Brilliant or Bonkers: Weird Inventions & Innovation Debates

A time Machine! But you can only use it once to go back in time. Where and when would you go? Would you bring something back? Change something in the past? Or would you observe something? Would it be Brilliant or Bonkers? Amanda stuns dad into silence when she tells him where she would go in time. What does Grandma Joey have to do with the assassination of Lincoln? What is better: the sermon on th...

Episode: The Hogwarts School After a visit to Warner Bros Studios London, Amanda pitches a chain of schools where every classroom looks like Hogwarts. Real curriculum, real exams, but floating candles, house dining halls, and a potions lab where chemistry used to be. Mark and Amanda debate whether designing schools to inspire children rather than contain them is the most important educational refo...

What if you could programme your earbuds to filter out the crying baby on the plane, the annoying colleague at work, or — controversially — your own spouse? Not sci-fi: the University of Washington already has it working, and it's two product cycles from your ears. Mark and Amanda dig in. Is this the most important accessibility breakthrough of the decade — finally giving the hard-of-hearing, the...

The shirt is white. The bolognese is red. The school photo is in twenty minutes. Every parent knows this exact moment of dread — and this week, Olga thinks she's solved it. In a Brilliant or Bonkers first, the referee has stepped into the ring with her own invention: the Piggy Patch. A plaster-sized sticker with a cartoon pig on the front and a slow-release detergent layer on the back. Stick it on...

Amanda wants to grow bacon on a tree. No pigs, no farms, just plant it and wait. Mark thinks she might be onto something — because someone has already done it with seaweed. This week on Brilliant or Bonkers: the chemistry of bacon, the world's only patented bacon-flavoured plant, and whether a "bacon orchard" could feed the future or whether trees simply refuse to play along. Verdict from the Judg...

What if every page your child read automatically earned them pocket money? This week Mark and Amanda look at The Earmark — a physical bookmark with a small display that tracks how many pages a child has read and shows their earnings in real time. Parents link it to an app, set a rate (say, £0.01 per page), and the cash transfers automatically from parent account to child account when the session e...

Every family knows the moment. The suitcase is full, the child is crying, and Mr Elephant is being left behind. This week Amanda pitches her solution: the Fluffdrum — a home device that compresses stuffed toys flat for travel, then restores them to full cuddly condition on arrival using warm air and five robot arms. The system has three parts. A roller press stays at home and squeezes toys into ai...

Ever jumped into a holiday pool and instantly wanted to jump straight back out because it was SO cold? Amanda has invented the solution! A personal pool heater that warms the water around just you! But is it a brilliant idea or a bonkers one? And is it even fair on everyone else in the pool? Join Mark and Amanda as they argue the science, the ethics, and somehow end up talking about space probes....

Episode 15: The Internet of Everything (Yes, Even Your Fork) What if your toaster could text your kettle? What if your cutlery drawer had beef with your dishwasher? Welcome to the fully connected home, where every object - and we mean every object - has an IP address and an opinion. In this episode of Brilliant or Bonkers, Mark and Amanda tackle the ultimate IoT fever dream: a house where literall...

COMPETITION SCANNER: Brilliant or Bonkers? Amanda wants a scanner that can detect winning tickets inside competition products BEFORE you open them. Is this brilliant entrepreneurship or bonkers cheating? Amanda argues it's just smart use of technology—no different from checking if fruit is ripe before buying. Why leave winning to chance when you can use a precision scale or portable scanner to spo...

Episode: The Classroom Seat Exchange You are stuck between two chatty kids in class again. The teacher moves kids around constantly, but doing so takes ages. So Amanda came up with an AI app that could optimise classroom seating using kids' feedback, teacher priorities, and learning needs. Sounds brilliant, right? Then Mark had an idea: What if kids could buy and sell their seats? Front row near t...

Why do Spanish people eat 12 grapes at midnight? How did ancient Babylonians invent New Year's resolutions? And what does a glowing Shame Cube have to do with keeping your promises? Join us as we debate whether New Year traditions, inventions, and resolutions are brilliant... or completely bonkers! In this episode Traditions from around the world - From Scottish first-footing (and why dark-haired...

Ho ho hold on... is that a defecating peasant in your nativity scene? Join Mark and Amanda for a festive sleigh ride through the world's most wonderfully weird Christmas innovations. From real patented Santa Claus detectors to a time travel Advent Calendar, we're debating whether these yuletide inventions are strokes of genius or completely crackers. We'll explore funny shape Christmas trees that...

What happens if you take the world’s biggest, grumpiest, most chaotic animals… and shrink them down to the size of a poodle? In this episode of Brilliant or Bonkers , Mark makes the case for a house-sized safari featuring miniature giraffes, pocket hippos, handbag zebras, and rhinos that can charge your slippers. Amanda, meanwhile, suspects this is how civilisations collapse. But here’s the twist:...

In this episode of Brilliant or Bonkers, Mark and Amanda tackle the Disaster Bed — an earthquake-activated bed that drops you into a protective capsule and seals shut to keep you safe from falling debris. Is it genius life-saving tech, or an over-engineered trap waiting to swallow you whole? Join us as we explore the science, the safety, the silliness, and the surprising design behind one of the s...

Climate change is heating up the planet like it’s wearing too many blankets — so can we build  artificial trees  to help cool it down? In this episode of  Brilliant or Bonkers , Mark and Amanda dive into one of the wildest climate solutions yet:  giant machines that suck CO₂ out of the air . Amanda thinks they’re  brilliant  — fast, powerful, and essential if we want to clean up 150 years of pollu...

What if the trees in your local park could glow in the dark? In this episode of Brilliant or Bonkers, Mark tries to convince us that genetically glowing trees are the future — magical, energy-saving, and totally brilliant. Amanda isn’t buying it. She’s worried about moths, TikTok influencers, glowing ghost forests, and light giving squirrels Together, they explore: How firefly genes could turn a t...

Dust: the silent killer of LEGO cities. Builders spend hours keeping skyscrapers, bakeries, and modular streets spotless… and then the dust comes back. So should someone invent a LEGO-sized Roomba? In this episode of Brilliant or Bonkers , Amanda argues that a tiny autonomous robot that patrols LEGO streets at night and parks itself in a LEGO dog kennel is pure genius. Mark thinks it is Bonkers. W...

What if you could 3D print your snacks? In this episode of Brilliant or Bonkers , Dad thinks the Cheese Printer is a meltdown waiting to happen; messy, overengineered, and totally unnecessary. His daughter? She’s convinced it’s the future of food design, where art meets cheddar. Join us as we debate whether printing a cheese Eiffel Tower is the height of innovation… or the end of civilization as w...

In the 1930s, parents were told babies needed fresh air to stay healthy, so some clever (or completely unhinged) inventors came up with the baby cage: a wire box you’d bolt to your apartment window and hang your infant outside. Join Amanda and Mark as they explore the strange history behind this real invention, from its 1920s patent to its popularity in London and New York. Was it a genius bit of...

Amanda hates getting soap in her eyes. Mark thinks she’s exaggerating. But what if a robot could fix the world’s biggest bathroom battle; washing hair without a single tear? In this episode of Brilliant or Bonkers , we dive into the invention nobody asked for but everyone secretly wants: the intelligent, tentacled hair-washing robot. Can smart sensors and gentle jets really make bath time blissful...

This week Amanda’s all in on the rise of AI-made music. No instruments, no lessons, no limits and just pure creativity at the click of a button. But Dad isn’t impressed. To him, it’s a soulless, generic ocean of noise, where real musicianship drowns under a flood of algorithms. Is AI the future of music? Does it open the studio to everyone, or will it be the end of everything that makes a song hum...

The AI TV That Answers Every Question You know that feeling when you’re trying to watch a movie, but there are millions of questions flying around: “Who’s that guy?” “Is she the sister?” “Wait, did the dog just die?” Now imagine a TV that answers all of them, instantly. No pausing, no explaining, just smart little pop-up answers powered by AI. Mark says it’s brilliant; finally, peace and quiet dur...

It sounds like science fiction — cows genetically engineered without heads . No brains, no suffering, just meat and milk on legs. Some call it a humane breakthrough. Others call it horrifying. Mark argues it’s brilliant — if it ends animal suffering and makes better meat, why not? His daughter Amanda (10) says it’s bonkers — creepy, unnatural, and straight out of a nightmare. Ethical innovation or...