Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International, is our guest in the pod this week, discussing the group's new Irrepressible campaign for internet freedom, and the links between technology and human rights abuse. She tells us more about how major campanies like Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft have been complicit with the Chinese government in censoring their content - and further examples of supression of online information around the world. To discover more about what Amnesty is doing at this year's Edinburgh Festival, click here. (We're also doing a daily podcast from Edinburgh by the way: head this way to listen to The Heckle)
Also in the show, Ian Sample reveals more about the science and the ethics behind the revolutionary deep-brain stimulation technique that's brought a patient out of a coma-like state after six years. We also discuss the controversial new proposals to UK fertility laws, and how Woo-Suk Hwang, the fraudulent stem cell scientist, actually made an unwitting discovery whilst telling porkies.
We save the biggest name to last, however. Brian May is of course best known for his guitar solos with Queen, but as many of you will know, he also has more than just a passing interest in the fields of astronomy and astrophysics. He's just completed his PhD thesis - the snappily titled 'Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud' - and Ben Green spoke to the soon-to-be Dr. May as he handed in his tome at Imperial College in London.
