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BBC World Service


We take your questions about life, Earth and the universe to researchers hunting for answers at the frontiers of knowledge.


CrowdScience

Some fish can deliver electric shocks that are four times more powerful than the electricity in your plug sockets at home. Crowdscience listener Mouhammed in Cameroon was stunned by this, so he charged us with finding out how they do it. 

Presenter Caroline Steel heads to Bayreuth in Germany to meet some eels who have this amazing ability. Dr Stefan Schuster and Susanne Proschke introduce us to their collection of electric fish, and help us conduct some experiments to work out how the fish are wired. We’ll be diving into electric fishes' anatomy, learning how a specialised organ allows them to generate massive voltages of electricity. 

Harold Zakon from the University of Texas will help us understand their evolutionary history, while Brazilian ecologist Nonato Junior takes us on a journey into the currents of the Amazon River where electric eels live. 

And we’ll answer a question that has boggled philosophers, thinkers, and scientists for over 2000 years. If these fish can stun a human, a crocodile or even a horse, how do they survive the electric shocks themselves? 

(Photo: Blue lightning bolt streaks. Credit: Ludmila Snimshikova/Getty Images. Electric Eel, Venezuela. Credit: Reinhard Dirscherl/Getty Images)

Presenter: Caroline Steel 
Producer: Robbie Wojciechowski 
Editor: Ben Motley

How do electric fish make electricity?

CrowdScience listener Matt wants to know why he's warm blooded. He started thinking about this when he was watching some ants during the recent heatwave in Europe and wondered why their blood didn't boil. What are the pros and cons of being warm-blooded like us or cold-blooded reptiles like lizards? 

Caroline Steel meets evolutionary biologist Dr Manuel Leal from the University of Missouri in the US, who explains the differences between ectotherms (cold-blooded animals) and endotherms (warm-blooded animals). She discovers that the terms cold blooded and warm blooded are actually misleading, because reptiles can reach a high body temperature and some might even become warmer than us. 

She talks to Simon Hodder, Professor of Environmental Ergonomics at Loughborough University in the UK, who describes how our bodies regulate heat, how we cool down when we get too warm and how that's all controlled by our brains. 

Caroline also gets to meet some hedgehogs in the wild with Julia Nowack, an ecophysiologist from Liverpool John Moores University, who researches thermoregulation and is monitoring hedgehogs when they hibernate. Changing body temperature is one of the ways that some endotherms survive the winter when it's colder and there's less food around. 

So who has the advantage? The warm-blooded endotherms who can heat their own bodies or the cold-blooded ectotherms who rely on the sun? Reptiles can get away with eating very occasionally while mammals and birds have to keep fuelling their energy with food to keep the heat going. That means we can live in most climates and have a better chance of escaping predators, but is it really best? 

Presenter: Caroline Steel 

Producer: Jo Glanville 

Editor: Ben Motley 

(Photo: European hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus) adult animal in a snow covered garden in winter, England, United Kingdom - stock photo Credit: imageBROKER/Kevin Sawford via Getty Images)

Why am I warm blooded?

Why is it hard to concentrate, and why does it feel like such hard work? The CrowdScience inbox is full of questions like that, so for this show we’re concentrating on concentration and focusing on how we focus. 

We’ll be answering questions about the extra energy the brain uses when we’re concentrating, whether mental effort can tire you out more than physical effort, why we zone out when faced with a difficult task and how the ability to multitask is governed by our overall cognitive load. 

To find the answers, presenter Alex Lathbridge is paying attention to a team of experts. Psychology professor Sophie Leroy from the University of Washington in the USA studies the impact of being interrupted on our ability to perform, cognitive neuroscientist Professor Salvador Soto-Faraco from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain researches how sight, sound and touch are blended together by the brain, and psychology professor Polly Dalton runs the Attention Lab at Royal Holloway University in London, UK. 

We’ll be trying to distract them with gossip about what we had for lunch, finding out why the brain is like a bike and, most importantly, discovering how you can concentrate better on shows exactly like this one. 

Presenter: Alex Lathbridge 

Producer: Tom Bonnett 

Editor: Ben Motley

(Photo: Woman with glasses thinking and pointing upward- stock photo - Credit: ismagilov via Getty Images)

Why can't I concentrate?

Tuberculosis kills more than a million people every year. It’s the world’s leading cause of death from a single infectious agent. This is despite the fact that we've had a cure for TB since the 1940s and a vaccine that’s over 100 years old. So why is TB still causing so many people to die? 

That’s what CrowdScience listener John in Tanzania wants to know, and presenter Marnie Chesterton is on the case. Over in Paris, she’s joined by Dr Claas Kirchhelle, historian of science, medicine and technology at French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) to look into the history and efficacy of the vaccine, known as BCG. 

As Dr Maximiliano Gutierrez, Associate Research Director at the Francis Crick Institute adds, the BCG is both effective and ineffective, protecting children well against severe TB, but offering inconsistent and often poor protection in adults. He also explains that antibiotics are a trickier treatment than we might expect. Over in Kenya’s Kibera slums, Janet tells us her about her experience of the drugs first hand. 

Dr Dany Beste, Senior Lecturer In Microbial Metabolism, University of Surrey, has been described as a dietician of mycobacterium tuberculosis. She explains the limitations of our knowledge of this bacterium, and why it is proving such a tricky customer. 

And since a better vaccine is the main hope for reducing the TB burden, Professor Angelique Luabeya Kany Kany, Chief Research Officer at University of Cape Town, shares her hopes for the first new alternative vaccine in 100 years: m72. Large phase 3 clinical trials are currently underway, and, if successful, could prevent millions of cases, and deaths a year. 

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton

Producer: Marnie Chesterton

Editor: Ben Motley 

(Photo: Doctor with vial of the doses vaccine for BCG Bacillus Calmette Guerin against tuberculosis disease. Medicine and health care concept - stock photo - Credit: angelp via Getty Images)

Why is TB still killing people?

Stare up at the night sky, and if you’re lucky, you might see a shooting star. Some people might make a wish, but CrowdScience listener Scott in California in the USA, thinks differently. He’s wondering how dangerous they might be. 

Shooting stars are actually meteors, ending their incredible journey whizzing through the depths of space by burning through our atmosphere, and crashing down to earth. And Scott’s not wrong to worry about them! In May 2026, an enormous meteor exploded off the coast of Massachusetts, causing a loud sonic boom before crashing into the ocean, releasing the equivalent energy of 300 tons of TNT! 

So, should we be worried? Marnie Chesterton is on the case. 

In Australia, Hadrien Devillepoix is the chief scientist for the Desert Fireball Network, which tracks meteors through the sky, and tries to recover any meteorites which make it to earth. He explains just how many of these smaller space rocks arrive on our planet every day, how many of them survive long enough to make it to the surface, and tries to figure out how much should we be worried about it happening to us. 

Over in the USA, NASA are less worried about the meteors, and more concerned about their big brothers – asteroids. These are the ones which could take out your whole neighbourhood. Or your whole city. Or even the whole planet. Kelly Fast, with NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office explains what the chances are one might be headed our way, and what we could do about it if they are. Push them away, pull them off course, or blow them up, are the options on the table. 

But space rocks, small OR large, aren’t the only things which could be tumbling down on our heads from outside our atmosphere. In fact, you might be more likely to be hit but something of our own – a man-made piece of space junk, falling out of orbit and whizzing towards the surface. Stephen Wokes, chief engineer at Astroscale, explains their mission: to use their innovative satellite to clean up Low Earth Orbit, and reduce the risk to us here on the ground. 

PRESENTER: Marnie Chesterton 

PRODUCER: Emily Knight 

PRODUCTION COORDINATOR: Stuart Laws 

EDITOR: Ben Motley 

(photo: Meteor Impact On Earth - Fired Asteroid In Collision With Planet - Contain 3d Rendering - elements of this image furnished by NASA - stock photo- Credit: RomoloTavani via Getty Images)

Will I get hit by a meteor?

We’re delving into the CrowdScience archive to give you another chance to hear an award-winning show from 2025. 

CrowdScience listener Dorit has a problem. She wants the tiles in her new bathroom to be arranged randomly but, no matter what she does, it still looks like they form some kind of pattern. 

This has got Dorit thinking about randomness – what is it, how do you create it, why do we find it so hard to recognise, and is anything really random at all? And if nothing is truly random, does it mean that everything is theoretically predictable? Tiling your bathroom is a much more existential problem than you might have thought. 

Never afraid of a question, whether big (is everything pre-determined?) or small (how do I tile my bathroom?), CrowdScience is on the case. 

Anand Jagatia heads to Switzerland to meet Hugo Duminil-Copin, a mathematician at the University of Geneva who specialises in probability theory. On the top floor of an old bank, Hugo has Anand flipping an imaginary coin in a random order. Hugo explains that randomness is something that cannot be predicted by any means – so why is it so easy for Hugo to guess what Anand’s next move is? 

Meanwhile, at the National Institutes of Mental Health in Maryland USA, Susan Wardle is a cognitive neuroscientist who researches how the human brain processes visual information. Can neuroscience help Dorit with her tiling problem, and is there a reason why the human brain likes to put random objects into some kind of order? 

Geneva is also the birthplace of the first Quantum Random Number Generator for smartphones, and CrowdScience has persuaded some of the University of Geneva’s finest quantum physicists to hook a photon detector up to a synthesiser. Thanks to Tiff Brydges and Nicolas Brunner, we can actually hear quantum particles behaving randomly. But is quantum randomness truly random, or just a pattern that we can’t see? And could quantum physics help Dorit tile her bathroom? 

Presenter: Anand Jagatia 

Producer: Ben Motley 

Editor: Cathy Edwards

(Photo: Many wooden dice - stock photo- Credit: akiyoko via Getty Images)

Is anything truly random?

Space missions are searching for evidence of extra-terrestrial life. CrowdScience listener George in Kenya wants to know what could be up there, and if there’s a risk it could harm humanity. 

With rovers currently analysing samples on Mars, missions searching for the building blocks of life on Jupiter’s icy moons, George’s concern that there could be diseases in space is timely. Presenter Anand Jagatia sets out to try and find an answer while keeping his feet on the Earth. 

He meets astrobiologist Dr Michaela Musilova, who runs experiments to try and understand what kinds of microbes could survive on other planets. In her work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, she recreates Mars-like environments that test lifeforms’ resilience to the rigours of the Red Planet. 

And if there are harmful pathogens in space, how do we make sure these missions don't bring them back to Earth? Anand talks to ‘planetary protection officer’ Silvio Sinibaldi from the European Space Agency, who explains what experts are doing to protect us. He helps Anand get suited and booted in specialist clothing so they can enter a highly sterile environment called a ‘clean room’, where things being sent to space are built. 

He also meets Paul Meacham, former chief engineer on the Rosalind Franklin Rover. The rover is being sent to Mars to try to determine whether life ever existed there, and even whether it still does. 

Paul shows us around the Airbus Defence and Space site where his team built the rover and explains high-tech measures to avoid contamination. 

And what would a programme on space be without an astronaut? Anand meets Kate Rubins, who spent 300 days on the International Space Station. While she was there, she ran experiments investigating what happens to microbes in space. It turns out that microbes affect humans differently in orbit to how they affect us on Earth. 

 Presenter: Anand Jagatia 

Producer: Tom Bonnett 

Editor: Ben Motley

(Photo : 3D render of the Coronavirus Covid-19 floating in the air with astronaut wearing space suit. - stock photo- Credit: Artur Debat via Getty Images)

Are there diseases in space?

CrowdScience listener Liana from Canada got in touch to ask about some very specific rocks she’d seen on an island in Indonesia – jagged, rugged and a very strange shape: hexagonal. They were in long columns, and clicked together like a jigsaw. But what are they, and how did they get there? 

Across the world in the UK, CrowdScience listener Sarah emailed us to ask about the famous rocks of the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. What makes them so uniformly hexagonal? 

Presenter Alex Lathbridge investigates, visiting the Giant’s Causeway to speak to geologist Dr Kirstin Lemon from the Geological Survey of Northern Ireland. She explains how this amazing landscape formed, and why the mythical rocks look the way they do today. 

We also hear from Dr Alfend Rudyawan from Institut Teknologi Bandung in Indonesia about Liana’s intriguing rocks. Are these distant locations more closely related than you might think? 

And we look to nature – because angular, uniform hexagons crop up surprisingly often. Professor Jean-Marc Schlenker from the University of Luxembourg explains why hexagons are much better than other shapes. 

Presenter: Alex Lathbridge 

Producer: Hannah Fisher 

Editor: Ben Motley

(photo: Giant`s Causeway in Northern Ireland Stock photo- Credit: MANUEL FIL ORDIERES GARCIA via Getty Images)

What are these strange rocks?

Many plants need pollen from another plant of the same species in order to reproduce, but they don’t have legs so they can’t simply walk around looking for a mate. 

As a result, many of them rely on animals to transfer pollen from one plant to another. They’ve developed a hugely diverse range of techniques to attract them, including their appearance, taste and smell. CrowdScience listener Alice in the UK wants to know how they have evolved to do this. 

To try and answer the question, presenter Anand Jagatia goes trekking up a mountain in the Philippines, battling mud and leeches in the hunt for an incredibly rare flower. Rafflesia has evolved to look and smell like rotting meat in order to attract flies, so it’s the perfect example of a plant that goes to fascinating extremes to make sure it gets pollinated. 

It only blooms for a few days each year, so to find it Anand is going to need the help of scientists at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and Lewis Barrett, Senior Botanical Propagator at the University of Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum. 

Anand also visits the University of the Philippines Laguna Quezon Land Grant, a huge site containing more than 5,500 hectares of protected forest land. Professor Pastor Malabrigo Jr shows him a fig tree that has a fascinatingly gruesome relationship with its pollinator wasps. 

So how did these amazingly diverse plants end up needing insect pollinators in the first place? Dr Kyra Krakos is a professor of biology at Maryville University and a research associate at the Missouri Botanical Garden in the United States. She explains to Anand that plants are surprisingly sexy – but how did they end up needing insects to survive? 

Back in the Philippines, Anand’s guides have never actually seen the Rafflesia flower themselves, despite many attempts. So could this be the time they finally get lucky? 

Presenter: Anand Jagatia 

Producer: Dan Welsh 

Editor: Ben Motley 

With special thanks to Dr Chris Thorogood, Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Oxford and founder of the Community for the Conservation & Research of Rafflesia

(photo: Edited high angle view of Rafflesia on green gradient - Stock photo- Credit: Mohamed Tazi Cherti / 500px via Getty Images)

How did plants evolve to attract insects?

“What separates humans from animals, is an interest in the past”. That’s a 900-year-old quote from a textbook that Nigerian listener Taiwo came across, and he wrote to CrowdScience to ask if modern science would agree. 

Most of us spend time thinking about the past, whether it is nostalgia for a bygone age or just wondering where we put the house keys yesterday. But is that just a human activity or do other animals also ruminate on their history and use it to make decisions? Taiwo wants to know if there is any evidence to show that animals have an interest in the past and if it matters to them. 

Presenter Caroline Steel has a history of answering questions like this, so she sets out to find an answer. She meets researchers who have found evidence that animals not only remember past events, but use their memory for planning. 

She talks to neuroscientist Dr Freyja Olafsdottir and discovers that some animals, including rats and mice, have the same brain structure for memory as humans. 

She meets baby magpies in Professor Nicola Clayton’s laboratory in the UK and finds out about some of the very smart tactics jays use to hide their food from rivals, evidence that they’re using their memory to protect their interests. 

She talks to psychologist Dr Gema Martin-Ordas whose research has shown that chimpanzees not only remember past events, but use what they’ve learnt in the future. 

And she tests the memory of her own cat Oli, wondering if his ability to remember dinner time suggests that he is interested in the past too. 

Ultimately it comes down to questions of consciousness, so as Caroline grapples with the idea that we can’t even be certain that other humans are genuinely conscious, what hope do we have of finding an answer for Taiwo? 

Presenter: Caroline Steel 

Producer: Jo Glanville 

Editor: Ben Motley

(Photo: Cute clever cat with glasses reading a book. The cat lies on a stack of old books on a blue background. Credit:vvvita/Getty Images)

Do animals care about the past?

CrowdScience listener Rachel uses Bluetooth headphones on her cycle to work, seamlessly playing music from her phone without using wires. But how does this technology send information through the air? 

To find out, Rachel and presenter Caroline Steel travel to Cambridge in the UK to meet telecommunications expert William Webb. He explains what Bluetooth signals actually are – and demonstrates why their properties are linked to the invention of leaky microwave ovens. 

Caroline speaks to Jaap Haartsen, the inventor of Bluetooth, who reveals the hidden meaning of its logo, and what the name has to do with an ancient Viking king. 

And she learns how a new flavour of “low energy” Bluetooth is having an unexpected application: helping ecologists like Damien Farine understand animal behaviour. Which leads her to an old tobacco barn in Switzerland, to meet researcher Bettina Almasi and her team – along with some very cute baby barn owls. 

 Presenter: Caroline Steel 

Producer: Anand Jagatia 

Editors: Ben Motley & Ilan Goodman

(Photo:Composite photo collage of hands hold phone device internet antenna connection technology bluetooth - stock photo- Credit: Deagreez via Getty Images)

How does Bluetooth work?

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