BenCast

After an extremely long incubation period (between 90 years and 42 months, depending on how you measure it), BenCast presents an interview with Roger Goodenough (1927-2017).

Roger was a banker, farmer, charity trustee and church warden. I met him first in 2007 in his capacity as my girlfriend's maternal grandfather. 

This episode features Roger's incredible historical knowledge and stories of his family history, spanning 250 years and touching on the lives of bishops, botanists, merchants, admirals, bankers and chairmen of charities. 

Roger's voice was also deeper than Darth Vader's, so good-quality headphones/speakers are recommended.

In this special Olympic episode, Ben interviews 2x Gold medal winner Tom James, from Team GB's mens' coxless four in 2008 and 2012.

Learn what it takes to train for an win an Olympic medal, how to prepare yourself mentally for victory and how it feels to cross that finish line as the world watches.

Ben takes on a solo challenge: climbing the tallest mountain in England - Scafell Pike! Featuring extracts from Wainwright's pictoral guides, and yet another compelling reason why one should always listen to one's mother.

BenCast veteran Anthony Ashmore (of the Theoretical Physics department, Imperial College London) returns to navigate us through black holes, the mysterious and massive ultra-dense objects that sit at the centre (literally) of Astrophysics. Featuring discussion of the mixed physics of Interstellar (some excellent, some awful) and whether black holes hold the key to discovering the ultimate theory of the universe.

Ben has a coffee and an erudite discussion with three friends/ published academics.

Anthony Ashmore from the Theoretical Physics department at Imperial College London describes mirror symmetries in nature, and why radioactivity can tell your left hand from your right hand (with a brief digression into the origin of life quite possibly being a comet that delivered an excess of left-handed amino acids to the Earth 4 billion years ago).

William Heard from The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich enlightens us on "biological control" - using living organisms to catch and kill other more dangerous ones. From the Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly (and then a spider, etc) to giving patients malaria to help fight syphilis (followed by a swift G&T to kill the malaria) and fighting drug-resistant bacteria using bacteriophages: viruses which have evolved to kill and eat specific types of bacteria.

Emma Molyneaux from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at Kings College London gives us an insight into "foetal programming", describing how the nutrition of a mother during pregnancy can affect the child's risk of heart disease and other conditions 70 years later.