My brother Zand. That's me. I'm here too. And I are back.

Now, in series two of our Radio 4 podcast, A Thorough Examination, we are on a mission to find out whether or not people can change. It's called Can I Change? We're thinking about all the things we want to change about ourselves and each other. Wait, what? I want to be more confident. I'd like to be less of a people pleaser.

I'd like to be more of an extrovert, but then sometimes I also think I should shut up. A quiet, confident man. Yeah, I'd like a quiet confidence. I think everyone has something they'd like to change about themselves. Change is important to me because I think it's going to improve the key relationships in my life. And one of those is you, Zand. You can change whatever you like.

Just don't make me do it again. Well, nonetheless, Zand, we are going to speak to some experts who are going to guide us through the idea of change. The last time you made me do this it changed my life for the better. Yeah. But I still don't want to do it. And if you at home think there's something stuck in your life that needs changing this might be helpful for you too. Search for A Thorough Examination with Drs Chris and Zond on BBC Sounds.