Einstein A Go-Go

Einstein A Go-Go is the podcast of a science program that RRR broadcasts live from Melbourne every Sunday. Each episode starts with a short spoken introduction from Dr. Shane, who then welcomes listeners to an hour of science. He ends almost every time with the same line. Science is everywhere, he reminds the audience, before the station moves on to the next program. Most of the hour belongs to researchers. Some come into the studio. Others join by phone, like a guest named Gracie calling in from Texas, and they talk through the questions their own work is built on. A researcher working on endometriosis asks whether all of the diseased tissue really has to be cut out to relieve pain or help fertility, since nobody can yet say which lesion causes which symptom. A PhD researcher studying people who live with a surgically created pouch describes how diet, fibre and the gut microbiome may drive inflammation. A guest who works on auditory processing explains why noisy classrooms can leave some children completely worn out by the end of the school day. One episode features finalists of the FameLab competition, among them a researcher who calculates a chill index for lambs and recommends shrubs and trees as windbreaks. The questioning is what makes the show useful. The studio asks the practical things a curious outsider would want to know: how often a woman ends up needing another operation, how restrictive a diet has to be, and how anyone can tell when background noise has become a real problem. The mood around those interviews is warm and relaxed. The studio nearly gets a Christmas song. A physicist's old joke that chemistry is 'the cooking department' turns into a round of teasing about who can be trusted in a lab. The year-end episode, 'What Would You Bring To The Year 1000?', has no guests at all. Instead co-hosts including Chris KP swap picks, glasses among them, and compare notes on a year when several of the crew caught pneumonia. Episode titles often pack several subjects into one hour, as in 'Hail Stones, Brain Size, Auditory Processing, and Gut Health in Space' and 'B cells, P waves and sound rage', and that run of titles covers medicine, farming, the human body and space. The archive is large, so new listeners can choose by subject. 'Organoids, legumes and lambs' introduces a group of researchers from around the country, while the year-end show is the easiest way to get to know the crew.