On the show this week, Alok Jha meets science writer Aarathi Prasad to discuss her book Like A Virgin: How Science is Redesigning the Rules of Sex in which she explores a world in which sex is just one way to create offspring.
The Guardian science correspondent Ian Sample is joined in the studio by Observer science editor Robin McKie to discuss some of this week's big science stories including the threat to UK Antarctic research from the proposed merger of the British Antarctic Survey and the National Oceanography Center, why the latest photographs from Nasa's Curiosity rover point to a watery past on Mars, and belated recognition for Alfred Russel Wallace – a 19th century naturalist who bears comparison with Charles Darwin.
Ian also speaks to the British IgNobel prizewinner, Professor Robin C Ball, who took this year's physics prize for calculating the balance of forces that shape and move the hair in a human ponytail.
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