Russian Spy Poisoning

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Science

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 8 March 2018

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia are in a serious condition after being exposed to a nerve agent on Sunday. The first police officer to attend the scene also remains in hospital. It is being treated as 'a major incident involving attempted murder.' We ask what happens next: what antidotes are available, how do they work and what's the prognosis?

Today marks International Women’s Day. Its aim is to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. But there’s also a strong call for change, especially in the tech industry where women are vastly underrepresented. Discussions on how we could achieve gender equality have been ongoing for years, so why has there been so little change? And how can this bias affect the technology we all use?

Scientists are warning of an infertility 'crisis' among men. Sperm counts have been falling for over 40 years and now, 1 in 20 men have low sperm counts. The cause is unknown and this week, doctors are calling for more funding to better understand the issue.

The red squirrel has found an unlikely ally: the pine marten. Grey squirrels were introduced to the UK in the late 1800s from America and have since caused the native red population to diminish. However, with the reintroduction of a predator, the mal-adapted greys are being hunted and as a result, red squirrels are bouncing back.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.
0:04.7	Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests.
0:08.8	Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook.
0:11.2	Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.
0:15.0	It's in the hands of the creator.
0:16.7	It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.
0:20.7	If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, you're doing the wrong thing.
0:26.0	Julie, but at your service.
0:28.0	Listen to all episodes on BBC Sales.
0:31.6	Hello, I'm Gareth Mitchell and this is the podcast version of Inside Science from the BBC for
0:36.8	Thursday the 8th of March 2018. Adam Rutherford appears to be back on Twitter which makes
0:42.2	me think that he's finally finished that book.
0:44.6	All I know is that I've not been booked for next Thursday, so we assume it's just one week to go.
0:48.9	Dr Rutherford will be right back here this time next week. As for today the latest theories on the
0:55.7	Russian double agent poisonings and it's International Women's Day but in the world
1:00.5	of tech hardly any day is really women's day.
1:03.7	Nearly everyone who designs the apps and services in your life is male.
1:08.4	So what's to be done?
1:10.0	And we're discussing male infertility too and hearing why it's far from a men-only problem.
1:15.3	Fertility is an issue for men and women but I think as a society we need to kind of rebalance this and refocus this because we may get to the situation
1:26.5	where infertility is so endemic in our population that it becomes a real, really big public health problem and far bigger than it is at the moment.
1:35.0	And in slightly better news, Red Squirrels are making a comeback.
	...

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