Where The Wild Thoughts Are

Exciting news: I have a new book coming out! It’s called In Search of Now: the science and mystery of the present moment, and I’d love to share some of the ideas in it with you, so here is a one-off special episode to ask: What is Now?
The present moment has always fascinated me because on the one hand it’s all around us: everything we do, everything we are. We feel that Now is where we meet the world, where stuff happens, where we feel, think, choose, act. But physicists can’t find it anywhere, and some insist it doesn’t exist at all. So if there’s no physical Now out in the universe, where does our sense of each unfolding moment come from? And is it really an illusion, or could it be a clue that reality is very different from what we thought?
Rather than me interviewing a guest this week, I’ve asked my good friend, Ian Sample, to come on as guest host and grill me for a change! You might know him as the host of the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast, although he’s here in a personal capacity.
In Search of Now is out in the UK on 12 February, published by Canongate, and in the US in March, published by Liveright.

In Search of Now (UK edition)
https://canongate.co.uk/books/4351-in-search-of-now-the-science-and-mystery-of-the-present-moment/
In Search of Now (US edition)
https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324097488

Do follow the show so you don't miss season 2, when we’ll be talking to scientists – and perhaps some philosophers as well – who’ll be helping us to stretch our minds, rethink our assumptions and imagine very different worlds.

*** Follow us on Instagram @wildthoughts_pod
*** Edited highlights on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhB4lyBDyjTliuz_h5oHwN6H8HoxS7qWL

Hosted by Jo Marchant:
https://jomarchant.com
Produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada:
https://www.yada-yada.net/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since September we've met 16 scientists, in fields from neuroscience and quantum physics to archaeology and ecology, who are asking wild questions, exploring the world in different ways, wondering what if the world isn't how we thought. They've all been surprising, brilliant and creative in different ways: for me, each chat has been like a glimpse into a fascinating, hidden world.
To finish the season, this week's episode is a bit different. I've asked my lovely producer, Julian Mayers (who also happens to be a cosmologist), to join me for a look back over some of our favourite moments from the interviews, from falling whales and Neolithic virtual reality to improvising ponds and moments of utter bliss...
As we take a pause over Christmas, thanks to all our guests so far and to you for listening. This first season has been successful far beyond our expectations - we've been recommended by publications including New Scientist and Smithsonian, we were featured by Apple as a top new science show, and we've had listeners in more than 80 different countries, from Madagascar to Mongolia to Montenegro.
We'll be back in the new year with season 2, so if you've enjoyed the show do subscribe now so you don't miss that when it comes.
Bye for now! And see you next time on Where the Wild Thoughts Are.

*** Subscribe for new episodes every Mon
*** Follow us on Instagram @wildthoughts_pod
*** Edited highlights on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhB4lyBDyjTliuz_h5oHwN6H8HoxS7qWL

Hosted by Jo Marchant:
https://jomarchant.com

Produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada:
https://www.yada-yada.net/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens if we let go of our expectations about nature – all the things we think it is, or isn’t, or should be – and just… listen?
Our guide into the unknown this week is award-winning sound artist and ecologist David de la Haye. I first met him at this year’s New Scientist Live in London: I was giving a talk about the science of awe and David came up to me afterwards to tell me about the awe he finds though his work with sound. Essentially he puts hydrophones into the water and records the submerged soundscapes of ponds. He calls it sonic pond dipping.
Rather than dissecting out individual noises or creatures – although that can provide valuable information – David’s work is primarily about listening to an ecosystem in an immersive and very personal way – almost like a meditation. He doesn’t stop at listening, though, he also answers back, creating music – often improvising in real time – with the ponds!
I asked him how he ended up listening underwater, and what he thinks we can learn from these tiny wild spaces that we so often overlook.

David’s home page
www.daviddelahaye.co.uk
Sonic pond dipping
https://sonic-pond.net/
With Ears Underwater
https://daviddelahaye.bandcamp.com/album/with-ears-underwater
Bionic and the Wires (a separate project where mushrooms and plants are wired up to play instruments)
https://bionicandthewires.com/

Clip 1: Pond at Wheatfen nature reserve, Norfolk, UK
Clip 2: Rockpool at Saint Abbs, Scotland
Clip 3: Underwater seals at Mingulay, Scotland
Clip 4: Pond at Wheatfen nature reserve, Norfolk, UK
Clip 5: Photosynthesising plants
Clip 6: With Ears Underwater: Plant based patterns
Clip 7: Pond session: Bliss
Clip 8: Awe response: First ever dawn chorus

*** Subscribe for new episodes every Mon
*** Follow us on Instagram @wildthoughts_pod
*** Edited highlights on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhB4lyBDyjTliuz_h5oHwN6H8HoxS7qWL

Hosted by Jo Marchant:
https://jomarchant.com

Produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada:
https://www.yada-yada.net/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

People have long told stories about the moon’s power, from werewolves shapeshifting by the moon, to the belief that drinking water soaked with moonlight could help women conceive. And monthly rhythms appear across nature, from corals and cacti to gorillas.
But while there's lots of research showing that the daily cycles of the sun are crucial for biology, scientists have largely ignored the role of the moon – or dismissed it as pseudoscience, particularly in humans. That’s partly because there hasn’t been a convincing mechanism for how the moon might influence life on Earth - which is what my guest this week, Kristin Tessmar-Raible of the University of Vienna, is working to uncover. She studies lunar timing in marine bristleworms: four-eyed, many-legged creatures that swarm according to the phase of the moon and have light receptors buried in their brains.
Forget biological clocks, this is a biological calendar. And the fascinating thing is, she’s uncovering surprising parallels with human biology, which means what’s happening in the worms could help to reveal our own deep connection with the moon, from fertility to sleep to mental health. Jo and Kristin discuss just how far-reaching the moon’s influence may be, the colleagues who once thought she was crazy, and what it takes to change minds in science.

Kristin's home page
https://neurodevbio.univie.ac.at/tessmar-raible-research/

2024 review by Kristin & Andrés Ritter on lunar timing in biology
https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.1038/s44319-024-00196-5

Excerpt from Jo's book The Human Cosmos about the moon's influence on biology
https://www.wired.com/story/oysters-that-knew-what-time-it-was/

2021 study on lunar rhythms in women's menstrual cycles
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.abe1358

2025 study on effect of LEDs and smartphones on timing of women's menstrual cycles
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.adw4096

2024 review of links between lunar cycles, sleep and mental health
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2214756121

2021 review of links between lunar cycles and human biology
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/bies.202100054

*** Subscribe for new episodes every Mon
*** Follow us on Instagram @wildthoughts_pod
*** Edited highlights on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhB4lyBDyjTliuz_h5oHwN6H8HoxS7qWL

Hosted by Jo Marchant:
https://jomarchant.com

Produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada:
https://www.yada-yada.net/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How does using AI change who we are? Last week on Where the Wild Thoughts Are, we talked about freeing AIs to have their own creative ideas and express their own realities. This week we’re flipping that theme, with philosopher Caterina Moruzzi of Edinburgh College of Art, to explore how people and AIs work together, and what that relationship does to us as humans.

There’s evidence that when we use AI chatbots to effortlessly generate pretty much anything we want – an essay, poem, painting – that may erode our own ability to think and create. Even if the end result looks impressive, we engage and learn less. But what if we turn that relationship on its head? Instead of using AIs to generate stuff (so we don’t have to); what if we design them to provoke and stimulate our thinking; to expand the possibilities that we can explore; to inspire us to new artistic heights?

I asked Caterina how we can move beyond simply typing prompts into chatbots, and the conversation took us from pianos and provocateurs to mindfulness and magnetic poetry. What if AIs could make us more engaged, more creative, even more human?

Caterina's home page
https://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/profile/dr-caterina-moruzzi

Artificial Intelligence and Creativity (2025 paper by Caterina)
https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/phc3.70030

Can AI be truly creative? My recent feature for Nature (£)
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03570-y

Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies
https://obliquestrategies.ca/

Mimetic Poet
https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.11984

Authenticity Unmasked
https://inspace.ed.ac.uk/authenticity-unmasked-unveiling-ai-driven-realities-through-art/

Slow AI project
https://aixdesign.co/posts/slow-ai

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