Wildfires and wild animals
Unexpected Elements
BBC
4.4 • 567 Ratings
🗓️ 15 June 2023
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The show that brings you the science behind the news, with Marnie Chesterton and an inter-continental team.
This week we take the headlines of the wildfires in North America, pull out the science and run with it. We explore what’s actually in smoke-polluted air, looking at the part the El Nino weather system plays in starting fires, and discover why a surprising element of air pollution is helping conservation biologists to track animals.
We look at how tobacco is not just bad for your lungs – it’s bad for some of the farmers who grow it too. We get the Kenyan perspective on farmers trying to move away from tobacco production. We continue our quest to find The Coolest Science in the World with a researcher who studies grasshoppers that are the noisiest on the planet, but might not actually be noisy enough.
And as Ukraine struggles with the devastation caused by the destruction of the Kherson dam, we look at dam building along the Mekong river and ask why a lack of flood water might be causing a problem.
All that, plus your emails and whatsapps, and a listener gets an unexpected answer to a question about whether we can send taste and smell over the airwaves.
Presented by: Marnie Chesterton Produced by Alex Mansfield, with Ben Motley, Margaret Sessa-Hawkins & Sophie Ormiston
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. This week, scientists revealed two unlikely elixias of life. |
| 0:39.7 | Makers of certain energy drinks will have been rubbing their hands with glee after a study suggested |
| 0:45.2 | that taurine, a chemical found in our bodies and also in some energy drinks, is associated with |
| 0:51.9 | longer, healthier lives in mice and monkeys. It hasn't been tested |
| 0:56.5 | in humans yet, but I suspect that won't stop some people from upping their intake. Meanwhile, |
| 1:03.0 | ants infected with tapeworm larvae can expect to triple their lifespan from one to at least three |
| 1:10.1 | years. |
| 1:14.8 | Now, this might be due to the cocktail of chemicals made by their parasite, |
| 1:20.6 | but it could also be down to the fact that the infected ants changed their behaviour. |
| 1:25.9 | They no longer leave the nest to work all the daylight hours busily looking for food, they essentially retire and their fellow |
| 1:28.8 | ants start to look after them on top of foraging duties. Now it's hard in science not to project |
| 1:35.1 | human behaviours onto animals and I hope you'll forgive me for deciding that the take-home message |
| 1:40.3 | from these long-lived ants is definitely work less hard. I'm Marnie Chesterton from the BBC |
| 1:46.8 | World Service. This is unexpected elements. I'm already sharing the workload with the unexpected elements global panel. |
| 2:07.6 | Joining us from Nairobi in Kenya is reporter Phyllis Mwate. |
| 2:11.0 | Welcome Phyllis. |
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