Ri Science Podcast

Memories give us a sense of who we are. But how can we be sure that what we remember is what really happened? And why is it that some unwanted memories just won’t go away? Vin Walsh is a Professor of Human Brain Research at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL. https://twitter.com/vinwalsh Julia Shaw is a memory hacker and psychological scientist at UCL. She is best known for her work in the area of false memories: memories of things that never actually happened. https://twitter.com/drjuliashaw Jennifer Wild is an Associate Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on why people over-remember what they most wish to forget. She has a special interest in how traumatic memories are formed and how they drive symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. https://twitter.com/drjenwild Check out our website: www.rigb.org/ Patreon: www.patreon.com/TheRoyalInstitution Twitter: twitter.com/Ri_Science YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/TheRoyalInstitution

This month Kate Jones tells us about the amazing technology being used to monitor wildlife worldwide and how it is helping us to learn about the fascinating world of bats. Kate Jones is Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity in the Research Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment (GEE) at University College London. She's on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/profkatejones Image credit: F. C. Robiller Check out our website: http://www.rigb.org/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheRoyalInstitution Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ri_Science YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheRoyalInstitution

What will the world of tomorrow be like? Kelly and Zach Weinersmith give us a snapshot of the transformative technologies that are coming soon(ish), from space elevators to origami robots, and explain how they will change our world in astonishing ways — maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. Kelly Weinersmith is a Huxley Fellow at Rice University in the BioSciences Department. She studies how host behaviour influences risk of infection with parasites and cohosts Science... Sort Of, one of the top 20 natural science podcasts. Zach Weinersmith is the cartoonist behind the popular geek webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

For millennia, humans have been firmly rooted to the Earth, but haven't you ever fancied a change of scenery? This month, science writer and broadcaster Dallas Campbell talks to former Christmas Lecturer and fellow space nerd Kevin Fong about all things space travel, and Dallas’ new book: Ad astra: An illustrated guide to leaving the planet. Dallas Campbell is an actor, author and TV presenter, and has always been fascinated by space. He was also an understudy for the 2014 CHRISTMAS LECTURES: How to hack your home, and appeared via hologram in the final show. Kevin Fong is an anaesthesiologist and space medicine expert. He presented the 2015 CHRISTMAS LECTURES: How to Survive in Space and regularly presents documentaries for Horizon and the BBC World Service.

2018 marks 200 years since the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a book that is just as relevant now as it was in 1818. Today, Shelley's creature lives on, as an embodiment of society's anxieties about where science is taking us. In this episode, Philip Ball is joined by Miranda Seymour, Frank James and Angela Wright to discuss the context in which the book was written and how the tale has become a popular myth with a life of its own, independent of Shelley's original text. Philip Ball is a science writer, writing regularly for Nature and having contributed to publications ranging from New Scientist to the New York Times. Miranda Seymour is a leading biographer and critic whose definitive life of Mary Shelley (2000) examined the sources of Frankenstein in depth. She has also written an introduction to the Folio Frankenstein (2015). Frank James is Professor of the History of Science and Head of Collections at the Royal Institution. His main research has been editing the Correspondence of Michael Faraday which is now complete in six volumes. Angela Wright is Professor of Romantic Literature in the School of English at the University of Sheffield. She is a former co-President of the International Gothic Association (2013-17).

Australian author and presenter Dr Karl Kruszelnicki gives a whirlwind tour of incredible science facts and questions. Like who put a nuclear reactor in africa 2 billion years ago? And is there life on a moon of Saturn? Dr Karl Kruszelnicki is an Australian science populariser with degrees in Physics and Maths, Biomedical Engineering, Medicine and Surgery. He has held a wide range of jobs, from doctor to film-maker, radio personality to labourer, car mechanic to physicist.

Our sense of reward motivates us and is essential for survival, so when the system malfunctions, it can lead to big problems. This month, Ray Dolan, Wolfram Schultz and Peter Dayan, winners of the 2017 Lundbeck Foundation Brain Prize, discuss their ground-breaking work on how the brain recognises and processes reward with Claudia Hammond.

An estimated 700,000 people in Britain are affected by autism. In this Discourse, Dame Stephanie Shirley shares her hands-on experience of the disorder. Dame Stephanie Shirley is an information technology pioneer and philanthropist. Her charitable organisation, The Shirley Foundation, facilitates scientific research aimed at understanding what autism is as opposed to what it looks like.

Aoife McLysaght explores the evolution of new genes, how they sometimes become essential, and the link between new genes and disease including cancer. Aoife's lecture was given as the 2016 JBS Haldane Lecture from the Genetics Society. Aoife McLysaght is a geneticist at Trinity College Dublin. She specialises in the the origin and evolution of new genetic sequences and was the first to discover a set of genes that only occur in humans. She has appeared on TV to discuss her work and is a regular contributor to radio shows on BBC Radio 4 and columns in the Irish Times.

Greg Foot leads a scientific exploration to the top of the tallest mountain and bottom of the deepest ocean, accompanied by mountaineer medic Dan Martin and oceanographer explorer Leigh Marsh. Hear more from Greg Foot on his podcast, The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread: http://gregfoot.com/slicedbreadpod/ Watch the incredible Nautilus explorations live: http://www.nautiluslive.org/ Find out more about Extreme Everest: https://www.xtreme-everest.co.uk/ Greg Foot is a science presenter and a regular contributor for Blue Peter. He is fascinated by exploration in extreme environments and has been to both Everest Base Camp and in submersibles 300m deep. Dan Martin is a mountaineer, medic and the director of the UCL Centre for Altitude, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine. In 2007 he summited Everest and measured the lowest blood oxygen level of any living healthy human (his own!). Leigh Marsh is the lead communications officer for technology at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) in Southampton. Her remit includes communicating the development and operations of all of the NOC's robotic and autonomous vehicles for scientific exploration of the deep ocean. She is also a visiting research fellow with the University of Southampton.