Unexpected Elements

The World Cup has us looking at why women get more ACL injuries, how to avoid cracking under pressure, and why some animals play dead. Also on the program we consider the pros and cons of Artificial Intelligence in Africa, whether the continent is turning to nuclear power, and if banana skins are hallucinogenic.

As Netflix cracks down on password sharing around the world - something it once encouraged - we wondered why people like to share passwords to other things, such as phones, email accounts and logins. Passwords and encryption exist as ways of protecting us from hostile agents in most aspects of life. But timing is everything. Nature has been doing it for years of course. But climate change is upsetting some of the ecological match-ups of locks and keys, migration and feeding that have evolved over the millennia. We hear how the shifting patterns of weather and food availability is affecting cuckoos in Europe and India. Another aspect of natural subterfuge is camouflage. Whilst physicists have been trying to make optical invisibility cloaks from ingenious new "metamaterials", Marc Holderied and team have been looking at how certain moths have used metamaterial properties in the structure of their wings to effectively hide from bats. They are acoustically invisible. Could similar materials be manufactured to make, for example, sound-proof wallpaper?Also, we hear how India's Chandrayaan-3 moon mission - due to land on 23 August this year - is exciting millions of people.Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producer: Alex Mansfield, with Margaret Sessa-Hawkins, Ben Motley and Sophie Ormiston

Unexpected Elements looks for the science behind the news, and this week the news is glittery and pink with the release of the Barbie movie.The movie has very pink aesthetic, so we get philosophical about the colour pink – does it actually exist and if so, how come it isn’t in the rainbow?We also discover how this iconic doll has performed some actual valuable science, helping cryogenic researchers design space suit technology to help future missions to the moon.In Ask the Unexpected this week we’ve got dog science as we answer the age old joke: how does my dog smell? Terrible, obviously, but it also depends on something called the vomeronasal organ..And there are newcomers in Germany and they’re troublemakers. We hear how an unpleasant mosquito borne virus has arrived in northern Europe and consider whether climate change might be to blame.All that plus your emails and WhatsApps, language pedantry and an ewaste dating service.Presented by Marnie Chesterton Produced by Ben Motley, with Margaret Sessa-Hawkins, Alex Mansfield and Sophie Ormiston

As Nato meets, we look at what science says about consensus decision-making, whether the universe is left-handed, and what chemistry can tell us about our ancient past.Also, we examine windfarms potentially blocking reindeer herding, our quest for the coolest science in the world continues with Beth the bee queen, and Caroline contemplates the long road that got us to a malaria vaccine.

This week time is up for the UN to come up with rules about how to mine the ocean bed. We hear about the mysterious potato shaped objects on the sea floor that contain lots of valuable minerals that are essential for electronics like mobile phones.Our team on three different continents compare how recycling of precious metals is going in their parts of world, and we hear why early Lithium batteries kept catching fire. We also speak to an expert on hydroelectric power who tells us how small scale hydro is a massively untapped resource, possibly even in your own back garden.This week’s Under the Radar story is a personal tale of floods and landslides in the Himalayas, and what science tells us about the huge cloudburst that caused them.Our search to discover The Coolest Science in the World continues with a fascinating look at sonification with a researcher who straddles science and music, and we dive into the fact that human use of underground water has redistributed the weight of the planet.All that plus your emails and WhatsApps, the answer to a question about heavy metal and the wonderful laugh of a Nobel laureate.Presented by Marnie Chesterton Produced by Alex Mansfield, with Ben Motley and Sophie Ormiston

Muslims around the world are celebrating Eid, but how to pick a date for your festivities? The Islamic calendar says look to the moon, but haven’t we always chosen to order life on earth by using the planets, moons and stars? We hear about the Mayans who tracked Venus and the astronomer who proved that comets weren’t bad omens.Having looked at the outsourcing of decisions to the sky, we wonder why we can’t just trust our brains and wonder what neuroscience has to say about it.And now that AI is able to make decisions for us, we hear about the computer-predicted proteins doing work that would otherwise take millions of years of evolution.Our ‘Under the Radar’ story this week comes from Brazil, where we meet the Lionfish – hear how these kings of the coral reef are upsetting the ecosystem by eating most of it. In our ongoing quest to find The Coolest Science in the World, we hear from a scientist doing amazing things with immersive audio.And Marnie learns about the engineer trying to build roads through fresh volcanic lava, and reflects on how we predict eruptions.All this plus your emails and WhatsApps, and a lot of mango chat.Presented by Marnie Chesterton Produced by Ben Motley, with Alex Mansfield and Sophie Ormiston Production Coordinator: Jonathan Harris

A look at some unexpected elements of congestion: Why does pollen make so many of us wheezy, and sneezy? What can it tell us about the distant past? Plus, we take a look at what we can learn from the construction and engineering behind aquatic snot palaces.Plus your enemy’s enemy can be your friend – hear about the tiny viruses that invade certain bacteria. Speaking of bacteria, we look at the latest place to hunt for new antibiotics – the fur of a certain animal, and with reports of famine emerging from North Korea, we hear about the scientist who is said to have saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived.

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

As French citizens protest against the raising of the state pension age, we look at the figures – are we really living longer? And if so, why? We take notes from the naked mole rat - it’s born looking wrinkled but this rodent is apparently ageless. And moving on from mere creatures, we’re asking if every state, society or civilisation has a lifespan, and if we can prevent it ending on our watch.Also, as South Africans battle to live their best lives against almost daily power cuts, we look at load shedding – why is their power being switched off and is there a light at the end of the tunnel? We continue our quest to find The Coolest Science in the World with a man using tiny microbes for big problems, and the launch of a new BBC World Service drama about Fukushima gets us thinking about the consequences.All that plus your emails and whatsapps, a team in three different countries and the decadence of Marnie’s footwear choices.Presented by Marnie Chesterton Produced by Margaret Sessa-Hawkins and Ben Motley

Human migration is in the headlines again – India and Australia have announced a new migration deal, in the US a Covid-inspired policy that allowed migrants to be quickly expelled has come to an end, and in the UK new measures were announced to stop foreign students bringing families with them, in a bid to reduce migration figures.But what does science tell us about migration? With a team across three continents, we’re looking at the origins of human migration and exploring some of the greatest migrations in the animal kingdom. We discover that migrating birds are more like migrating humans than you might think, and learn how even the ground beneath our feet is trying to move somewhere else.We’re also introduced to the real life people labelling images that inform the algorithms behind AI, a researcher with a wall of wind makes a bid for The Coolest Science in the World, we find out why tiles are colder than carpets and we dig deeper into the news that a company founded by Elon Musk has been given the go-ahead to trial a ‘brain-machine interface’.Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producers: Margaret Sessa Hawkins & Ben Motley