Switzerland has submitted a proposal to create a United Nations expert group on solar geoengineering to inform governments and stakeholders. The idea was discussed at the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, this week. Professor Aarti Gupta shares how, after tense negotiations, the different member states could not agree, and the proposal was withdrawn. Why is solar geoengineering a controversial issue? How would dimming the sun even work? And should we consider it a genuine option in our fight against climate change? Dr Pete Irvine and Professor Joanna Haigh join presenter Marnie Chesterton in the studio to discuss.
Animal welfare charities have been celebrating a ban on donkey skin trade, agreed to this month by 55 African countries. This will make it illegal to slaughter donkeys for their skin across the continent, where around two thirds of the world’s 53 million donkeys live. Victoria Gill tells Marnie that the demand for the animals' skins is fuelled by the popularity of an ancient Chinese medicine called Ejiao, believed to have health-enhancing and youth-preserving properties and traditionally made from donkey hides.
Lastly, Dr Jess Wade, physicist and science communicator at Imperial College London, discusses Breaking Through: My Life in Science. It’s the memoir of Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Dr Katalin Karikó, whose passion and dedication to mRNA research led to the development of the life-changing COVID mRNA vaccines.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producers: Florian Bohr, Louise Orchard Assistant Producer: Imaan Moin Editor: Martin Smith Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth
BBC Inside Science is produced in collaboration with the Open University.
mRNA vaccinations; bacterial space miners; Artemis accords
COVID in families; earthquake under Aegean Sea; Camilla Pang wins science book prize
A new saliva gland, Bill Bryson on the Human Body, and the return of the Dust Bowl
COVID reinfections, Susannah Cahalan questions psychiatry and sense of smell and COVID
Test and trace - how the UK compares to the rest of the world; Linda Scott's book The Double X Economy
08/10/2020
Brian May's Cosmic Clouds 3-D; How fish move between waterbodies and Jim Al-Khalili's take on physics
Royal Society Science Book Prize - Gaia Vince; Biodiversity loss and Science Museum mystery object
COVID-19 in Winter, Acoustics of Stonehenge and Dog years
Coronavirus: The types of vaccine; How the UK is scaling up vaccine production
Bird and dinosaur skull evolution; the wonders of yeast and Science Museum mystery object
What does the science say about the COVID risks of schools reopening? Dolphin ear autopsy
Smart bricks, The Royal Academy of Engineering awards for pandemic engineering solutions and detecting SARS-Cov-2 in sewage
Land use and zoonoses, California's earthquake risk and the Tuatara genome
How sperm swim, the theory of soil & the Big Compost Experiment update
Science Museum mystery objects; home security camera security and Rosalind Franklin at 100
Pre-prints over peer review during the COVID pandemic and roads and birds
Science Fraud & Bias, Immunity to COVID-19
Satellite navigation in the UK; the science of the World Wide Web and Neolithic genomics
Preventing pandemics, invading alien species, blood types & COVID-19.
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Briefing Room
Science Weekly
FT News Briefing
Science Vs
Economist Podcasts