001 - Get unzipped!

Here’s a special teaser for Genetics Unzipped - a new podcast from the Genetics Society, taking a look at the world of genes, genomes and DNA.

Join us next week for our first full episode taking a sneak peek behind the scenes at the 2018 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures with Alice Roberts, Aoife McLysaght and Fran Scott, and in the meantime please do listen, subscribe, rate, review and share.

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Transcript:

Kat: Hello, and welcome to Genetics Unzipped - the Genetics Society podcast, with me, Dr Kat Arney. This is a little taster of the kind of things you can expect over the coming months, as we celebrate one hundred years at the forefront of genetics, and I’m very much looking forward to you joining me on a journey through the world of genes, genomes and DNA.

Hi there - so, big news! Welcome to a brand new fortnightly podcast from the Genetics Society, bringing you stories from the world of genetics, genomics and DNA. I’m Kat Arney, science writer, broadcaster, author of two books about genetics - Herding Hemingway’s Cats and How To Code A Human, and the former host of the Naked Genetics podcast, and I am absolutely delighted to be able to bring you this new podcast celebrating the centenary of the Society throughout 2019 and beyond.

Here’s how it’s going to work - once a month we’ll be releasing a show packed with fascinating interviews with experts from all kinds of fields, as well as the latest genetics news, in-depth features and a few surprises. Then the fortnight in between, we’ll be releasing a very special centenary series celebrating 100 ideas in genetics.

Our series starts next week with a behind-the-scenes peek at the 2018 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on the theme ‘Who am I?’, in partnership with the Genetics Society and presented by Professors Alice Roberts and Aoife McLysaght, with a helping hand from the fabulous and fire-obsessed Fran Scott and the demonstration team. Here’s a little taster of what’s to come...

Alice: You know, the question ‘Who am I?’ is an enduring human question – people have always asked it as soon as people were sentient enough, as soon as we had something that felt like human consciousness people would look at themselves and go ‘huh, who am I? Where did I come from?’

So normally if I was giving a lecture I would just have a set of slides. Sometimes I might have video clips and that gets exciting! [oooh!] But in this lecture, if I’m talking about milk and the development of lactase persistence and the ability to digest lactose into adulthood I can talk about that, but wouldn’t it be rather nice to actually have a cow in the room with me. So I will do!

And if I’m talking about the difference between the bones in the limb of an armadillo and the bones in a horse’s leg I can do that using pictures or using skeletons, but wouldn’t it be more interesting to have the live animals in the lecture theatre?

Aoife: Any time I’ve given a lecture before, whether it’s a lecture at a university or even a public lecture it’s just been me sitting down and saying, ‘OK, what do I want to say?’ and then going ahead and crafting that in some way. I’ve never had a situation before where I’ve been able to say, ‘Imagine if…’ and I describe something hanging from the ceiling or swinging from the sides or other things joining in and they go, ‘OK, we’ll build it!’

Fran: There’s one at the moment that I’m trying to get into the lecture…

Kat: I was going to ask are you going to get some fire in, because I know it’s your Thing, setting things on fire.

Fran: it’s something I need to practice tonight, which is I’ve got a handheld pyrotechnic fire launcher, I suppose it’s called, and so we fire that into a tray which spells FIRE, and then each of those catch fire. That’s the plan… [laughter]

Kat: That’s a hell of a double-act, good luck with it.

Alice: Thank you!

For more information, show notes, transcripts, links, references and everything else head over to geneticsunzipped.com You can find us on Twitter @geneticsunzip or email us at podcast@geneticsunzipped.com with any questions and feedback. Please do take a minute to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts from, and it would be great if you could rate and review - and tell all your friends - and I will be forever grateful.

Genetics Unzipped is presented by me, Kat Arney, and produced by First Create the Media for the Genetics Society - one of the oldest learned societies in the world dedicated to supporting and promoting the research, teaching and application of genetics. You can find out more and apply to join at genetics.org.uk  Thanks to Hannah Varrall for production, thank you for listening, and until next time, goodbye.