Futureproof with Jonathan McCrea
452 episodes - English - Latest episode: 20 days ago - ★★★★★ - 11 ratingsJonathan responds to your texts and tweets, is joined in studio for all the latest science stories for Newsround and speaks to one of our two guests featured on the show.
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Episodes
Futureproof Special: The Best of 2022
January 01, 2023 14:30 - 47 minutes - 43.7 MBIn this special episode of Futureproof, Jonathan looks back at some of our favourite pieces from throughout 2022. - Martin Wikelski, Professor at the University of Konstanz & Director at Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour explores the idea that animals can detect natural disasters. - Carl Zimmer, an award-winning New York Times columnist and author of ‘Life’s Edge: The Search For What It Means To Be Alive’ speaks to Jonathan about the myriad ways we define life itself. - And to sif...
Futureproof Extra: Beyond Our Five Senses
December 20, 2022 07:30 - 18 minutes - 17.1 MBOur senses are at the heart of how we navigate the world - coalescing in any moment, in any combination, to varying degrees, to relay what is going on around us and within us. But when you stop to think about the level of complexity involved in making sense of all of this in your brain - it really is quite astonishing. That being said, are we guilty of doing our senses a disservice by reducing their scope to just five? Is there more to it than just smell, sight, taste, touch, and hearin...
Do Dark Matter & Dark Energy Actually Exist?
December 18, 2022 11:12 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBOver the 13 years of doing this show one of the things that we, and indeed all of the field of Astrophysics, has been trying to get our collective head around is the idea of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. To the layperson, these ideas can seem like rather convenient inventions thought up merely to paper over the cracks in our current models. But let’s be honest, most of us don’t really know enough about physics to make such bold accusations. This week's guest however does, and not only do...
Futureproof Gold: Evolution's Bite
December 15, 2022 07:30 - 16 minutes - 15.3 MBEvolution is constantly adapting us to our environment, making species more suited and better equipped to survive in their natural habitat. So why did our distant ancestors have better teeth than we do? And what can the study of our gnashers tell us about our diet, our oral health, and our very origins as a species? Professor Peter Ungar is a Paleoanthropologist, and author of 'Evolution’s Bite: A Story of Teeth, Diet, and Human Origins'. He joins Jonathan to discuss what teeth can tell us...
Futureproof Extra: The Origins of Sentience
December 13, 2022 07:30 - 17 minutes - 16.2 MBFrom day one we feel our way into, and through, the world. By utlising a complex array of sensory receptors that grow and evolve as we mature, we come to understand not just everything we encounter in our external lives but also in our internal lives as well. We are sentient beings. But what is sentience and when did it arise in animals? And why are we sentient at all? Nicholas Humphrey is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of many b...
Is Human Hibernation A Possibility?
December 11, 2022 12:05 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBOne of the most blindingly obvious problems facing human space travel is that space is very big. It’s like REALLY big. Space being big means things in it are far away and the amount of time it takes to get from one rock to the next presents a myriad of challenges for any aspiring "Star Trekker". First of all, you’re going to need a lot of supplies, you’re going to have to spend a lot of time exposed to radiation, and you’re going to get bored and old. Mainly for the sake of storyline, S...
Futureproof Extra: The Art of Making the Invisible Visible
December 06, 2022 07:30 - 13 minutes - 12.3 MBPhotography may, at a cursory glance, appear to dwell in the domain of the humanities and artistic expression but it is a vital tool to science as well. When it comes to understanding the vastness of the cosmos or the structure of a cell, we rely on imagery to help us better understand the natural world around us. But how do the technologies that give us these images actually work? How do we make the invisible visible and what developments might we expect in the years to come? Jack Chall...
Evidence of the Multiverse
December 04, 2022 11:00 - 30 minutes - 28.3 MBFor most of us, the word “multiverse” probably conjures up some sort of fun sci-fi episode like the universe in which we all have hot dogs for fingers in Oscar contender ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ or the parallel universe in Star Trek where there’s an evil you with a moustache. Multiverses are just vehicles for our flights of fancy, right? Well, that’s what we thought until Professor Will Kinney casually mentioned that the majority of physicists now accept that we live in a multive...
Futureproof Gold: Enemies of the State
November 29, 2022 07:30 - 32 minutes - 29.8 MBIn this special insatllment of Futureproof Gold, we take a listen back to our award-winning episode 'Enemies of the State'. Among other guests, Mara Hvistendahl, Contributing Correspondent for Science, National Fellow at New America and author of the Wired article 'Inside China's Vast New Experiment in Social Ranking', joins Jonathan to explore the true potential that technology has in controlling and manipulating the behaviour of entire populations through social credit scores.
Futureproof Live: Is there a limit to our intelligence?
November 27, 2022 11:00 - 43 minutes - 39.5 MBFor this very special episode of Futureproof, recorded live at the TU Dublin Grangegorman Campus, Jonathan was joined by a panel of guests to explore the limits of human and artificial intelligence. Joining Jonathan is: -Dr. Benjamin Cowan, Associate Professor at UCD's School of Information & Communication Studies and Co-Principal Investigator at The ADAPT Centre. -Dr. Tomás Ryan - Associate Professor in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology and the Trinity College Institute of Neurosc...
Futureproof Live: Is it possible to run forever?
November 20, 2022 14:18 - 49 minutes - 45.4 MBFor this very special episode of Futureproof, recorded live at the TU Dublin Grangegorman Campus, Jonathan was joined by a panel of guests to explore whether it is possible for a human being to run forever. Joining Jonathan is: - Ultra Runner, Keith Russell - Helen French, Associate Professor in the RCSI School of Physiotherapy - Dr. Oran Kennedy, Senior Lecturer in Anatomy and Regenerative Medicine at RCSI - Sinead Bradbury, Performance Nutritionist (SENr) Dr.Ruth Freeman from the SFI & D...
Futureproof Extra: Neurostimulation in E-Sports
November 15, 2022 07:30 - 14 minutes - 13.4 MBJoining Jonathan to discuss how the skills needed to perform laparoscopic keyhole surgery as well as e-sports can be significantly enhanced by applying electric neurostimulation during training is Adam Toth, ESRL Research Program Manager at Lero in the University of Limerick.
Gravity Batteries
November 13, 2022 11:00 - 42 minutes - 39.1 MBWhen you walk out your door today, it may be sunny, it may be windy, the waves may be crashing against the shores with an awesome fierceness. Or, you know, none of those things might be happening. And therein lies one of the fundamental issues with renewable energy, its unpredictability. But one thing that won’t happen when you go out there this morning is that you won’t float off into the air. Gravity is reliably keeping your feet on the ground and it will continue to do so ad infinitum. ...
The Sounds We Cannot Hear & What Can We Take To Make Us Live Longer?
November 06, 2022 14:03 - 51 minutes - 46.9 MBJonathan is joined by Karen Bakker, Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies and author of 'The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants' to explore the sounds in nature that we cannot hear. Andrea Maier, Oon Chiew Seng Professor in Medicine, Healthy Ageing and Dementia Research, Co-Director at the Centre for Healthy Longevity, National University of Singapore, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam joins Jonathan to discus...
Using AI to fight blindness
November 01, 2022 07:30 - 13 minutes - 12.1 MBAs well as trying to sell you products you’ve just been talking about but don’t want, and beating humans at chess or Go or Mario cart, AI can actually do some real good in the world. One field in which AI could really have a profound effect is medical diagnostics for instance. Dr. Nikolas Pontikos is the Principal Investigator and Group Leader of the Pontikos Lab at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital - he joins Jonathan to discuss.
What is energy anyway?
October 30, 2022 11:30 - 48 minutes - 44.4 MBPhysics, while absolutely fascinating, can be impenetrable. And it isn't just cutting-edge ideas that can melt our brains, often we accept basic principles and ideas without really knowing how they work or even what they are. This week, Jonathan is joined by Sean Carroll, physicist, and author of 'The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion', to explain some of the fundamental aspects of science we thought we knew.
Futureproof Extra: How do we tackle chronic pain?
October 25, 2022 06:30 - 18 minutes - 17 MBPain is a deeply subjective thing. When it’s with us it’s all we can think about. So, what is life like then for someone for whom pain never leaves? Haider Warraich, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and author of 'The Song of Our Scars: The Untold Story of Pain' joins Jonathan to discuss.
Can Humpback whales be altruistic?
October 23, 2022 10:00 - 41 minutes - 37.7 MBIt can be easy to think poorly of humans. When we're not destroying the planet or starting wars, we're likely off somewhere making fools of ourselves on social media. We're not all bad though, as some people dedicate their spare time, and even their lives, to helping others. But can we say the same about other animals? (We're looking at you, cats.) Bob Pitman is a Marine Ecologist at the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University. He joins Jonathan to discuss.
Is “Gamification” making fools of all of us?
October 16, 2022 10:00 - 35 minutes - 32.5 MBYiddish author and playwright Sholem Aleichem; the man whose stories formed the basis for 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof once proposed that “life is a dream for the wise but a game for the fool”. So, is modern technology and more specifically “Gamification” making fools of all of us? Adrian Hon - CEO of Six to Start and author of You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All joined Jonathan on the show to discuss.
Futureproof Extra: The science behind bees' waggle dance
October 16, 2022 10:00 - 14 minutes - 13.4 MBWe have covered the lives and behaviors of bees a few times here on the programme. So much so we thought we’ve seen and heard it all. Well, we may have been wrong about that…in particular, with something to do with the dance they perform in the hive and how it relates to their ability to communicate and navigate. Prof. Jürgen Tautz is a bee expert, animal behaviorist and Emeritus Professor at the Biozentrum, University of Würzburg and author of ‘Communication Between Honeybees: More Than J...
Futureproof Extra: The new science of the heart
October 09, 2022 10:00 - 17 minutes - 15.8 MBAverage adults' heart beats 72 times a minute. In a lifetime it creates enough energy to drive the truck to the moon and back and generates astonishingly 2,5 gigajoules of energy. Yet, cardiac arrests and heart diseases are major causes of death worldwide, despite decades of research. How much further we'll have to go before we solve this problem? To discuss Jonathan was joined by Sian Harding, Emeritus Professor of Cardiac Pharmacology at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial Co...
Human Organs-on-Chips
October 09, 2022 10:00 - 39 minutes - 36.5 MBDrug development is notoriously slow and expensive to bring a new compound from the lab bench to market. A major cause of this inefficiency is the traditional reliance on testing drugs in animals before they are tested in humans. Animal models often do not accurately reflect human physiology, meaning that drugs that appear to be safe and effective in animals frequently turn out to be harmful or ineffective in humans. The solution could come from computer microchip manufacturing methods to cr...
Futureproof Extra: The End of Medicine As We Know It
October 04, 2022 06:30 - 16 minutes - 14.7 MBIf you have acute migraines, your doctor might refer you to a neurologist. If your Asthma is really bad, maybe you’ll be sent to a respiratory specialist. They will then use their expertise to alleviate your symptoms but crucially they won’t be able to tell you what is causing your illness because frankly, they don’t know. So, what if the ultimate cause of these ailments isn’t happening in the brains or the lungs but elsewhere? Doesn’t that present a problem for how our medical system ope...
Thorium Nuclear Reactors
October 02, 2022 11:02 - 40 minutes - 36.7 MBRecently, the Chinese government has been testing a thorium nuclear reactor that uses molten salt as a coolant. Although this radioactive element has been trialed in reactors before, experts say that China is the first to have a shot at commercializing the technology. The Wuwei reactor is designed to produce just 2 megawatts of thermal energy, which is only enough to power up to 1,000 homes. But if the experiments are a success, China hopes to build a reactor that could power hundreds of t...
Futureproof Extra: The Large Hadron Collider & The Search for a Fifth Force
September 28, 2022 11:30 - 32 minutes - 30.1 MBDepending on your social media proclivities you may or may not have noticed that your feed is awash with images from the JWST. Certainly science Twitter is very excited about it. And so they should be, it’s amazing to see what we can observe of the very big and very far away thanks to the increased resolution of our newest space telescope. In a similar vein the third run of the Large Hadron Collider is allowing us to peer ever further into the world of the very small. So what might we find...
Longevity, Immortality and the quest to defeat death with Aubrey De Grey
September 25, 2022 18:07 - 39 minutes - 36.6 MBHow do you eat an elephant? One spoon at a time, right? Well It's the same with living forever. No one is going to find a magic potion that will make you 20 again but over the years we are slowly, consistently and incrementally improving patient health and preventing diseases associated with ageing. We've nearly doubled life expectancy in just over a century. Doubled! Jonathan caught up with Author and Biomedical Gerontologist Aubrey De Grey at the Inaugural Longevity Summit in Dublin to hear...
The Future of Transport
September 18, 2022 10:00 - 34 minutes - 32 MBA recent Newstalk survey on commuting has found that people are spending longer on their journeys to work since the pandemic. And so all week we’ve been speaking to transport experts, policymakers as well as commuters themselves to hear about the issues being faced on a daily basis as we look to get from A to B. But what does the future hold for commuting and for transport in general? Are the likes of Hyper Loop, Air Taxis, and automated pods a thing of science fiction? Professor Marcus E...
Futureproof Extra: Survival of the Richest
September 13, 2022 06:30 - 18 minutes - 17.2 MBYou’ve probably seen the likes of '2012' or more recently 'Don’t Look Up' - disaster movies where there’s a race against time to save humanity. Those films also have a common thread: you have a superset of super-rich people looking to buy their way to salvation. Pretty silly stuff, right? But what if we told you those preparations are happening right now, and that there really is no room at the inn for the like of you and me? Douglas Rushkoff is Professor of Media Theory and Digital Econo...
Exploring the Idea of Plant Intelligence
September 11, 2022 10:00 - 36 minutes - 33 MBSometimes in science, a question can be so hotly debated that attempting to answer it can become a lifetime project. And more often than not these questions are ones that we didn’t even realise were up for debate. In plant biology, the topic getting researchers all hot under the collar at the moment is the question of whether plants can be intelligent or not and this week's guest is just one of the many voices in the debate. Paco Calvo is Principal Investigator in the MINT (Minimal Intell...
Futureproof Extra: What Animals Can Teach Us About Living Longer
September 10, 2022 06:30 - 16 minutes - 15 MBSteven N. Austad is the Chair and a Distinguished Professor within the UAB Department of Biology and the author of 'Methuselah's Zoo: What Nature Can Teach Us About Living Longer, Healthier Lives'. He joins Jonathan to discuss what we know about longevity in animals, and what they might be able to teach us humans about extending our own lifespans.
Futureproof Extra: The Genetic Age
September 06, 2022 06:30 - 17 minutes - 15.7 MBWhen Leo Szilard conceived of the idea of a nuclear chain reaction in 1933 he immediately tried to suppress his own discovery culminating in 1945 with the Szilard petition which advocated a demonstration of the atomic bomb rather than its use in warfare. Szilard knew only too well the awesome destructive power of what he had discovered and knowing what we do about what happened next, what then should we make of the field of genetic engineering, a field of research that has instigated a self-...
Chemputers & The Future of Chemistry
September 04, 2022 10:00 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBProf. Lee Cronin, Regius Chair of Chemistry in the School of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow joins Jonathan to discuss working on taking the guesswork out of creating the pharmaceuticals that we depend on through the use and development of 'Chemputers', a new method that is capable of reliably synthesising organic chemicals.
The Futureproof Language Special
August 28, 2022 10:00 - 46 minutes - 42.2 MBLanguage is fundamental to who we are and what has makes us so successful as a species, and while all species have their own means of communicating, we are the only ones that seem to have mastered it. But where did this ability to share complex ideas using sound come from? And what effect has it had on our development? In this Futureproof special, Jonathan looks to unravel questions about the evolution of language, the impact it has on our brain, and how we might communicate with extraterre...
Futureproof Extra: Prader-Willi Syndrome
August 23, 2022 06:30 - 14 minutes - 13.7 MBPrader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is a genetic disorder that occurs in approximately one out of every 15,000 births. It affects males and females with equal frequency and affects all races and ethnicities and is recognized as one of the most common genetic causes of life-threatening childhood obesity. To discuss this disorder and what can be done to help people living with it, Jonathan is joined now by Dr. Tony Holland, Professor Emeritus at the University of Cambridge, UK & President of the Int...
The Science of Attraction
August 21, 2022 10:00 - 44 minutes - 40.4 MBMost of us could probably put together a list of things we find attractive in a potential partner and a lot of those things will likely come down to our personality or the cultural environment. But what about that initial, almost unconscious, spark of attraction? What causes that and does it have any real impact on whether a relationship with that person will stand the test of time? Paul Eastwick is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis, and Head...
Futureproof Extra: The Last Days of the Dinosaurs
August 16, 2022 06:30 - 13 minutes - 12.1 MBThere has been a lot said about the extinction of the dinosaurs. But aside from the actual extinction event itself, when it comes to the days, weeks, months, and years immediately following it well, not so much. So, how exactly did any species survive it, and why those specific species? Riley Black is a freelance science writer specializing in evolution, paleontology, and natural history, and the author of ‘The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction and the Beginning of Our Wo...
Inside The Mind of a Bee
August 14, 2022 10:05 - 43 minutes - 39.7 MBIn years gone by, if a bee was annoying you, it was usually "bye-bye Mr. Bee" but nowadays, we’re more likely to put out plates of sugary water to help them on their way as in recent years our appreciation for these incredible insects has grown, our understanding of their importance more rounded. But just how intelligent are they? Lars Chittka, Professor in Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at Queen Mary University of London and author of 'The Mind of a Bee' joins Jonathan to discuss.
Futureproof Extra: The Trouble with Cloning Birds
August 09, 2022 06:30 - 15 minutes - 14.5 MBJurassic Park came out in 1993, then "Dolly" the sheep was cloned in 1996, and yet here we are more than two decades later and we still haven’t got a dinosaur theme park. So, what’s the hold-up? Well aside from the many significant ethical issues, the scientific challenges are huge and one in particular that adversely affects much more reasonable de-extinction projects is the simple fact that right now we can’t clone birds or dinosaurs for that matter. Why? Ben Novak is Lead Scientist wi...
Why Usain Bolt Can’t Outrun Your Cat
August 07, 2022 10:00 - 41 minutes - 37.6 MBWhile you may be King or Queen of your local park run, no matter how much training you do, even if you were to use performance-enhancing drugs, you'll still never outrun the likes of the common house cat. So, what are the determining factors when it comes to the top speed that can be achieved by animals? Michael Gunther is a Researcher in Biomechanics at the University of Stuttgart, he joins Jonathan to discuss. Dr. Shane Bergin & Dr. Lara Dungan also join Jonathan for this week's install...
Futureproof Extra: Why Do We See Ghosts?
August 04, 2022 10:20 - 19 minutes - 17.6 MBHave you ever seen a ghost, or a UFO, or had some seemingly supernatural experience that you can’t explain? If you haven’t, we'd be willing to bet you probably know someone who has. These experiences are fairly common across cultures and they can’t all be the work of hoaxers and charlatans. So what’s going on? Chris French is Emeritus Professor of Psychology in the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at the Goldsmiths University of London. He joins Jonathan to discuss.
Is Animal Translation Possible?
July 31, 2022 06:30 - 46 minutes - 43 MBIf you are a pet owner you probably have plenty of experience trying to get a basic message across to your dog or perhaps if you own a cat you gave up on that hope years ago. Yet many of us have had that momentary glimpse of understanding; that sense that we could communicate if we just worked at it. But is animal translation actually possible? Diana Reiss is a Co-Founder of the Interspecies Internet and Professor in the Department of Psychology at Hunter College. She joins Jonathan to dis...
Futureproof Extra: The Science of Bisexuality
July 26, 2022 06:30 - 18 minutes - 17.3 MBDr. Julia Shaw, a psychological scientist at University College London and the author of ‘Bi: The Hidden Culture, History, and Science of Bisexuality’ joins Jonathan to discuss her work in uncovering the many surprising truths behind sexual orientation and bisexuality as a whole.
The Hidden Depths of Animal Perception
July 24, 2022 10:00 - 38 minutes - 35.5 MBFor us humans, our overall sensory capabilities - the scope of our sense of smell, our sight, our hearing, and touch - feels all-encompassing, like there’s nothing more that we could possibly conceive of that would change how we experience the world around us. But that’s dead wrong. And this is an illusion that we share with every animal and insect in the world. But what we might humans lack in one area of perception, another animal or insect might excel. So, what are we missing? Ed Yond,...
The Dream Machine
July 19, 2022 06:30 - 21 minutes - 19.7 MBWe have a complex relationship with psychedelics. To some, they can be gateways to a higher level of consciousness, to others, a poison that should be stamped out. Regardless of where you stand though, the fact that our brains are capable of creating these fluid, dynamic, altered states of perception seemingly on their own is pretty cool. But can these experiences be created with light flashes instead of chemicals? And if so, what might we learn from them? Fiona Macpherson, Professor of P...
Gazing Into the Deepest Depths of the Cosmos
July 17, 2022 10:00 - 32 minutes - 29.5 MBThe biggest story this week was the release of some absolutely spectacular views of the cosmos from the James Webb Space Telescope, which include the deepest infrared view of our universe that has ever been taken. Joining Jonathan to discuss this incredible achievement is one Irish person who has been involved in the project for two decades, Professor Tom Ray, Director of the School of Cosmic Physics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.
Futureproof Extra: The Secret Perfume of Birds
July 12, 2022 06:30 - 16 minutes - 15 MBThere's much to admire about birds. They can soar through the skies, build durable nests, sing the most beautiful songs, and possess a visual acuity that is truly something to behold. But when it comes to their other senses how do they fare? For a long time, it was widely believed that birds had none, but that didn't sit right with Danielle J. Whittaker, Evolutionary Biologist, Managing Director of the COLDAX Center for Oldest Ice Exploration, and author of ‘The Secret Perfume of Birds: Unc...
How To Change Someone's Mind
July 10, 2022 10:00 - 50 minutes - 45.8 MBHow do we get someone to change their mind? Is it by arguing them into submission or is it by letting them explain the story about how they arrived at that point of view? What is the underlying brain chemistry of how opinions change? A new book titled ‘How Minds Change’ delves into these questions. The author, David McRaney, joins Jonathan to discuss.
Futureproof Gold: DARPA - The Pentagon's Brain
July 07, 2022 06:30 - 30 minutes - 28.2 MBAnnie Jacobsen, author of 'The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency' joins Jonathan to discuss the history of the US Defense Department's most secret, most powerful, and most controversial military science R&D agency. First broadcast July 9th 2016
Futureproof Extra: The Cutting-Edge Tech of Modern Operating Theatres
July 05, 2022 06:30 - 17 minutes - 16.3 MBFor most of us, our image of what goes on in an operating theatre comes from television and movies; we think scalpels, scrubs, facemasks, and beeping heart monitors, etc. What we don’t envisage, is robots and augmented reality glasses but increasingly modern surgery is incorporating these and other cutting-edge technologies into their systems and procedures. So just what does the operating theatre of 2022 look like? Connor Green is Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at the National Orthopaedi...
A Brief History of Weaponised Insects
July 03, 2022 10:00 - 45 minutes - 41.7 MBIf you’ve seen classic B Movies like 1954’s 'Them' or the criminally underappreciated classic, 'Starship Troopers', the words “Insect Warfare” probably conjure up some specific, likely silly imagery. But insects have featured in human conflicts in very real and often terrifying ways since the beginning of the historical record and likely, long before it. Jeffrey Lockwood is Professor of Natural Sciences and Humanities at the University of Wyoming and the author of 'Six-Legged Soldiers: Usi...