Thailand
The Producer’s Tale
by Alexandra (Sasha) Feachem
Hello, I’m Sasha. I produce the radio show The Infinite Monkey Cage. I say produce, I use the term loosely. You’ll understand why in a moment. Brian thought it would be a good idea if I wrote something about what it is like to work with him and Robin. I’m not sure he had fully thought through that suggestion when he made it. I responded with hysterical enthusiasm. Brian looked scared. Perhaps punching the air and shouting ‘Yes! Finally the world will hear my story’ was a nanometre over the top.1 Despite this, and trying desperately to hide his alarmed expression behind a nervous smile, Brian realised that retracting the suggestion was clearly not an option… that the horse, or monkey keeper, had well and truly left the infinite zoo enclosure at something approaching the speed of light.
So here I am, with the producer’s tale; to tell you how The Infinite Monkey Cage evolved into existence and what it’s like to work with the infinite monkeys. And although the title of the show was in no way chosen to reflect the personalities of the people involved, or the way the radio show is put together, there is no doubt that we have all gloriously grown into the title. Thank goodness we didn’t call it Top Geek.
Back in 2008, CERN switched on the mother of all science experiments: the Large Hadron Collider. It is still the longest, fastest, most expensive science experiment ever undertaken. A particle smasher of biblical proportions, it recreates the moment just a billionth of a second after the Big Bang, and is the ultimate testament to what happens when human beings get together and ask why and what if? And when the Large Hadron Collider did switch on, Brian and I were sitting in the control room at CERN, alongside Andrew Marr, broadcasting to the nation, live on the Today programme. It was quite an odd experiment in itself, doing live coverage of a science experiment that is hidden underground and involves minuscule particles that I think even David Attenborough would fail to do justice to, especially on the radio. As Evan Davis commented from the safety of the Today studio back in London, ‘it’s a bit like Olympic taekwondo. It all sounds very interesting, but no one is quite sure what is actually going on.’
Luckily, the much predicted black hole that had gripped the popular press did not materialise and we all lived to tell the tale.2 And of course just a few years later, this extraordinary machine discovered the elusive Higgs particle, and with it gave us the origin of mass and opened a whole new chapter in our quest to understand the Universe we live in.
But perhaps the most extraordinary achievement of this jaw-dropping experiment was the interest it ignited in the general public; suddenly, incredibly, science was cool. Not just science, but particle physics. Some very well-known voices and faces emerged from the shadows and declared themselves fans of physics. Science had become, dare I say it, a little bit rock ‘n’ roll, and so the idea for The Infinite Monkey Cage was born.
Brian had told me some hilarious tales about celebrities he’d encountered on his travels, from dinners with Dan Aykroyd to finding himself in a hotel suite with Cameron Diaz and Queen Noor of Jordan… all fans of particle physics, not just Brian’s hair. One of Brian’s friends told us that we should try to get hold of Mick Jagger (he’s ‘way up on this shit’, apparently!). What could be more rock ‘n’ roll than that? (Mick – if you’re reading this, we’d still love to hear from you.) Robin, at this point, was regularly performing and curating his hugely popular stand-up shows, mixing scientists with comedians, and so this odd idea of a Radio 4 panel show featuring scientists and celebrities was born. Robin came up with the title and now, nearly 10 years later, it doesn’t seem like such an odd idea to have comedian Katy Brand on stage with Professor Carlos Frenk, one of the world’s most esteemed cosmologists. Or Ross Noble sitting alongside an expert in early human fossils. Or even a Python (Monty) and a geologist.
But I think the moment when I seriously began to believe in the possibility of parallel universes was the first time we took to the stage at Glastonbury, in 2011, to be greeted by the deafening cheers of more than 3000 people. These rock-festival goers, most of them still probably the worse for wear from the night before, had stampeded across fields of mud to cram into the cabaret tent at the most famous music festival in the country to see a comedian and a physicist take to the stage to talk about rationality, evidence and the wonders of science.
‘Who’s here for particle physics?’ shouted Robin. The 3000 people screamed back. ‘Quantum Chromodynamics?’ shouted Brian, to even more enthusiastic cheers. ‘It’s not very Radio 4 is it…?’ observed Brian. Not very Radio 4, and not, some might argue, very sciencey. But why shouldn’t it be?
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.4 And 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?
1 Brian: A nanometre is 10-9