Popular Science
The Infinite Monkey Cage
BBC
4.7 • 9.4K Ratings
🗓️ 14 June 2010
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Physicist Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince return for a new series of Radio 4's witty, irreverent and unashamedly rational look at the world according to science. In a special programme recorded as part of this year's Cheltenham Science Festival, Brian and Robin are joined by special guests Ben Miller and Robert Winston to explore the choppy waters of science and fame. Are we are entering a golden age of science popularity? Is there a genuine interest in the wonder of science and is science the real star or is it simply being dumbed down as a result of our celebrity obsessed culture? They'll be asking whether science needs to be popular and whether this new wave of enthusiasm has any real impact on science policy, or the quality of science being done in this country. Has science finally found the S Factor? Producer: Alexandra Feachem.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading this program from BBC Radio 4. For more information visit |
| 0:06.2 | bbc.co.uk slash radio 4. |
| 0:10.2 | Hello and welcome to a new series of the Infinite Monkey Cage. I'm Robin Inc and I'm Brian |
| 0:15.5 | Cox and for the first time we've been released from our cage of Infinite Proportions and |
| 0:19.8 | let loose on an unsuspective audience. I mean it says unsuspective audience. Obviously |
| 0:23.6 | you knew you were coming here, you had tickets. So that's line number one. So we've been |
| 0:29.5 | released from the cage but what truly is Infinity? Professor Brian Cox OBE? |
| 0:34.2 | Well, Infinity, Robin, is a complex subject in quantum field theory then it generally |
| 0:44.4 | means that we're ignorant of some part of the theory and the description of nature |
| 0:48.5 | is not complete and so I would say that Infinity's parameterised our ignorance and so |
| 0:52.8 | if we did shrink the Infinite Monkey Cage into something that was not infinite then |
| 0:56.3 | I would say we were probably be less ignorant. That still hasn't really answered the question |
| 1:01.5 | because the main thing because people still don't know what the show title actually means |
| 1:04.5 | but the case is if it is an infinite cage then can it be a cage because if it's infinite |
| 1:09.1 | does that mean it's a cage. If it's actually an infinite number of monkeys in a small cage |
| 1:12.5 | is that against BBC Health and safety regulations? It's just a really large monkey. Ben Miller |
| 1:19.2 | with quite a spatter. Ben, you know why does it have to be an infinite number of monkeys |
| 1:22.9 | going to be just like a really massive monkey with a quite small cage. But if the cage |
| 1:27.4 | were infinite then no matter how big the monkey was as long as it were finite there would |
| 1:31.0 | still be an infinite amount of space in it. Who says the monkey's in the cage might just |
| 1:34.2 | be the monkey's cage? Could it be outside anything? Get out of the box, Brian. Wow. |
| 1:41.0 | I'm sorry Ben. Before we get out of the box could we at least parameterise that box? |
... |
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