BBC World Service - CrowdScience, Is anything truly random? Homepage Accessibility links * Skip to content * Accessibility Help Close menu BBC World Service CrowdScience * Home * Episodes * Clips * Podcast * Contact CrowdScience * Join us on Facebook Main content Listen now Is anything truly random? CrowdScience An award-winning show in which we attempt to help a listener decorate her bathroom with the assistance of a mathematician, a neuroscientist and some friendly quantum physicists. Show more We’re delving into the CrowdScience archive to give you another chance to hear an award-winning show from 2025. CrowdScience listener Dorit has a problem. She wants the tiles in her new bathroom to be arranged randomly but, no matter what she does, it still looks like they form some kind of pattern. This has got Dorit thinking about randomness – what is it, how do you create it, why do we find it so hard to recognise, and is anything really random at all? And if nothing is truly random, does it mean that everything is theoretically predictable? Tiling your bathroom is a much more existential problem than you might have thought. Never afraid of a question, whether big (is everything pre-determined?) or small (how do I tile my bathroom?), CrowdScience is on the case. Anand Jagatia heads to Switzerland to meet Hugo Duminil-Copin, a mathematician at the University of Geneva who specialises in probability theory. On the top floor of an old bank, Hugo has Anand flipping an imaginary coin in a random order. Hugo explains that randomness is something that cannot be predicted by any means – so why is it so easy for Hugo to guess what Anand’s next move is? Meanwhile, at the National Institutes of Mental Health in Maryland USA, Susan Wardle is a cognitive neuroscientist who researches how the human brain processes visual information. Can neuroscience help Dorit with her tiling problem, and is there a reason why the human brain likes to put random objects into some kind of order? Geneva is also the birthplace of the first Quantum Random Number Generator for smartphones, and CrowdScience has persuaded some of the University of Geneva’s finest quantum physicists to hook a photon detector up to a synthesiser. Thanks to Tiff Brydges and Nicolas Brunner, we can actually hear quantum particles behaving randomly. But is quantum randomness truly random, or just a pattern that we can’t see? And could quantum physics help Dorit tile her bathroom? Presenter: Anand Jagatia Producer: Ben Motley Editor: Cathy Edwards (Photo: Many wooden dice - stock photo- Credit: akiyoko via Getty Images) Show less Download Choose your file * Higher quality (128kbps) * Lower quality (64kbps) Available now 27 minutes Last on Mon 27 Jul 2026 12:32 GMT BBC World Service Australasia, East and Southern Africa, News Internet & West and Central Africa only More episodes Previous Are there diseases in space? Next Will I get hit by a meteor? See all episodes from CrowdScience Featured * . Broadcasts * Fri 24 Jul 2026 19:32 GMT BBC World Service * Mon 27 Jul 2026 01:32 GMT BBC World Service except Americas and the Caribbean * Mon 27 Jul 2026 04:32 GMT BBC World Service Australasia, Americas and the Caribbean, South Asia & East Asia only * Mon 27 Jul 2026 08:32 GMT BBC World Service * Mon 27 Jul 2026 12:32 GMT BBC World Service Australasia, East and Southern Africa, News Internet & West and Central Africa only Show more / Show less Podcast * CrowdScience Answering your questions about life, Earth and the universe Related Content Similar programmes By genre: * Factual > Science & Nature > Science & Technology By format: * Discussion & Talk * Online schedule * Help & FAQs * Contact us * News in more than 40 languages * Terms of Use * About the BBC * Privacy Policy * Privacy Policy * Cookies * Cookies * Accessibility Help * Parental Guidance * Contact the BBC * Make an editorial complaint * Careers * BBC emails for you * Advertise with us Copyright (c) 2026 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.