The fast and the curious
Unexpected Elements
BBC
4.4 • 566 Ratings
🗓️ 14 March 2025
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s the month of Ramadan, when Muslims across the world fast between dawn and sunset in the belief that it will bring them closer to Allah. And this has inspired the Unexpected Elements team to turn their attention to all things fast.
First, we explore the latest research around intermittent fasting.
Next, we contemplate a new way to relax by harnessing the time-distorting power of black holes.
We then find out why deserts in South Africa are spreading at an alarming rate.
Plus, we’re joined by Dr Claire Lee, a particle physicist who works with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. She explains how she and her colleagues accelerate particles to phenomenal speeds, how they detect these particles when they collide, and what this can tell us about the origins of the universe.
That, plus many more Unexpected Elements.
Presenters: Marnie Chesterton, with Tristan Ahtone and Leonie Joubert. Producers: William Hornbrook, with Alice Lipscombe-Southwell, Harrison Lewis, Debbie Kilbride and Noa Dowling.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Can I just say? |
| 0:01.5 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | It's such a wonderful listen. |
| 0:05.6 | So nice. |
| 0:06.5 | There are loads more like it on BBC sounds. |
| 0:08.8 | Different paces, different heights. |
| 0:10.6 | The roof is buckling. |
| 0:11.9 | Where you can also listen to live sports commentary. |
| 0:14.2 | It's right foot goes for goal. |
| 0:16.7 | And then enjoy even more podcasts full of analysis and reaction to the big stories. |
| 0:21.6 | The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession. |
| 0:25.2 | And she's had to live with that. |
| 0:26.8 | So if you love sport, a passion, it's almost like a religion. |
| 0:29.7 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:31.7 | Sort of expecting that every week now. |
| 0:43.6 | This week, the streets around my house have been unusually busy. It starts early afternoon as the orderly queues form outside the local Asian sweet shops and snake around the block. |
| 0:50.7 | Boxes of treats are carted away for later. And by sundown, it's party time, a cacophony of |
| 0:58.4 | muffled yet loud car stereos as families cruise around looking for a rare parking spot. |
| 1:05.7 | All because my bit of the city has some of the best curry restaurants in the UK. And if you've been fasting since |
| 1:13.0 | before sunrise, you're going to want something really delicious to break that fast with. I'm Marnie |
| 1:19.6 | Chesterton from the BBC World Service. This is unexpected elements. Elements. |
| 1:42.8 | Unexpected Elements is the show where we take a story from the news you might have heard of and use it to springboard into a world of |
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