Fixing the Future
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We face many global problems, such as drought, flooding and climate change. All of these issues are rooted in science. It'll take politics and people and business to fix them, or for us to manage them, but none of that can happen without a solid scientific base.
In front of an audience at the Hay Festival, Adam Rutherford is joined by Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College London, Marcus du Sautoy, the Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, and science journalist, Gaia Vince, to discuss what the future holds for humanity and the planet, what we can know, what we can predict, and what is to come.
Adam Rutherford talks to Gaia Vince about the new age of man, the Anthropocene, and the impact it is having on peoples' lives, to Marcus du Sautoy about chaotic systems and when maths can and cannot predict the future, and to Steve Jones about forecasting human population growth and how we are still evolving.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to a program from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:05.0 | Hello, this week Inside Science is at the Hay Festival where we're devoting the whole program to the question of if and how science |
| 0:14.7 | can help fix the future. Now this all sounds a little bit doom laden but I want to |
| 0:19.6 | add a really optimistic note about what we can do in the future because we face many global |
| 0:25.4 | problems from outbreaks of disease, epidemics and obesity in the West, famine elsewhere, |
| 0:31.0 | drought and flooding, and of course all of this is underwritten by climate change. |
| 0:34.7 | Now all of these issues are rooted in science and it will take politics and people and |
| 0:39.8 | business to fix them or for us to manage them, but none of that can happen without a solid scientific |
| 0:45.4 | base. |
| 0:46.4 | So I'm joined by a geneticist, a mathematician, and a science journalist to discuss what the future |
| 0:51.2 | holds for humanity and the planets, what we can know, what we can |
| 0:54.3 | predict what is to come. |
| 0:55.9 | My guests are. |
| 0:57.7 | Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College London, author of many books, including |
| 1:02.1 | his latest, |
| 1:03.2 | No Need for Geniuses, Revolutionary Science |
| 1:05.2 | in the Age of the Guillotine, which |
| 1:07.0 | is on the scientists and intellectuals and radicals |
| 1:09.5 | that helped shape the future during the French Revolution. |
| 1:13.0 | Marcus de Sotoy is the Simone Professor of the Public Understanding of Science |
| 1:16.4 | at the University of Oxford, and his latest book is called |
| 1:18.9 | What We Cannot Know. |
... |
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