Skeptics in the Pub Podcast - Cambridge

Laughter is a universal human behaviour about which we have very little insights - we like to laugh, but we don't always know why we are laughing. In Sophie Scott's talk she will explore how the emerging science of laughter is shedding new light on this common behaviour.Sophie Scott has worked in psychology and cognitive neuroscience for over 20 years and she is funded by the Wellcome Trust. Sophie Scott is interested in the human voice, how we use it to communicate and what we can do when this communication goes wrong.

Dr Iroise Dumontheil is a lecturer in the Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London. She obtained a PhD from the University of Paris VI and then was a postdoc in labs in London, Cambridge and Stockholm. Her research focuses on the typical development of social cognition and cognitive control during adolescence and their functioning in adulthood. Her studies combine a variety of methods to study brain and cognitive development including functional and structural neuroimaging, behavioural assessments, and genetics. She is further interested in the potential implications of this neuroscience research for education.

Electric cars? They're rubbish aren't they?! Nothing but glorified golf carts that take forever to charge and then run out of power on the way to the shops. Try finding somewhere to charge them. They cost a fortune to buy and another fortune to replace the battery when its range drops to half after 500 miles. You don't want to believe all that nonsense about them being environmentally-friendly. They are actually worse than petrol-powered cars because the batteries are made from dirty lithium and use electricity made from dirtier coal. There isn't even enough lithium in the world to make all the new batteries we'd need anyway. Electric cars are just rubbish. Aren't they? - Robert says no. This evening he'll tell us why he thinks we need to put away our prejudices and think seriously about electric vehicles as the future of transport.Robert Llewellyn is an actor, writer, comedian, TV presenter and self-described wishy-washy liberal best known for playing the android Kryten in the long-running BBC sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf. He presented Scrapheap Challenge for 10 years and these days he can be seen on TV presenting the shows CarPool on Dave and How Do They Do It? on Channel 5. He is probably the UK's most prominent advocate of electric vehicles (EV) and presents a YouTube-based show called Fully Charged that documents current developments in the electric vehicle industry. In February 2012 he debated the motion "This House Believes Electric Cars are the Future of Transport" at the Oxford Union. The motion was carried.