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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. So, we can now listen to your podcast. you lifetime perks. Up in the air has a nice double meaning as the emotional emptiness of George's supposedly successful life unfolds before him. It does feel like a weird sort of paradox that while we live in an age where travel can bring us closer together, we aren't reporting more closeness. Quite the opposite. A couple of years ago, the World Health Organization declared loneliness a global life-shortening epidemic. Maybe real fulfilling connection, just like eating your vegetables, is something we need to be nudged to do. I'm Marnie Chesterton from the BBC World Service. This is Unexpected Elements. and connecting with me today through the wonders of modern technology are our panel of excellent science journalists in lagos nigeria ogeche eke anyewu ogeche this is your first time at the table so extra warm welcome to unexpected elements thank you and same continent different corner we have Candice Bailey in Joburg, South Africa. Welcome. Hey, hey, Marnie. This is the show that looks to news headlines for inspiration. We take a story that sparks conversations about interesting and sometimes tangentially related science subjects. And then we go from one subject to the next. And sticking with the theme of staying connected to each other, here's a tech story from China that really got us talking. Let me ask you something. Are you dead? Are you dead? Are you dead? That's the name of an app that's gone huge in China, and the concept is really simple. If you don't press this green button after two days, an emergency contact gets an alert. The app is aimed at people living alone who fear nobody will notice if something happens to them. A stark reminder that in a hyper-connected world, modern loneliness is quietly becoming the norm. Yes, apparently the app called Are You Dead is becoming hugely popular in China. So the development team described it as a lightweight safety tool crafted for solo dwellers. Fail to check in for a couple of days and your emergency contact is alerted. Now, we don't know how many people do live alone, but it is estimated in China there are upwards of 200 million one-person households. So that's quite a big market for this app. And with its sudden viral popularity, the company is releasing an international version with the less blunt name. It's called Damumu. Candice, Oguchi, if this took off in Africa, would either of you be clamouring to download this? Absolutely. My mum would need this. She puts her phone in her bag and it's so hard to get out. We never know how to reach her. So, yes, this would be a very useful tool for us. I think that's an old age thing. I think my mum's got the same problem. So I used to live alone and all my family live in Cape Town. So I'd always call home and as soon as they don't answer the phone, I'd be like, where are they? Has the worst thing ever happened to them? Meanwhile, my mum's just in the garden. So yeah, I think I would like it. I think that's fair enough. So this app has us thinking about loneliness, but also the different ways we connect to each other and the weirdness of our modern age where we can be simultaneously alone and potentially connected to everyone and everything thanks to the internet and the phones that most of us carry around. So plenty to get our scientific teeth into. Where should we take this conversation? Well, Marnie, can you picture yourself being the only one of your species within a 400 kilometre radius? I can't even be the only of my species within a flat without feeling uncomfortable. I know, but that was the fate of the tree of Teneri, which stood all by itself in the heart of Niger's desert for almost 300 years. And there's only one tree and then everywhere else is sand in every direction. Sand in every direction is not a particularly hospitable environment for a tree. How did it survive? It was an acacia tree and they're very resilient in dry conditions. They're able to store and save water. This particular tree was especially resilient. It had an extensive root network that ran down more than 35 metres where it tapped into the water table. But here's what I love most about it, right? Even though it was the most solitary tree on earth at the time, people came to it. People had rituals there. It was even on official military maps. People came and then they gathered around the tree. I love that it got on maps. What I love less is that we're talking about it in the past tense. Yes, unfortunately, a drunk driver hit it and it died in 1973. The only tree for 250 miles and the person with all that space hit it. Wow, nothing else for 250 miles and they managed to drink drive into the only object in a desert. That's kind of tragicomic. It is. So Oguchi, has another tree taken up the title of World's Loneliest Tree then? Yes, actually, it's a spruce tree on Campbell Island near New Zealand. The next closest tree to that one is over 220 kilometres away. Is there more to it than it's just being lonely? OK, so let's get to the science of it. The Campbell Island tree grows like crazy, maybe because there aren't any other trees around to compete with. But in more than 100 years, it has never made clones. It can't make copies of itself. It will always be young and it will always be alone. Oh, that is a bit depressing. Sort of, but not really, no, Marnie. that's why this tree is important. So scientists then took core samples and found something really surprising. They found radiocarbon from nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s and 1960s. Those experiments were done thousands of kilometres distance in the northern hemisphere, but the radioactive signal even got to this tree. This lonely tree has been silently keeping track of what people do all over the world, and scientists have even suggested using it as a sign of the start of the Anthropocene, which is the time when humans first appeared on Earth. But I think what makes this even more fascinating, more interesting is that being alone didn't make them unimportant. It made them landmarks, places to meet. They became holy places, sacred. So they're simply more than trees. They're symbols, places where people want to connect. They really did bring people together. Thank you, Oguchi, for the tale of trees that like to go their own way. So the Are You Dead app took us to the last trees standing. Meanwhile, over at Unexpected Elements HQ, this app has producers Lucy and Ella rethinking their own connections with technology, the rat race and the rest of the team in this week's Fact File. Lucy, I'm grateful that you organised this holiday. It is amazing to be away from the endless stream of emails. But this isn't exactly what I had in mind. But Ella, you said you wanted to relax in the sea. No, I said I wanted to relax by the sea. Oh. And you've brought me to Point Nemo, the point on Earth furthest from land. It's literally impossible for us to be any further from a beach. I can guarantee there is nowhere on earth more relaxing. Look, in this world of constant communication, the only way to properly relax is to take some time away from the hustle and bustle of modern life. Yeah, but there's time away from modern life and then there's being so far from the rest of humanity that the nearest people to us are on the international space station. Well, you said that you needed some space from the madness of the world. So why don't you just sit back, relax and enjoy the sounds of the South Pacific. Fine, I can try. Um, Lucy, do you see that? See what? Up there in the sky, it looks like a kind of giant satellite or something. Oh yeah, that's weird. I wonder what that... Oh, what? Um, I may have read something somewhere about Point Nemo also being called the Spacecraft Graveyard. The Spacecraft Graveyard? Yeah, it's the furthest point from land, so it's the safest place to crash decommissioned spacecraft. They've crashed like 300 of them here. Well, it looks like number 301 is heading straight towards us. Quick Ella, paddle! Paddle! getting away from it all except falling satellites thank you lucy and ella candace over to you well money what's the longest that you can go waiting for reply on your whatsapps these days oh months i'm terrible with whatsapp messages yeah well imagine being away from your phone or not getting a message for at least 24 hours do you want a cup of tea and then you get back 24 hours later yes please or no. Tomorrow. Yeah, that might make me a little anxious. You know, it's interesting to note that not all messages and not all signals are instant these days, especially when they're being sent across the cosmos to the furthest man-made object in the universe, Voyager 1. I love Voyager mission. It genuinely makes me tear up to think about what we achieved. The Voyager 1, for those who might not know, is a robotic space probe which was launched by NASA on September 5th, 1977. And it's one of the two interstellar probes in the Voyager program. Now, this is one of the most ambitious and it's one of the most successful deep space exploration missions that's ever been undertaken. When Voyager 1 launched nearly 50 years ago, the signals took minutes to reach the spacecraft and come back to NASA. But it's much further away now. How far away is it? The latest news is that in November, the spacecraft will be about 25 billion kilometers away from Earth. That would be around one light day distance. I just can't translate that into the number of rugby fields, even if I tried. Okay, stick with light. A light day being how far light can travel in one day. Exactly. It means it will take 24 hours for the signal from the Voyager 1 to get Earth and vice versa. I actually, I was so interested in this, I did have a bit of a deep dive. Go on, tell all. Well, what I know now is that when the Voyager 1 was first launch, it was powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which convert heat from radioactive decay into electricity. It uses this electricity to produce radio signals, which are transmitted via dish antenna back to Earth. I'd never come across a radioisotope thermoelectric generator before, but you know. You didn't buy it at your local mall yet. But as the time's going on, the signals from the Voyager are actually getting weaker. So they are currently 20 billion times weaker than the power of a digital watch battery. And the systems are actually aging. So the space agency has turned down the onboard computers and the instruments to conserve its power so that it can last a little bit longer I love that a space agency can even do that Oguchi bringing you in here do you know about Voyager No but I very fascinated by it all This is something that my son will probably be interested in He talk about these kinds of things for periods long periods of time So Candice, how long have we got left to talk to Voyager? NASA estimates that we'll lose connection with Voyager around 2036, which is four years before I'm officially scheduled to go into retirement. Just FYI. But it's done some incredible work in the past 50 years. You know, as a result of the Voyager 1, we now know that there's volcanic activity on Jupiter's moon IO. We have a better understanding of the complex ring structures and moons of Saturn. And we have better measurements on the edge of the solar system. Hasn't it left our solar system? It has left our solar system. It's now in the interstellar sky. So it's basically getting us interstellar data at the moment. Thank you, Candice, for giving us an excuse to talk about Voyager again, the furthest tentacles of where human civilization has reached. Still to come, doing science at the ends of the Earth. Hello, Ella here, and this is the Unexpected Elements quiz. This week, we're reaching out to you from a great distance to bring some unexpected science. Elephants often roam far and wide to find enough food and water. And to communicate with one another across great plains or forests, they make calls using infrasound. That is very low frequency sound waves below the range of human hearing. So I want to know what is the furthest distance an elephant's call can travel? A. 6 kilometres. B. 13 kilometres. C. 32 kilometres. What is the furthest distance an elephant's call can travel? A. 6km B. 13km C. 32km Have a think and I'll be back soon with the answer. Good luck. You're listening to Unexpected Elements from the BBC World Service. This week we've been inspired by China's Are You Dead app to talk staying connected. So far, we've heard about a tree and a spacecraft defying the odds to stay connected to both humanity and life. Let's stick with remoteness, because sometimes in science, you need to get away from everyone else to do some research. Candice, Oguchi, either of you been tempted by the Antarctic landscape? The white continent, of course. I just think it would be so beautiful to see it. Yeah. So it's the thing about when places are lonely or isolated, they attract people. I'm very curious about Antarctica. Well, good, because joining us now is someone who knows about it and has experienced it firsthand. Glaciologist Liz Morris. Welcome to Unexpected Elements. Hello. So let's introduce you. You've spent your career studying glaciers. And I imagine Antarctica is a hot spot for glaciers. But it took you quite a while to get there, didn't it? Yes, I'm afraid it did, because when I first decided I wanted to be a glaciologist, unfortunately, the best place for doing glaciology in the United Kingdom was the British Antarctic Survey. And they had a policy of not allowing women to work in the field as scientists. So I had to wait about 20 years before that policy changed. And I was able at last to go and do what I dreamt of for many years before. Why didn't they let women work in Antarctica? Well, that's a very good question, because clearly women had been working in science in other fields for a long time. And it was well established, I think, that women scientists were perfectly capable. So it is a bit of a mystery. I can only think that because it's such a remote place and because you live in small communities, that some people were worried about the effect on the community of having a mixed population. OK, so how did it feel when you finally got there, when you got to set foot on Antarctic ice? Well, it was pure joy. It was one of those experiences where you realise what it is to be utterly happy in the right place, the right time, and doing something you'd long to do for many, many years. And it was everything I could have hoped it to be. And tell us what happened immediately after you set foot in Antarctica. Oh, you mean the penguin story? I mean the penguin story. Well, as you can imagine, my first actual step onto the ground of the Antarctic, which was actually Insignia Island, was very, very emotional. And I did think that perhaps I could have a photograph to record the event. So I asked somebody to take a picture and I posed trying to look heroic. And a smaller daily penguin came, walked up to me and pecked me very, very harshly in the knee, at which I fell over into the snow and didn't look at all heroic. So it rather took the heroism out of the moment. Liz, I want to know what was the hardest part about being in that article? I didn't feel anything was hard apart from when I was learning things and making mistakes. And then I did think occasionally when I made a mistake that people would think that the mistake was happening because I was a woman rather than because I was me. So, for example, you know, I've never been very good at driving skidoos. So, you know, when I had a skidoo crash, that was because, you know, I, Liz, I'm bad at skidoo driving, but I was a little bit nervous that other people would think, oh, well, that's because she's a woman, she can't drive. So that, I think, was the hard part. I don't know how to drive a skadulas, just FYI. And it's not because I'm a woman. Exactly. So what were you doing when you weren't being nipped by penguins? What was your actual research out there? So most of the time I was doing surveying work and using GPS, which was then quite new, to establish how fast the ice was moving and whether it was stretching or whether it was being pushed together. And all of this was because we wanted to see how the Antarctic was responding to climate change. But later on, I started specialising in the upper layer of the ice sheet, which is the snow, the snow layer, where the snow is gradually densifying and turning into ice. So I wanted to know what the processes were that were controlling this densifying process and how these would change because of climate change. I mean, I think everybody knows from personal experience that if you squash a snowball and it's a warm snowball, then you can make it quite solid quite easily. But if you're trying to make a snowball out of very, very cold snow, it's a different process. When you started the work, what were scientists predicting about Antarctica and climate change? And have those predictions turned out to be accurate? Oh, that is a really good question. I started work there in 1987. So it was already clear to the scientific world that global warming was happening, that this would have an effect on the Antarctic. What we didn't know then was what the balance would be between possible increase in snowfall and the possible loss of ice because of melting. And I think we probably didn't quite realise how fast the ice streams might be losing ice. Wow. And were you on your own out there? Did you work with other people or was it as isolating as I'm imagining? Well, I mostly worked as a two-man field party, so I would have had one companion. So you're out there, you're making all these measurements, you're with somebody else. Did you have any contact with anyone else outside your party of two? Well, yes. Every evening we would radio our base to say, report that we were safe, to say where we were. And then once a month you had 100 words of communications with people back home. So you would read out your 100 word letter to your family over the radio to the radio operator. And then you might get 100 words back from your family. I mean, if you're limited to 100 words, I'd want to start picking some really long words just so that I got more of my money's worth. I mean, I did have one message from my sister who'd been on a trip in France, which did have about five or six French town names in it. And that caused unbelievable difficulty to the poor chap who was having to read it out. But of course, all this was in the past. And then when satellite phones were invented, then you started to be able to use a phone. So that was a little bit easier. Oh, wow. So the Antarctic of today is actually far less remote? Oh, very much so. Certainly on base, the old hundred word limit is not there because they can just email back and forth. So it is a different world now. Liz Morris, thank you so much for coming on to Unexpected Elements and giving us an insider's guide to a continent that probably most of us are never going to tread on ourselves. Well, thank you. It's been lovely to meet you all. So, a Chinese check-in app, bluntly named Are You Dead, has us musing on the theme of connecting and isolation. We've learnt about two lonely trees, the even lonelier Voyager mission, currently still checking in with home, but 15 billion miles away from it. And just now we've heard from Liz Morris sharing how Antarctica is both isolated and a bit intense. still to come on unexpected elements we reunite with a species that we thought was lost forever yes it's a good news story of a long lost friend coming up shortly starting a business can be overwhelming you're juggling multiple roles designer marketer logistics I understand that you want to listen to your podcast, so I'll keep it short. Because if you think it's important to make a lot of choices, can ASR maybe help? Well, I think, how then? Well, for example, when it's a lot of stuff that you love are, you want to know more about the where a lot of choices can be? Go to asr.nl slash duurzamekeuzes. This is ASR for you and a lot of things. ASR does it. So, then you can listen to your podcast. This is Unexpected Elements from the BBC World Service. This is the science show that takes its inspiration from a news headline. And flicking through those headlines is a crack team of science journalists who join me in the studio. We have... Candice Bailey in Johannesburg. And... Ogichi Ekenia in Lagos, Nigeria. And I'm Marnie Chasterton in Cardiff in the UK. Every so often one of us comes across a local story that deserves a wider audience and we make space for it here on our Unexpected Elements version of Show and Tell. So let's start with a show in audio form, of course. Okay that sounds like a comedy cartoon sound effect but it is in fact reality Candice, I believe this is your story. What have we just listened to? Well, Marnie, that's actually the raucous calling song of a number of male bladder grasshoppers who are trying to connect with female grasshoppers. And it's being recorded in Durban in South Africa. Now, this sound comes specifically from a species called Numora inanis, but it's not actually the grasshopper that I want to talk about today. OK, what do you want to talk about and extra points if you can relate it to the theme of connections and isolation? I'm going to try my best. So the grasshopper that I do want to talk about is a granulate bladder grasshopper, or it's better known as, its scientific name is Prostalia granulate. And now it's in the same family as the Numura inanis. But we don't have any recordings easily available from this crossover because it's been missing for 45 years, until recently when scientists in South Africa rediscovered it. So how's that for distant connections or distant reconnections? I like it. I like it. I will take it. So I love it. something that what we we thought had gone extinct and it reappeared? Tell me more. Exactly. So it's called a granulated grasshopper because it has several tiny bumps on its body. In fact, the male grasshopper has an inflated abdomen, which serves as a resonating chamber when it makes a mating call over a long distance. Okay, so it's good to know that inflated abdomens are sometimes, you know, advantageous to finding a mate. Exactly. So you might be in luck, Mani. No offense, no offense. No, you're taken. The species was known from only three vague historical localities in South Africa. So in Mpumalanga, which is sort of a farm area, the KZN Midlands, and the Eastern Cape, which is on the East Coast. But this grasshopper's reappearance really confirms that it still exists extant. and it really helps us expand its knowledge on its current distribution so it actually can be found. You know, what the discovery really highlights for us is why it's so important for it to be in a protected area and in a small reserve of its kind. So, you know, it's really safeguarding biodiversity. There are lots of very poorly known invertebrates that are often overlooked in conservation planning and this is obviously a good example of that. Right, right, right. So everyone's looking at the charismatic megafauna and they get all of the attention. People look at the nice big animals and they miss the smaller stuff. And the cute grasshopper gets ignored. But it's even worse for plants. They always get overlooked. But where this grasshopper was found was in the Umtamwuna Nature Reserve, which is in KwaZulu-Natal on the east coast. And this nature reserve is actually recognised for conserving rare vegetation types, specifically endangered coastal grasslands, as well as several threatened plant species. Now, the finding of the granulate bladder grasshopper has really prompted scientists to do something really cool, which is compile a new checklist of endemic and threatened invertebrates in the reserve, which really highlights this broader conservational value of making sure that these plant life and matter actually can be protected. So the researchers have found that ongoing threats like illegal grazing, fire misuse, pesticides, drift from nearby orchards, underfunding, all of these pose risks to the grasshoppers in habitat and other species. Are there any other examples of people rediscovering species? In fact, Oguchi, there are. It's actually more common than I thought. In fact, when something is thought to be extinct and found or rediscovered, it actually has a name. It's called a Lazarus species. Now, I don't know if any of you guys are familiar with the Bible. Lazarus was a figure in the Bible who was brought back to life by Jesus. Now, another example of a Lazarus species, like the granulate bladder grasshopper, is a species called the Victorian grassland earless dragon. Sure, that's a long name. But the long story short is that in 2023, after more than 50 years of not being sighted, small populations of this Victorian grassland earless dragon was discovered west of Melbourne and its surrounding grasslands. Now, Marnie, you've just been in Australia. Have you seen any of these Victorian grassland earless dragons, these lizards? I mean, I was looking at the area to the west of Melbourne, but primarily because it was on fire as I was passing through. I did stay away from the fire. I did see some lovely lizards in Taronga Zoo in Sydney. I'm just looking at pictures of your Victorian grassland earless dragon. It's very sweet looking. Yeah. Yeah, it's quite sweet. But I'm not surprised that you didn't see any. The lizard is critically endangered by both the Australian national and the Victorian state legislation. So people don't actually even know their location. They're like in a secret location. And the scientists believe that these lizards disappeared because there was a long list of things that could have led to their disappearance. Habitat loss, invasive plants, predators like foxes and feral cats, pesticides, climate stresses like drought. So it's a long list of things. Right. But despite the many things trying to kill it, it is a Lazarus species. It has found a way. Life finds a way. It does. It does indeed. Well, you know, everybody needs a little bit of help sometimes. So rediscovering the species provides us with a rare second chance for conservation action. And it highlights how even tiny overlooked species can really persist in fragmented landscapes. So we probably won't get a third chance. So we better do what we can do now. Oh, thank you, Candice. It's really good to hear a not dead yet story from a time when we are losing species to extinction thick and fast. So I count this as a small but encouraging, important win. Now, frequently throughout the show, you may hear me put calls out for listeners to get in touch on our email address, for example, which is unexpected at bbc.co.uk. And the reason is because we love it when our listeners do. We get your observations, we get your reactions to previous episodes of Unexpected Elements. So as usual, we've been trawling the inbox to see what peak your interest. Now after our recent episode on the science of the future we discussed whether blue light glasses can relieve eye strain for people who use screens. Helen Smith got in touch to say the following. I have a blue light filter on my prescription glasses and my optometrist recommended them as I'm a truck driver in Canada. They're great as they stop the hypnotic Star Wars effect when driving through a snowstorm, especially at night. These lenses make the snowflakes look more like paper rather than stars on an intergalactic hyperjump. They also help in fog. I'm not sure I'm familiar with the Star Wars effect. Maybe I haven't done enough driving in snowstorms at night. Candice, Oguchi, are either of you familiar with the Star Wars effect? It doesn't snow in South Africa, Moni. Gutting. Does it snow anywhere in Nigeria? No. That's a very funny question. No, it's hot in Nigeria. I just wanted to check because, you know, there was that, what was that song, Feed the World, There Won't Be Snow in Africa This Christmas? and a lot of people point out that actually there's loads of snow in bits of Africa. Yeah. So try all the mountains of Morocco and, I don't know, Mount Kilimanjaro. So I just thought, I didn't want to assume, but I was... Look, Marnie, I'm going to say it does snow. It has snowed in South Africa twice in the last 18 years. Yeah, I was going to say South Africa, perhaps. It gets cold in South Africa. Twice, but not often. And in the Western Cape on the Sierras Mountains, it also snows, but it's not a common thing. And in Lesotho, which is slap bang in the middle of South Africa, it does snow in winter as well. Okay. But South Africa, it's not really. It's not your thing. It's not the Star Wars effect type of snow, like, you know. Right, right. You don't have snow tyres, no. Well, thank you for getting us back to the Star Wars effect. So Star Wars effect is when the snow outside the car looks like that blur of stars that you see in films when your spaceship suddenly goes into hyperdrive and all of the little dots turn into kind of white lines. So, OK, you have to explain this to me. So, well, it's no, it's just the picture of something very specific that happens at the beginning of Star Wars. Where the kind of... Oh, that's when it does that thing. Where you're zooming into and all the stars turn from points into like white lines. It looks like this because of the physics of moving forward in falling snow and the optical effects of light bouncing off frozen water. So as snowflakes fall, the air flowing past your vehicle draws them towards the windscreen. And as snowflakes are intricate patterns of frozen crystals, light doesn't just reflect off of them. It's also refracted in a way that causes each snowflake to sparkle. And if you're driving at night, the light from your headlights hits the snowflakes and bounces directly back at you, leading to these kind of dazzling light displays that Helen described. So there you go. I'm very sad that I've missed snowfall in British winter so far. I'm looking forward to having a go at next time it is snowing to try out the Star Wars effect firsthand. I'm also having a bit of FOMO, by the way. of not being able to see the Star Wars effect in real life. I know. But hey, we're really connected in the modern world. And guess what? We just watch videos on our phone, which I know it's not the same, but it's close. Anyway, thank you everyone for writing in. Again, if you'd like to get in touch about anything you've heard in the show or even something else you'd like to share, then you can email unexpected at bbc.co.uk or you can send a message or a voice note on WhatsApp to plus 44 330 678 3080 or you can go old school, my personal favourite, send us a letter or postcard. The address is Unexpected Elements, BBC World Service, Cardiff, CF10 4GA in the UK. We do read everything you send, even if we can't feature all of it in the programme. Coming up, is there a limit to how large a spider can grow? I really hope so. Find out after this. Hello, Ella here again. Earlier I asked you what is the furthest distance an elephant's infrasound call can travel? A. 6km, B. 13km or C. 32km? The answer is C. 32km. That's around the distance of the narrowest stretch of the channel between Dover in the UK and Calais in France So pretty far Elephant infrasound is created by very long vocal folds slapping together at a low rate A bit like how human humming works And because low frequency sounds lose less energy as they travel It allows them to cover much greater distances As a result, elephants have evolved pressure sensitive nerve endings in their feet called Piscinian corpuscles to pick up the seismic vibrations. Well done if you got that right. You can hum a celebratory tune that may or may not travel 32 kilometres. And if not, better luck next week. In an age of fake news and misinformation, Unexpected Elements likes to offer our listeners the bespoke service, custom answers to your science questions. So if your web browser can't help and you don't know who to ask, it's us. Try us and our feature, Ask the Unexpected. This week's question comes from Doug about a creature very few people want a connection with. Oguchi, do you want to read the question out? Sure. Doug asks, My brother-in-law Chris grew up in England and many years ago was in an old manor house. The building had very thick walls and raincoating and air-filled cavities. Chris opened up a wall panel that had not been disturbed in potentially hundreds of years. In the cavity, he saw a spider. The spider was 10 inches across, but he thought it was a species of house spider that is normally about two inches across. So how big do spiders grow? And could this spider have been 100 years old? To find the answer to Doug's question, we spoke to Sarah Goodacre, who's a professor of evolutionary biology and genetics at the University of Nottingham, where she runs a spider lab. I'm intrigued by the idea of a 10 inch house spider. What does Sarah have to say? More often than things becoming bigger, it's actually that the range of species may have changed. so it's quite possible that one year you're looking at one type of spider in the next year actually it's something else slightly different it's taken that space but the second thing then is that would we expect to see big spiders for example whatever whatever size we call big in our homes in the autumn and yes we would because it's a bit like we know that leaves mature on trees in the summer they're small in the spring they're quite often a deciduous tree they're mature in the summer and in the autumn trees lose their leaves and the same is true for the spider life cycles so if we were to say yes well would a spider live for longer could it live for a huge amount longer time and therefore get much bigger not so really is biologically no but we have an idea of the range that things can be and the same is exactly the same is true for a spider so quite often and things will go through an annual life cycle and some things can live for a little bit longer and i have to say have some beautiful tarantulas in my spider room absolutely gorgeous and some of them live for decades. So it is specific to a type of species. So to you, it may also seem huge, but actually it's not. And it definitely won't been alive for, as I think one of your listeners might have suggested, for a very, very long time. That we can be pretty sure. I am very pleased to hear that spiders cannot just carry on getting bigger throughout their lives. What's the biggest spider that you get in Nigeria? Actually, I was just Googling that. I think about 20 inches. 20 inches? 20 centimeters. I made a mistake. Eight inches, about 20 centimeters. Yeah, but I haven't seen anything that big. For now, thank you so much, Professor Sarah Goodacre. And thank you, Doug, for your question. I'm intrigued to know more about how potentially big spiders can grow. I might do some more digging into that. Anyway, listeners, do you have a question that no amount of Googling or chat GPTing can get you an answer for? If so, you can email us unexpected at bbc.co.uk or send us a message or voice note on WhatsApp to plus 44 330 678 30 80. we've broadly been themed this week by connection and in my final section of the show i want to dig into the bbc archives and explore that because you know i mentioned at the top of the show that seeming conundrum that in an age where so many of us have phones that connect us to a world of knowledge, and also where we can travel more easily, we seem to be both more connected and yet more lonely. So according to the World Health Organization, one in six of us is affected by loneliness. And that's irrespective of age or social status. And they also have this headline grabbing stat that being lonely has the equivalent negative effects on your body as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Now, a few years back, the BBC did one of my favourite things to do if you have a global audience and a platform. They did a big science experiment. Here's my colleague, Claudia Hammond, with one of the answers to their questions about loneliness. There are, of course, no right or wrong answers to the question, what is the opposite of loneliness? We asked you what you thought. People from 237 different countries, territories and islands around the world chose to take part. The BBC loneliness experiment. The top five replies to the question, what is the opposite of loneliness? One, being connected. Two, contentment. Three, happiness. Four, friendship. Five, people who care. So there's no right answer. If I asked you both, what's the opposite of loneliness? Instinctively, what would either of you say? Maybe I'll say contentment because there are some times when you're with people, but you're still feeling lonely, you know. So I probably choose that, contentment. Candice? I'd say being connected. Yeah, I'd say at least being able to connect with somebody at some point. In the archives, in this BBC Health Check special focused on loneliness, Claudia interviewed Professor of Humanities Barbara Taylor, who had some interesting insights on the history of loneliness. There's an aphorism that's derived from Aristotle, actually. It's coined by Francis Bacon, but he's basically an Aristotle. And he says that the person who delights in solitude is either a beast or a god. And bestial, because to be truly human you want to be with other people. A god, because you are completely self-sufficient. You exist in a different realm than ordinary human beings. And for the most part, for ordinary human beings, all through history, a desire for solitude has been seen as unnatural. It's a very interesting question about whether or not loneliness is a sort of modern phenomenon. And my own hypothesis is that the concept of loneliness, as we understand it today, possibly doesn't really come into existence until the mid to late 19th century, because in our minds, there's a link between modern society and loneliness. I mean, with the birth particularly of a critique of the modern world as an alienating, estranging sort of place, which really comes into being from the mid to late 19th century. Some fascinating words there from Barbara Taylor. I love that she describes if you like being alone, then you're a beast or a god. So we've got there this idea that loneliness seems to be viewed as a modern phenomenon. And I wondered why and what social changes might be driving that. And I discovered one potential cause in the archives in a World Service documentary on loneliness in India. Here's reporter Sermit Herpal's insights. So in India, of course, there is a great emphasis on community, on families, and on specifically spaces where individuals and groups could have come together. They could have shared a sense of community and a sense of belonging. However, as we've seen with young people moving out of their cities in search of employment, they have moved away from their traditional families from the cities where they had belonged to, to bigger cities. And this is quite an urban phenomena that we are looking at, wherein young individuals are feeling increasingly disconnected. While we're in an age of social media and a lot of events, cafes and multiple options around us, there is a desire that young Indians are feeling to have more meaningful and authentic connections. connections. That clip really hit home for me because I moved to a new city, a new country in my late 20s for work. And I have to say, I don't think I've ever been that lonely. That moving is just one of the factors contributing to loneliness in the US, which is about to be mentioned by the former Surgeon General. And the BBC caught him speaking at a conference on loneliness. Let's hear that clip. My name is Vivek Murthy, and I served as the 19th Surgeon General of the United States. Rates of loneliness in the United States are high. They're sufficiently high that it's very likely there are more people who are struggling with loneliness than have diabetes in the United States. But we comparatively don't put nearly as much thought, money or attention into addressing loneliness as we do other chronic illnesses. And I think this can change, but it starts with raising public awareness around loneliness and with engaging employers, educators, and policymakers in the conversation so they can understand that loneliness is not just an isolated condition, but it impacts the illnesses that we care about and it impacts how we perform in school and in the workplace. In the United States, there's no one factor that's driving loneliness, but it's a multitude of issues. And number one, mobility has increased significantly over the last few decades. And so people are moving away from trusted communities. There's also been a dramatic increase in the presence of technology in our lives. And sometimes that can be helpful. But the way in which we use technology matters. And what we have found is that very often people are using technology in ways that actually takes away from their time with family or friends or substitutes lower quality online relationships for the higher quality face-to-face relationships that they had before. But what I think is also concerning is that there has been a culture of individualism that I think is so strong that it has in fact allowed people to think that our collective work and our interdependence is in fact not so important. We've come to see interdependence as a sign of weakness as opposed to in fact what it is, which is our true nature and the way that we have evolved to operate. And it turns out, in fact, that building the skills to cultivate relationships with other people is just as important a tool for success and for survival as what I may learn in math class or what I might learn in my science class. Fascinating stuff there from the former Surgeon General. There's a lot to grab on to what he said. You know what it made me think about was, one day loners get lonely. You know, you get people who just like to be on their own. Well, if any of them like to be on their own, but listen to Unexpected Elements, do get in touch and tell us. Which brings us back to our theme that's been running through this show, which is connection. So inspired by the app called Are You Dead? that checks in on people in China living on their own, we've explored the trees, space mission, and South African grasshopper species that are also still clinging on. and we've looked at some loneliness science and how research into it might be the beginning of tackling this problem. That's us out of time. Thank you so much to this week's panel. Candice Bailey in Johannesburg in South Africa, thank you. Thanks for connecting with me. And in Lagos, Nigeria, Ogeche Ekeanyawu, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. This was really great to be here. I'm Marnie Chesterton. The producer was Ella Hubber with Lucy Davis, Immy Harper and Sophie Ormiston. Join us next week for more Unexpected Elements. I'm your service mom. On BBCNL, you'll find the best British series of British British. From the sun-strand of paradise... This is murder. ...to the dark streets of Belfast. Put your helmet on, me. 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