Instant Genius - Christmas Lectures 2020: How can we look after our planet?

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

Started by Michael Faraday in 1825, and now broadcast on national television, the Christmas lectures bring a science topic to our screens over three nights every year. The series of lectures has always been held within the Royal Institution in London, but this year, of course, is going to be slightly different. In this week's episode, editorial assistant Amy Barrett is joined today by three expert scientists, Tara Shine, Chris Jackson and Helen Czerski, who are going to be presenting the 2020 Christmas lectures, titled Planet Earth: A User's Guide. In lecture one, geologist Chris Jackson will reveal our Earth's climate story through the rocks and the fossil record. In lecture two, physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski will talk about the part our oceans play in the climate crisis. And in lecture three, environmental scientist Tara Shine will talk about carbon emissions and what we're really breathing in. Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts. Subscribe to the Science Focus Podcast on these services: Acast, iTunes, Stitcher, RSS, Overcast Read the full transcription [this will open in a new window] Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast: Hannah Fry: How much of our lives is secretly underpinned by maths? Royal Institution Christmas Lectures past and present Sir David Attenborough: How can we save our planet? Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac: Has climate change determined our future? Everything you ever wanted to know about... the deep sea with Dr Jon Copley Mark Miodownik: Are biodegradable plastics really better than traditional plastic? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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to learn more. You're listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Science Focus magazine team. With the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world. Find out more at ScienceFocus.com or look out for us in your app store. Hi and welcome to this episode of the Science Focus podcast. I'm Amy Barrett's editorial assistant at BBC Science Focus magazine. Started by Michael Faraday in 1825 are now broadcast on national television. The Christmas lectures bring a science

topic to our screens over three nights every year. The series of lectures has always been held within the Royal Institution in London, but this year of course is going to be slightly different. I'm joined today by three expert scientists, Tara Shine, Chris Jackson and Helen Chersky, who are going to be presenting the 2020 Christmas lectures titled Planet Earth A User's Guide. In lecture one, geologist Chris Jackson will reveal our Earth's climate story through the rocks and the fossil record. In lecture two, physicists and oceanographer Helen Chersky will talk about the part our oceans play in the climate crisis. And in lecture three,

environmental scientists and Tara Shine will talk about carbon emissions and what will breathing in. So let's go in that order, shall we? Chris, in lecture one, you tell us all about rocks and fossils and how they help us understand the Earth's climate and how it's changed. But you also talk to us about tectonics. It might seem like volcanoes would contribute to kind of a global warming. We can understand heat, warming, that sort of thing. But it's not quite the case, that way, is it? No, so the main role that volcanoes play is by bringing carbon from deep within the earth. And it's the carbon that it, that those volcanoes bring from deep within

the earth into the atmosphere that then creates carbon dioxide. So it's not necessarily that volcano. I think it sounds logical that volcanoes are hot and that the stuff that comes out to them is hot, but it's not the heat. It's the carbon. And so it's the carbon that then charges the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and causes the global warming. And then also there's an associated effect. So the increased carbon dioxide would enhance the greenhouse gas effect. But there's also a short-term cooling after some major volcanic erupt. So when you have a major volcanic eruption, one thing that comes out of a volcano in addition to lava, is ash, and that's just fragmented rock particles. And what they do is form this blanket, which can be very rapidly and efficiently mixed in the atmosphere around the whole planet, such that there's less, you know, there's rest, heat coming into the earth.

So it actually cools in the short term. So there's less radiative energy coming from the sun into the earth. And so you get a short-term cooling, but then a long-term warming. So there's two effects of these large volcanic eruptions, not just one. We can see, you know, through the fossil records, through rock records, the impact of humans, but also the changing climate that the Earth has have over its entire history. But how can you use this information to understand what steps we need to take in the future against climate change? So for me, the exciting thing is a lot of the discussion around climate change is rightly in the here and the now and the future.

So it's what's happening now, what can happen in the future. But the geological record actually allows us to establish a baseline. So it can allow us to see how carbon dioxide levels and the Earth's temperature have changed over tens to hundreds to even a few billions of years. So we can get that baseline. And then that allows us to put into context what is happening now and what may happen in the future. even more importantly than that, what we can also look at is the biodiversity through time.

And that is how life on Earth has changed in response to those changing temperatures because that's ultimately what we as selfish humans are all about. And so if you go and have a look at the rock record, that allows you to piece that together and see times on Earth which were very, very hot, how was the total biodiversity impacted by that? Because then it gives us a sense

as to the pace of change of the climate, climate and temperature in particular, but also the response of life on Earth to those changes. So how far away have we from the baseline? So there have been times in the past where the carbon dioxide levels have been higher, and there have been times in the past where the temperatures, the global average temperature has been higher. What is unprecedented is the rate of CO2 rise and the rate of temperature rise as a function of human activities. So that's the, that's the real. important bits of this. And that's why going back into the theoretical record and looking at the

rates of change in the past, when you start to see what's happening now, that makes it, in my mind, the kind of the hugely concerning thing that it is, is because it's, we don't, it's without parallel in the rock record. And so we're leaving our own rock record right now. I mean, what do you think, what our actions today are going to be leaving, you know, in 50, 100, couple of 100 years time? Yeah, so a lot of our activities on Earth are going to be recorded. The same way we'd go and look at a core from 100 million years ago, taken from beneath the seabed, and we'd see the layers of rock.

We're going to see layers of sediment which record our time on Earth. And one layer that we might see in there is a layer of plastic, for example, in the deep sea. So some of the plastic on land may not be preserved, but some of the things which are carried by winds and by currents into the deep sea may be recorded as a discrete or several discrete layers in the rock record. And so we will have an indelible kind of fingerprints in the radionucleides as well from nuclear weapons testing as well. There's going to be certain layers that are enriched in that material, which again are going to be not seen in the older rock record.

You never know if we think that there may be another extinction driven as a function of the recent warming of the planet. Maybe there's going to be a layer in the rock in which there is clearly a content. traction of the biodiversity on Earth. But hopefully future geologists will see also the point of which we started to improve and change things and make a difference. So yeah, you would like to think it would be a huge, you know, we don't want to make it about achievements and we were great and we kind of turned this thing around. But you'd like to think there was enough humanity and enough invention and innovation

in humankind that we could take this challenge on. And we could eventually, I mean, whether we're around to look at, at that layer of rock as a species anyway is a different thing. But it would be a, it would be, it's an inspiring thing to think about that. We could see the, you know, a near-disasterment recovery in the same way that we do for ancient, for ancient extinctions or for certain species joining ancient extinctions. And I wanted to go back to what you said about the energy in the ocean. I wonder if you can maybe explain that a bit further. So in terms of energy itself, in what form does that take in the ocean?

So most of the energy in the ocean is in the form of heat, but there is also kinetic energy. And so we know that it takes a lot of energy to boil a kettle. We don't necessarily see it because you just switch a thing on. That light comes on and sometime later there's tea. But if you actually look at, if you could monitor the energy use in your house, the two biggest spikes are basically the kettle and the tumble dryer. Tara might correct me if I've missed anything out there.

but the kettle, you know, three kilowatts is an enormous amount of energy. And so what that means is that you don't have to heat up the ocean very much to store a lot of energy. And even though it doesn't heat up the ocean very much, once it goes to other places, it can have quite large effects because that's a lot of energy. So the ocean is basically a battery for Earth. It helps, it helps, it makes our planet a lot nicer because it means that, say it's cloudy for a few days, temperature doesn't drop by 50 degrees, for example. It only goes down a little bit and we all complain about it. But actually, the oceans are keeping us warm. And during the very hot summer

days, they're actually keeping us cool. So the ocean is that store of energy, it's something that the Earth's system, that the machine of Earth can store up when there's plenty of energy and extract it back when there's not so much. So that, the ocean is the Earth's battery. You can imagine and Earth being like, we're borrowing energy from the universe. You know, it comes in, it hangs around in the Earth system a bit, and eventually it flows away into space. And we're just kind of holding on to a bit of it, using it. We're sort of getting in the way of its journey out on into the universe.

But so we need a store. We need a store of energy in order for that to happen to deal with the kind of lumps and bumps of energy coming and going. So the ocean is critical for all. that and it also moves energy around the planet. You know, the poles would be much, much colder in the depths of the Arctic winter if there wasn't an ocean. Actually, you can see that in the surface temperature in the Arctic and the Antarctic during

the polar night. So, yeah, it's hard because we look at the ocean and we just kind of see blue and it's sort of flattish and there's lots of it. But actually, there's loads of stuff happening underneath the surface as it shifts that energy around. And because of its nature as a battery, does it mean that it's one of the best sources of renewable energy? No. Interestingly, so there are ways you can extract energy from ocean temperature. It only works in a small number of places. So here's the reason why, right? There's basically, we talk about energy and really, if you're being picky, you know, when it comes

to renewable energy, it's not energy we're short of at all. What we're short of is, is useful energy. And what you need in order to have useful energy is you need a difference. So let's imagine you are, you know, a bird soaring in space. If you're traveling, you know, in the atmosphere, if you're traveling at the same speed as the wind, so you don't experience the wind because you're moving and the wind is moving, but relative to each other, there's no movement. So there's no doubt that you've got energy and the wind has kinetic energy, but because there's no difference between those two positions, you can't get anything useful out of that, right? So the problem with, from the point of view of renewable energy, the ocean is very low-grade energy for humans, not for the ocean because it runs the system.

But it's very low-grade because it's kind of a bit warm. It's not very big difference. So you can't extract energy from a small temperature difference. That's the reason that sunlight is used for, right? Because bright sunlight makes a really big, you have a dark day and you have bright sunlight. It's a huge difference. So you can definitely take usable energy out of that. There's a fundamental physics point here. which is that it's this useful energy that really matters. So it's not actually, so although the ocean battery is really important, because what it carries is low grade energy, it's kind of not very different from its surroundings.

It is quite hard to extract energy from it. There are a couple of exceptions. There are heat pumps which use the difference at the tropics between the very warm water at the surface and the very cold water at depth. There's a plant in Hawaii that I've visited, where they basically do that. They kind of have a hot tap and a cold tap to the ocean. And very entertainingly, they've coloured them red and blue.

But they can only just, it was built as a demonstration plant. And even in Hawaii, they can only just get enough energy out of that to make it workable. The difference isn't big enough. But wind and waves and all those kinds of things, those, there's a big difference. So actually being on land, we can use the ocean energy, but it tends to come on with stationary things, like a wind turbine, you know, where the weather might be, the warmth of the ocean might help drive weather and the weather pushes the wind turbine round. So, so sadly, although it may be the case that we're accumulating heat energy on Earth, it's not very useful for running our

society with. And so we've heard a little there about, we've heard about renewable energy from Helen a little bit. So Tara, I wonder if you can help us in, you know, after the viewers, our listeners now have become viewers of the Christmas lectures as they come out. If they're kind of fired up to learn more and to do more to help look after the planet, what can they go and do next? They can do lots of things. I guess that's number one. So quite often in the face of a really big overwhelming problem,

we can feel just that overwhelmed and feel like there's no point. What I do doesn't make a difference. And I would challenge other a little bit because not because you're small individuals, actions are necessarily going to save the planet. In fact, they won't. But because the actions of many people really do count and because you have an influence, each of us has an influence, particularly on our peers, on our friends and on our family and on people in our community, they're going to really listen to you and respect what you say. So I think that if people are curious about the earth that they live in, if they're curious about how things work, if they ask how and why, and they seek to

get a better understanding of even, you know, the everyday objects in their house, or why are things disposable after one use, or why are some fuels so cheap in the world and others so expensive? And what's behind all of that? If you ask questions and you play your part, even in the small things that you can do within your home, even as Helen says, even looking at your kettle, it is one are the most energy intensive appliances in the house. So if you boil it three times before you make a cup of tea or fill it to the top every time you want to make one cup of tea, it seems like a small thing, but actually has quite a big impact on your electricity bill. It accounts for 85% of the carbon footprint of your cup of tea just from boiling the kettle. So even these small things,

either having a direct impact on your life and on your pocket, but it's more about the kind of the collective sharing of those things. So passing that hint onto somebody else so that they do it too. That's where your real power lies. So your power is really in how you share your actions, how you use your voice, how you use your leadership, whether that is a captain of your sports team or in your school or on your debating society. Whatever platform you have, that's what gives you power. But of course there are, you know, big impacts coming from organizational changes when big companies or governments or anyone as a group does something. What sort of initiatives are out there currently you're seeing that give you hope for the future? Yes. At the moment, although

the COP 26 has been postponed for a year when the United Kingdom will be the host of the 26th conference of the parties of the climate convention, although it's postponed, it's still a really important point in time when that convention happens because it's when the countries, come back five years, now six years after the Paris Agreement to say, this is what we've done and this is what we're going to do next. So they have to come back with bigger, bolder statements of intent around how they're going to take action in climate change. And what I see happening, even in this weird COVID year, is there are more and more cities, companies, states and countries that are coming up with more ambitious climate commitments that are putting their

commitments to climate change in law that are actually realizing that they have to get to net zero emissions by the middle of the century. So I find that really heartening. So that's important for us to know too, as we try and make changes in our own lives, that the change is happening at the larger scale to, because that's what systemic change is. Systemic change is going to be a top-down, bottom-up effort. And keep an eye to that too, because we, again, we can have a role in holding our own governments to account. We have a role in holding companies and big multinational corporations to account. So being inquisitive about what they're doing and asking questions and using any power we have, whether it's our pocket or our voice on social media with our friends,

all of that is a way to contribute to that as well. Can I add something on the optimism, actually, which is it's really easy to feel that things are changing really slowly. But the thing is, we're not starting from the beginning of the running track here. So my mum last week sent me a picture of me standing next to her 25 years ago campaigning for Friends of the Earth on the streets of the town that I lived. And what was interesting about the picture was looking back, it was much easier to remember how it had been.

These are not new problems. And people have been thinking about them for a long time. And the thing that, the reason that's important now is that I think people are really starting to talk about them a lot more, which is brilliant. But a lot of the ideas have been turning around for decades. So they've now got to the stage where they're ready for use. So it does feel frustrating sometimes that sometimes, you know, it feels like nothing's changing immediately.

But actually on the timescales of human civilizations, you know, on the human lifetime, things are changing really quickly. And we both, like, the conversation is really important. But also all of this work has already happened. to come up with good ideas. They already exist. And there might be more of them and they might be better. But we're also building on a foundation.

We're not starting from square one. And I think that's really important when it comes to the scale of the task, is realizing that actually we're already quite a long way along this road. Yeah, and I would say that that's a message, sorry, Amy, that I give a lot to young people too. I know sometimes it can feel like we've just lumbered them with this big problem that we've caused and we've done nothing about. but there are lots of boring older people like us

or maybe mildly interesting people like us if you ask someone who isn't my child that we have laid a lot of the ground or whether that's in the policies and the international conventions or in figuring out how to make wind and solar energy at scale and at a cost that's less than coal and oil.

Like a lot of this stuff is there. It really is the ramped up moment right now and that ramped up moment's really exciting. Chris, do you have anything you wanted to? to add to just that conversation about optimism? No, I just to echo the idea about the solutions being there already, I think what's now happening is people leaning on governments to actually implement those, right? So one thing is making a commitment or writing a policy.

The other thing is actually, you know, putting some money into something that will actually manifestly have a positive impact. And I think that's where we should feel empowered is to go and vocalize our concerns to governments to make sure that they make good on the promise. And so, yeah, we're not short of ideas. Maybe we're just short of will sometimes at the appropriate level. Thank you. I wanted to talk a bit more generally about the lectures now we've got about 10 minutes left.

I actually had the pleasure of watching one last year being recorded. And I was kind of surprised at the difference between how it's recorded and how it comes out polished on the TV. I sort of assumed that the lecturer would kind of do everything as smoothly as they appear to on telly. But obviously, you know, things do end up going wrong. There's animals that don't quite do what they're supposed to. There's demonstrations that don't go to plan. I wonder, maybe Helen, you can answer this one,

as to what the bit that you're most terrified about maybe going wrong on the night. Well, obviously, we will have a virtual audience and not a real audience. A lot of the filming will be very similar in the sense that, you know, normally if you're making a TV documentary, you'd stop and start and you'd do everything in bits. And this will be filmed pretty much as a lecture, even though we'll be talking to cameras rather than to physical people who are there in the room.

So I'm not terrified about anything going... I don't know. I wouldn't tell you if there was a demo, to be honest, that I was really worried about going wrong because it might not, because it might be surprised. But the thing that is... interest, the thing that is hardest, I think, for us and will be hardest for us is that normally there's this, like the fundamental unit of human civilization is a human talking to another

human. And it's a very powerful thing, right? People are interested in other people fundamentally. And we get a lot of cues from talking to other humans. So in a live, the wonderful thing about the Royal Institution as a place to talk normally is that you are right in the middle of it. Like what you see on TV are these very steep seats that curl around and you as the let's, you as the letter, whatever lecture you're giving, are right in the middle. It's like sort of Greek democracy. You know, you're in the middle of all the people and you have to kind of defend yourself to this surround sound audience. And obviously when you speak to an audience, you're, you are connecting with them. You hear them breathe. You hear, you know, you kind of hear when they're, if they're

not interested, actually, they go very quiet. But you get, even if they think they're being quiet, you can feel the response in the room. And so the thing that is hardest, I think, for us, is that as a human, you're used to judging that in real time, right? You know, you can build based, you can change this sentence based on what happened with that sentence. And we won't be able to do that. So I think it'll be really, you know,

it's going to be interesting managing the sort of emotional journey of this thing because if I talk to you and tell you a story, I'll hear you react to that story. And we won't have that in quite the same way. And the entire format is set up to get those reactions in a way that TV normally isn't. So I guess my biggest concern is kind of misjudge, even though I won't have any way of judging it,

is sort of misjudging the way the audience is reacting at home. Because although we will have a virtual audience, it'll be a little bit different. But I have every confidence in the Royal Institution demo team. It has to be said that the most impressive thing about all of this is the amount of effort that the Royal Institution and others put in behind the scenes to make these demos work. You know, we all have the luxury of not being the people who, although we have the ideas and we help, we're not the ones who are, you know, adjusting the height of a glass tube 14 times in an afternoon to try and get work out how to make it work, right? So we have to acknowledge the teamwork that goes on behind the scenes to really make these things work. because you still have to have a demo that works, right?

And actually one of the things that I'm excited about for my lecture is there are ocean demonstrations that we, you know, academics, we don't have time to build that. We don't have time to spend an entire afternoon and just being a tube 14 times to see what works. So there will be demos that I think are useful from probably all of our lectures for teaching because, you know, you don't normally have the opportunity to set them up.

And once you've done it and you filmed it, then they become useful to everyone forever. So that's a great. And of course you can watch, you know, previous lectures online as well. I wonder if any of you have got, you know, a favourite Christmas lecture or a lecturer that you've watched that you loved. I've got two that I remember, but one of them is probably Chris's. So the two that I remember growing up is I remember Frank Close is the Cosmic Onion. And I remember James Jackson's, the planet, I can't remember what it was called, actually.

Chris has probably watched it. What is it? I've never watched any of the Christmas lectures. Oh, dear. The only one I watched was... But I've talked about this, and we can talk about why, but yeah, I've never watched any of them. Apart from them setting me some of the tapes.

Why? So I guess, I mean, it depends on Christmas traditions, isn't it, as of what you do, but... Yeah, I wasn't interested in science growing up and my parents were both nurses. So I wasn't... So as a child, I was too busy playing with my football and climbing trees. You know, so they just... And I think it's important to recognise that people are assigned,

nowadays or science for their job, they weren't, you know, you don't have to be soaked in science to become a scientist. And I'm not embarrassed about never having watched the Christmas lectures before. I'm a little bit embarrassed that I got asked to do them having not watched them. But yeah, I think it's, yeah, I think we just all come from different places and we all end up kind of ending, working on similar things, I think. Yeah, and I live in Ireland where they, we had two television stations growing up, but two Irish television stations. So the BBC was something exotic that I only got to go to see if I went to someone's house who happened to have parents who would pay extra money to have BBC. And my dad

certainly was not. So I didn't grow up with the Christmas lectures either. And even when I'm like, I mean, my parents didn't go to university. So for them lecture was something that, you know, was academic and they weren't going to understand. So we wouldn't sit down and watch it because, you know, it came with that kind of impression. How does it, what does it mean to you, Chris, to then be speaking on them, not having watched them, and being aware that there might be a lot of people out there who you don't reach through this audience? Yeah, it's a huge responsibility, isn't it, in many different ways. One is to make science relevant and exciting, and I think in 2020, we've seen science doing that in a very positive way and being criticized in another way.

And so to make sure that, in my case, geosciences, is represented as well as possible. I think just science in general, but then also geoscience particularly, and then just, yeah, you know, for the people around you, the people who are your friends and family who, you know, to make them proud of you. And that's like a less of a science thing, right? That's just you want to do the best you possibly can. Because I think especially with this climate change focus for the lectures this year, there is a considerable, I feel that there's a considerable weight of importance on how we message that. and who we touch and how we do that. And it's not say we're going to solve climate change in these lectures, it's still we are just one of the steps

and one of the mechanisms by which I think Tara and Helen have touched on this. We can further the conversation. And maybe like Tara, I think, said, is spark that inquisitive bit of people to go and find out a bit more about something because they heard Chris Tara or Helen speak about it, right? And that's hugely exciting. And there is actually a benefit here to the online world.

So I think, you know, although these will be broadcast on TV, like you said, all the other lectures are available online. And what that does is it removes a barrier. In the past, you know, if you did not come to this quite posh, Mayfair venue, and if you weren't on the invitation list, then you didn't get to see this, you know. And so I think one of the things that all of us came in caring about a lot at the start

is that the audience, and this will be represented in the virtual audience, is that they're not just the people who always get to come. It's other people who get to be part of the virtual audience as much as we've been able to manage. And so that I think that there are hopefully some things that will come out of, you know, having virtual audiences and online things which might stay because they open the door to more people. And I think that is really important. Yes, there's all this tradition and this is the way it's always been done. And that's all brilliant. But there's no harm in the tradition opening its doors and, you know, becoming sharing it. If you've got a good thing, why not share it as widely as possible and why not use it to share views that. come from as many places as possible. So all of that matters quite a lot. And I think this year is a really good opportunity to really push forward on that. I think you're right, Helen. People seem to

forget that traditions arise. Things that we now consider as traditional arose from some set of norms that developed over a given period of time. So let's make new traditions. And not be afraid to kind of let our own current traditions change or perhaps, you know, leave them behind for new one. Well, you hold on to the good bits, right? If there are good things, that's what. So this was a set up for children in 1825, which was quite a thing all by itself, right?

The thought of having a sign selected just for children in 1825, that's a great idea. But then we don't have to hold on to all of it. You know, we can do without the cholera and the top hats and all of those things. Yeah, I think, you know, a lot about finding solutions to things like climate change is about changing habits. So I think that's an interesting tie-in too.

So, yeah, it's like Helen said, we want to keep the best of the things that we do and then lose the bad ones, whether that's an addiction to fossil fuels or addiction to too many male-only panels or not an adequate diversity within, you know, science thinking and science representation. We can lose some of those things. And in bringing in the new things, we can bring new fresh ideas. And it is that diversity of ideas and diversity of perspectives that we need. And that's why this lecture is really interesting because it isn't one lecturer with one

perspective. It's three lectures with shared and different perspectives looking at our planet Earth in a holistic way. And to me, that's the excitement. It's the linkages between the different earth processes and systems and how we as human beings interact within those. That's really exciting. And within that, there's room for human beings creating new habits, and those habits can be pretty powerful. I just wanted to say, as well, one thing about asking about how the lecture is going to work, you know, and things going

wrong in demos. I actually, that's one of the things I think is really important. Science is messy. Things don't always work. Things fall over. Things explode. Animals don't do what you want to do, as you said. And I think it's really important to tell people that. And again, I think, you know, this year has shown as that, that uncertainty and, like, communicating uncertainty and being honest about the scientific process is as important as the outcome or the ultimate, like, headline item or the bit that goes into the policy, right? So I think that's a really good thing with the Christmas lectures, is right, you know, ball full out of machine and roll across the floor or something won't quite work. And I think that's really, really good. And I think it's fun,

but I think it's, I think it's real. Bringing science down off a pedestal as well. Yeah. I wanted to just ask, I mean, looking forward if we can to 2021, and I know you haven't done much of the filming for the lectures yet, but if you could give the 2021 Christmas lecturer or lecturers one bit of advice or one piece of information that you've picked up on, what would it be? I would say think big. I think, yeah, I think I started, I think, yeah, I think the team that you work with is capable of pulling off big ideas. years they think big. I hope that next year's, well, next year's lectures, hopefully there will be a live audience again, but I think some good things will have come out of doing it this way. And so it's really important that this doesn't just go back to exactly how it was before. There are probably things that can be done this way that couldn't have been done in the other way. And it's important to incorporate those. So I would say, don't look at us as the weird ones that did a thing that will

never be done ever again. Something out of this will be good enough that it gets done every year in the future. And it would be great if they look to find that. Yeah, I guess related to Helen's point, this is a good chance to keep on this path of democratising science of taking the science out of this lecture theatre for a privileged view and bringing it into people's homes. There's the representation aspect of who me, Helen, Tara are. You know, like that is all for me. Like who's talking about science is as important as the science that's being done in many ways, because what that means is there's more engagement by the global population who don't often just look like the type of people of until 1996 were giving the lecture.

That was this year's Christmas lecturers Tara Shine, Chris Jackson and Helen Chersky. Do check Radio Times for information about how to watch this year's lectures over the holiday period. If you've enjoyed this episode of the Science Focus podcast, please do leave and review wherever you're listening to us. And for more science news, Q&As and features, head to ScienceFocus.com or pick up the latest issue of BBC Science Focus magazine. Thank you for listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Science Focus magazine team. With the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world. Find out more at ScienceFocus.com or look out for us in your online. App Store. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. The texture and emotional depth of music

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