CrowdScience

Have you ever found yourself doing something – perhaps getting a glass of water, eating a snack, or even sitting on the toilet – without remembering making the decision to do it? CrowdScience listener Mohammed certainly has. It’s left him wondering: does he really have free will, or is he a puppet of his biological processes? To try and find the answer, we start in the brain. Presenter Caroline St...

Where do shells come from? CrowdScience listener Tamsyn got in touch, a little embarrassed, confessing that she had managed to reach her twenties without realising that shells are made by living creatures. Suddenly, her curiosity ran wild and she asked CrowdScience to investigate how these sea creatures have the architectural prowess to make shells in delicate ornamental shapes with beautiful colo...

CrowdScience listener Gurmeet in India wants to know if plants can sense that we're around. She started wondering about this at a wellness centre where she was encouraged to hug a tree. She enjoyed the experience, but what about the tree? Did it enjoy being touched? And is there actually evidence that hugging a tree is good for us? Anand Jagatia talks to scientists about what happens to a plant wh...

CrowdScience listener Devin in Canada has just had a baby. Worried that all the good email addresses might be taken by the time his child needs one, he has already set up an account. But it got him wondering: how many email addresses belong to people who have died? From websites and blogs to email accounts, social media profiles, gaming avatars and even our conversations with AI, we’re all leaving...

CrowdScience listener Lisa, who is from South Africa but now lives in the UK, has been a vegetarian for many years. Sometimes though, she still finds herself craving meats – like spaghetti bolognese or a burger. To satisfy these cravings, she eats ‘alt-meats’, products meant to look and taste like meat but made from vegetables. This has her wondering though, are these alternative meats better for...

Your heart pounds, your chest tightens, your stomach drops and your legs feel weak and shaky. Your palms are sweating and a tingling rush spreads through your arms and fingertips as your brain is overwhelmed with feelings of tension and fear. And yet, you’ve asked for this. You wanted to be on this ride, at this theme park, hurtling towards the ground at a frightening speed. But why? An adrenaline...

Some fish can deliver electric shocks with four times the voltage of the electricity in your plug sockets at home . Crowdscience listener Mouhammed in Cameroon was stunned by this, so he charged us with finding out how they do it. Presenter Caroline Steel heads to Bayreuth in Germany to meet some eels who have this amazing ability. Dr Stefan Schuster and Susanne Proschke introduce us to their coll...

CrowdScience listener Matt wants to know why he's warm blooded. He started thinking about this when he was watching some ants during the recent heatwave in Europe and wondered why their blood didn't boil. What are the pros and cons of being warm-blooded like us or cold-blooded reptiles like lizards? Caroline Steel meets evolutionary biologist Dr Manuel Leal from the University of Missouri in the U...

Why is it hard to concentrate, and why does it feel like such hard work? The CrowdScience inbox is full of questions like that, so for this show we’re concentrating on concentration and focusing on how we focus. We’ll be answering questions about the extra energy the brain uses when we’re concentrating, whether mental effort can tire you out more than physical effort, why we zone out when faced wi...

Tuberculosis kills more than a million people every year. It’s the world’s leading cause of death from a single infectious agent. This is despite the fact that we've had a cure for TB since the 1940s and a vaccine that’s over 100 years old. So why is TB still causing so many people to die? That’s what CrowdScience listener John in Tanzania wants to know, and presenter Marnie Chesterton is on the c...

Stare up at the night sky, and if you’re lucky, you might see a shooting star. Some people might make a wish, but CrowdScience listener Scott in California in the USA, thinks differently. He’s wondering how dangerous they might be. Shooting stars are actually meteors, ending their incredible journey whizzing through the depths of space by burning through our atmosphere, and crashing down to earth....

We’re delving into the CrowdScience archive to give you another chance to hear an award-winning show from 2025. CrowdScience listener Dorit has a problem. She wants the tiles in her new bathroom to be arranged randomly but, no matter what she does, it still looks like they form some kind of pattern. This has got Dorit thinking about randomness – what is it, how do you create it, why do we find it...

Space missions are searching for evidence of extra-terrestrial life. CrowdScience listener George in Kenya wants to know what could be up there, and if there’s a risk it could harm humanity. With rovers currently analysing samples on Mars, missions searching for the building blocks of life on Jupiter’s icy moons, George’s concern that there could be diseases in space is timely. Presenter Anand Jag...

CrowdScience listener Liana from Canada got in touch to ask about some very specific rocks she’d seen on an island in Indonesia – jagged, rugged and a very strange shape: hexagonal. They were in long columns, and clicked together like a jigsaw. But what are they, and how did they get there? Across the world in the UK, CrowdScience listener Sarah emailed us to ask about the famous rocks of the Gian...

Many plants need pollen from another plant of the same species in order to reproduce, but they don’t have legs so they can’t simply walk around looking for a mate. As a result, many of them rely on animals to transfer pollen from one plant to another. They’ve developed a hugely diverse range of techniques to attract them, including their appearance, taste and smell. CrowdScience listener Alice in...

“What separates humans from animals, is an interest in the past”. That’s a 900-year-old quote from a textbook that Nigerian listener Taiwo came across, and he wrote to CrowdScience to ask if modern science would agree. Most of us spend time thinking about the past, whether it is nostalgia for a bygone age or just wondering where we put the house keys yesterday. But is that just a human activity or...

CrowdScience listener Rachel uses Bluetooth headphones on her cycle to work, seamlessly playing music from her phone without using wires. But how does this technology send information through the air? To find out, Rachel and presenter Caroline Steel travel to Cambridge in the UK to meet telecommunications expert William Webb. He explains what Bluetooth signals actually are – and demonstrates why t...

CrowdScience listener Haruka has been making origami cranes out of paper since she was a child. Creating one out of a cloth napkin, however, was a next-level challenge. It gave her a new appreciation of paper’s excellent foldability, and made her wonder: what is it about paper’s structure that means it remembers its creases? We set out to unfold her question as we peer into paper’s secrets. First...

CrowdScience listener George is showing Alex Lathbridge around a small, dark, and extremely hot shed, just outside the city of Accra in Ghana. Inside are row after row of shelves, stacked high with bulging grow-bags. And out of some of them, gorgeous cascades of oyster mushrooms are bursting into bloom. We’re on George’s mushroom farm, and he’s noticed something interesting. Even though the condit...

Why is there such a variety of tongues in the animal kingdom? CrowdScience listener Dale has observed that his dog’s tongue is different from his and so is his cat’s.  He’d like to know the reason. Caroline Steel visits London Zoo in the UK to find out more about the different types of tongues - from giraffes and birds to lizards. She talks to evolutionary biologist Kurt Schwenk, who explains that...

CrowdScience listener Daniel in Accra, Ghana is an introvert. Or at least, he thinks he is. And he’s worried that his preference for quiet spaces and lower social interaction might be holding him back in life. But what is introversion really? How do introverts and extroverts see the world differently? And is it better to be one or the other? Presenter Alex Lathbridge spends his working days talkin...

Why do we feel itchy? So many listeners have emailed in with questions about itchiness, and presenter Anand Jagatia on the case. We explore why we itch, the different types of itch, the different causes, and why scratching can help with the itchy sensation.  Anand puts your questions to an expert panel: Dr Sonja Ständer, professor of Dermatology and Neurodermatology at the University of Münster an...

As our oceans warm due to climate change, sea levels are rising. It ought to be straightforward – as water gets warmer, it increases in volume. All the world’s oceans are connected, so how come sea levels are rising at different rates around the world, and even falling in some places? CrowdScience listener Alison in Australia wants to know the science behind the mystery.  Presenter Anand Jagatia t...

CrowdScience listener Jeroen finds it hard to remember people's faces - and he wants to know why. He wonders if it's to do with getting older and if there’s any way of improving. Presenter Caroline Steel has the same problem and is keen to find an answer too. She meets Professor Zaira Cattaneo, a neuroscientist based in Italy who researches face perception. Zaira has discovered which parts of the...

CrowdScience listeners Dougie and Molly have been wondering what happens to animals when they die, and whether there are animals that hold rituals to mark the passing of one of their kin. Presenter Caroline Steel is on the case, trying to work out what happens to the bodies of animals when they die. Dougie and Molly say they rarely see animal carcasses where they live - so where do they all go? Dr...