The Infinite Monkey Cage - Welcome to The Infinite Monkey's Guide To...

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Brian Cox and Robin Ince introduce a new series in which they look back at some of the best moments from more than 27 series of their hit science show.

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, Robin Ince here. Welcome to a brand new series from BBC Radio 4 where we take a look through the Infinite Monkey Cage back catalogue to bring you handy little guides to everything from space travel to, of course, dead strawberries. It's called The Infinite Monkey's Guide 2.

The Infinite Monkey Cage is a BBC podcast presented by physicist Brian Cox. That's you. And comedian Robin Ince. That's me. Delving each week into science's most compelling and often hilarious questions with a team of experts and guest celebrities. It's been going now for 27 series, over 27 series. So in celebration, we've pulled together some of the best moments from the shows to date.

Some of my favourite things, I'm so pleased we've got them, is when we went to Starmus out in Norway and we had that panel that was just all astronauts we had charlie duke the polo astronaut it walked on him it was a bit humbling actually that one wasn't it yeah it's like what do you do i floated outside the international space station for a very long time what do you do i walked on the moon then we had another space exploration one where you were absolutely wowed by patrick stewart's communicator badge we were talking to him about space exploration space is really big and there's not very much in it. And he said, yeah, yeah. He said most weeks we were filming Star Trek. We went and we

landed on planets. Nothing interesting happened, but we never broadcast those. And then, of course, there's Brian Blessed, one of my favourite ever guests. He's been on a few times now. And he scared the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield when he did his impersonation of Jesus on the cross. It was a pretty full-on impersonation. it was louder than a Soyuz yeah why have you forsaken me so we'd be hearing

from such an eclectic mix of guests including Brian Blessed, Jan Eleven, Steve Martin, Susie Maidman, Carolyn Porco as well who someone once described as being the greatest photographer ever that was one of the great moments for me because she worked on voyager yeah you know so you watch some of those programs about the first photographs of jupiter saturn the only photographs of neptune and venus from a space probe and she worked on those cameras she's a legend and that that's been one of the great things for me meeting some of my heroes yeah so. So the Infinite Monkeys Guide 2 is perfect to listen to if you're brand new to the Infinite Monkey Cage and want to learn more or if you're just a lifelong, I say just a lifelong fan, thank you very much if you are a lifelong fan and you want to reminisce.

Is it the Infinite Monkeys Guide 2? Is that grammatically correct? We're going to get letters, aren't we? The Infinite Monkey. Yeah. Because the Infinite Monkey Cage, that suggests to me a monkey with an infinite number of degrees of freedom. So if you're an infinite number of monkeys, we suggest you listen to The Infinite Monkey Cage. If you are a singular infinite monkey, then we suggest you listen to The Infinite Monkey's Guide 2.

Is that what I'm saying? We'll leave that to you, the listeners. I'll tell you what, we definitely will now. We've recorded 10 episodes. You can listen to The Infinite Monkeys Guide 2 weekly on BBC Sounds.