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Dare to Repair: How we broke the future Jul 12, 2021

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Materials engineer Professor Mark Miodownik looks back to the start of the electronics revolution to find out why our electronic gadgets and household goods are less durable and harder to repair now. As he attempts to fix his digital clock radio, he reveals that the drive for cheaper stuff and advances in design and manufacturing have left us with a culture of throwaway technology and mountains of electronic waste.

Image: Apron housewife at kitchen dish washer, Credit: George Marks/Getty Images

Producer: Fiona Roberts

Tooth and claw: Tigers Jul 05, 2021

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“As it charges towards you, you can actually feel the drumbeat of its feet falling to the ground”. Nothing quite says fear more than standing before a charging tiger. Yet so often it’s also the poster-predator for conservation. The tiger truly is the ‘prince of the jungle’.. The good news (to some) is that after a century of decline, wild tiger populations have increased recently. But with this comes the increase in human fatalities – there are almost daily attacks on the rural poor across India. A world without wild tigers is not a world we want, but how do we balance the needs of people and the needs of tigers? Adam finds out more about tigers and the people that live around them by speaking with Indian tiger expert Rajeev Matthews and conservation biologist Samantha Helle, who is based in the US and works with communities and tigers in Nepal.

Producer: Rami Tzabar and Beth Eastwood Presenter: Professor Adam Hart

(Photo: A crouching tiger, Credit: Yudik Pradnyana/Getty Images)

Tooth and claw: Bears Jun 28, 2021

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Teddy bears might be popular with children but real bears are anything but cuddly. Brown, Black and Grizzly bears are the most well-known and have a well-deserved fearsome reputation. But for most part, bear attacks are not nearly as common as you might think. They are solitary, curious and you are unlikely to see one unless you are really lucky – or unlucky depending on your point of view. So what should you do if you find yourself facing one in a forest? To learn more about these fascinating creatures, which can spend the winter months in a deep state of biological hibernation, professor Adam Hart speaks to Dr Clayton Lamb from the University of British Columbia in Canada and Dr Giulia Bombieri from the Science Museum in Trento, Italy, about their work and experiences of these amazing beasts, whose numbers are increasing in some parts of the world, leading to an increase of defensive attacks on people.

Producedr: Rami Tzabar and Beth Eastwood Presenter: Professor Adam Hart.

Picture: Brown bear, Credit: Szabo Ervin-Edward/EyeEm/Getty Images

The Evidence: How Covid damages the human body Jun 26, 2021

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A year and a half in, and in many ways Covid-19 is still an enigma. All over the world, doctors and scientists are still struggling to understand exactly how this new virus undermines our defences and then damages, even destroys, our bodies, in so many different ways. And why are some people completely unaffected?

In this edition of The Evidence, Claudia Hammond and her panel of experts chart the remarkable journey to understand this chameleon-like virus, including the long tail of the pandemic, Long Covid. Millions the world over are suffering under the dark shadow of post-Covid, with a multitude of symptoms months after the infection. Some of them, listeners to the programme, share their experiences.

And, the background story of the world famous RECOVERY trial, set up at record speed in the UK (but now international) to test which treatments could save the lives of the sickest Covid patients. So far 10 treatments for Covid have been randomised and tested on thousands of patients and the results have shown that six, including the widely used and promoted hydroxychloroquine, make no difference to chances of surviving a hospital stay. While evidence that the cheap, widely-available steroid, dexamethasone, does work, and has so far saved more than a million lives world-wide.

Joint chief investigator of RECOVERY, Sir Martin Landray, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, admits to Claudia that he’s been asked to include bee pollen and snake venom in the trial, but so far he’s resisted.

Claudia’s expert panel also includes Professor K. Srinath Reddy, cardiologist and epidemiologist and President of the Public Health Institute of India; Dr Sherry Chou, intensivist and neurologist from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine who heads the Global Consortium Study on Neurological Dysfunction in Covid-19 (GCS-NeuroCOVID) and Dr Melissa Heightman, respiratory consultant and Clinical Lead for post-COVID services at University College London Hospitals.

Produced by: Fiona Hill, Hannah Fisher and Maria Simons Studio Engineers: Donald MacDonald and Matilda Macari

Tooth and claw: Lions Jun 21, 2021

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From Aslan to Simba, from the Wizard of Oz to heraldry, children in the West probably recognise this king of beasts before they can name the animals in their own back yards. But what about people who have lions roaming in their back yards literally? To find out more about the archetypal ‘man-eater; and how our increasingly complex relationship with them is playing out in Africa, Professor Adam Hart talks to two female researchers who have spent much of their lives working and living in lion country, helping to manage the wildlife conflicts that are becoming a threat to both humans and beasts.

Dr Moreangels Mbizah is the Founding Director of Wildlife Conservation Action in Zimbabwe, and Dr Amy Dickman heads up the Ruaha Carnivore Project in Tanzania.

Producer: Rami Tzabar and Beth Eastwood Presenter: Professor Adam Hart.

(Photo: Lion, Credit: Nicholas Hodges/Getty Images)

Peter Goadsby on migraine Jun 07, 2021

Show notes

neurological condition is far more common than you might think, affecting more people than diabetes, epilepsy and asthma combined.

While medications, to help relieve the symptoms of migraine, have been around for some time, they haven’t worked for everyone. And what happens in the brain during a migraine attack was, until recently, poorly understood.

Peter Goadsby is Professor of Neurology at King's College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience and is a true pioneer in the field of migraine.

Over the course of his career, he has unravelled what happens in the brain during a migraine attack and his insights are already benefiting patients - in the form of new medications that can not only treat a migraine, but also prevent it from occurring.

Peter shares this year’s Brain Prize, the world's largest prize for brain research, with three other internationally renowned scientists in the field.

Producer: Beth Eastwood

Picture: Woman with head in hands, Credit: Ivan Nanita/EyeEm/Getty Images

The Evidence: Sharing Vaccines – what’s gone wrong? May 29, 2021

Show notes

The lofty ambition of the global community was that across the globe, those with the highest risk of losing their lives to this virus should be vaccinated first. With 99% of deaths coming in the over fifties, the plan was that everybody in this age group should be inoculated.

But that’s not what has happened. Vaccine supply is in crisis and in Africa, a continent of over 1.2 billion people, only around 20 million Africans have been vaccinated, with only 35 million vaccines landing so far on the continent.

It’s been called “vaccine apartheid” and “a moral outrage” but as South Asia, South America find themselves again, in the eye of the virus storm, largely unvaccinated Africa fears the next wave is heading for them.

Can vaccine nationalism be overcome and scare supply be fairly distributed?

It’s a question that very much concerns Claudia Hammond’s expert panel: Gagandeep Kang, Professor of Microbiology at the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, Dr Yodi Alakija, co-chair of the African Union’s Vaccine Delivery Alliance for Covid-19, Professor Andy Pollard from the Oxford Vaccine Group who led the clinical trials for the Oxford/Astra Zeneca (or Covishield) Vaccine and Professor Peter Hotez, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine in Houston and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Centre for Vaccine Development in the USA.

Produced by: Fiona Hill, Hannah Fisher and Maria Simons Studio Engineers: Jackie Marjoram and Tim Heffer

Patient zero: Back from the brink May 24, 2021

Show notes

A six-year old boy in Papua New Guinea woke up one day in 2018 and was suddenly unable to stand up. Less than a year later, children in three other Asia Pacific nations were experiencing the same alarming symptoms.

A disease that had been thought to have been eradicated from this region 18 years before was back -- and it appeared to be spreading. Olivia Willis tells the story of how doctors discovered that these children who developed paralysis had in fact contracted polio.

Producers: Jane Lee, Cheyne Anderson Senior Producer: Carl Smith Executive Producer: Joel Werner Sound Design: Tim Jenkins

An ABC Science Unit. ABC Radio National and BBC World Service co-production.

Picture: Child receiving a polio vaccination from health worker at a mobile clinic on a street in Mount Hagen in the Western Highlands, Credit: Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images

The noises that make us cringe May 03, 2021

Show notes

Why do some people find noises like a fork scraping a plate so terrible? asks Findlay in Aberdeenshire. Rutherford and Fry endure some horrible noises to find out the answer.

Warning - This episode contains some horrible sounds

Trevor Cox, Professor of Acoustic Engineering at the University of Salford, has run experiments to find out the worst, most cringe-making sound. He divided horrible sounds into three categories: scraping sounds, like nails down a blackboard; disgusting sounds like a snotty sniffy nose; and sounds that make us cringe because of what we associate them with, like the dentist’s drill. All horrible sounds have some sort of association whether it’s a primal scream or fear of catching a disease, and they’re dealt with in the ancient part of the brain – the amygdala.

Professor Tim Griffiths is a Cognitive Neurologist at Newcastle University’s Auditory Cognition Group. He has been studying people with misophonia, a condition where ordinary, everyday sounds, such as someone eating or breathing causes a severe anxiety and anger response. Misophonia may affect around 15% of the population and Tim thinks that different parts of the brain – the insula and the motor cortex - are involved in this fight or flight response to seemingly innocuous sounds.

Cat Thomas’s job is to make horrible sounds. She is a foley artist at Boompost. If you watch Call the Midwife or Peaky Blinders, all the incidental sounds are created by Cat and her team. She also created some of the sounds for the horror film Camilla, which involved evisceration and disembowelling with the aid of some squishy oranges and bananas. Adam Rutherford and Hannah Fry try their own horror sounds when they chop off a finger with the aid of some large pasta shells, an orange and a knife.

Presenters: Hannah Fry & Adam Rutherford Producer: Fiona Roberts

The Hamster Power Hypothesis Apr 26, 2021

Show notes

"How many hamsters on wheels would it take to power London?" asks Judah from Virginia in the USA. Rutherford & Fry return with engineering, ethics and economics to answer this electric query.

Smart grid engineer Lynne McDonald helps keep the lights on for 8.3 million homes and businesses across London at UK Power Networks. She explains how the kilowatt hours we see on our electricity bills relate to the thousands of gigawatt hours required when thinking about powering the whole of London. In theory, a hamster in a wheel might be able to produce about half a watt of power – enough to run a small LED light bulb.

Whilst the doctors argue the case on the resultant practicalities and ethics of even considering such a scenario – as, for example, the required cubic kilometre stack of hamster habitats would cover Canary Wharf – Royal Veterinary College researcher Zoe Davies points out some biological and anatomical home truths. As an expert in biomechanics currently investigating athletic performance in racehorses, she walks Adam through the impossibilities of using pretty much any animal, bird or insect as a source of power.

There may be one exception though: humans. Veteran lecturer of undergraduate chemistry for biologists and cycling enthusiast, Andrea Sella discusses whether human power might realistically work. We consider what this or other more realistic sources of renewable energy could mean for the future of our national grid.

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