Heads-up for 23 December 2010

Scientific American Podcast aka Science Talk
How You Gonna Keep Flu Down On The Farm?: Pig Farms and Public Health
Journalist Helen Branswell discusses her January Scientific American article, "Flu Factories", about the attempts to monitor new strains of flu that can originate on pig farms and the difficulties of balancing economic and public health constituencies.
(review, feed)

Thinking Allowed
Christmas and Class
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, children gathered beneath a sparking tree, a table groaning with turkey.....the cliches of the season are as alive and well as they were in Dickens time. But does everybody have equal access to the bounty of Christmas and the good will of others? The geographer, Steve Millington, finds that the distaste some middle class people feel for 'excessive' displays of xmas lights in working class areas reveals a narrative of class hostility which echoes Victorian attitudes to the 'undeserving' poor. He joins Laurie Taylor, the sociologist Bev Skeggs and the historian Julie Marie Strange to explore Christmas, compassion and class, then and now.
(review, feed)

Witness
Andrei Sakharov
On December 23 1986 the Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov was allowed to return home from internal exile. He was greeted by a huge crowd at a Moscow railway station.
(review, feed)

NeuroPod
December 2010
On NeuroPod this month, being in control helps you learn, the 200th birthday of the founder of cell theory, depression and cognition, and the brain's 'preplay' button.
(review, feed)

In Our Time
The Industrial Revolution: Part I 23 December 2010
In the first of two programmes concentrating on the Industrial Revolution, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what caused the Industrial Revolution and examine the reasons for why it happened in Britain; as well as highlighting some of the men who invented the machinery which changed the world forever. Melvyn is joined by Jeremy Black, Professor of History at the University of Exeter; Pat Hudson, Professor Emerita of History at Cardiff University; and William Ashworth, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Liverpool.
(review, feed)