Robin Ince - The Infinite Monkey Cage – How to Build a Universe

One of the most frequent complaints we get to the radio programme (usually, I have to say, from people who have never listened), is that we are dumbing down science. Have you heard one of Brian and Robin’s introductions?! I’m sorry, but ‘yo mamma’s so massive she’s redshifted’ has got to be one of the most highbrow jokes ever heard on Radio 4. You need a PhD in astronomy to really keel over laughing at that one. The rest of us just sit and look a bit baffled, although we very much enjoy watching Brian giggling away and we feel happy that we know the joke might be funny once we’ve had a chance to go home and do some homework. 3

To accuse the show of dumbing down science is to fundamentally misunderstand its purpose and the real reason why we all feel so passionately about its central message. Science is arguably the single biggest force in culture today. Cloning, genetic modification, nuclear power, the web, modern medicine – you name it, science is changing our world. Turn your back on science and you turn your back on the future and you fail to understand the present. To be truly engaged in society, everyone needs a basic grasp of what science is about and the way of thinking that leads to the advances that we all take for granted.

Science is vitally important, and therefore it must be part of popular culture. Why would anyone want to leave the foundation of our society to the boffins? They are just people, after all – they laugh, they cry, they watch Love Island like the rest of us. 4And comedians and entertainers read books, and newspapers, use hospitals and drive cars, and take an interest in the world around them, and in some cases had whole careers in quantum physics or cosmology before being lured away by the thrill of treading the boards (hello, Ben and Dara).

What I love most about working on the show is that in mixing these amazing people together, and putting a comedian and a physicist in charge, you never quite know what you are going to get. It’s chaotic and anarchic and a little bit terrifying if you are the producer, and possibly if you are the listener, too, but whatever the outcome, it is always interesting and surprising, and most of all we hope it makes people think. Brian and Robin really are the infinite monkeys, and although we may set out hoping to produce the works of Shakespeare, what emerges at the end, just like the theory we are named after, is a splendid testament to randomness. But despite the infinite chaos, and the anarchic bamboozlement, I hope we are never dull, and that we do the best job possible at fighting the corner for evidence, rational thinking and the glory and wonder of scientific endeavour and asking questions. After all, science allows you to write the secrets of the Universe on a blackboard, and what’s not to love about that?

1Brian: A nanometre is 10 -9metres – that’s one-billionth of a metre. This sentence implies that Sasha went around 10 helium-atom-diameters over the line of acceptable excitement.

2Brian: By ‘popular press’, Sasha means the Daily Mail, whose headline ‘Are we all going to die next Wednesday?’ should, if accuracy was the only goal, have led a one-word article: No.

3Brian: This experience will be familiar to anyone who has been in the audience at one of Robin’s stand-up gigs.

4Brian: I don’t even have to say it, do I?

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