Sharks, albatrosses, the Jaws theme and fishing
Unexpected Elements
BBC
4.4 • 566 Ratings
🗓️ 11 July 2025
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Shark Awareness Day on 14th July sends us on a deep dive into marine biology.
First, we learn how shark-inspired materials could help make aeroplane flights more efficient.
Next, we hear about the fish that don’t flee from sharks... instead, they seek them out to help them hunt.
Bob Duke, Meyerson Professor of Music and Human Learning at the University of Texas, Austin, joins us in the studio to reveal how and why the iconic Jaws music taps into our psychology to leave us trembling.
We also hear about a couple of tiny islands in the Southern Ocean, on which an unexpected predator is wreaking havoc.
Plus, why a tiny fish is being ground up and fed to other fish.
All that, plus many more Unexpected Elements. Presenter: Marnie Chesterton, with Leonie Joubert and Christine Yohannes Producer: Alice Lipscombe-Southwell, Imaan Moin, Minnie Harrop and Margaret Sessa Hawkins
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In 2019, we began investigating the disappearance of Dr. Ruzha Ignatva. |
| 0:08.0 | I believe we are a very special network. |
| 0:10.0 | A scammer who stole billions from investors around the world. |
| 0:15.0 | She's on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. |
| 0:18.0 | And now, we have some unmissable updates. She has money and when you have |
| 0:23.0 | money you have power. Join me, Jamie Bartlett, as the hunt for the missing crypto queen continues. |
| 0:29.5 | Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.2 | The BBC Audio Science Unit is based in Wales, a country with a confusing geology, |
| 0:42.7 | eventually mapped by a soldier, a priest and a schoolteacher, each with the determination to follow |
| 0:48.8 | rock formations up hills and downcliff sides, often on hands and knees, and this is in the 1800s, so before |
| 0:56.0 | quad bikes. The school teacher, Charles Lapworth, had a special waistcoat with dozens of |
| 1:02.4 | extra pockets made by his wife, so that he never had to discard a rock sample for want of a place |
| 1:07.6 | to put it. I thought of him over the weekend when emptying my coat pockets, |
| 1:12.5 | among all the ticket stubs and receipts, |
| 1:14.8 | I found a fossilised squid remnant |
| 1:17.6 | that I've been carrying around for a couple of years. |
| 1:20.7 | Imagine a piece of thick pencil lead |
| 1:23.2 | about the length of a fingernail. |
| 1:25.8 | It's both mundane |
| 1:26.9 | and the most extraordinary privilege |
| 1:29.6 | to carry around a piece of an extinct sea creature |
| 1:32.7 | from around 140 million years ago. |
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