The Greatest 3 Minutes of Radio Ever!

Having listened to a few episodes of The Infinite Monkey cage over the last few years, and seen one of Robin Ince and Brian Cox's live shows, I was pretty excited to read their book at Christmas.

Reading the book prompted me to start binge listening to all the episodes. I had originally started from the most recent and worked backwards but realised I was undoing evolution and didn't really want to end up with Robin and Brian's common ancestor so instead restarted the Infinite Monkey universe from the beginning.

For those who have never listened - beyond the ongoing jokes about old looking, arts graduate Robin, ageless keyboard playing robot Brian, dead strawberries and the fact that Ben Miller didn't finish his PhD is a show centred on rational thought, the scientific method, evidence and asking challenging questions to stimulate discussions about these three key elements.

Over the last few weeks I have witnessed the rapid evolution of the show from an echoey broom cupboard with Dara O'Briain to a large guest panel in front of a live audience. [On a slightly irrational interlude I did get slightly nervous about the impact of restarting the universe when both Prof Stephen Hawking and Ken Dodd died within 24 hours of a mention on the show - but then the rational part of me reminded me that statistically there is a high chance of Stephen Hawking being regularly mentioned on a show about science - Ken Dodd less so].

The Greatest 3 minutes of radio ever

One evening, on the way home from work, I started to listen to Series 8 Episode 3: Space Tourism, featuring none other than Brian Blessed.

The episode started with Brian Blessed discussing, in his inimitable way, his ongoing desire to explore the worlds most challenging areas and then beyond. He mentioned that having climbed to the top of a mountain on the equator he reached up to the sky knowing that he was now at the closest point he would ever be the planet Mars.

The discussion moved on to his friendship with the late Sir Patrick Moore (unarguably one of the greatest science communicators of all time). He then discussed how he spoke to Sir Patrick shortly before his death. I cannot describe what happened in any way that would do it justice so please listen... [and then continue below].

 

Combining the best science show around with discussions of one of the greatest science communicators and one of the greatest living orators gives what I believe is the greatest 3 minutes of radio ever.

As a teacher of STEM in my 'spare' time, listening to this show, this episode and this 3 minutes in particular have re-inspired me in the sciences but more importantly reminded me how important is it to look up!