Imagine the scene; you visit your shed and notice the plastic clips you placed on the side bench have been collected up and put into an tub of peanuts for the birds. You empty the ice cream tub. Next morning everything has been placed back in the tub, alongside screws, nuts and bolts. Must be a ghost, right?

Is a pandemic the best time to develop your zombie apocalypse plan? We can learn a surprising amount from the current situation. After all, no-one mentioned that the apocalypse would involve epic missions to find toilet paper or washing your hands to the tune of Happy Birthday. So let’s get started.

Ever noticed those fruit flies buzzing around your overly ripe bananas? Only a couple of millimetres long, these tiny flies are attracted to rotting, fermenting fruit. Research has found that male fruit fly who were rejected by females, drank four times as much alcohol as those who had sex.

Next time you make tea listen carefully as you add hot water to the cup. Try pouring the same volume of cold water into the same type of cup. Can you hear a difference? Listen to the experiment and take a look at the science behind this phenomenon.

As part of our podcast episode ‘Blood-Sucking Science’ we interviewed Dr Daniel Streicker, from the University of Glasgow, about vampire bats, how they hunt in the dark and feed on their prey.

We have decided not to release an episode today. Like many, we’ve been trying to learn more about black history and our own white privilege. We would like to use this space to recommend and share some of the podcasts that we have spent time listening to this week.

We have all watched TV forensic pathologists pause whilst photographing the body, grab a pair of tweezers and bag a piece of trace evidence from under the victim’s fingernails or inside a wound. In the storyline, this fibre or sliver of glass proves to be crucial damning evidence against the killer. So how important is trace evidence and is it true every contact leaves a trace?

It might not sound like a natural stepping stone for signing up to dance classes, but exercise has been shown to help slow the progression of the condition’s symptoms.

Avid readers of crime fiction will be familiar with the ‘little grey cells’ of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes’ examination of trace evidence. Less well known is Song Ci, whose casebook ‘Washing Away of Wrongs’ provided coroners with a step-by-step guide to autopsy and forensic investigation. Why is his work so significant?

Once a body has been found, how do forensic pathologists and forensic entomologists use science to work out how and when did they died? And what do insects have to do with it?

You bought some chocolate nibbles to gobble during lockdown but your dog steals and eats some. Will they be OK? It depends how big your dog is, the type of chocolate it was and how much they ate – but you should definitely contact your vet. Let’s take a look at the science behind why chocolate is so toxic for our pets.

A thick, smooth, silky-looking chocolate ganache can really make a cake, but they are notoriously hard to get right. By understanding the science behind what’s going on in the making process, you’ll stand a better chance of getting it right.