Episode 20 features Tony Kinsella. As well as being a teacher and our friend, Tony is a stand-up comedian and has compered and performed at multiple Bright Clubs across the country including at one of our shows. Tony tells us about how he got into comedy, who his influences are, and about his recent stand-up shows about Scandinavian ways to find happiness.

Episode 19 features Maria Ramos Suarez who performed at our eleventh show in March 2018. Maria tells us how she could have been making money working for an oil company, but how she is instead doing rubbish research – research on making useful things out of food waste. Maria also told us about why she came to the UK from Spain, how close she is with her family, and about why she no longer thinks PhD students are smart.

Episode 18 features Anna Hurley-Wallace who performed at eleventh show in March 2018. Anna told us about how studying the psychology of pain misleads people into thinking that she wants to hear about their psychological pain or that she might be some kind of pseudoscientist. She also tells us about studying body dysmorphia and having to get her head around medical jargon in order to collaborate with doctors in her work studying pain in children who have survived cancer.

Episode 17 features Lisa Jones who performed at our ninth show in September 2017. Lisa gave us some tips for anyone thinking about doing or doing a PhD and told us about some of the mistakes she made along the way. She also tells us about how her work studying how diet during pregnancy can affect the lifelong health of the offspring and how her research might be transferable to people. Lisa has a blog that you should check out at https://inascienceworldblog.wordpress.com/.

Episode 16 features Grace Andrews who performed at our ninth show in September 2017. Grace told us how studying climate change makes her a miserable presence at parties, but that knowing her gives people the feeling that they’re doing enough to fight climate change. Grace also told us about her travels to Greenland and why she has to work in a metal-free lab.

Episode 15 features Shona Waddell who performed at our tenth show in December 2017. Shona talked about the experience of working on a project that didn’t seem to be working as well as expected, despite the prestigious publications, and why she has spent the last few years trying to grow stem cells on tiny pits and dumps, and on oyster shells. Shona also tells us a bit about how she got to go to Glastonbury for science communication reasons and about how her surname provides her with motivation.

A Bonus Episode for the week of our 9th show! Dave Christensen performed at Bright Club Guildford earlier this year and told jokes about how his upbringing has affected the way he treats his stem cells in the lab. Here is that set.

Episode 14 features Nuria Garcia Casacuberta who performed at our seventh show in February 2017. Nuria compares herself and her own experiences of going on archaeological digs with Indiana Jones and describes the pain of sorting mosaic tiles by colours when they are all the colour of sand. Nuria also tells us about how being a classicist/archaeologist can let you skip the queues into the beautiful libraries of Florence and Venice and how they don’t actually want you to handle old manuscripts with gloves.

Episode 13 features Sadie Jones who performed at our eighth show in May 2017. Sadie talked about what those black holes might be doing, the advantages of working in astronomy and being able to go up on the roof to the telescopes, and about the quotes from her mum that went into her thesis. Sadie also tells us about her work in outreach, the accuracy of science in films like Interstellar and The Martian, and about the exciting year ahead of her as she’s going to be getting more training and opportunities in the world of science comedy!

Episode 12 features Chris Allen who performed at our seventh show in February 2017. Chris tells us about how easily distracted he can be by the internet when he’s supposed to be doing research on the use of the internet to improve the lives of patients with long-term illnesses and how he tried following cats on twitter to get away from the stress of modern politics and just ended up seeing political cats shouting at each other. Chris also talked about how beneficial the internet could be in helping people meet others with similar conditions to develop support networks and about the potential problems relating to who runs the websites that provide this patient support. Chris made reference to a story about a citizen tweeting with the President of Ecuador and I’d like to recommend this podcast on that story: https://soundcloud.com/replyall/25-favor-atender