BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Today we'll start with one of the most beautiful introductions to a science lecture,

and it's from Michael Faraday's Chemical History of a candle.

He said,

there is not a law under which any part of the universe is governed,

which does not come into play,

and is touched upon in the chemistry of a candle.

There is no better, there is no more open door,

by which you can enter into the study of science

than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle.

Which is beautiful, but it's not right.

You have to spoil everything, don't you, with your evidence-based thinking.

There's always something, isn't there?

It's not his fault, he didn't know about nuclear forces.

So you need nuclear forces to understand their starshine, for example.

Just so you know, by the way, evidence-based thinking is very 20th century.

We're not doing that in the 21st century anymore.

Haven't you been looking around at the world?

LAUGHTER

In today's show, we'll be talking about fire.

What is it? How did we learn to harness it?

And why is it so hard to control?

...