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PODCAST

CrowdScience

BBC World Service

We take your questions about life, Earth and the universe to researchers hunting for answers at the frontiers of knowledge.

science

All Episodes

29:52

Does Technology Change How we Fall in Love?

CrowdScience ·

2017/11/27

How does technology affect how we fall in love? Crowdscience travels to India to answer listener Erin’s questions about the impact of the internet on our search for soulmates. We meet the traditional matchmaker who says her service provides security in an era of digital fraud. And ask whether computer algorithms are the best way to help people make permanent romantic connections?Presenter: Chhavi Sachdev Producer: Marijke Peters(Photo: A couple kiss while taking a selfie. Credit: Getty Images)

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27:52

Why are There Morning People and Night People?

CrowdScience ·

2017/11/17

Some of us want to be up with the larks, while others are more like night owls. But is our preference down to our genes, or more to do with habits and surroundings? We set out to find the answers, inspired by a question from Kira, a night owl CrowdScience listener in Philadelphia, USA.Our daily, or circadian, body clocks are a hot topic of discussion at the moment - this year’s Nobel Prize for Medicine went to three scientists who discovered the gene that makes these clocks tick. To answer our

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33:10

How Can I Remember More?

CrowdScience ·

2017/11/10

Sometimes our memory fails us and we wish facts would just stick better. Listener Mothibi is a student and has spent three years trying to remember as much as possible for his exams. He wants to know how he can train his brain to better to remember things – and does the brain have a limit on how much stuff we can cram into it? To find the answers presenter Marnie Chesterton seeks help from memory magician, Simon, at the European Memory Championship. Using the loci technique she accomplishes a memory

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29:18

How Did Life Get onto Land?

CrowdScience ·

2017/11/03

People often talk about being descended from apes. But go back a bit further and we have a more unlikely ancestor – fish. Improbable as it may sound, the creature that gave rise to every bird, reptile and mammal on Earth today lived a fully aquatic life. So how did it switch to life on land? And how hard was it to swap swimming for walking and breathing fresh air? That’s what CrowdScience listener Pierre in France wants to know, and what Marnie Chesterton is in Scotland to find out. She goes fossil

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37:07

How Can We Fight Unwanted Noise?

CrowdScience ·

2017/10/31

Unpleasant man-made noise is something that disturbs many of us and even damages our health. But as millions more people move into crowded cities around the world, it's a cacophony that we almost unavoidably create ourselves. CrowdScience listener Diana from New York City in the USA got in touch to ask how we can temper the din and live a more peaceful life. Presenter Anand Jagatia heads to an acoustics lab at the University of Salford in Manchester, UK, to meet the researchers and engineers

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27:37

Is There Proof of Life After Death?

CrowdScience ·

2017/10/20

Is there any scientific proof of an afterlife? Six months ago, CrowdScience tackled a question from a listener who wanted to know whether there was life after death. But following more listener emails, presenter Marnie Chesterton returns to the subject to investigate the world of ghosts, souls and parapsychology. She meets Professor Susan Blackmore, who studies out-of-body experiences and has spent decades hunting for scientific proof of life after death. And she visits the woman who, despite dying

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27:27

Can We Worm Our Way Into Better Health?

CrowdScience ·

2017/10/13

We test the science behind parasitic therapy to answer listener Michael’s question about whether intestinal worms can help us stay healthy, and visit a deworming programme in a rural Ugandan village.Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.ukPresenter: Marnie Chesterton Producer: Marijke Peters(Picture: Tapeworm in human intestine, Credit: selvanegra/Getty Images)

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26:59

Is Carbon Dioxide Higher Than Ever?

CrowdScience ·

2017/10/06

Carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere today are higher than at any point in human existence. But going back further into Earth’s history, when do we find concentrations as high as they are now - and what was the planet like back then?CrowdScience sets out to answer our listener Thomas’s question, travelling back through time with the help of Antarctic ice cores, ancient plant fossils, and microscopic popcorn-shaped organisms called foraminifera, all of which hold clues to past climates.Enlisting

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27:24

Can We Make Artificial Organs?

CrowdScience ·

2017/09/29

Human Organs are in short supply. But what if you could grow new ones in the lab? And if you donate your body parts to help others, where might they end up? That's what Sarah Gray wanted to know after making the difficult decision to donate the body of her son, Thomas, to medical science after he died from an incurable disease shortly after being born. Sarah then contacted the scientists whose research has been made possible by Thomas’ donation and discovered just how he is contributing to

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31:59

Should We Kill One Species to Save Another?

CrowdScience ·

2017/09/22

Is it fair to kill invasive species which humans have introduced? When people move around the world, many of their favourite – and not so favourite - animals tag along for the ride. From cane toads through to rats, cats and crayfish, so-called ‘invasive species’ can destroy ecosystems and kill off native wildlife. CrowdScience listener Jude Kirkham wants to know if eradicating these invaders is justified.One country determined to do something about invasive species is New Zealand, where rats, stoats

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29:26

Could All Cars Be Electric?

CrowdScience ·

2017/09/15

Just one per cent of vehicles are powered by electricity, but CrowdScience listener Randall from Lac du Bonnet in Canada wants to know how quickly that might change, and whether one day all cars could be electric. Marnie Chesterton begins her journey in an electric car, stuck in traffic on a Los Angeles freeway. It was in California where the modern electric car revival began in the late 1990s with the EV1 – popular with Hollywood celebrities like Mel Gibson and Danny DeVito. More than two decades

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29:02

How Could Humanity Become Extinct?

CrowdScience ·

2017/09/08

Nuclear weapons and mega asteroids: what would the aftermath look like? CrowdScience explores past extinction events and future dystopias. In a past episode, CrowdScience headed to Denmark to find out whether humans could go the way of the dinosaurs – mass extinction triggered by a large asteroid impact 66 million years ago. Although no killer rocks are on route to Earth any time soon, we do not have to look far for other dystopias. “Do we have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world?”, listener

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27:11

Spider Silk and Super Fly Senses

CrowdScience ·

2017/09/01

CrowdScience is uncovering the super-powers of spiders, flies and the most irritating mosquitos. Anand Jagatia meets spider specialist Jamie Mitchells at London Zoo to find out how spiders create such vast webs and speaks to researchers in Sweden about how they are trying and succeeding in recreating spider’s silk. Rory Galloway heads to Cambridge University’s Fly Lab to find out how their tiny brains process the world up to four times faster than humans. And Bobbie Lakhera is at the London School

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27:54

Trees v Air Pollution - the Rematch

CrowdScience ·

2017/08/25

CrowdScience dives back into a debate about trees and their ability to tackle air pollution. Growing trees take in carbon dioxide and emit oxygen, but their leaves also attract tiny particles, which can get into our lungs and brains. So how good are they at cleaning our clogged up skies? Following on from our original programme, CrowdScience was contacted by a team of researchers in the UK who claim tress may be as much as 50 times better than previously thought at mopping up particles, and learn

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31:30

Sydney Science Festival, Australia

CrowdScience ·

2017/08/18

CrowdScience heads to the Sydney Science Festival in Australia where, from a special event at The Powerhouse Museum, we reveal answers to questions listeners have been sending in such as: What living thing has the most toxic venom? What is déjà vu? And why do our fingers wrinkle in the bath? To tackle our listeners’ questions about life, Earth and the universe, presenter Marnie Chesterton is joined by four special guests who will bring the good, weird and bemusing from the world of science to the

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35:15

Lightning Strikes Again

CrowdScience ·

2017/08/11

Is it possible to get power from lightning? This was the first CrowdScience question posed by listener John Emochu in Kampala, Uganda, in November 2016. We revisit John’s story as presenter Marnie Chesterton goes hunting for answers at a lightning lab in Cardiff, Wales, where she discovers just what lightning lab is, and how to make a tiny – but very loud – lightning bolt. And we tackle the best of the many questions that came into our inbox about thunderstorms after the original broadcast – from

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28:37

Can Animals Commit Murder?

CrowdScience ·

2017/08/04

** Contains some upsetting scenes **As a species, we humans can be uniquely horrible to our own kind. But are we the only animal to commit murder? Listener Michelle’s question sends CrowdScience trekking – and getting lost - in the Budongo rainforest in Uganda in search of one of Man’s closest relatives, the chimpanzee. We hear from the scientists, who only days before the team’s arrival at the camp, witnessed a gang of chimps brutally killing another adult. But does chimpanzee lethal aggression

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27:09

What Do Our Accents Say About Us?

CrowdScience ·

2017/07/28

How do we end up speaking the way we do? What's happening in our brains and mouths to make us sound so different from each other - even when we’re speaking the same language? This week on CrowdScience we return to our listener Amanda’s question of why there are so many accents, and discover more about what our accents say about us.We visit Glasgow in Scotland, home to one of the most distinctive dialects of English, to see how social status and age affect the way we speak; and investigate another of

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27:05

Could a Computer Judge My Crime?

CrowdScience ·

2017/07/21

People said they’d never catch on. Mobile phones, the internet and even robot assembly lines all once seemed like niche technologies. But today they are at the heart of the modern world.But just how far can technology go? Could machines start to compete with humans in making complex and life-changing decisions, like those made by lawyers and judges? That’s what CrowdScience listener Zackery Snaidman from Orlando in the US wants to know and presenter Marnie Chesterton has set out to find answers. She

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28:49

Why is it so Hard to Quit Smoking?

CrowdScience ·

2017/07/14

A billion people across the world smoke cigarettes, and many would agree it’s the hardest habit to quit. One such smoker, listener Sharif, emailed CrowdScience from Uzbekistan to ask if we could find out why giving up is so difficult. Marnie Chesterton travels to San Francisco to meet addiction experts and discovers how nicotine tricks smokers into thinking tobacco’s good for them. And we meet ex-smokers at a weekly therapy session aimed at retraining the brain.Do you have a question we can turn

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476 results

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