Ri Science Podcast

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.

Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith explains what epigenetics is and how our environment interacts with our genome and if these changes can be passed on to the next generation. What is epigenetic inheritance and why is it important? And why would it matter which parent you inherited a particular gene from? Epigeneticist Anne Ferguson-Smith outlines the implications of parental origin for development, metabolism and the brain. Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith is Head of the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge. She is a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator and her lab focuses on the developmental role of imprinted genes and the epigenetic mechanisms controlling the specific expression of genes depending on their parental origins. Thumbnail image credit: eLife Sciences Publications Ltd, CC BY 4.0

Steve Jones chronicles the remarkable scientific advances made during the French Revolution and ambles through the history of modern science and current research. Paris at the time of the French Revolution was the world capital of science. In this dazzling new insight into the City of Light, Steve Jones takes a sideways look at its history, its revolutionary science and the scholars who laid the foundations, in the age of the guillotine. Steve Jones is professor of genetics at Galton laboratory of University College London, where most of his academic research has been looking at snails and what they can tell us about population genetics. Steve Jones is well known as a regular broadcaster and writer of popular science books, including The Language of the Genes, In the Blood and Y: The Descent of Man. He gave the 1991 Reith Lecture, has written, presented and appeared on TV and radio shows.

In a lightning tour of human reasoning, world-renowned psychologist Richard Nisbett shines a new light on the shadowy world of the way we think – and how we can make our lives, and the lives of those around us, better. Subscribe to the podcast via your podcasting app for free: Just search 'Ri Science Podcast'. Richard Nisbett is Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished Professor of social psychology and co-director of the Culture and Cognition program at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. "The most influential thinker, in my life, has been the psychologist Richard Nisbett. He basically gave me my view of the world." –Malcolm Gladwell

Have new brain imaging techniques really revealed that women and men are ‘hardwired’ for their gender roles? Or has neuroscience become misappropriated to justify gender gaps? Professor of cognitive neuroimaging Gina Rippon investigates. *Subscribe to the podcast for free by searching 'Ri Science Podcast' in your app of choice* There is a long history of debate about biological sex differences and their part in determining gender roles, with the ‘biology is destiny’ mantra being used to legitimise imbalances in these roles. The tradition is continuing, with new brain imaging techniques being hailed as sources of evidence of the ‘essential’ differences between men and women, and the concept of ‘hardwiring’ sneaking into popular parlance as a brain-based explanation for all kinds of gender gaps. But the field is littered with many problems. Some are the product of ill-informed popular science writing (neurotrash) based on the misunderstanding or misrepresentation of what brain imaging can tell us. Some, unfortunately involve poor science, with scientists using outdated and disproved stereotypes to design and interpret their research (neurosexism). These problems obscure or ignore the ‘neuronews’, the breakthroughs in our understanding of how plastic and permeable our brains are, and how the concept of ‘hard-wiring’ should be condemned to the dustbin of neurohistory. This talk aims to offer ways of rooting out the neurotrash, stamping out the neurosexism and making way for neuronews. Gina Rippon is Professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging at Aston University. Her research involves the application of brain imaging techniques, particularly electroencephalography, (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), to studies of normal and abnormal cognitive processes. Recorded at the Royal Institution on 20 January 2016. Find out what's on here: http://www.rigb.org/whats-on