The Infinite Monkey Cage - Brian and Robin introduce the new series

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Brian Cox and Robin Ince look ahead to the topics and guests you can enjoy in Series 32 of The Infinite Monkey Cage.Listen first on BBC Sounds from Wednesday 19 February, 2025.

BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox and we would like to tell you about the new series of The Infinite Monkey Coach. We're the show that tackles scientific quandaries using the sharpest minds on the planet. And also Robin, which is part of our charm. Yeah, well I mean that's the point is you're not going to feel the benefit of sharp sharp minds if you haven't got a slightly blunter mind in there and that is how I help you sound

much wiser than you really are. I'll go with that one. In this series we're going to have a planet off. Yeah, this is very very exciting now. Some of you might have heard in the past we've done shows like Bats vs Flies, Bees vs Wasps, versus dogs. But now we decided it was time to go cosmic, so we are going to do Jupiter versus Saturn! Well that's very well done that, because in the script it does say in square brackets wrestling voice question mark. Yeah I hoped it was a wrestling voice of an introduction, not the voice of someone being

wrestled, but we can try both of those things and go and do this latter Safe word with guests Katherine Parkinson Michelle D'Arty and Paul Abel you were very much for Jupiter weren't you? Which is bigger? That's all it was it was about size. Yeah, but doesn't have't have any rings, does it? No, but it does, yeah. Does it? Yeah. Faint ones. Oh no, I might make a lot of a decision.

Did you not listen? No, do you know what? A lot of the time when those scientists are talking I'm in my own little world. And once we touch back down on this planet we're going to go deep. Really deep. Yes, we're journeying to the centre of the Earth with guests Phil Wang, Chris Jackson and Anna Ferreira. And after all of that intense heat and pressure we're just going to kind of chill out a bit and talk about ice with Darren Harriot, Christoph Saltzman, Liz Morris and Felicity Aston.

On the panel we had the discoverer of three different kinds of ice, three new, unknown to science until he discovered them, forms of ice. Three new, unknown to science until he discovered them, forms of ice. Ice 13 I think was one of them. So now you can be, if you want to be a little bit like kind of hoity-toity, if someone says I can have ice with that, you go which ice do you want? Do you want ice one? Ice two? And then they all know that you are wiser than they are. Yeah, although most of them are at very high temperatures and high pressures so you wouldn't, you know. Most of them will damage the quality of the gin, it is true. And indeed the quality of your life very possibly.

Yeah, if you're at 10 million atmospheres and 30,000 degrees, the gin... Things go downhill pretty rapidly under those kind of atmospheres. And also in this series we're discussing altruism. I can't even say it. Never mind practice it. You hate altruism so much! What is this thing? Altruism, I can't even say it. Nevermind, practice it. You hate altruism so much. What is this thing? Altruism.

We're discussing it anyway. We'll find out what it is. Exploring the history of music, recording with Brian Eno, and looking at nature's shapes. I loved having Brian Eno there, because one of my favorite stories of Brian Eno was when the wonderful former drummer and singer-songwriter,

Robert Wyatt, talked about why he had to leave his flat in Chiswick. He said that Brian Eno kept coming round and the neighbours complained about the noise. And I thought what a beautiful thing that is to go, Brian Eno is making too much noise. But so much of his noise is so very, very quiet. It's ambient. It's too much, too much for the people of Chiswick. Too much ambience. And also nature's shapes as well because trying to get,

like you've got your head round, you have got your head round kind of like it's round yeah, it's more roughly. Definitely a song. You're a tube, I mean you're basically a tube. Yeah. At one end is the mouth. Yeah. So if that sounds like your kind of thing you can listen to the Infinite Monkey Cage first on BBC Sounds. And if you subscribe to the show and have notifications turned on in the app, BBC Sounds will kindly let you know when each new episode is available. So that's kind of altruism I suppose. So it is.

Kind of, yeah. Lens-a-fiver.