Radio listener with Jim Gilchrist

Published on 22/07/2012 13:16

Still trying to get your head around that Higgs Bosun, or the Large Hadron Collider that helped identify it? It may interest you to know that, as a member country of CERN, the research council that runs the collider, the United Kingdom contributes some £34 million per year towards its cost – less, we’re assured, than the price of a pint per adult head of the population.

But who decides on what scientific projects – be they particle physics, nanotechnology or stem cell research – merit funding, and how much they should receive? In DOES SCIENCE NEED THE PEOPLE? Geoff Watts investigates the 
research councils who dispense 
some £3 billion of public money per year, and asks whether the public should have more of a say in how it is spent.

In Argentina, the people took 
to Eva Perón in a big way, but never mind the Lloyd Webber musical: 
the story of what happened to her body following her death 60 years ago is stranger than fiction, as 
Linda Pressly discovers in EVITA’S ODYSSEY. Following her death from cancer at the age of 33, the body of Argentina’s popular First Lady was embalmed, but three years later, when her husband Juan Perón was deposed in a military coup, her corpse was stolen by officers who feared it would become a focus for protest against the dictatorship.

As the military unceremoniously shifted the late Evita around to keep her out of the reach of Perón’s followers, her body spent time hidden in a parked van, behind a cinema screen and in the offices 
of Argentina’s military intelligence. Wherever it was concealed, however, it continued to attract tributes such as candles 
and flowers.

Mysterious, too, are tales of a lost kingdom sunk, Atlantis-like, beneath Cardigan Bay. Radio 3’s TWENTY MINUTES: THE SUNKEN CITY looks at this Welsh legend, which has its counterpart in the related culture of Brittany. Whether it is based on a folk memory of some natural catastrophe remains debatable, but as climate change brings freak weather episodes and rising sea levels, the tale seems all too relevant today.

Does Science Need the People? - Tuesday, Radio 4, 11am

Evita’s Odyssey - Monday, Radio 4, 8pm

Twenty Minutes: The Sunken City - Thursday, Radio 3, 8:05pm