Matthew Cobb studies the sense of smell in maggots, as part of his job as Professor of Zoology at the University of Manchester. He is also interested in the history of science, and his most recent book, Life’s Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code, was shortlisted for the 2015 Royal Society Winton Book Prize. He has won awards for his science communication and has appeared a number of times on BBC Radio 4’s The Infinite Monkey Cage.

Talk: The rise of the robots and the human brain – from Ancient Greece to tomorrow

Robots and the promise – or threat – of AI are real issues for the 21st century. But people have been thinking about what machines tell us about what it is to be human, and worrying about what will happen, for thousands of years. Professor Matthew Cobb shows what insights we have gained from robots down the centuries, in particular how we think about the brain, and explores what tomorrow holds.