Oxygen: A Matter of Life and Death
The Infinite Monkey Cage
BBC
4.7 • 9.4K Ratings
🗓️ 17 July 2017
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Oxygen: a matter of life and death.
Brian Cox and Robin Ince are joined on stage by chemist Andrea Sella, science broadcaster and writer Gabrielle Walker and comedian Sara Pascoe to look at the life and death properties of oxygen. It's the molecule we simply can't live without, but as fate would have it, oxygen is also the molecule that eventually leads to our death. Hailed as an elixir of life, and foundation of the atmosphere, oxygen is the revolutionary element that quickens life and hastens death through its ferocious reactivity. It's the molecule our cells need, but is actually highly toxic to them, and is in the end what causes us to age. Brian and Robin get to grips with the chemistry of this contradictory molecule, and Andrea Sella tries not to cause too big an explosion by demonstrating oxygen's reactive nature using a digestive biscuit.
Producer: Alexandra Feachem.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:03.8 | Hello, I'm Robinins. |
| 0:04.8 | And I'm Braincox. |
| 0:05.8 | And in the moment, you're going to be hearing me saying, |
| 0:07.4 | Hello, I'm Robinins. |
| 0:08.4 | And I'm Braincox. |
| 0:09.4 | Because this is the longer version of the Infinite Monkey Cage. |
| 0:12.8 | This is the podcast version, which is normally somewhere between 12 and 17 minutes, |
| 0:17.8 | longer than that that is broadcast on Radio 4. |
| 0:20.6 | It's got all the bits that we couldn't fit in with Brian Overu explaining ideas of physics. |
| 0:25.2 | I do object to the use of the word longer, though, |
| 0:27.6 | because that's obviously a frame-specific statement. |
| 0:30.4 | Yeah, we haven't got time to deal with that, because even in the longer version, |
| 0:32.6 | we can't now have a longer intro. |
| 0:33.8 | Can we just let them listen? |
| 0:34.8 | I've got an idea. |
| 0:35.8 | Can we just have a podcast version of this intro to the podcast, |
| 0:38.6 | which can be longer than the intro to the podcast? |
| 0:40.6 | Yeah. |
| 0:41.2 | And then we can have a podcast version of the podcast intro to the podcast. |
| 0:43.2 | I'll have to start by now, but if you're still hearing this, |
| 0:45.4 | I don't know what's going on. |
... |
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