On our excellent panel this time

Joining Chris this week, biologist Tom Ireland, marine scientist Liberty Denman, chemist Philip Broadwith and comedian Rosie Wilby

Chris - I'm delighted to introduce the panel we have with us to answer your questions. Tom Ireland is a science journalist, he's also editor of the Biologist, the magazine of the Royal Society of Biology, and he's recently published a book, it's called 'The Good Virus: The Untold Story of Phages.' I've been reading it, Tom, it's absolutely smashing, it's really beautifully written. But people won't know what we're talking about until you tell us what a phage is and why this matters?

Tom - Yeah, so a phage is simply a virus that infects bacteria. So it's a microbe of a microbe. And of course most people will think of viruses, things that make us ill and kill us, but the vast majority of viruses out in the world are viruses of bacteria and other microbes. So they're actually really important in terms of keeping bacterial populations under control. And this surprisingly old idea of using them in medicine is once again being taken really seriously.

Chris - You open the book with the accounts of the Russians using them in the war and they're going and grabbing victims in the trenches of cholera. And you think, well, there's a risk of catching cholera, but they were after the bacteria phages that were in those people who were dying of cholera because they had phages there that could potentially protect other people?

Tom - So these viruses, phages, are absolutely everywhere, but if you are looking for a particular phage that treats a particular condition, the best place to look for them is where that nasty bacteria is. So, during the Second World War, there were reports of Soviet scouts going out and stealing corpses of German soldiers that had died of cholera, bringing them back in and then, using that, brewing up a cocktail of these viruses which they could then use on their citizens, on their soldiers, and protect them from the cholera epidemics that were encircling Stalingrad. There were even stories of people queuing up for bread and not not being allowed their bread until they'd been 'phaged.' So they'd get their dose of viruses to protect them from cholera. The Soviets used phages for decades because they didn't have a consistent supply of antibiotics.

Chris - Thanks, Tom. It's a really well told account if you want to read 'The Good Virus: The Untold Story of Phages.' It's out now, isn't it?

Tom - Yeah.

Chris - Also with us, Liberty Denman is a marine biologist and she has a particular penchant for sharks, but she's going to tell us later on all about whales and dolphins. You also have a podcast and it's called 'Out of Our Bubble.' So what bubble is it that you are talking about?

Liberty - With absolutely all puns intended, I'm referring to a common habit we have as marine scientists, but also, I'm sure some of the other panelists here might agree, all scientists, we have a bit of a habit of talking amongst ourselves and given a lot of the research and work that people are doing, the wider world should probably hear about it! So it's about engaging with those much further outside of our space and with 'Out of Our Bubble' I'm particularly trying to reach an audience that wouldn't otherwise engage in the marine space at all. So it's starting with any topic you like from the very beginning. So it's actually a reverse podcast where the people that come on ask the questions and I have to try and answer them, which always makes fun and games because it's across all different topics. We've almost finished the first series, which has been on fishing, touching on all different types of fishing.

Chris - So the guests, are they experts themselves? Are they asking really hard questions or are they members of the general public challenging you to tell us why they should care about certain elements of marine biology?

Liberty - It's the total opposite of having experts. It's absolutely anyone who's happy to come on and ask questions. Science material out there often comes in at a higher level than what most people may have, purely because everyone has their specialty and it's not always science. No one wants to feel stupid and there's no follow up questions you're able to ask if you don't know anything from the very beginning, phages being a great example! So you need to know where to begin and this is what it's all about: encouraging that conversation. Obviously then it develops as soon as people start asking questions - I find myself starting to get out of my depth!

Chris - Have you had any real stinkers? When we first started making the Naked Scientists, the best question anyone ever sent me was, 'how many organs can I donate and still remain alive?' I thought it was absolutely brilliant. It was at the time of the financial crisis and I thought, "well that makes sense - there's someone who's seeking to capitalise on their internal assets." Have you had any equivalents to that?

Liberty - I haven't other than what I'll call "innovative ideas." I, I actually did the first episode with my best friend because I thought, "if I can't reach her, what hope do I have with anyone else?" We were talking about trying to remove plastic from the ocean in the form of discarded fishing gear, and she came up with a fantastic idea of just popping a bin bag on the back of every vessel that's out at sea and just doing it as you go...

Chris - People are seriously investigating ways of going surfing around scooping stuff up, aren't they? Because of all those gyres where the oceans mix and you get a vortex where there's tons of this stuff accumulating. One scientist told me there's enough plastic there to get to the moon and back a couple of times.

Liberty - Absolutely right. There's huge garbage patches accumulating in different places around the world because of currents and then, as a result, we're thinking, "well, do we just leave it?" And as you said, some organisations are actually going around and trying to remove it. Then it comes down to the technology as to whether it's worth it? If you have huge vessels emitting huge amounts of carbon going around to pick up the plastic, you've got that cost benefit analysis. But there's all sorts of different emerging tech that people are using as well to try and deal with it.

Chris - Thanks Liberty. With us as well this week. Philip Broadwith, he's the business editor at Chemistry World, which is the Royal Society of Chemistry's monthly magazine. Speaking of which, you've got a story in there about an amateur chemist? He got a suspended jail sentence for conducting science experiments in his garden. What was he doing?

Philip - This is a guy called Gert Meyers and he's been a hobby chemist for a very long time. We interviewed him a number of years ago for a feature we did about hobby chemistry. He used to have a company that would supply chemicals mostly to hobbyists but sometimes to small/medium companies. There's a whole community of people doing chemistry experiments at home and at various different levels. There's a difference between your kitchen chemistry set and then you go up and up. This guy had not great amounts, less than a gram of a chemical called sodium nitrate, which you could use to make explosives. He probably wasn't making explosives, but you need special licences to have some of the stuff that he had and he didn't have those licences. He'd been in trouble a little bit before; his company had been closed down in 2017. I'm a really big fan of home chemistry experimentation, but it's absolutely crucial that you have, at the forefront of your mind, "is this safe? What am I going to do if this goes wrong? How could it possibly go wrong?" Doing all of that risk assessment, "what am I going to do with the waste at the end?" All of those things. It's perfectly possible to do some really cool chemistry at home, but you've got to not take it quite that far.

Chris - Are you a fan of David Hahn? Do you know who he was? He goes by the nickname: 'Radiation Boy.' He's the guy who, at the age of 16, had a fast breeder reactor in his garage. He took all of the americium from smoke detectors that he bought. He found sources of gamma rays in old radium paint and he worked out off the internet a whole heap of physics that enabled him to make his own fast breeder reactor. But he's quoted as saying, "I got rather nervous when I started having a Geiger counter going off in my bedroom quite some distance away." And he then tried to bury the products of his reactor and the FBI I think came and caught him at the roadside burying it and he was arrested. That takes home physics to quite considerable levels.

Tom - There's also an amazing story of a DIY biologist who tried to gene edit himself. So he had enormous muscles, exactly like in the Incredible Hulk. He live streamed on Facebook and injected himself with this CRISPR gene editing tool, which was apparently to knock out the gene that restricts muscle growth. It didn't work. There's been some actually quite tragic cases of people trying to create their own genetic medicines and not really knowing what they're doing.

Chris - On that thought, we also have with us Rosie Wilby. Now Rosie is an award-winning comedian. She's also an author and a podcaster. Her podcast is called 'The Breakup Monologues', which is also the title of the new book that you've just brought out.

Rosie - The clue is in the name. It's all about that very universal experience of heartbreak. We've all had a breakup at some point, either a romantic breakup or a friendship breakup or a professional breakup - or maybe you've experienced all of those types of endings. We all can feel pretty rubbish at the time. But the subtitle of the book is 'The Unexpected Joy of Heartbreak' because I found many, many people who have found joy in reinventing themselves and the transformation and growth and healing that can happen after adversity.

Chris - You've reinvented yourself quite a lot, though, haven't you? I was looking at your biography. You went to York University. What did you study there?

Rosie - Well, I studied electronic engineering, so I was a scientist back in the day and so science has crept back into my comedy shows even though I escaped and fled into the arts world. I've always been interested in science and I think my parents had a bit of a fantasy that I might be a science teacher as they worked in education all their lives. But there is a sort of educational aspect to the shows that I've done, the book and podcast follow a trilogy of shows where I was investigating the science of love and relationships and I suppose I'm all about making it really super accessible and not talking in the jargon that some of the real boffy scientists might.

Chris - But I'm desperate to pursue this a little bit because before you did that you were a singer?

Rosie - Yes, I've been a singer/songwriter. I had an album on my own label when people were just starting to do that and the internet just started to be a thing and everyone's web address used to end with freeserve.co.uk.

Chris - You had one of those as well!

Rosie - In fact, I worked at a magazine where all the music listings were sent in by fax which was exciting. People won't know what I'm talking about!

Chris - How did the comedy come about then?

Rosie - Well, you've got to laugh about things, haven't you? I think what really happened was when my band all broke up and I went solo as a musician, I was telling funny stories between the songs because I thought I might want to fill things out a bit. I just thought, do they really want to see another miserable woman with a guitar singing bleak songs of heartbreak? I would then sort of make fun of myself in between with very sort of bleak stories about my tragic life and bad luck in love. A new career was born somewhat accidentally, but then the best things in life often are.

Chris - Well that was absolutely brilliant. What a story. Rosie's here and she will be talking to us later on a bit more about the science of love and the science of breakups. There is the team we have assembled for you.