Author: BBC World Service

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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy - Infant Formula

Not every baby has a mother who can breastfeed. Indeed, not every baby has a mother. In the early 1800s, only two in three babies who weren’t breastfed lived to see their first birthday. Many were given “pap”, a bread-and-water mush, from hard-to-clean receptacles that teemed with bacteria. But in 1865 Justus von Liebig invented Soluble Food for Babies – a powder comprising cow’s milk, wheat flour, malt flour and potassium bicarbonate. It was the first commercial substitute for breastmilk and, as Tim Harford explains, it has helped shape the modern workplace. Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon Producer: Ben Crighton (Image: Baby lying down drinking from bottle, Credit: Lopolo/Shutterstock)
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CrowdScience - Why Does It Always Rain on Me?

Listener Ros Allen wondered why it always seems to rain on her village but not the one a mile away. It’s all down to microclimates. CrowdScience explores the impact of microclimates on our lives, discovers how more rain can help an English tea plantation and reveals the deadly effect of the urban heat island. Marnie Chesterton also talks to a local project in New York City, the Cool Roofs Program, that aims to reduce the urban heat effect, helping to mitigate the impacts of climate change. But just how much of a difference can measures like this really make?

Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producer: Marijke Peters

(Image: Women standing on the edge of a forest with an umbrella. Credit: Getty Images)

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World Book Club - Jeffrey Archer – Kane and Abel

This month World Book Club is in the BBC Radio Theatre and is talking to one of the most popular and widely read British novelists, Jeffrey Archer, about his stunningly successful novel Kane and Abel.

William Lowell Kane and Abel Rosnovski, one the son of a Boston millionaire, the other a penniless Polish immigrant are two ambitious men born on the same day on opposite sides of the world.

Their paths are destined to cross in the ruthless struggle to build a fortune and an empire. Fuelled by their all-consuming hatred for one another, over 60 years and three generations, through war, marriage, fortune, and disaster, Kane and Abel battle for the success and triumph that only one man can have.

(Photo: Jeffrey Archer and Mary Archer attend the press night of Photograph 51, 2015, London. Credit: Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

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CrowdScience - What’s the Oldest Living Thing?

Trees transcend human generations – but are they the oldest living things on Earth? CrowdScience listener William from London, UK, got in touch to ask what the oldest tree or other organism on our planet is. Presenter Marnie Chesterton heads out to meet one of our older arboreal cousins to see how we can work out its age - without cutting it down to count the rings. But whilst certain individual trees can live for thousands of years, some that live in colonies can survive for much longer – perhaps up to 80,000 years old. Along the way, Marnie asks what other organisms contend for this title, what the word ‘oldest’ really means, and even ponders whether some creatures could actually be immortal.

Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producer: Jen Whyntie

(Image: Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. Credit: Getty Images)

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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy - Tally Stick

Tally sticks were made from willow harvested along the banks of the Thames in London. The stick would contain a record of the debt. It might say, for example, “9£ 4s 4p from Fulk Basset for the farm of Wycombe”. Fulk Basset, by the way, might sound like a character from Star Wars but was in fact a Bishop of London in the 13th century. He owed his debt to King Henry III. Now comes the elegant part. The stick would be split in half, down its length from one end to the other. The debtor would retain half, called the “foil”. The creditor would retain the other half, called the “stock”. (Even today British bankers use the word “stocks” to refer to debts of the British government.) Because willow has a natural and distinctive grain, the two halves would match only each other. As Tim Harford explains, the tally stick system enabled something radical to occur. If you had a tally stock showing that Bishop Basset owed you five pounds, then unless you worried that Bishop Basset wasn’t good for the money, the tally stock itself was worth close to five pounds in its own right - like money; a kind of debt, which can be traded freely. Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon Producer: Ben Crighton (Photo: Medieval tally sticks, accounts of the bailiff of Ralph de Manton of the Ufford Church Northampton. Credit: National Archives)
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CrowdScience - Why do Human Faces Look so Different?

You don’t have to be a “super-recogniser” to know that human facial features are extremely varied. Just look around you. Yet look at a most other animals and you’d find it hard to tell individuals apart. So why are human faces so diverse?

We’ll also be finding out why salt tastes salty (warning: lots of spitting and gargling ahead) and one listener wants to know what would happen if one of the key ocean current systems, the North Atlantic Conveyer, slowed down or stopped altogether. Presenter Marnie Chesterton heads to the beaches on the West Coast of Scotland in search of answer. Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk Presenters: Marnie Chesterton and Geoff Marsh Producers: Laura Hyde and Jennifer Whyntie

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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy - Passports

How much might global economic output rise if anyone could work anywhere? Some economists have calculated it would double. By the turn of the 20th century only a handful of countries were still insisting on passports to enter or leave. Today, migrant controls are back in fashion. It can seem like a natural fact of life that the name of the country on our passport determines where you can travel and work – legally, at least. But it’s a relatively recent historical development – and, from a certain angle, an odd one. Many countries take pride in banning employers from discriminating against characteristics we can’t change: whether we’re male or female, young or old, gay or straight, black or white. It’s not entirely true that we can’t change our passport: if you’ve got $250,000, for example, you can buy one from St Kitts and Nevis. But mostly our passport depends on the identity of our parents and location of our birth. And nobody chooses those. Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon Producer: Ben Crighton (Photo: Irish and UK passports are on display. Credit: Getty Images)
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CrowdScience - Why is Childbirth Painful?

Childbirth is different for everyone. Depending on who you ask, it’s one of life’s greatest and worst experiences - and can be anything from traumatic and excruciating to life-affirming and spiritual. But what pretty much every mother will agree on is that it hurts. But why is such a fundamental aspect of life so painful? And why do some women find it worse than others?

Presenter Gareth Barlow – who doesn’t expect to be giving birth ever – goes on a quest to understand the experience of female labour pain and why evolution hasn’t given women an easier ride. He discovers the latest research into the nature and experience of pain and whether the idea of male/female pain thresholds, is a real thing. We also hear from CrowdScience listeners about their own experiences, and find out if having a supportive birth partner can help bringing new life into the world that little bit easier.

Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk

Presenter: Gareth Barlow Producer: Anna Lacey

(Image: New born baby with mother. Credit: Getty Images)

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50 Things That Made the Modern Economy - Intellectual Property

When the great novelist Charles Dickens arrived in America in 1842, he was hoping to put an end to pirated copies of his work in the US. They circulated there with impunity because the United States granted no copyright protection to non-citizens. Patents and copyright grant a monopoly, and monopolies are bad news. Dickens’s British publishers will have charged as much as they could get away with for copies of Bleak House; cash-strapped literature lovers simply had to go without. But these potential fat profits encourage new ideas. It took Dickens a long time to write Bleak House. If other British publishers could have ripped it off like the Americans, perhaps he wouldn’t have bothered. As Tim Harford explains, intellectual property reflects an economic trade-off – a balancing act. If it’s too generous to the creators then good ideas will take too long to copy, adapt and spread. But if it’s too stingy then maybe we won’t see the good ideas at all. Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon (Image: Copyright stamp, Credit: Arcady/Shutterstock)
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CrowdScience - Where’s my Ejector Seat?

Even if you spent your entire life on a plane, the chances are you’d never crash – commercial air travel is remarkably safe. But after hearing about a recent air tragedy, two brothers in Kampala wondered if commercial airplanes could ever have ejector seats – like fighter jets do - to give passengers a last option for escape.

We meet 98-year-old John Oliver “Jo” Lancaster, one of the first people ever to eject out of a plane, and discover the seemingly insurmountable barriers to fitting ejector seats into passenger jets. And we find out that an awful lot of work goes into making flying as safe as it is, as we visit an air accident investigation lab, practise an emergency exit from a passenger cabin and deal with a multiple engine failure …in a plane simulator.

But are any safety ideas as radical as ejector seats on the horizon? We assess a controversial design that would parachute the entire passenger cabin down to earth should the worst happen.

Do you have a question we can turn into a programme? Email us at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producer: Cathy Edwards

(Image: Person blasting out of a plane cockpit on an ejection seat Credit: Martin-Baker Aircraft Company Ltd)