The Infinite Monkey Cage - 201st Birthday Bonanza - Mel Giedroyc, Deborah Meaden and Nish Kumar

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

Get ready for a landmark episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage as we celebrate our 201st show! Brian Cox and Robin Ince invite a lively panel of celebrity guests to pose their burning scientific questions to a top-tier team of scientists. Mel Giedroyc is tunnelling into the world of engineering, asking how we build and operate trains under some of the world’s busiest cities? Mel has found a new best friend in, Isabel Coman, Director of Engineering at Transport for London, who is here to guide her through the particulars of subterranean transport systems. Deborah Meaden, entrepreneur and investor, is delving into the emotional lives of animals - do our furry, feathered, and scaly companions have feelings like grief in the way we do? Helping her to sniff out the science of animal emotions is Dr Liz Paul, a comparative psychologist from the University of Bristol. Comedian Nish Kumar wants to know - are we totally screwed when it comes to climate change, or is there still hope? Helping him unpack tipping points, rising temperatures, and how we might turn the tide is climate scientist Ed Hawkins from the University of Reading.Series Producer: Melanie Brown Assistant Producer: Olivia Jani Executive Producer: Alexandra FeachemBBC Studios Audio Production

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It had never been done before. Go launch like a rocket and land like an airplane. And we got people on it. Roger. 13 Minutes presents The Space Shuttle. Coming soon. BBC Sounds Music music, radio, podcasts. You're about to listen to the Infinite Monkey Cage. Episodes will be released on Wednesdays.

Wherever you get your podcasts. But if you're in the UK, the full series is available right now. First on BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Brian Cox. I'm Robin Ince and this is the 201st Infinite Monkey Cage. Sixteen years of searching for answers to some of the most important questions in science. What is death? Are we living in a simulation? How did life on earth begin? What is the point of pandas? Is there any whatsoever? And is quantum theory just woo?

I'll just stop you there. Why are you going to stop me? Pandas, pointless, they get in the way. Though actually, I should say, later on in this series, you will hear a discussion about whether pandas would have more sex if they were on the International Space Station of that particular episode. Now, when we began, of course, Brian was just plain old Professor Brian Cox.

Then he became Brian Cox OBE. Then he became OBE FRS. and now he is CBE FRS and also of course won rear of the year in 2017 in the science communication category. I of course when this began I was just plain old Robin Ince, whereas now I am Robin Ince winner of Richard Osmond's house of games and owner of a B hotel B hotel Richard Osmond luggage and a selection of things I can keep eggs in Yeah, oh no, I think that's it that's all I want now for our 201st birthday show We've decided to do something special and it should havely have been the 200th, but we missed it.

We've invited three celebrity guests who have burning questions about science and engineering and perhaps unfashionably in today's intellectual and political climate, we've also invited a panel of experts to answer them. So to explore what they've always wanted to know, the burning questions we have on this birthday episode, a discerning dragon, a cake commissar and a mashmaster and they are? Hi I'm Mel Gerdroydch, I'm the cake commissar and the first question that I ever wanted to ask my science teacher Mrs Stone Stone. I have not changed her name for legal reasons that was her actual name. Brian she was my physics

teacher. The question I want to ask her as I was then age 14, why did you kick me out of my physics class? And have you got no inkling of why she kicked you out? I do have a bit of an inkling. You probably don't know about Mel right? Mel created a little plot against Mrs. Stone with the art teacher Miss Paper. And Mr. Rock. No it's fair to say that I did, I don't know if this is Radio 4 friendly, I did tit about quite a lot in Mrs Stone's classes. But I thought, come on man, why did they do that to me, Brian? Because you tit it about in the classes.

Okay, fair enough. What level of titting are we talking about here? It's really lame, but the thing that was the sort of last straw on the camel's back, aka Mrs Stone, she did spit a bit as well, actually. She did spit a bit like a camel. But physics was on a Tuesday afternoon and showing on Tuesday evenings on ITV was Brideshead Revisited. And I used to sing the theme tune in the physics class quite loudly

do you like to do it now? two things firstly I would have kicked you out for that second secondly this is radio 4 we can't afford the publishing. You can use the first eight seconds, that's copyright free. What in the name of God is going on here? I don't know. It's like being the Manchurian candidate for people over 45. People in the audience just started going, Baaaaa, baaaaa.

Anyway, I wonder who our next guest is. Our next guest is scared and confused. My name is Nish Kumar. I am a stand-up comedian and the co-host of Pod Save the UK. And the question I would like to have asked my science teacher was on the first day of science, what is science? Because I was really bad at it. I was such a bad student and so I'm here. I'm excited to be here but I'm also I should not be here. Can I say at least you've got to Blooming Doos science till you were 16 some of us 14. At least that's because I wasn't there going BAM BAM BAM. We could do the Dr. Who theme tune together if you'd like. Oh yes, shall I go top or bottom? I don't think you can ask that on Radio 4 now.

I think the third guest is still here. Hi, I'm Deborah Meaden. I am very unkindly sometimes referred to as a dragon, TV dragon, but investor. And my question that I wanted, I did ask actually my first science teacher, because I was a big fan of Doctor Who, hence the Doctor Who theme tune, was will we ever be able to time travel? Nice. Into the past, no.

Don't spoil it. That might be the question everyone's gonna ask. This is our panel. Let's start with our first question. So each one of our panel has, as we mentioned, has got a question and we have a selection of scientists and hopefully within the audience we have one that's suitable for each question. Of course we do, there's three people over there and we know exactly what's going to happen. Anyway, so Mel, let's start with your question. Can we not do the Dr. Who theme tune really quickly? Ten seconds.

Dr. Who theme tune. I'll go low, someone else go high. The tuning on that. Mel, what would you most like to know about the universe and what lies within it? Right I'm obsessed with trains, with tunnels, with tunneling. The Elizabeth Line, which if you live outside of London and may not have used, is the incredible new East West service from Reading on the one side to Abbey Wood slash Shenfield on the other side that basically goes underneath London and it's incredible. So

it's my spiritual home and I just sit on the Lizzie line and marvel at the incredible engineering and the beauty of it and the aircon and just the everythingness of it. With the Elizabeth line, the Lizzy as I call it, sometimes the Lizzo just for lols. But every time I'm on it, I just think, how is this marvelous contraption getting me from A to B without bumping into any other things underground? How was it built?

How did they make the tunnels? Why does London not fall down? I'm obsessed. Well hopefully we've got a scientist who could answer that so let's find out with scientist number one. Hi my name is Isabel Komen and I'm the director of engineering at Transport for London and I spent seven years of my life working on the building of the Elizabeth Line. So let's have your first question then. To put this into perspective, Isabel, I moved my entire family to what we knew would be an Elizabeth Line station and I remember saying to my two then small girls, I

think they were sort of three and five at the time. I said, girls, you're going to be seven and nine, and then you're going to be riding this line. This is going to be incredible. Anyway, cut to, they were 23 and 21. And had very much left home. But it doesn't matter. It was late, but it was so worth the wait. What you're saying is you haven't got a question. It does it was late, but it was so worth the wait

Can I just button and maybe just ask us the science question yes We wish is what's the first thing you do when someone says right? We need we need a line needs to go from here to here under a city like London. I was just about So you need to know what's underground so you need to make sure you're not going to hit something first. And there's all sorts of things underground, especially in a city like London. So whether that's the piles for tall buildings, underground rivers, sewers, obviously other underground lines. So you need to make sure you don't hit anything.

But you also want to connect into other key points. So it's important when people are traveling, they can connect into other stations and other transport modes so that that becomes really important and you try and balance all of those things together and then the other thing you need to know is what's the ground condition so what's the soil that you're going to be building in so there's lots of lots of things you have to think about. Wasn't there a really tense moment where the Elizabeth Line tunnel at Tottenham Court Road

had to go between the Northern and the Central Line and there was something like millimetres? It was about a metre between the tunneling. To be fair, that is millimetres. A thousand millimetres. She was nonspecific about how many millimetres. A thousand,. It was nonspecific about how many millimeters. A thousand, a thousand millimeters. You're digging a seven meter hole underneath a tube line with the trains running up and down. And is it true also, Isabel, that Marc Brunel, Isambard Brunel's dad, didn't he start building a tunnel?

He wanted to build to France, I think, didn't he? And isn't part of that tunnel that he originally started now one of the tunnels I can sense from your face Isabel that maybe that's not correct. Isn't it the wrong direction? I'll look into that again. How has it changed over the years because I suspect the well the accuracy with which we know the underground has improved somewhat. Yeah, so the main tunnel routes that were built for Crossrail and the Elizabeth Line were built with earth pressure balanced tunnel boring machines.

So they're a big machine that gets launched and drives underground or it's dropped into a hole and it bores underground. And the technology that's on those machines nowadays is absolutely incredible. So there are lots of monitors and sensors. And they basically have a big cutting wheel at the front of them that spins around and excavates the material ahead. And the whole time that you're digging them,

the teams that are aboard those are watching for all the information that's coming to them. Because of course you can't see ahead of yourself. So you're just trying to interpret the ground and the material that's coming to them. Because of course you can't see ahead of yourself. So you're just trying to interpret the ground and the material that comes through and balance the pressure of the earth in front of you as you cut a hole. They have a shield that presses behind it

that creates pressure to hold it all up so that you don't get the ground ahead of it falling in. And obviously the buildings and the railways and everything else that's going on in London falling into the hole as you dig it. Being very practical what happens to all the dig out? Oh that's amazing. They shake it out of their trousers. There's millions of tons of material excavated and actually for the Elizabeth Line I think 90 over 90% of it got transported by railway and barge

down the River Thames and it built a bird sanctuary actually there called Wallasey Island. And it was clean enough to do that? Yes, because you're digging through ancient, ancient ground. So the London clay, which is where most of the excavation came from, is completely inert material. So it's absolutely perfect for building a bird sanctuary. It's so cool. I've got a bit of beef with the Elizabeth Line, just a little bit,

if that's allowed. So in my career I have done quite a few voiceovers, Isabel. Are you doing your voiceover voice? I am, so I'm doing my voice. Anyway, I said to my voiceover agent, Susan, I said, God, you know what? I would retire if I could be the voice of the Elizabeth line. You know, the voice that goes, and the next train to Shenfield will be two minutes from platform four. You see how good that would have been? See? Thank you. Anyway, so I said to Susan, look, any chance you get me in, can I do an audition? Never heard a word is about not a word.

I think it should be me, because I've got quite an aggravating nasal voice. And I think they should use my voice to be like, your train is so late. Oh, my God, it is so late. And I'd love to tell you why, but full disclosure, someone's taken a dump in the carriage. So once you've built the line, so what are the challenges in running the trains that you mentioned that they're not on time, it's difficult, how many trains are going through there

per hour, how close do they get to each other, how do you manage that? So Elizabeth Line runs 24 trains an hour. They have to travel through three signaling systems. So the signaling is the thing that controls and protects the train from crashing into each other but also it makes sure that you they run to time. So the technology and software inside has to be able to tell, the train has to know where it is, so it has to know which kind of signaling is telling it what to do and that has to change between the systems.

And they have to speak to each other, they have to sort of talk to each other. The beautiful, when you get all three, is going out of Ealing Broadway, which is main line, into I'm going to say suburban Paddington, which is kind of the midway signalling system, and then into the tunnel, which is the fully underground one. If I happen to be on that part of the line I do a little Tim Henman when he scores a point like yes to myself. How do you know that? I like to look on websites Brian. It's quite funny to hear the studio audience for this show laugh at something else if to go that's too geeky for me. But I presume that when the digging actually begins there will still be moments of surprise.

What cannot be detected from above ground surveying? So you could have faults in the soil where it changes condition and basically what you end up having is you have geologists who are experts who watch the material coming that gets excavated coming back out through the front of the face of the tunnel and the sensors around you are sensing pressure, they're sensing changes. The machines are designed to cope with a lot of different situations. Yes, Nish, do you have a question you wanted to ask? Yes, I'm now embarrassed because my question was going to be,

and what is the situation vis-a-vis buried treasure? LAUGHTER But it's a good question because actually... Very good question, well done, Nish. And if you find buried treasure, who gets to keep it? Is it the individual who finds it, or does it get pumped back into the TfL system? LAUGHTER So where the tunnels

go you're not going to find much buried treasure but where the stations were built so particularly at Liverpool Street they actually excavated through the Bethlehem Hospital graveyard which was between the mid 16th century in the mid 18th century and they had to assume over 3,000 bodies from that graveyard so their national artifacts they get reburied and any treasure that my archaeological treasure is is kept and preserved and actually you know many many things that being found out about population of London in that time through through the various things that were excavated out. There was a really

good exhibition I don't know if it's still on, of all the artifacts. That was so great. And there was like a water bison or something found in the Acton area. Horns from like a pre-Jurassic water bison. LAUGHTER I've been to Acton. That's one of the least scary things. LAUGHTER Well, thank you so much.

Thank you very much. Isabel Kahn. Wow. I love her. There are so many questions. Now Debra, you are the next question. Yes. So this is one that my vet and I disagree over.

And the question is, do animals grieve? So what does your vet think then? Well he thinks it's unlikely that they grieve but I've got a lot of animals, I've had a lot of animals, they don't all respond the same way but when we've had to put one down definitely the animals have changed their behavior so I wonder whether or not that is grief or what that would be and you know there are emotions around all of that really. Well let's find out. Now meet our next scientist. Hello my name is Dr. Liz Paul. I'm from the University of Bristol and I'm a comparative psychologist. That means I study humans by studying all sorts of animals as well and I'm interested in emotion and how it

evolved and how we can define it in animals and how we can study it in animals. So what's your initial reaction then to Debra's question? I think there's a little cluster of thoughts one of them would be that maybe your vet is being careful not to over anthropomorphize, you know, to sort of not slip into the trap of assuming that all animals are sort of just like mini us's, your furry people. I have the thought that actually as scientists we're interested in answering that question experimentally but also understanding theoretically what emotion

is, what grieving might be, what kind of factors are involved with that. Then finally, the main thought that I have is that we have to sort of point out or say that emotion is a multifaceted phenomenon, so that feeling emotion is only one part of it and that we also do emotion in terms of our behavior and we do emotion in terms of our behaviour and we do emotion in terms of our physiology and we also change our cognition or our information processing when we're doing emotion. So maybe we can't always answer the question of do they feel but we can perhaps answer the question of is their physiology or the behaviour changing. And I guess also not

all animals are the same so is there a difference in groups of animals? Yes, definitely. So I guess what you're thinking about tends to be, you know, most of us are experiencing... Horses, cats, dogs, sheep and geese. Companions. And dogs. So most companion animals are mammals. And so we're going to get a lot closer to grief in the mammals or human-like grief because we're mammals as well. Geese, yeah, gonna be a bit more tricky. So in the wild there are a lot of anecdotal stories that reported about

chimpanzees, there was a very widely reported story about an orca carrying its dead baby. There's also been observations of elephants, not just the mother but other members of the group coming and having a look at a young elephant that's died and spending a lot of time hanging around, kind of, you know, touching it and walking around and things. So there's a lot of these kind of on the whole larger bigger brained mammals doing these sorts of perhaps a bit more sadness like responses and that's also been observed by owners in more systematic studies of where sort of owners are asked

to report how their dog or their cat has responded to the death of another dog or cat in the household. And again there seem to be more not always sadness responses but some kind of behavioural change and potentially some sort of physiological change so like a stress response but I guess the question is yeah are they really feeling a sadness and I think the answer is well I think mammals at least we have evidence that they can experience what that they can do let's say behaviorally physiologically do loss in some way they recognize that they had a good thing and it's now gone. Specifically grief, you have to be a social animal

to recognize that loss. But whether grief is somehow special and different from any other loss, like your family going on holiday for a fortnight, you know, and you not knowing whether they're coming back or not, I doubt because I suspect that that conception of death as a complete end and they're never coming back is something even us humans find it difficult to Grass and and I guess that the question would be I mean evolutionary terms everything we feel has a benefit to us Doesn't it we feel fear it keeps us alive. We run away. What would be the purpose of grief? So if I come back to sort of maybe focusing on the purpose of loss in general, if that's where grief comes from,

then the thing that I find interesting as a scientist studying that whole extension, that sort of evolution of all of the amazing complexity that we have as humans in our emotions, but all the sort of seeds of that, the roots of that in our evolutionary history, then I think we can say that loss might have an important adaptive function, particularly in detecting not just the value of things, whether something's good or bad, but detecting the relative value of things. So if you give them a very nice food, they know that that's high value. If something bad to happen to the student, they know that's low value or it's a negative value. But a lot of particularly game mammals, some birds probably as well and we haven't studied all animals, can recognize and respond apparently emotionally to when they had a good thing going for them and then it kind of cut back and it wasn't as good

anymore. So they're learning, it gives them the capacity to learn about the world changing and that's a very important piece of information. What about kind of what you might call interspecies grief I suppose, which is you think, and I'm sure you may have seen this Deborah and Nish and everyone else, which is I remember when my dad died and his dog, it was very much out of sorts and a level of confusion and it didn't have the same kind of vim and verve. So what do we know about that? Well that has been studied, yeah, and it's mostly been studied at the moment, as I say, with owner reports rather than somebody sitting in your house when somebody's just died, you know, observing what your dog did, because that would be a little bit ethically problematic.

What a weird job, isn't it? It would be a weird job, like, the dog on the door. Did he have a dog? Yeah, yeah. Can I come and sit in your house and watch your dog while you're organizing the funeral? Yeah. So I think, yeah, dogs are very, very social animals.

They've been domesticated for over 40,000 years. They have learned to live with humans. They've changed genetically to live with humans. So they're just as attached, I would say, to their humans as they would be to another dog in the same way that wolves would have been attached to other wolf pack members. So I think it's not surprising that if you've got an animal like a dog that's a highly social animal that, you know, when it understands that somebody who has always been there in its life is no longer there, of course, as I say, they may not understand the finality

of death necessarily, but they are definitely going to change their behavior having said that it's not all dogs and this is what Deborah said as well you know it does depend on the nature of the relationship so more arrogant dogs or narcissistic dogs it depends on like the like Hitler's dog was like thank God do you think they recognized death I'm just thinking of one of my horses put down, the other two horses went over, poured, sniffed, poked around a bit and then just wandered off

and carried on eating grass. What was that? Yeah, so I think it's something really surprising. It's, this is called expectancy violation, I suppose in animal behaviour. So that would be, they would normally expect it to get up again. It tallies very closely with the reports that people have done of, as I say, of wild animals and elephants and giraffe and things like that, you know responding, going over to the body.

Interestingly the primates do something, as I say the orca and dolphins do this infant carrying, and particularly with infants, as though they're trying to revive it in some way, which I think the elephants and the giraffes and these larger animals who can't pick them up, you know, maybe they're just inspecting it and they may hang around for a while but they leave. Whereas quite shockingly in a way, some of the chimpanzees have been videoed, you know, carrying really quite rotten babies around with them, you know, for weeks and if not months. When Her Majesty the Queen died I swear no, I swear my god, so Prince Charles went over and he sniffed her a little bit And then he just walked away

Welcome to the final episode If there's anyone in from the Daily Mail, I did not think that was funny at all. If there's anyone from the Daily Mail, say he said it. No, seriously, our dog, Juno, from Bulgaria, inconsolable. She was really sad. I mean, there was a sadness that hung over the house. Juno, absolutely, she sensed something in the air.

So people have looked at empathy in animals and whether they can empathize with their human owners but also whether they empathize with other animals and again they don't necessarily do a fully-fledged, you know, kind of highly cognitive human type empathizing but they they do seem to resonate, you know, get some kind of... They pick something up. They pick something up. Smell it? Do they smell it? Does grief smell? Nobody's ever shown that but you never know, you never know. But they could well be picking up on emotional cues from the owners.

I have unbounded admiration for the way you saved that. That was just magnificent. Deborah, having heard that, where does that leave you now? I'm not sure it's settled yet, is it? But from my observations, I come back to something actually you talked about, I do see behavioral change but some of them, and I try not to something actually you talked about. I do see behavioral change, but some of them, and I try not to anthropomorphize. I try, thank you. Come on. You got it.

I try not to, but I do sense loss. I spend a lot of time with my animals and I do sense actually from the horses, not all of them, but very close companions. When one is lost, the other is lost for a while. So I feel it's unsettled. So I think that's not sorted anything, but thank you very much. I think you tried very hard and will be used in media training programmes in the future. Thank you to Dr Liz Paul there. Right so we've gone from the

Elizabeth line to death. Nish, where will you take us now? Was Hitler's dog evil? No, my question is, now I will say, I did submit this question in advance as requested, and of my original wording, one of the words has been changed. See if you can see which word it was. In regards to climate change, are we screwed? Now we have our final scientist. Please take to the stage. Good evening. I'm Ed Hawkins. I'm a professor of climate science at the University of Reading. And what's your initial reaction there to issues, are we screwed? We're not screwed yet. It's often talked about as being a problem for our children or our grandchildren.

But what we're increasingly realizing is that we're feeling the consequences now, today, and the consequences are only going to get worse as our planet continues to warm. Do scientists really think, oh, there is a point of no return here? I think one of the problems is there are people now that are increasingly thinking, well, if we've gone beyond the point of no return, then there's almost a kind of despair and a sort of nihilism setting in, especially with, I think, younger people. Is that something that is a scientific term, tipping points, points of no return? We often hear about the term tipping points, you're right.

And they exist, we believe, in the system. We might imagine, we often talk about the change in the circulation in the Atlantic Ocean and how we might have less heat transported northwards by the ocean currents, which might actually cool our climate. And that might be caused by the continuing warming of our planet, you know, slightly paradoxically. So we think these events have happened in the past. We don't know when they might occur in the future.

They're plausible, but we think they're unlikely in the very near future. And that would be cool our climate, you mean in the UK? It would. So locally? It would. So we warm the planet. What happens is that we are melting Greenland. For example, we're melting Greenland at a rate of three Olympic-sized swimming pools every second. And that water is entering the ocean. It's causing sea levels to rise but it's also changing the properties of the water in the North Atlantic and that might disrupt the ocean circulation. The reason we have in the UK a relatively warm climate is because of that circulation

and if it was disrupted that yes could cool our climate in the UK and North West Europe. Oh man. Just trying to work out in terms of the pooping my pants ometer. That won't help. That'll actually contribute even more to the warming. We don't want that. Are we at, I don't know how to properly say this,

are we at skid mark or full turn? I think what we need to focus on is that we first of all we have the solutions right so we have enough to worry about about changing heat waves becoming hotter and more intense about our rainfall becoming more intense and causing more floods and our droughts becoming more severe those are things that we know are going to happen we should worry about those and do something about it the tipping points are there there are possibility but they're very uncertain.

But they don't really affect about what we need to do about it, right? We need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions if we are to stop the warming continuing further. And that's what we need to focus on as our target to do, to stabilize global temperatures by reaching net zero emissions. Because you know, the Paris Climate Summit,

a few years ago now, there's a one and a half degree global average temperature target right over pre-industrial levels. Wasn't last year exceeded that globally on the average? So yes, last year was above 1.5 degrees. That doesn't mean that the Paris agreement has been breached yet. It's a strong indication that we're going to and I think we will breach that limit in the near future. But I think we also need to emphasize that the impacts of climate change, they're not a cliff edge where we go over a level and suddenly everything comes disastrous. We are gradually feeling the consequences and they're getting worse and worse and every bit of warming matters And so we need to ensure that if we miss 1.5 is the target our next target is 1.6

And if we miss that 1.7 the thing that I'm concerned about is there a point of which that Damage becomes irreversible that we can no longer claw back Habitable life on this planet. I mean, I think that's a very long way off if that was to happen I mean, I think we will probably find certain parts of the planet which will become extremely difficult to live in. Like, there's Pacific Islands that are just underwater now. So, you know, sea level rise is a long-term problem, for example. You know, we are going to see more than a metre of sea level rise, whatever we do with our emissions,

over the next couple of hundred years. And so that is a long-term problem we're going to have to deal with. We're going to have to adapt to that. The worst-case scenarios we might see several meters, you know, and how do we plan for London with several meters of sea level rise? Of course we are lucky in that we have money to tackle that problem and those in more vulnerable parts of the world do not. I sometimes think that one of the problems with the way that it's phrased, every time we hear 1.5 degrees, I think in most people's minds they go, yeah, but you know, there was that summer

in 1976. So it feels to people like, it still feels to me as if the message about the fragility of life and the rarity of life and the fact that you do need very specific measurements to go and thus life. But I think when people hear 1.5 degrees they go Whatever, you know, it's no different I agree that the the one degree two degrees isn't necessarily always very helpful for telling those stories for getting across the Severity of the consequences, you know seeing several meters of sea level rise or seeing these much worse heat waves Or seeing much more rain come in these downpours that we've seen across Europe and across the world we are really feeling that one or one and a half degrees and we've only had one or

one and a half degrees we might have three or four degrees and if we get to that level things are going to feel really difficult. Sometimes when I try and conceptualize it it just becomes overwhelming you go I've got no idea how to wrap my mind around this but there are solutions out there and what are ways that we can get our emissions down? So the vast majority of our missions come from burning fossil fuels and deforesting large areas of the planet. And so if we are to tackle this, we need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, which means we need to electrify most things that we would normally use fossil fuels for

and generate that electricity through renewable means. The Elizabeth line is electrified. But by the sounds of things the trains are going to have to be able to turn into bunks. But you know at the same time there are certain things that we do as a global society which is going to be extremely difficult or impossible to remove our emissions from and so actually we will also need ways of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere and burying it back underground from where it came. Is that carbon capture? Is that what that means? So it's often called direct air capture or direct ocean capture there's various

different methods that we might think about to do that but we will need some of that technology to counteract the emissions that we can't avoid. That sounds positive. But it does. I didn't even know about that. That sounds bloody great. It hasn't been demonstrated to work at scale yet. But it's in the works. It's in the works. But that's the issue whenever, because Carbon Cat is now a big political buzzword and but there is an issue in that this scale that politicians are suggesting it can achieve is not scientifically possible right now right? Plan A we need to reduce

our emissions as much as possible there will be some leftover that we can't reduce and so we need other ways of tackling those. What about the oceans? Don't they have a massive part to play? The oceans play a massive part. The oceans take up 90% of the excess heat that our greenhouse gas emissions are causing and it warms up the ocean and as water gets warmer it expands which is one of the big reasons we have sea level rise. So the oceans are playing a role in that but they are soaking up a lot of the heat that we are creating through our emissions. But that means that the life in the ocean also faces consequences. We're already seeing coral reefs around the world suffer from the hotter temperatures. They bleach and

then they die. And these are the nurseries for fish and you know there are billions of people around the world who rely on marine sources for their protein source. And so yes, what we're doing to the ocean makes it is a huge consequence. How much of the problem is purely scientific in a sense of understanding the climate system and understanding what the solutions might be and how much of it is behavioral and or political? We know enough about the science to know what we need to do. We've known the basics of the science for a very long time indeed.

This is the 201st episode of the Infinite Monkey Cage. It happens to be 201 years since the famous French mathematician Joseph Fourier first suggested the atmosphere must behave as if it was a greenhouse. And that's why we say greenhouse gas. Yeah. Oh wow. He wanted to know what is the temperature of the planet. And he did some calculations. You know, he knew roughly how much energy was coming from the sun and how much got reflected to try and estimate the planet's temperature. And he realized that if he did that, the planet should be a ball of ice

because he had neglected the fact that the atmosphere absorbs infrared radiation emitted from the surface and that is absorbed by the greenhouse gases that the atmosphere absorbs infrared radiation emitted from the surface and that is absorbed by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as a blanket. He didn't know what it was in the atmosphere that was doing that, but he recognised that it must be like that. And it wasn't until later that we understood that carbon dioxide was the main gas that was doing that, but yes, we've known that basics for 201 years. Can it be reversed by individuals changing their behavior or is it about industrial response or is it all of those things? It's all of those things you know we need to take

individual action we need companies and industry to take actions as well and we need governments to set the direction to ensure that we're going in the right direction to enable people to make the right choices because often it's very difficult for people to make the right choices because the infrastructure is not in place to do it. Can it be reversed or are we aiming at stopping it? So the target we hear about is net zero, right? Where we are achieving a balance between the emissions that we produce and what we can

manage to draw down from the atmosphere. But that's probably not the end of the journey, right? If we have the technology that we allows us to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, then in theory we might be to go net negative and actually draw down more than we emit and store that excess underground and so potentially cool the planet again if we go too far. But that relies on a lot of technology we don't yet have. Ed, thank you very much. Amazing.

Thank you. Wow. Really? Yeah, really good question. That was an interesting spiral downwards, wasn't it? It started off, isn't the Jubilee line great? Oh, I wonder how sad my dog is when things die. Oh well the world's coming to an end. I thought that the ultimate message was optimistic and that the message was that

we know what to do and we can do it if we take collective action. I know but we've been saying that for years Brian. Yeah let's have the upbeat audience jokes they've written. You better have worked well now. They're relying on you. I will say, my turd has returned back to home base. That's the level of optimism I'm operating on. You could eat your dinner off my underpants right now. Whoever does the best joke, that's your prize tonight,

my friends. So we asked the audience a question and the question was, what is the most useful thing you've learned from the Monkey Cage over the previous 200 episodes? What have you got, Brian? No spoilers, please. I'm only up to podcast episode August 2022. There is a big twist in January 2023 you are not expecting. There's an endless supply of things can only get better jokes and puns to torment Brian with.

And that is true, Natasha, that is true. Right, the answer to what is the most useful thing you've learnt is the name of an 11-sided shape. What was that, Brian? I don't remember. Does anyone in here know what the name of an 11 sided shape we had one down there from someone as well congratulations you're gonna be eating a fine meal with Bon Appetit I've got one

here from Barthi that says I've learned that Brian Cox is the same age as me in astronomical terms, but light years apart in intelligence. And I'll say this to Bharathi, you have the small and precise handwriting of someone who has killed and will again. I've got one here from Dave Bulbrook who says, interesting, yes, but Professor Brian Cox's moisturising regime remains a secret to science. Isn't there anything about any of the science we've covered over 16 years? I've got to say, Brian, I'm obsessed with your skin. Wow, you know that serial killer thing you were saying?

This is a sensible... Look at this. Peter has saved the day. Knowledge is valuable even when it is not useful. Oh, nice! APPLAUSE That's all we have time for, so thanks to our panel, Deborah Meaden, Mel Gedroych and Nish Kumar, and of course our three wonderful scientists who were...

Nish Kumar. Liz Paul, Ed Hawkins, and Isabel Komen. Thank you. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Now, next week, we'll be discussing whether we should all just move to Mars. Or, to be more specific, we ask the question, should we settle in space? So, that's going to be very exciting. We're going to be talking about canal holidays in Mars. We're going to be more specific we asked the question should we settle in space so that's gonna be very exciting we're going to talk about canal holidays

in Mars we're gonna be seeing some of the sites the different faces that you can visit on Mars and hopefully finding the archaeological kind of remains of the people who came down to earth to build the pyramids he's learned nothing it's very important I learned nothing it's what keeps the show fresh thank you so much to everyone We'll be back for episode 202. Bye bye. and things like blush, lie or laugh. Things we do every day that don't always make a whole lot of sense. You're 30, three zero times more likely to laugh

if there's somebody else with you than if you're on your own. I'm a paleoanthropologist and with some expert guests, I'll be revealing why we've evolved to do the things we do, like hanging out with dogs and gossiping. Nothing is a better bonder of a group of people than one collective enemy. From BBC Radio 4, the new series of Why Do We Do That with me, Ella Alshamahi, available now on BBC Sounds.

First, they told the story of the moon landing. 60 seconds. We choose to go to the moon. 30 feet down, two and a half. I thought, wow, what have I gotten myself into? Then came the dramatic rescue of the Apollo 13 mission. OK Houston, we've had a problem here. I literally got on my knees and prayed.

Now from the BBC World Service, 13 Minutes presents The Space Shuttle, the inside story of a dream to revolutionize spaceflight. We had so much writing on something we'd never done before. Unlike anything that had ever flown in space. This is the Space Shuttle. Roger all.

We're just hooting and hollering and screaming and yelling for the sheer joy of what you were taking in. Thirteen Minutes presents the Space Shuttle. Coming soon.