How inflation affects the entire cosmos

Unexpected Elements

BBC

Science

4.4 • 567 Ratings

🗓️ 28 September 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week on the show that brings you the science behind the news, there are lots of stories about inflation in economies across the world. When inflation happens your money doesn’t go as far, so what does psychology say about how much money you really need to make you happy?

We humans aren’t the only ones experiencing inflation either, trees are suffering from it too. We find out what happens when the balance of supply and demand of nutrients between trees and fungi is disrupted by climate change.

And then we take a look at the bigger picture - the much bigger picture - as cosmologist Ghazal Geshnizjani tells us about how the entire universe once existed in a space smaller than a marble.

Plus, are Romanian bear populations inflating? We probe a scientist about spider webs – why do they look the way they do? And we look at vaping – it’s illegal in some countries while smokers in other countries are encouraged to take it up.

All that plus your emails, WhatsApps and some unexpected elephants.

Presenter: Caroline Steel, with Godfred Boafo and Andrada Fiscutean.

Produced by Ben Motley, with Alex Mansfield, Sophie Ormiston and Margaret Sessa Hawkins.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh, hello. You have chosen a BBC podcast, but before you listen to it, we thought you might
0:04.7	like our podcast too. You might. You might. It is called Sightracked with me, Nick Grimshaw.
0:09.2	And me, Annie Mack. And we talk about the week in music. All the news, all the cultural
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0:38.5	bringing you extraordinary personal stories from around the globe.
0:42.8	Search for Lives Less Ordinary, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
0:52.4	I love cycling to work. I always arrive with a slight buzz, partly endorphins from the
0:57.7	exercise, partly adrenaline from dodging cars, but nonetheless, happy. Though recently I've been
1:03.6	noticing cycling has been getting harder. I'm becoming less fit as summer has ended. I'm spending
1:09.2	less time walking in the park with friends
1:11.2	and more time curled up on the sofa with a hot chocolate. In fact, every day I cycle into work
1:17.0	it gets more difficult. Depressing, but understandable. Or so I thought until last week when I
1:23.8	cycled past a reflective shop window and took a quick glance at myself,
1:27.9	only to realise my back tyre was as flat as a pancake.
1:31.9	It's probably been slowly deflating for weeks now,
1:34.6	and it didn't occur to me that the source of my panting might be down to a lack of air pressure,
1:39.0	rather than my rapidly declining seasonal fitness.
1:42.3	I'm Caroline Steele from the BBC World Service. This is unexpected elements.
	...

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