Crowdscience

CrowdScience listener Michael wants to know whether the brain responds differently if we listen to books instead of reading them. Do we retain information in the same way? And is there a difference between fiction and non-fiction? Anand Jagatia finds out whether curling up with a good book is better than putting on his headphones. She is speaks to Prof Fatma Deniz from the Technical University of Berlin; Prof Naomi Baron from American University, Washington DC; Prof Patrick Nunn from the University of Sunshine Coast, Queensland and The Guesthouse Storytellers.Presenter: Anand Jagatia Producer: Jo Glanville Editor: Richard Collings Production co-ordinator: Jonathan Harrison Sound engineer: Andrew Garratt(Photo: Senior man wearing headphones listening to an audiobook. Credit: pixdeluxe/Getty Images)

Lying is something all humans do. We find it in every culture around the world. It’s in the world of work, in our relationships and online. It’s all pervasive and hard to escape. Our question this week is from listener Anthony from Cambodia. He asked us to find out why we lie, and wants to know how conscious we are of the lies that we tell? CrowdScience’s Caroline Steel is in the hot seat, on a journey where she will attempt to untangle the complex story behind lying. It’s a subject scientists and psychologists have been studying for a long time. It’s also something writers, philosophers and theologists have been interpreting for thousands of years. But we’re only now really starting to get to grips with how it works as a human behaviour. There are lies in our folklore, lies in the media and also lies in everyday conversation. It’s something we’ve all had to learn to navigate at some point in our lives. In this episode the CrowdScience team unravels the mysteries surrounding the behaviour and the

Our planet is quickly approaching 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Scientists say we might cross this milestone in just six years. Listener Julian wants to know what life will look like on the other side of that threshold. With the help of climate scientists, the BBC’s Anand Jagatia dives into the worlds of virtual climate models. From heatwaves to higher humidity indices to extreme precipitation and drought, he gets a picture of what's to come. We also venture to places that are warming both faster and more slowly than the global average. In a remote village in Alaska residents are already dealing with life-changing permafrost thaw and ground that's melting beneath their feet. Permafrost expert Sue Natali tells us what this unexpected thawing ground means for the planet as it releases carbon and methane we weren't necessarily counting on. In Indian cities, temperatures were already high, but they're not rising as quickly as climate scientists had initially predicted. We hear

“You are what you eat” is a well-known saying. But is it really true? That’s what we explore in this week’s CrowdScience thanks to a question from listener Claire from Australia. We each have trillions of tiny microbes and bacteria inside our bodies, living in our mouths, skin, ears and even in our eyes. Each community of microbes and bacteria is known as a microbiome. The most populous of these is in our gut, with hundreds of trillions of organisms and bacteria helping digest the food we eat. Our gut microbiome is affected by lots of things but mainly by our diet. With our gut microbiome forming such a massive part of our insides, people have long suspected that what we eat impacts how we feel. Presenter Caroline Steel investigates. She speaks to a professor of Psychiatry, Jane Foster, to find out how interconnected our microbiome and our brain really are. Professor Foster also explains the different ways in which our microbiome and brain communicate. Do we really know what role diet plays in ment

Why are some animals cute, cuddly, adorable – and some are slimy, creepy and downright weird? This edition of Crowdscience, recorded in front of a live audience, comes to you directly from the world-famous Green Man Festival in Bannau Brycheiniog National Park in Cymru (Wales). The programme recording was powered entirely by hydrogen. Our inbox has been bursting at the seams with questions about creepy crawlies, deep sea beasties, cheeky monkeys, endangered species and animals of all shapes and sizes. So, we rounded up a panel of experts to get some answers! Surrounded by 25,000 people trudging merrily through the mud, pelted with torrential rain, underscored by the warm hum of revelry, the BBC’s Marnie Chesterton speaks with Dr David Jones from the Natural History Museum, an expert on creepy crawlies and someone who spends a considerable amount of time thinking about earthworms, ants, and termites. Also joining us is Jess Savage, a researcher from the Institute of Zoology in London who’s an expert on oc

Salmon farming is a massive global industry. Just off the coasts of countries like Norway or Chile, hundreds of millions of these fish swim around inside big ocean nets. They provide crucial proteins and fatty acids to many people’s diets, but are they more or less healthy than their wild cousins? That’s what CrowdScience listener Jodie wants to know. For presenter Marnie Chesterton, answering this question means visiting a Scottish salmon farm and collecting dispatches from the ocean around Alaska; it means a closer look at what the salmon themselves are eating; and it means moving beyond nutrition to explore the health of the environment as well. What problems do salmon farms solve, what problems do they cause, and could moving onto land be the future for this field? (Photo: Atlantic Salmon jumping out of the water. Credit: Kevin Wells)

CrowdScience listener Kristine from Wisconsin in the USA wants to know why herbs and spices taste so good to so many of us. She’s intrigued to know if there's evidence that herbs and spices can keep us healthy. Anand Jagatia visits the historic naval city of Portsmouth in the UK, where exotic spices from around the world were first brought in from the East Asia more than 600 years ago. He’s on a journey to find out why many of us think spices are delicious. But are there also nutritional benefits to seasoning our food with them? Anand asks what science or studies are there to show that eating herbs and spices can be beneficial for our health? Presenter: Anand Jagatia Producer: Joanna Hall Assistant Producer: Jonathan Harris Editor: Richard Collings Studio Technicians: Bob Nettles & Steve Greenwood Contributors: Prof. Lindell Bromham, evolutionary biologist, Australian National University Dr. Kanchan Koya, Molecular Biologist and founder of the Spice Spice Baby website Dr. Beronda L. Montgom

Humans have an outsized impact on the planet: we’ve wreaked havoc on countless ecosystems and one study estimates only 3% of land on Earth remains untouched by our influence. CrowdScience listener Teri has witnessed the harmful effects of development on natural habitats near her home, and wonders whether we can ever function as part of a healthy ecosystem. We look for answers in Teri’s home state, California. Humans have lived here for over 10,000 years and its first inhabitants formed a connection to their landscape unlike the exploitative approach of many later settlers. Today, the beliefs and traditions of the Karuk Tribe of northern California still emphasise a symbiotic relationship with nature, seeing plants and animals as their relations. Over the past couple of centuries much of the Karuk’s land has been degraded by mining, the timber industry and the outlawing of traditional burning practices. Tribal members show us how they’re working to try to restore ecological balance. As for the rest of hum

It's pretty obvious to each of us that we are conscious, as we go about our days and feel the experience of just ‘being ourselves'. But how do we know that someone else is conscious? It’s something we lose during dreamless sleep, under anaesthesia or in a coma. But what exactly is consciousness? On the one hand, it’s pretty obvious - it’s what we all feel as we go about our daily lives. It's the experience of 'being you'. On the other hand, it gets pretty tricky when we try to pin down the science of it all. How do we know that someone (or something) else is conscious? CrowdScience listener Sylvester was wondering about this and he got in touch with a few questions on the subject. What is the relationship between our consciousness and reality? Is it all just a hallucination? When does it start and stop? Does consciousness reside in a particular part of the brain? Host Marnie Chesterton sets out to tackle this elusive but utterly fundamental quality of life and sees how researchers are attempting to co

Philosophers have long pondered the concept of a brain in a jar, hooked up to a simulated world. Though this has largely remained a thought experiment, CrowdScience listener JP wants to know if it might become reality in the not-too-distant future, with advances in stem cell research. In the two decades since stem cell research began, scientists have learned how to use these cells to create the myriad of cell types in our bodies, including those in our brains, offering researchers ways to study neurological injuries and neurodegenerative disorders. Some labs have actually started 3D printing stem cells into sections of brain tissue in order to study specific interactions in the brain. Human brain organoids offer another way to study brain development and diseases from autism to the Zika virus. So, might stem cell research one day lead to a fully-grown human brain, or is that resolutely in the realm of science fiction? If something resembling our brains is on the horizon, is there any chance that it could ac

Everyone has fears – but what makes a fear become a phobia? Why are some people scared of spiders (arachnophobia), buttons (koumpounophobia), or the colour yellow (xanthophobia)? Or why are others are scared of situations, like small spaces (claustrophobia), empty rooms (kenophobia) or heights (acrophobia)? This is a question which has been bothering Crowdscience listener Scott, who has a phobia of bridges. He gets anxious and panicky when driving over bridges and is scared he’ll lose control of the car. It’s also a question that struck a chord with presenter Caroline Steel. She is claustrophobic, particularly in lifts, steering clear of them at all costs and even once climbing nine flights of stairs in crutches to avoid using the lift. But where do these phobias come from and why do some people have them and not others? To investigate, Caroline speaks to experts to discover where phobias come from, why we have them and how they develop. And she visits a psychologist to learn about different types of tre

CrowdScience listener Leo gets stressed when his young children start screaming at the same time in the middle of the night. He wants to know why we haven’t evolved to deal with the stress more effectively. The challenges of bringing up a family are nothing new and we don’t face the same dangers as our ancestors, so why do we still react as if it’s a life-threatening emergency? Caroline Steel finds out what stress is for, what it does to us and whether we have in fact evolved to manage it. Contributors: Tashfia Ahmed, biomedical engineer, post-doctoral researcher, City University, London Anne-Kathrin Gellner, neurologist and psychiatrist, Bonn University James Rilling, anthropologist and neuroscientist, Department of Psychology and Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, Emory University Gunter Wagner, evolutionary biologist, Vienna University Presenter: Caroline Steel Producer: Jo Glanville Editor: Richard Collings Production Co-ordinator: Jonathan Harris Studio Manager: Jackie Marge

Many of us are worried about the environment, but the aim of living in a truly sustainable way is hard to pin down. Do we all need to stop buying things? Is it down to governments to make the changes for us? Is there somewhere in the world painting a picture of the end goal? It’s a question that has bothered CrowdScience listener Cate for 20 years! She’s worried we’re not doing enough for the environment and just wants a clear scenario of what it might look like to live sustainably, in a way that could work for all eight billion of us on the planet. It’s a big question, so this week presenter Caroline Steel has teamed up with her friend and colleague Graihagh Jackson from The Climate Question podcast to answer it. They head to the remote Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, which is aiming to go carbon neutral by 2025 and zero waste by 2032. How are they going about it and could this be replicated elsewhere? We visit a ground-breaking project turning nappies into compost, meet a glassblower mak

For hundreds of millions of years insects controlled the skies. Before birds, bats and pterodactyls, insects were the only creatures that had evolved the ability to fly: a miracle of physics and physiology requiring their bodies to act in coordinated ballet. This week three separate CrowdScience listeners have been asking questions about the flight of butterflies and moths. How do they move so erratically, yet land so precisely? What makes such tiny insects such accurate flyers? Presenter Anand Jagatia -- not the biggest fan of either butterflies or moths -- visits Butterfly Paradise at London Zoo to meet keeper Mark Tansley. Anand tries to get over his aversion by immersing himself in fluttering creatures. He then meets insect flight expert Sanjay Sane to learn the hidden mechanics behind their aeronautical skills: the vortexes of air generated by their wings and the complex muscle architecture inside their torsos. Next, aerospace engineer Amy Lang explains how the scales on their wings reduce air re

How do you think about the internet? What does the word conjuror up? Maybe a cloud? Or the flashing router in the corner of your front room? Or this magic power that connects over 5 billion people on all the continents of this planet? Most of us don’t think of it at all, beyond whether we can connect our phones to it. CrowdScience listener Simon has been thinking and wants to know how much it weighs. Which means trying to work out what counts as the internet. If it is purely the electrons that form those tikitok videos and cat memes, then you might be surprised to hear that you could lift of the internet with 1 finger. But presenters Caroline Steel and Marnie Chesterton argue that there might be more, which sends them on a journey. They meet Andrew Blum, the author of the book Tubes – Behind the Scenes at the Internet, about his journey to trace the physical internet. And enlist vital help from cable-loving analyst Lane Burdette at Telegeography, who maps the internet. To find those cables under the

Dogs have been our best animal buddy for thousands of years. They’ve helped us out in countless ways from hunting alongside us to guiding us as service dogs. Talk to any pet owner and they’ll tell you how much joy their dog brings them. But you’ll also probably hear about vets bills, muddy footprints, or chewed up slippers. There are plenty of claims about the ways in which dogs might benefit our physical and mental health -- but how strong is the evidence? This week on CrowdScience, listeners Jason and Finn in Guernsey want to know if there’s any real evidence that our furry friends can benefit our health and wellbeing. Join Anand Jagatia as he enlists the help of his own pup, Stella, to explore the evidence. He uncovers the profound effects that service dogs can have on the mental health of military veterans in the US. Anand ponders the strangely unique relationship between humans and dogs and we learn about the surprising ways that about growing up with a pet dog can impact your health. Presenter: Anan

Imagine spending six months of every year living in total shade. That’s what life is like for residents of the Norwegian town of Rjukan, set so low in a valley that they see no direct sunshine at all from October to March. Marnie Chesterton heads there to hear about an ingenious solution: giant mirrors that beam rays down into the town square, where locals gather to feel the reflected heat. The man behind the project was motivated by a need for winter sun – but how much difference does it really make to our health and happiness? That’s the question posed by this week’s CrowdScience listener Michael, who has noticed living in the rainy Australian city of Melbourne is taking its toll. Many pensioners claim sunshine relieves achiness as well as conditions like arthritis but one of the biggest scientific studies found temperature has no real impact on reported pain levels, while factors like air pressure and humidity may play a role. When it comes to our mood, it seems that spending time outside is mo

Imagine spending six months of every year living in total shade. That’s what life is like for residents of the Norwegian town of Rjukan, set so low in a valley that they see no direct sunshine at all from October to March. Marnie Chesterton heads there to hear about an ingenious solution: giant mirrors that beam rays down into the town square, where locals gather to feel the reflected heat. The man behind the project was motivated by a need for winter sun – but how much difference does it really make to our health and happiness? That’s the question posed by this week’s CrowdScience listener Michael, who has noticed living in the rainy Australian city of Melbourne is taking its toll. Many pensioners claim sunshine relieves achiness as well as conditions like arthritis but one of the biggest scientific studies found temperature actually has no impact on reported pain levels, while factors like air pressure and humidity may play a role. When it comes to our mood, it seems that spending time outside is more impor

CrowdScience investigates the link between music and emotion to try and understand why certain songs can have such a profound impact on our mood. From breakup songs to upbeat holiday hits, many of us have made playlists that reflect how we feel, whether that’s down in the dumps or high as a kite. This week CrowdScience investigates the link between music and emotion to try and understand why certain songs can have such a profound impact on our mood. Presenter Anand Jagatia is surprised to learn that newborn babies are more likely to fall asleep when listening to fast tempo happy tunes than soothing sad lullabies, which may be because they’re attuned to multiple auditory stimuli after months in the womb. But later in life we actually seek out sad songs to make us feel better. The so-called ‘sadness paradox’ has been studied for many centuries. But what is it about melancholy music that might be good for us? Some scientists believe more empathetic people enjoy listening to these types of tune because

“I’m bored!” We can all relate to the uncomfortable - and at times unbearable - feeling of boredom. But what is it? Why does it happen? And could this frustrating, thumb-twiddling experience actually serve some evolutionary purpose? CrowdScience listener Brian started wondering this over a particularly uninspiring bowl of washing up and it’s ended with presenter Marnie Chesterton going on a blessedly un-boring tour through the science and psychology of tedium. She finds out why some people are more affected than others, why boredom is the key to discovery and innovation and how we can all start improving our lives by embracing those mind-numbing moments. Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producer: Samara Linton Production Co-ordinator: Jonathan Harris Editor: Richard Collings Contributors: Professor James Danckert, University of Waterloo, Canada Dr Elizabeth Weybright, Washington State University Dr Christian Chan, Hong Kong University Annie Runkel, University of Dundee