4.8 • 985 Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2023
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Welcome to Part 1 of CrowdScience’s year-end extravaganza! It’s an extra-festive episode this week. For those who celebrate it, Christmas is the perfect time to pause and look back at the year just gone. Here on CrowdScience we’ve had a great 2023: we answered dozens of listener questions, ranging from climbing plants and ostriches to panic attacks and the weight of the internet.
This week presenter Anand Jagatia magically appears with a Santa’s sack full of special features. We’re catching up with some of our favourite guests from the past year and answering some of the extra questions that we never got the chance to cover.
First up we hear from presenter Tim Clare who we first heard in the episode “Why do some people have panic attacks?” He takes Anand through his new book – it's about board games: why we play them, how they’ve existed throughout history and what he’s learned about himself in the process of writing it.
Then it’s time for a bonus question. The CrowdScience team often get questions about noise pollution. One listener got in touch to ask whether the transition to electric vehicles will reduce this noise. Acoustic scientist Kurt Fristrup and epidemiologist Erica Walker give their perspectives on this question, and how sound and noise can sometimes be very different things. CrowdScience listener Marie - who originally starred in an episode about why she doesn’t have any sense of time - returns. Since the programme she has been speaking to psychologists about her problem and tells Anand what more she’s learnt.
We received another bonus question after a show in 2023 about AI: why can’t artificial intelligence be designed to explain it’s decisions? Producer Phil returns to data scientist Briana Brownell from the original episode to ask her why AI decision making is so very complex.
Finally, as it’s the season for holiday music, we’re asking what makes the genre so distinctive? Composer Jane Watkins - who originally created the sound of a panic attack for a CrowdScience episode - brings in her musical keyboard to demonstrate what makes a Christmas song so specifically ‘a Christmas song’.
It’s all topped-off with the premiere of a happy and heart-warming song performed by the CrowdScience Christmas Choir – a little gift for our loyal listeners.
Presenter: Anand Jagatia Producer: Phil Sansom Editor: Richard Collings Production Co-ordinator: Jonathan Harris Studio Managers: Tim Heffer and Cath McGhee
Featuring:
Tim Clare, author/poet/podcaster Dr. Kurt Fristrup, acoustic scientist, Colorado State University Prof. Erica Walker, RGSS Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, Brown University School of Public Health Marie Bergholtz Briana Brownell, data scientist Jane Watkins, composer
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
0:25.5 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
0:31.9 | Hello and welcome to a festive edition of Crowd Science. I'm Anan Chagatia and this is part |
0:36.9 | one of a very special end-of-year extravaganza. Now for those of you who celebrate it it's coming up to Christmas which means |
0:44.8 | that here in the UK it's time for looking back on the year and raising a glass |
0:48.6 | to all of the things that we've done and here on crowd science we've done quite a |
0:52.4 | lot we've answered over 40 of your different science questions on everything |
0:56.2 | from panic attacks and climbing plants to ostriches and even the weight of the internet. |
1:02.0 | And it's all thanks to you and your brilliant thought-provoking questions. |
1:05.3 | So to celebrate all of that today we're going to be bringing you a whole load of special features |
1:10.0 | catching up with some of our favorite guests from the past year |
1:12.8 | and answering some extra questions that we never got the chance to cover the first time. |
1:16.8 | And if you stay tuned you will hear the very first crowd science Christmas carol. Science Christmas Carol. So we're here in the studio and with me is producer Phil, hi Phil. |
1:30.0 | Hi Phil. Hi Annand, good to be here. |
1:35.5 | How are you doing? I'm good. I'm feeling pretty festive. Are you? Yeah, I actually don't have a Christmas |
1:41.9 | jumper. I used to have one that had two stockings that were sort of attached to it. |
1:46.9 | That were physical stockings like little ones that you could put things in. Yeah, and I used to put little smarties in Which are an English sweet and I got rid of that jumper for |
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