Brilliant or Bonkers: Weird Inventions & Innovation Debates

Mark & Amanda | Science and Ideas Podcast

Every week, a curious 10-year-old and her slightly too-confident dad debate the world’s weirdest inventions and ideas. From headless cows to AI televisions. One of them argues it’s brilliant, the other insists it’s bonkers. Together they explore the strange space between genius and madness — where the best ideas often start. Is it the next big thing or total nonsense? You decide.

  1. Aug 6

    EP26 - Shoppy the Supermarket Shopping Robot

    What if you never had to set foot in a supermarket again — but still got to pick your own bananas? This week Mark unveils the Shoppy: a robot that rides in your car, deploys itself when you park, and does the whole shop while you sit back with a coffee. You watch through its camera on an app and approve the fruit and veg yourself, and it conveniently forgets the sweets aisle exists. But here's the twist: maybe you don't own it. Maybe the supermarket does, and you just connect to one as you pull into the car park — which means the store still gets to tempt you with its offers. And when two robots reach for the last discounted chicken? They settle it, naturally, with rock paper scissors. It looks like Wall-E... but with human hands. Amanda thinks that's deeply creepy. Mark's already working out how to make money from it. And the Judgement Giraffe — who can see over every slow walker but still can't get past them — has some feelings. Brilliant, or bonkers? You decide.

  2. Jul 25

    EP 25 - Robo-Pigeon

    Texting is instant, but is it any fun? After a trip to a War museum, Amanda pitches her boldest invention yet: a robot pigeon that flies handwritten notes to your friends' windowsills. Mark counters with Blackadder, Speckled Jim, and the awkward fact that stamps exist. Along the way: the heroic pigeons of WWI, robot birds that actually fly. Is this the vinyl record of communication or the world's most over-engineered envelope? The Judgement Giraffe decides.

    EP 25 - Robo-Pigeon

  3. Jul 18

    EP24 - Fixing Football with Crowd Control

    It's the Brilliant or Bonkers Worldcup Special! This week Amanda & Dad set out to fix football. The crowd takes over. Dad suggests electrodes in the boots that buzz players left, right or middle. Having viewers at home pick the penalty takers and letting viewers at home overrule the manager's bench. Mark and Amanda pull apart four ways to hand fans real power over a football match. One of them rewards attacking teams. The others might just ruin the game. The Judgement Giraffe decides.

    EP24 - Fixing Football with Crowd Control

  4. Jul 11

    EP 23 - A Single Use Time Machine

    A time Machine! But you can only use it once to go back in time. Where and when would you go? Would you bring something back? Change something in the past? Or would you observe something? Would it be Brilliant or Bonkers? Amanda stuns dad into silence when she tells him where she would go in time. What does Grandma Joey have to do with the assassination of Lincoln? What is better: the sermon on the Mound or the first night Romeo & Juliet in the Globe Theatre? Joins Amanda and her Dad as they debate the single use Time Machine.

  5. Jun 24

    EP22 - Going to Hogwarts. For Real.

    Episode: The Hogwarts School After a visit to Warner Bros Studios London, Amanda pitches a chain of schools where every classroom looks like Hogwarts. Real curriculum, real exams, but floating candles, house dining halls, and a potions lab where chemistry used to be. Mark and Amanda debate whether designing schools to inspire children rather than contain them is the most important educational reform of the century, or whether dressing up a primary school in someone else's imagination is the most expensive kind of borrowed magic. Along the way: what Ofsted and the Daily Mail would each do with a Warner Bros licensing bill on a state school, the awkward truth that Hogwarts itself is an elite boarding school for the magically gifted, and the bigger, sharper idea hiding underneath about the bookends of life we've stopped designing for. The Judgement Giraffe rules.

    EP22 - Going to Hogwarts. For Real.

  6. Jun 14

    EP 21 - Vampire Hearing

    What if you could programme your earbuds to filter out the crying baby on the plane, the annoying colleague at work, or — controversially — your own spouse? Not sci-fi: the University of Washington already has it working, and it's two product cycles from your ears. Mark and Amanda dig in. Is this the most important accessibility breakthrough of the decade — finally giving the hard-of-hearing, the autistic, and the migraine-prone their cities back? Or is it the audio echo chamber that finishes off shared public space, available from £400 a pair? Along the way: babies and the social contract, marriages saved or quietly ended, a new class divide where silence becomes a paid amenity, and the question nobody's asked yet: Vampire hearing? The Judgement Giraffe weighs in.

  7. May 22

    EP 20 The Piggy Patch - Hide the stains and make them go away

    The shirt is white. The bolognese is red. The school photo is in twenty minutes. Every parent knows this exact moment of dread — and this week, Olga thinks she's solved it. In a Brilliant or Bonkers first, the referee has stepped into the ring with her own invention: the Piggy Patch. A plaster-sized sticker with a cartoon pig on the front and a slow-release detergent layer on the back. Stick it on the stain, let your child play, and two hours later peel the pig off and the mess is gone. Shame solved. Stain dissolved. Amanda is suspicious. Mark is delighted. The Judgement Giraffe has notes. Brilliant, bonkers, or a little of both?

    EP 20 The Piggy Patch - Hide the stains and make them go away

  8. May 16

    EP19 - The Bacon Tree

    Amanda wants to grow bacon on a tree. No pigs, no farms, just plant it and wait. Mark thinks she might be onto something — because someone has already done it with seaweed. This week on Brilliant or Bonkers: the chemistry of bacon, the world's only patented bacon-flavoured plant, and whether a "bacon orchard" could feed the future or whether trees simply refuse to play along. Verdict from the Judgement Giraffe at the end.

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About

Every week, a curious 10-year-old and her slightly too-confident dad debate the world’s weirdest inventions and ideas. From headless cows to AI televisions. One of them argues it’s brilliant, the other insists it’s bonkers. Together they explore the strange space between genius and madness — where the best ideas often start. Is it the next big thing or total nonsense? You decide.

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