logo
episode-header-image
Jul 2024
28m 2s

Are implanted brain chips the future?

Bbc Radio 4
About this episode

Elon Musk’s implanted brain chip, Neuralink, is coming to the UK for clinical trials. Is controlling computers with our minds a future reality or is it all hype? Neuroscientists Dean Burnett and Christina Maher weigh in.

Zoologist Jules Howard ponders the strange effects drugs in our sewage have on frogs from his garden pond.

How do we measure the distance to distant galaxies? Astrophysicist Edward Gomez answers a listener's burning question.

And a 101 on blood groups from Dr Lise Estcourt.

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producers: Ella Hubber, Gerry Holt, Sophie Ormiston Editor: Martin Smith Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth BBC Inside Science is produced in collaboration with the Open University.

Up next
Jul 3
Can science save our oceans?
More than 2,000 marine scientists have come together at the One Ocean Science Congress in Nice, France. It is a gathering that will bring marine experts from all over the world together to share the latest discoveries about the health of our seas and oceans. It is an issue at the ... Show More
28m 11s
Jun 26
Your science questions answered
We’ve been rummaging through the Inside Science mailbox to pick out a selection of the intriguing science questions you’ve been sending in, and assembled an expert panel to try to answer them. Marnie Chesterton is joined by Penny Sarchet, managing editor of New Scientist, Mark Ma ... Show More
28m 7s
Jun 19
Does the pandemic agreement make the world safer?
The World Health Organisation has agreed a treaty looking at tackling the issue of future pandemics. It’s hoped it will help to avoid some of the disorganisation and competition for resources like vaccines and personal protective equipment that were seen during the Covid-19 outbr ... Show More
27m 59s
Recommended Episodes
Apr 24
Consciousness, Reasoning and the Philosophy of AI with Murray Shanahan
In this episode, Hannah is once again joined by Murray Shanahan, Professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London and Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind, for a philosophical deep dive on AI. They explore everything from consciousness and metacognition in animals, to ... Show More
40m 30s
Feb 2025
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
Is nuclear power the key to sustainability? With data centers consuming massive amounts of energy, can we keep up? Neil deGrasse Tyson, Gary O’Reilly & Paul Mecurio discuss the physics, safety, and future of nuclear reactors in a world of increasing power demands with nuclear eng ... Show More
51m 59s
Mar 2023
Is time an illusion?
Without a sense of time, leading us from cradle to grave, our lives would make little sense. But on the most fundamental level, physicists aren't sure whether the sort of time we experience exists at all. We talk to three experts and find out if time could potentially be moving b ... Show More
42m 36s
Feb 2025
523. Why We Dream, Learn, and Adapt Faster Than Any Other Species | Dr. David Eagleman
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with neuroscientist, bestselling author, and PBS presenter Dr. David Eagleman. They discuss brain plasticity, how perception works, whether free will exists (and if it’s superordinate), how willingness to engage with higher entropy indicates sophi ... Show More
1h 30m
May 21
Do Mitochondria Talk to Each Other? A New Look at the Cell’s Powerhouse
Mitochondria are known as the powerhouse of the cell—but new research suggests they might be far more complex. Columbia University’s Martin Picard joins Scientific American’s Rachel Feltman to explore how these tiny organelles could be communicating and what that might mean for e ... Show More
27m 4s
Apr 18
From the Internet’s Beginnings to Our Understanding of Consciousness, This Editor Has Seen It All
Senior mind and brain editor Gary Stix has covered the breadth of science and technology over the past 35 years at Scientific American. He joins host Rachel Feltman to take us through the rise of the Internet and the acceleration of advancement in neuroscience that he’s covered t ... Show More
20m 15s
Dec 2024
Adam Brown – How Future Civilizations Could Change The Laws of Physics
Adam Brown is a founder and lead of BlueShift with is cracking maths and reasoning at Google DeepMind and a theoretical physicist at Stanford.We discuss: destroying the light cone with vacuum decay, holographic principle, mining black holes, & what it would take to train LLMs tha ... Show More
2h 43m
Jan 2025
Our World of Particles with Brian Cox
How much more physics is out there to be discovered? Neil deGrasse Tyson sits down with physicist, professor, and rockstar Brian Cox, to discuss everything from the Higgs boson, life beyond our planet, and the fundamental forces that guide our universe.NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can ... Show More
1h 12m
May 2024
Chip in the Brain? How Brain-Computer Interfaces Could Change Medicine
A day when people can interact directly with computers using their thoughts could be on the horizon. Several companies, including Elon Musk’s Neuralink, have begun preliminary human trials of brain-computer interfaces - devices that decode the electrical signals in their brain an ... Show More
20m 47s
Feb 2025
Exploring the Hidden Life in the Air around Us with Carl Zimmer
Scientists now agree that COVID spreads via airborne transmission. But during the early days of the disease, public health officials suggested that it mainly did so via close contact. The subsequent back-and-forth over how COVID spread brought science journalist Carl Zimmer into ... Show More
16m 47s