PODCAST

Curious Cases

BBC Radio 4

Hannah Fry and Dara Ó Briain tackle listeners" conundrums with the power of science!

science

All Episodes

29:51

13. The Fastest Fly

Curious Cases ·

2025/01/04

The buzz of a fly hovering just above your head has got to be one of the most irritating sounds around, but this week we try to work out just how fast they could be flying. Could a claim horseflies reach speeds of up to 90 mph possibly be true, and Dara wants to know if this is what makes them so difficult to swat?Entomologist Erica McAlister is better known as the ‘fly lady’ and speaks up in defence of these tiny creatures, explaining there are 7,000 known species in the UK alone. Which makes it

30:21

12. Bored to Death

Curious Cases ·

2024/12/28

Anyone who has ever done a long car journey with kids will be familiar with the idea of being bored to death – but can this feeling really be fatal? Hannah and Dara hear about a club where members count roundabouts and collect milk bottle tops, but boredom expert Wijnand van Tilburg explains these dull-sounding hobbies might actually have mental health benefits. He explains that science and comedy are stereotypically both seen as exciting subjects but warns them their chat about Venn diagrams might

28:21

11. Freeze Me When I Die

Curious Cases ·

2024/12/21

When you die, would you want to be frozen so that one day you might be brought back to life? Listener Elspeth wants to know if that’s even possible. So Hannah and Dara embark on a quest to explore the chiling science of ‘cryobiology’: preserving living things at really low temperatures.It turns out there are already thousands of people alive who were once suspended in antifreeze and stored in liquid nitrogen - when they were just a small clump of cells! There’s even a frog which can turn into a

28:39

10. Night Walkers

Curious Cases ·

2024/12/14

Wake up! It’s time for a dreamy new episode of Curious Cases all about the science of sleepwalking. Listener Abigail has done some strange things in her sleep, from taking all the pictures off the wall, to searching for Turkish language courses. And she wants to know: WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?It turns out Abigail is not alone. Hannah and Dara hear weird and wonderful stories of extreme sleepwalkers - from the lady who went on midnight motorbike excursions, to the artist who does all his best work while

29:56

9. A lemon-powered spaceship

Curious Cases ·

2024/12/07

Fruit-powered batteries are the ultimate school science experiment, but they’re normally used to power a pocket calculator. This week’s listener wants to know if they could do more, and sends the team on a quest to discover whether they could used to send a rocket into space?Professor Saiful Islam is the Guinness World Record holder for the highest voltage from a fruit-based battery, but disappoints the team when he reveals they produce very little power. He used 3,000 of them and only managed a

29:56

8. Be More Athlete

Curious Cases ·

2024/11/30

Are you more of a rhino or a kitten? More like a tortoise or a hare? Listener Ivy wants to know what makes a good athlete and so Hannah and Dara tackle the science of sport. Our curious duo get to grips with the rigours of training tailored for endurance events vs those based on more explosive bursts of activity. They consider the contribution of genetics, fast vs slow twitch muscle fibres, the unique advantage of Michael Phelps's body proportions and whether butterfly really is the most ridiculous

28:47

7. Invincible Moss Piglets

Curious Cases ·

2024/11/23

Listener Vivienne has heard that tardigrades - aka moss piglets - have special powers of survival. Radiation? Drought? Extreme cold? NO PROBLEM. Does that mean they could survive an apocalypse? And could they even help us master space travel!?Hannah and Dara learn how to find these little moss piggies in roof gutters and garden corners. And they're amazed by their capacity to dry out and hunker down for decades before springing back to life. But calamity strikes when it turns out that fine glass

28:35

6. The Shock Factor

Curious Cases ·

2024/11/16

If there’s one type of discharge you really want to avoid, it’s lightning, but what happens when it hits you?We hear from lightning survivor Kerry Evans, and discover that the best place to shelter – if you ever find yourself in a similarly charged storm – is in a car, or low to the ground. And why this is never a good time to take a selfie.Dr Dan Mitchard from Cardiff University’s excitingly-named Lightning Lab explains why there's no lightning at the poles, and the presenters lament that polar

29:55

5. The Taste of Words

Curious Cases ·

2024/11/09

11 year old Esther visualises days of the week in a kind of 3D structure. It’s something called ‘synaesthesia’ and she wants to know why it happens - and why other people don’t experience things the way she does. Hannah Fry and Dara Ó Briain explore the vibrant and varied ways different people experience the world, from the man who tastes individual words - including all the stops of the tube - to the composer who sees music in shapes and colours. And along the way, they figure out why Mozart is

30:44

4. In the Groove

Curious Cases ·

2024/11/02

It’s sometimes said that timing is everything and this week the pair investigate the mystery of rhythm, discovering why some of us might be better at staying in tempo.From the daily cycle of dawn and dusk to sea tides and circadian clocks, rhythm governs many aspects of our lives, and cognitive psychologist Dr Maria Witek says it makes sense we also place great importance on its presence in music. She specialises in ‘groove’, or the feeling of pleasure associated with moving to a beat – and it’s not

30:28

3. Mirror, Mirror

Curious Cases ·

2024/10/26

9 year old listener Koby sends Hannah and Dara on a mission to find the shiniest thing in the world. And so they enter a world of mirrors… The journey takes them into the subatomic goings on of shiny metal surfaces, where electrons waggle and dance and send light waves back at *just* the right angle. Our curious duo play with an astonishingly reflective plastic film that can be found hidden in devices we all use. And they probe the mysterious power of refraction, harnessed to make the $2 million

28:48

2. The 5 Second Rule

Curious Cases ·

2024/10/19

Would you eat food that fell on the floor? That’s the question Hannah and Dara are getting their teeth into this week as they put the so-called ‘5 second rule’ through its paces. For some people it’s 3 seconds, and for others its 10 – especially if it involves a dropped ice cream and a screaming child. But microbiologist Don Schaffner says there’s no safe amount of time to leave food on the floor if you’re planning to eat it. And while you might think buttered toast would pick up the biggest number

28:25

1. Space Bubbles

Curious Cases ·

2024/10/12

While chatting at the back of class, best mates Abi and Sofia got curious about bubbles. How do you make really giant ones? Could you even get one around the entire planet?Hannah and Dara set out to investigate. They hear from a renowned 'bubbleologist', and learn how NASA helped him blow his way to a world record. They coax a physicist to reveal the secrets of his peer-reviewed bubble-juice formula, and investigate how bubbles work in space and in the ocean. Our curious duo also discover an

2:18

Introducing a brand new series of Curious Cases!

Curious Cases ·

2024/10/04

Curious Cases is returning! Superstar mathematician and broadcaster Hannah Fry teams up with legendary comedian and fellow science nerd Dara Ó Briain for an all-new series of the show which takes your quirkiest questions and solves them with the power of SCIENCE.In this short preview ep, our dynamic duo tease some of the upcoming episodes in which they enlist the world’s top experts to tackle the most profound and puzzling questions to have ever trickled through your curious minds: Could you power a

14:26

Introducing… Uncharted with Hannah Fry

Curious Cases ·

2023/10/02

Behind every line on a graph, there lies an extraordinary human story. Mathematician Hannah Fry is here to tell us ten of them.

41:48

The Impossible Number

Curious Cases ·

2023/02/14

There is a bizarre number in maths referred to simply as ‘i’. It appears to break the rules of arithmetic - but turns out to be utterly essential for applications across engineering and physics. We’re talking about the square root of -1. WHICH MAKES NO SENSE.Professor Fry waxes lyrical about the beauty and power of this so-called ‘imaginary’ number to a sceptical Dr Rutherford. Dr Michael Brooks tells the surprising story of the duelling Italian mathematicians who gave birth to this strange idea,

43:44

The Mind Numbing Medicine

Curious Cases ·

2023/02/07

This episode will render you oblivious, conked out and blissfully unaware. It’s about anaesthetics: those potent potions that send you into a deep, deathly sleep. Listener Alicia wants to know how they work, so our sleuths call on the expertise of consultant anaesthetist Dr Fiona Donald. Fiona shares her experience from the clinical frontline, and explains what we do and don’t know about how these chemicals work their mind-numbing magic.We hear about ground-breaking research led by Professor

38:30

The Resurrection Quest

Curious Cases ·

2023/01/31

‘Can we bring back extinct species?’ wonders listener Mikko Campbell. Well, Professor Fry is pretty excited by the prospect of woolly mammoths roaming the Siberian tundra once more. And everyone is impressed with the science that might make it happen. But Dr Rutherford comes out STRONGLY against the whole thing. Can our expert guests win him over? Dr Helen Pilcher shares the tale of Celia the lonely mountain goat, and makes the case for cloning to help protect species at risk of extinction

36:09

The Puzzle of the Pyramids

Curious Cases ·

2023/01/24

The Great Pyramids of Giza are awesome feats of engineering and precision. So who built them - and how? Was it a mysteriously super-advanced civilization now oddly extinct? Was it even aliens? Nah, course not! Rutherford and Fry investigate how these inspiring monuments were really constructed, and learn about the complex civilisation and efficient bureaucracy that made them possible. Professor Sarah Parcak busts the myth that they were built by slaves. In fact, she reveals, it was gangs of

43:37

The Magnetic Mystery

Curious Cases ·

2023/01/17

Magnets are inside loads of everyday electronic kit - speakers, motors, phones and more - but listener Lucas is mystified: what, he wonders, is a magnetic field? Our sleuths set out to investigate the mysterious power of magnets, with the help of wizard / physicist Dr Felix Flicker - author of the The Magick of Matter - and materials scientist Dr Anna Ploszajski.They cover the secrets of lodestones - naturally occurring magnetic rocks - and how to levitate crystals, frogs and maybe even

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