Many thanks to Joanna Bagniewska for a fabulous talk in April about weird and wonderful creatures which inhabit the real world and yet wouldn’t be out of place in a medieval bestiary of curious and fantastical beasts.
Her book, The Modern Bestiary, published by Wildfire, is available from all good booksellers (see links).
Joanna is also my interview guest on the May episode of The Science Show, due to broadcast at 3pm on Bank Holiday Monday 4th May, after which it will be available to stream on Mixcloud, along with science news and discussion, a fabulous Random Walk through science with my guest co-presenter and science teacher extraordinaire, Geoff Burgess, plus a healthy dose of excellent music.
In case you hadn’t noticed, The Science Show has been running on Resonance 104.4 FM since October 2025, and was presented by myself and Mike Lucibella for the first six episodes. Rather wonderfully, our final episode together broadcast as the crew of Artemis II were nearing their furthest point from the Earth.
On the far side of the Moon, the four crew had travelled deeper into space than any humans have ever been, at 406,771 kilometres (252,756 miles) – in fact they were the first humans to leave low Earth orbit since 1972. This official NASA mission patch includes the crew’s surnames.
Episode 6 of The Science Show also features a Random Walk inspired by Charles Darwin (and medieval bestiaries) and an interview with March’s PubSci speaker, Professor Andrew Jaffe.
I’m delighted to report that Episode 6 of The Science Show earned us the accolade of the Number One Science Show on Mixcloud as well as entering the Top 100 of all podcasts on the platform. It’s a tribute to Mike’s knowledge and enthusiasm that we went from zero to Number 1 in six shows, and I want to thank him for saying YES and coming on this journey with me.
Using Mixcloud for hosting allows us to use copyright music in the knowledge that rights holders are compensated (it was originally created for DJs to upload and share mixes without fear of takedown notices for copyright infringement).
This potentially makes The Science Show unique in playing excellent music alongside science content. If you haven’t listened yet, give it a whirl and let me know what you think.
Finally, a reminder that booking for May’s PubSci is live on Eventbrite, and take-up has been brisk (to say the least). I’m keeping this blog post brief and getting it out early in case it books up by the time I do the usual monthly post.
The topic on Wednesday 20th May is “The Future of Transplant Surgery” and our speaker is Mr Pankaj Chandak, a pioneering transplant surgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital (among others) who was medical advisor and director on the celebrated TV series The Crown, in which he also acted.
You can book directly by going to the Eventbrite booking page HERE, or check out the details and read all about it on PubSci’s Next Event page which is updated each month with the latest event.
Don’t forget that PubSci links are also on our Linktree, including the latest event booking link, links to social media and YouTube, a link to the PubSci LinkedIn group, which everyone is welcome to join, along with our events calendar and latest programme in a format suitable for printing out. Talking of social media, please remember to follow PubSci on Bluesky, which has an excellent science feed in general. Sadly we still have 10x as many followers on the nasty platform which used to be Twitter as we do on Bluesky, which is incredibly easy to join and use.
That’s it for now, though there may be another post before May’s talk. Hope to see you at The Old King’s Head on Wednesday 20th May. Meanwhile, for everyone in the UK, I hope you have a fabulous Bank Holiday Weekend.
Richard, PubSci organiser and host. x
PubSci 