Podcast: The Infinite Monkey Cage

I have been working my way through the nearly 150 episodes of Monkey Cage over the past few months and it has been a worth method of quelling the silence. The two hosts of the show are science communicator Professor Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince who are accompanied every week they have a new panel of "experts" which usually includes a couple of scientists and a comedian to stop it from getting too serious. Each episode lasts around 30-40 minutes and is filled with heated discussion. One particularly heated moment is in the episode titled "Through the Doors of Perception" where Brian Cox emphasises the importance of physics and how life cannot get deeper than physics. Which is rebutted by one of the panellists who then claims that physics is easy compared to understanding reality.

Image via globalplayer.com

The topics covered range from how to define death all the way to commercial space travel and the guest panellists include comic writer Alan Moore, Stephen Fry, Mathematician Simon Singh and Neil deGrasse Tyson! The show has been running since 2009 and has 23 seasons.

I have enjoyed the shows I have listened to so far largely because it does not claim to answer all of the questions, rather it is more of a discussion which allows the listener to come to their own conclusion. However, there is always a comedic aspect, especially when they play into the thirst of Brian's middle aged and female audience.

Here are my favourite episodes so far (only up to season 9)

• "science and religion" (21/12/09)

• "is there room for mysticism in a rational world?" (27/6/11)

• "I'm a chemist get me out of here" (19/12/11)

• "what is death" (24/6/13)

• "what makes science a science" (15/7/13)

• "science museum" (29/7/13)