Bats v Flies
The Infinite Monkey Cage
BBC
4.7 • 9.4K Ratings
🗓️ 23 July 2022
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Brian Cox and Robin Ince kick off the new series by tackling one of the greatest questions ever posed by science: which are better, bats or flies?
Joining them for this unusual version of animal Top Trumps are a bat expert (Prof Kate Jones), a fly expert (Dr Erica McAlister) and Dave Gorman. Pitching arguably two of the least-lovable groups of creatures against each other, the battle for victory explores why we should favour flies or find bats beautiful. Although both are much maligned thanks to their association with some nasty diseases, Erica and Kate battle furiously to show why their respective species should be loved not loathed and how our planet would simply not be the same without them. Dave Gorman joins the panel in an attempt to help adjudicate.
Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts |
| 0:04.6 | Before you get stuck into this episode of the Infinite Monkey Cage podcast, use a little |
| 0:09.0 | reminder that if you're in the UK, the new series is available first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:13.9 | It's a doodle to download the BBC Sounds app and subscribe to the Infinite Monkey Cage. |
| 0:19.3 | Once you have, you'll get all those irreverent insights from the brightest scientific minds |
| 0:23.8 | 28 days before they're available anywhere else, which ironically is a bit of an o-brainer. |
| 0:29.7 | Now, over to Robin and Brian. |
| 0:31.8 | Welcome back to the Infinite Monkey Cage. I'm Robin Itz. |
| 0:33.9 | And I'm Brian Cox. We've been away for some time. |
| 0:36.6 | Or we've been away for no time. |
| 0:38.7 | Defending on your understanding of time. |
| 0:40.1 | Yeah, this is really, I suppose, because some physicists suggest that we may seem to |
| 0:44.2 | experience the passing of time, but that's just our delusion, which is why more of them |
| 0:48.4 | were being employed by past delivery companies. |
| 0:51.2 | Then again, physicists also tell us that we're holograms, that in fact we are merely projections, |
| 0:57.3 | two-dimensional images, which is insane. |
| 1:00.0 | It's nice to consequence of the thermodynamics of black holes. |
| 1:03.3 | Beckinstein showed that black holes have an entropy, which is proportional. |
| 1:07.7 | Okay, right. Anyway, so for the purposes of today, let's just presume that the passing of time |
| 1:13.1 | has occurred, so we're sorry we haven't been about, but now we are here as well. |
| 1:15.9 | And we've always been there in the Brock University, so don't worry about that. |
| 1:18.3 | It's fine. Today's show about Robin. |
... |
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