Out of the Ordinary Podcast
1) The buy button
Half of all money spent on advertising is wasted. But we just don't know which half. In recent years, marketing professionals have been trying to use neuroscience to locate the "buy button" in our bra...Show More
2) How to memorise anything
"Memory athletes" compete to see who can remember the most random numbers in an hour. Or else to memorise decks of playing cards. Memory training is big in China, where there are TV game shows for mem...Show More
3) Holy relics
Ever since the middle ages, pieces of the True Cross, and other relics such as saints' bones, have been sold to the gullible. But now the trade in bogus relics has moved online, to the fury of traditi...Show More
4) Aliens are the size of polar bears (probably)
There are millions of planets out there that could contain intelligent life. We can't look at them all, so which should we focus on? Using nothing but statistics, astronomer Fergus Simpson predicts th...Show More
5) Have we already found aliens?
As telescopes get better, astronomers are seeing more and more things in the night sky. Sometimes they can't explain them. Is it unreasonable to suggest that they might have found evidence of alien ci...Show More
6) Lightning before death
Jolyon Jenkins investigates reports that people with severe dementia, or who haven't spoken for years, can sit up and have lucid conversations just before they die. Victorians called the phenomenom "l...Show More
7) A Sense of Direction
Many animals can navigate by sensing the earth's magnetic field. Not humans, though. But might we have evolved the sense but forgotten how to access it? 40 years ago a British zoologist thought he ha...Show More
8) Esperanto
Jolyon Jenkins explores Esperanto, the language designed to bring world peace and harmony. Invented in the late 19th century, Esperanto is simple to learn, with a logical grammar, a vocabulary drawn...Show More
9) Digital death - what happens to your online stuff after you've gone?
Who do you want to read your old emails when you die? Are the dead entitled to privacy?
10) Whistling
Jolyon Jenkins attends an international whistling competition in Los Angeles to meet the people who want whistling to be taken seriously as a musical art form. The competition is organised by the "W...Show More