Small Screen Science Emma Brisdion & Karen Collins

From using maths to bake the perfect pie to exploring the science of food acoustics, our first episode looks at the Great British Bake Off. We explore the science behind baking a victoria sponge or sourdough loaf, speak to 2017 Bake Off contestant Yan Tsou about using maths when creating pies and we join food acoustics specialist Dr Megan Povey to find out how the crunching and crackling sounds of crisps and chocolate play a big role in how much we enjoy them.It is a TASTY trip to the studio this week; Emma's baked a loaf using Yan's famous sourdough starter 'muvver', and Karen's turned up to the studio with not one, but four different bars of chocolate. We tuck into each of them to test the 'snap' sounds made by chocolate bars with different cocoa solid contents and watch out for the cooling in the mouth sensation described by Professor Povey in the episode.Hosted and produced by Emma Brisdion and Karen Collins.For more, read our science blog and find out what else we learned from our expert guests on our website www.smallscreenscience.co.uk.And don't forget to follow us on social media! You can find us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Is there a better-loved British crime drama? Silent Witness has been running since 1996, season 23 aired in 2020, and it’s also one of Emma and Karen’s favourite shows. In this episode, we speak to one of the scientific advisors for the show, Dr Stuart Hamilton, who is a forensic pathologist and helps make sure all the science in the show is fact-checked. Who better to ask about all the gory details of an autopsy, and how you can estimate the time of death of a body? But before that, we head to the University of the West of England to explore their on-campus ‘Crime Scene House,’ which is staged for forensic science students to practice their evidence-gathering skills. Helen Green shows us around the place, explaining crime scene processing techniques and some of the scientific tests used.Hosted and produced by Emma Brisdion and Karen Collins.If you enjoyed the episode please leave us a review (five stars would be perfect, thanks) as it really helps new listeners find the podcast.For more, read our science blog and find out what else we learned from our expert guests on our website www.smallscreenscience.co.uk.And don't forget to follow us on social media! You can find us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

In this week's episode on Strictly Come Dancing, we start by waltzing on over to London to explore a dance science laboratory at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, where Professor Emma Redding explains to us a little more about the field of Dance Science. Then we speak to Katie Goates from Parkinson’s UK, to find out how dance is being used to slow the progression of neurodegenerative diseases.Hosted and produced by Emma Brisdion and Karen Collins.If you enjoyed the episode please leave us a review (five stars would be perfect, thanks) as it really helps new listeners find the podcast.For more, read our science blog and find out what else we learned from our expert guests on our website www.smallscreenscience.co.uk.And don't forget to follow us on social media! You can find us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

We've been mugged right off and watched the latest series of Love Island, all in the name of SCIENCE. Why do we fancy people? Can we learn anything from reality TV or is it just trash? And how can we win Love Island using Science?We explore the science behind attraction and what physiological changes happen in our bodies when we meet someone who's our 'type on paper'. We're also joined on the episode by two experts in reality TV, Professor Annette Hill and Dr Brendan Rooney, who explain to us how to define reality TV and how it's evolved in recent decades, whether binge-watching reality TV shows can be a bad thing, and what indeed we might be LEARNING from Love Island, as we judge the islander's interesting decisions and questionable outfit choices.Hosted and produced by Emma Brisdion and Karen Collins.If you enjoyed the episode please leave us a review (five stars would be perfect, thanks) as it really helps new listeners find the podcast.For more, read our science blog and find out what else we learned from our expert guests on our website www.smallscreenscience.co.uk.And don't forget to follow us on social media! You can find us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

VELCOME to Blood-Sucking Science, where we explore the science surrounding Dracula!How do vampire bats find prey and survive by drinking blood? Why do we love watching horror films and vampire shows? And CAN science disprove the existence of the vampires we get in legends? We speak to vampire bat expert Daniel Streicker from the University of Glasgow, and friend of the podcast Dr Brendan Rooney, to run us through the psychology of why we love horror films, and what we can even learn from them.And of course, watch out for our dracula vernacular - we’ll be trying to seamlessly weave in as many vampire puns or terminology.Hosted and produced by Emma Brisdion and Karen Collins.If you enjoyed the episode please leave us a review (five stars would be perfect, thanks) as it really helps new listeners find the podcast.For more, read our science blog and find out what else we learned from our expert guests on our website www.smallscreenscience.co.uk.And don't forget to follow us on social media! You can find us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Our series ends with a BANG as well take a look at forensic ballistics and the ethics of policing with Line of Duty!Ever wondered if you would hear the gun firing before the bullet hit you? Is it possible to trace the bullet back to the gun that fired it? What is rifling and how do guns fire? All this and more on this season’s finale.We speak to Allyson MacVean OBE about the code of ethics that the police use to tackle internal corruption, and then Paul Everington, MD of Wiltshire Ballistics Services, who joins us to explain rifling, tracing bullets back to the weapons they were fired from and working out just how much damage a bullet would do to you.Hosted and produced by Emma Brisdion and Karen Collins.Support us on Patreon to help us get season 2 off the ground: https://www.patreon.com/smallscreenscience
If you enjoyed the episode please leave us a review (five stars would be perfect, thanks) as it really helps new listeners find the podcast.For more, read our science blog and find out what else we learned from our expert guests on our website www.smallscreenscience.co.uk.And don't forget to follow us on social media! You can find us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.