Pint of Science

Welcome back to a special mini-series of the Pint of Science podcast: Untold Stories. 2023 marks the tenth anniversary of Pint of Science and we decided to chat to people behind the organisation and creation of the festival as well as those that have taken part over the years.

We continue the series by talking to two organisers, Dr Cristina Perez  & Dr Shaline Fazal. 

How did they hear of Pint of Science? What do they do in the f...

Welcome back to a special mini-series of the Pint of Science podcast: Untold Stories. 2022 marks the tenth edition of Pint of Science and we decided to chat to people behind the organisation and creation of the festival as well as those that have taken part over the years.

We start with the two co-founders, Dr Praveen Paul and Dr Michael Motskin who were research scientists at Imperial College London where they first met and came...

Welcome to the third and final episode of our very exciting three-part mini series of the Pint of Science podcast, in collaboration with bit.bio, the cell coding company. The series wraps up with Dr Ramy Ibrahim, bit.bio’s Chief Medical Officer and a leading immuno-oncologist. 

Ramy explores how the field of immuno-oncology has evolved from fringe research to a 2011 breakthrough, when the US FDA approved the first immune therapy tr...

Welcome to the second episode of our very exciting three-part mini series of the Pint of Science podcast, in collaboration with bit.bio, the cell coding company.

From Californian surfer to scientist to entrepreneur, today we're talking to Dr Paul Morrill, Chief Business Officer of bit.bio, who discusses their core purpose - to develop the underlying technologies capable of producing consistent batches of every cell type in the hum...

Welcome to the first episode of a very exciting three-part mini series of the Pint of Science podcast, in collaboration with bit.bio, the cell coding company.

The series kicks off with Dr Mark Kotter, founder and CEO of bit.bio. Mark is an academic neurosurgeon and scientist at the University of Cambridge, or more accurately these days, a bio engineer. His research specialises in quite literally reprogramming cells and coding them ...

Welcome to Episode four of a very special mini series of the Pint of Science podcast, in collaboration with Aston University.

In this four episode series, we're meeting with a few of the leading lights of research at the university – some you may know if you've been to a Pint of Science talk, and some you may not. We'll be talking about their research, what makes them tick, how they are changing the world for the better and pushing...

Welcome to Episode three of a very special mini series of the Pint of Science podcast, in collaboration with Aston University.

Over the next four episodes, we're meeting with a few of the leading lights of research at the university – some you may know if you've been to a Pint of Science talk, and some you may not. We'll be talking about their research, what makes them tick, how they are changing the world for the better and pushin...

Welcome to Episode two of a very special mini series of the Pint of Science podcast, in collaboration with Aston University.

Over the next four episodes, we're meeting with a few of the leading lights of research at the university – some you may know if you've been to a Pint of Science talk, and some you may not. We'll be talking about their research, what makes them tick, how they are changing the world for the better and pushing ...

Welcome to Episode one of a very special mini series of the Pint of Science podcast, in collaboration with Aston University.

Over the next four episodes, we're meeting with a few of the leading lights of research at the university – some you may know if you've been to a Pint of Science talk, and some you may not. We'll be talking about their research, what makes them tick, how they are changing the world for the better and pushing ...

Callam and Jim meet Professor Jim Smith, Environmental Scientist at the School of the Environment, Geography and Geosciences at the University of Portsmouth.

Jim started his career as a physicist, and has spent the last 30 years working in the Chernobyl disaster zone in Ukraine and Belarus. His work is somewhat unusual in combining physics and the science of radioactive decay, with environmental science and the effects of said ra...

Callam and Jim meet Dr Paula Koelemeijer, Global Seismologist and Royal Society University Research Fellow and Lecturer at Royal Holloway University of London. Paula studies the seismic activity of the Earth thousands of kilometres below the surface, but recent events much closer to home have had a surprising positive effect on her work.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and much of the world being in lockdown, Seismologists have been g...

We're very excited to have Nick Chater, Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School, from a safe social distance. Nick is the author of The Mind is Flat: The Illusion of Mental Depth and The Improvised Mind, and an advisor to the UK Government’s Behavioural Insights team (‘The Nudge Unit’). He's also scientist in Residence for BBC Radio 4’s The Human Zoo.

This week, Callam and Jim talk to Nick about the psychology o...

In a very special episode, Pint of Science was invited to do something rather different: Spend an afternoon with YouTuber and inventor/engineer Colin Furze. With nearly nine million subscribers, Colin is known worldwide for his incredible (and often a little dangerous) way of turning extreme dreams into real machines. Previous inventions include a real Star Wars AT and land speeder, a jet powered bicycle, and a guitar with a flamet...

Welcome back to a very special episode of the Pint of Science podcast! We had a chance to catch up with XKCD creator and author of 'How To' and 'Thing Explainer' Randall Munroe.

Like this episode? Please share it with your friends and on social media!

Randall is the brains and artistic hand behind https://xkcd.com/. His website gets some 70 million hits a month, and is a huge presence online, especially among communities on Reddit....

We were lucky enough to catch up with Dr Raia Hadsell, senior research scientist with world-renowned artificial intelligence research company DeepMind. DeepMind describe their mission as being ‘to push the boundaries of AI, developing programmes that can learn to solve a complex problem without needing to be taught how’. Artificial intelligence is an increasingly important part of our day to day lives and, whatever your feelings on...

There’s stuff everywhere. It’s there when you look out the window, it’s there when you’re doing your groceries, it’s even there when you look up into the night sky. But where did all the stuff come from, and what is it made of? What would happen if you broke something down into it’s constituent parts, and then broke those down, and then broke those down? How far could you go?

No, this isn’t a Philomena Cunk episode, this is particl...

The world is facing an energy crisis – our current energy storage and conversion technologies must continue to evolve to cope with an ever-growing population, but to avert a climate catastrophe science needs to meet those demands in a green and sustainable way. Well, thanks goodness then for people like Professor Saiful Islam, Professor of Materials Chemistry at the University of Bath and our guest for episode 8!

We caught up with ...

How do we manage to remain in good health (at least most of the time) in a world full of microorganisms that think our bodies are the equivalent of Magaluf? Does ‘imposter syndrome’ ever go away? And just what the heck is the microbiome!? All of these questions and more were answered when we returned to The Salutation Inn in Manchester for a catch up with Sheena Cruickshank, Professor of Immunology and Public Eng...

This week we share a pint with a scientist who really smells. Sorry, he researches smells. Specifically, he’s interested to know how maggots smell; who says science can’t be glamorous! Our guest for episode 6 is the University of Manchester’s Professor Matthew Cobb, Professor of Zoology, award-winning science communicator extraordinaire and expert on the French Resistance during World War II… A bit of a modern-da...