UCL Minds UCL

In this podcast, we examine what 'decent' living standards mean for people in low-income countries – including energy access and transport infrastructure – and how these are critically linked with the urgent need to reduce global carbon emissions. Join UCL experts Professor Priti Parikh, Professor Jing Meng and Dr Simon Chin-Yee as they discuss what's needed to lift living standards for low-income countries in the global climate crisis, and the role that high-income nations can play.

Transcription link: https://bartlett-review.ucl.ac.uk/podcast-lifting-living-standards-with-low-emissions/index.html

Date of episode recording: 2024-03-06T00:00:00Z
Duration: 00:31:40
Language of episode: English
Presenter: Professor Priti Parikh
Guests: Professor Jing Meng; Dr Simon Chin-Yee
Producer: Liz Griffith and Adam Batstone

What are individuals doing to fight climate change and how important is the role of local activism? This episode will be focusing on individual climate action, with our guests chatting to our hosts about the role of activism in initiating change. Featuring Louise Harris (songwriter and Just Stop Oil activist), Versha Jones, (Climate Reality Project - Volunteer National Coordinator, UK) Annabel Rice (Political Advisor at the Green Alliance) and Kris de Meyer (Senior Research Fellow in Climate Communications University College London, Dept of Earth Sciences).

‘We Tried’ song by Louise Harris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2XV20G85Tg

The Climate Reality Project https://www.climaterealityproject.org/

For more information and to access the transcript: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/climate-change/podcasts-videos/generation-one-climate-podcast

Sign up to our climate newsletter here: https://r1.dotdigital-pages.com/p/6T06-7DL/subscribe-to-ucl-climate-hubs-newsletters

Date of episode recording: 14th February and 8th March
Duration: 39.20 minutes
Language of episode: English
Presenter: Mark Maslin and Simon Chin-Yee
Guests:
Louise Harris, Just Stop Oil
Versha Jones, The Climate Reality Project
Annabel Rice, Green Alliance
Kris de Meyer, Department of Earth Sciences, UCL
Producer: Adam Batstone

Date of lecture: Tuesday 19 March 2024

About the lecture:
Beauty and aesthetics have always played a multi-faceted role in human society. During the last decades, smile attractiveness has become a very important factor influencing both personal and professional aspects of everyday life. This has been compounded by the effect of social media and marketing. Dentistry has also evolved significantly over the last decades and has the capacity to predictably restore missing teeth with various modalities, including dental implants, or completely transform the shape and colour of teeth with smile make-overs. The demand for such services has steadily increased and patients are faced with a multitude of offers from dental colleagues. Such dental treatment is usually elective and expensive which also leads to the phenomenon of dental tourism. This presentation will showcase the state-of-the-art dental treatment modalities available today for tooth replacement with dental implants and smile design/make-overs but will also highlight the pitfalls of misinformation, overtreatment and marketing of some dental services.

About the speaker:
Professor Lambis Petridis qualified from the Dental School of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

About the Lecture:

A tapestry of cosmic events stretching over the past 13.8 billion years have shaped our existence in a vast universe. This lecture will explore how the computer simulations to study the cosmos have developed in tandem with more down-to-earth pursuits like weather forecasting. We will see how the resulting computer codes have unlocked our understanding of the universe, from galaxies and black holes to the essence of matter. And the lecture will conclude with a look at the multiverse and the contentious idea put forward by some philosophers and scientists that we may already be living inside a simulation, Matrix-style. The talk is based on the lecturer's critically-acclaimed book “The Universe in a Box”, published in 2023.

About the Speaker
Andrew Pontzen, Professor of Cosmology at UCL

Andrew Pontzen is a professor of cosmology and author of the recent highly-acclaimed book The Universe In A Box. His award-winning research uses computer simulations to shed light on the cosmos. He has written for the Guardian, New Scientist, BBC Sky at Night and BBC Science Focus; appeared on BBC, Amazon Prime and Discovery Channel documentaries; and contributed to BBC radio programmes including Inside Science, CrowdScience and The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry.

About the Lecture:

Understanding reproductive health is key for everyone, whether we want children or not. Since writing a book called Your Fertile Years, Professor Harper has been researching into all aspects of reproductive health education and heads the International Reproductive Health Education Collaboration who aim to deliver reproductive health education to everyone. She created a survey to ask teenagers around the world their attitudes and knowledge to reproductive health. So far data has been obtained from the UK, Belgium, Greece and Japan. And she asked UK teenage girls how they feel about having a period. She has also surveyed over 6000 women to ask their attitudes and knowledge of their periods and menopause. Through this research, resources have been created to help teachers and health professionals provide education and she is heading the development of the UK Menopause Education and Support programme, so that all women in the UK can understand what happens during menopause.

About the Speaker
Joyce Harper, Professor of Reproductive Science at UCL

Joyce Harper is an award-winning educator, author, podcaster, academic, and scientist. She is Professor of Reproductive Science at University College London in the Institute for Women’s Health where she is Head of the Reproductive Science and Society Group.

She has worked in the fields of fertility, genetics and reproductive science since 1987, written over 240 scientific papers and published three books.

She is leading the development of a UK Menopause Education and Support Programme with support from key organizations.

She is co-founder of the UK Fertility Education Initiative (www.fertilityed.uk) and founder of the International Reproductive Health Education Collaboration (www.eshre.eu/IRHEC). She is working with schools in the UK and globally to help deliver reproductive health education.

Her latest book, Your Fertile Years, What you need to know to make informed choices, was published in 2021 by Sheldon Press.

Her podcast is called Why Didn’t Anyone Tell Me This? Is available on all podcast channels.

Further information – www.joyceharper.com

Follow on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Tiktok and Linkedin - @ProfJoyceHarper

In part two of a two part medical special we focus on the question 'If I am good at Maths and Biology and I want to go into Neurosurgery and Science, do I have to start out as an ordinary doctor? I am also interested in Pathology, where do I start with this?' In this episode we focus on the second question and Dr. Shoba Poduval talks us through a career in Pathology.

Date of episode recording: 2024-03-19T00:00:00Z
Duration: 00:11:37
Language of episode: English
Presenter: Roberta Livingston
Guests: Dr Shoba Poduval
Producer: Roberta Livingston and Emma Bryant