In this week's show, our new columnist Chris French, who edits the Skeptic magazine, discusses what it means to be a sceptic and why he thinks sceptical thinking is making a comeback.
We hear from the Nobel prizewinner Harold Varmus, who discovered the cellular origin of retroviral cancer genes and for most of the 1990s ran the US National Institutes of Health, the biggest funders of medical research in the world. He has just been appointed to President Barack Obama's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology and, last week, addressed the Royal Society in London on everything from the White House's views on science policy to stem cell research.
We also ask why George Monbiot hates charcoal. Find out how the Guardian's very own green doyen managed to put himself at odds with environmentalists Jim Lovelock and James Hansen over biochar – the latest great hope for combating climate change. Author Chris Goodall tells us why George is wrong, and why biochar ranks as one of his 10 most important ideas that could save the planet.
All that plus this week's Newsjam, which features a return for cold fusion after 20 years, and how therapists, psychoanalysts and psychiatrists are still trying to 'cure' homosexuality.
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