Psychological small talk

www.bit.ly/psychobabble

Psychobabble is a fortnightly 40-minute podcast that grabs hold of everyday happenings and subjects them to the vigorous methodology of experimental psychology. Hosted by a team of knowledgeable, enthusiastic PhD students and describing itself as a combination of “life, psych-science and blue-sky musings”, Psychobabble’s remit is wide-ranging. Past episodes have been dedicated to selfdeception, the sublimity of advertising and, most crucially, how facial hair defines you in the minds of others.

http://bbc.in/wondermonkey

The Wonder Monkey blog is an informed and perceptive blog by BBC Nature online editor Matt
Walker. He’s an amiable guide on this exploration of the natural world, his words both concise and precise on a variety of subjects – the moth’s self-destructively attraction to a flame; the myth
that a swan sings beautifully just before its demise; the shocking cannibalistic tendencies of primates. It’s not all about death, though. True to the blog’s name, Walker also muses on whether a monkey can indeed wonder.

www.sacredsites.com

Over one hundred years ago, Machu Picchu, the Inca lost city located high on a mountain ridge in southern Peru, was brought to the world’s attention through its ‘discovery’ by the American historian Hiram Bingham. It’s just one of a multitude of spiritually significant locations from across the world celebrated by the Sacred Sites website that offers in-depth histories of places both world-famous (Stonehenge, Uluru/Ayers Rock in Australia) and less familiar, such as the curious mountain-top shrine of Nemrut Dagi in Turkey.

www.eol.org

The free Encyclopedia of Life portal is an excellent resource for those curious about the natural world. Boasting information on nearly 700,000 species gathered from more than 160 trusted sources, it celebrates the planet’s extraordinary biodiversity. Valued by the public, teachers and professional biologists alike, it’s recently undergone a facelift that allows a more user-friendly and interactive experience. No more excuses for not knowing your arsenic bean from your elbow crab.

www.darwinproject.ac.uk

The Darwin Correspondence Project is an endeavour of mindboggling dedication. Contained
within are details of all the known letters written by or to Charles Darwin – more than 15,000 of them. But that’s not all. Every letter written or received by 1868 (14 years before Darwin’s death) has been transcribed and is fully searchable. Not only do they offer a fascinating character study of the great man, they also provide a vivid snapshot of Victorian social life and the 19th-century academic world.

http://bbc.in/spacemissions

Courtesy of the BBC, discover the full stories behind many of those pioneering, often dramatic
voyages into the final frontier. There’s the 1957 Sputnik mission, the first Earth-orbiting satellite;
the oxygen tank explosion experienced by the Apollo 13 crew in 1970; and the probe Messenger
that’s currently collecting data from Mercury. As well as a multitude of pictures and videos, there
are also respected explanations from such figures of authority as Patrick Moore and Brian Cox.