By Megan
Link: https://www.untanglingscience.com/episode-1-dna
Available until: Unknown
The podcast is written and presented by Darragh Ennis who is my favourite Chaser on The Chase which is one of my favourite TV programmes. When he is not Chasing he is a neurobiologist and he works in the Biochemistry department in Cambridge University. He really loves science but he knows lots of people find it scary and difficult and maybe even boring so he is making this series of podcasts to show everyone that science is actually really fun.
The first podcast is all about DNA, what it looks like, what it does, how it was discovered, how we learned more about it and different ways which it is used. I kind of knew what DNA was before the podcast but I didn’t know very much because I am only ten so we haven’t really got that far at school yet.
It is quite difficult to understand it all and I have to concentrate really hard for some of it and my mum helped me understand some of it (it is probably more for grown-ups really) but it is really worth the effort. There aren’t many technical terms which is sad in a way because I like learning new words but I think if there were lots and lots of technical terms it would get a bit confusing because there would be so much to remember. Sometimes you have to use technical terms because there isn’t any other word for it but that means you get a really nice number of new words to learn but you don’t get overwhelmed by them all. There are some funny bits in too like the part about ‘survival of the fittest’ and a really interesting bit about why a lot of nouns start with the word ‘blood’.
It is so interesting and exciting to hear about how DNA works and what it can do and also the ways it can help people like when it’s used in medicine. Thinking about DNA as like a book with lots of chapters in was really helpful because it helped me to imagine it in my mind. I definitely have inherited DNA from both my parents because I really love English, foreign languages, psychology, biology and music and they are all subjects my mum has studied but everyone says I look just like my dad and he is quite sporty and I really like gymnastics and dancing. There are other really good images in the podcast too like the way a cell creates an exact copy of itself without missing out any bits of DNA.
It is really interesting hearing about how people learned
about DNA and learned more about it. The podcast also mentions the things that
people believed which turned out to be wrong and I really like that because
it’s like the whole story of DNA and not just the ‘good’ bits. I bet there are
lots of things I know now which everyone thinks are facts but which are
actually wrong and one day someone will find that out.
The part about the pea plants with the different generations was really mind blowing and I wonder if it is possible to have pet fruit flies because I would really like some so I can observe them. DNA profiling is even more exciting and clever than I thought it was. The bit about cloning was interesting too. I kind of knew what cloning was but I feel like I understand it much better now. It’s really complicated because some sorts of cloning have issues like is it really right to do this? I probably don’t understand it well enough to know if it is right or not but it makes me feel sort of uncomfortable in my head. But I am really glad I know about it.
It is recorded as a podcast which you can listen to but there is also a transcript on the website which tells you what it says so if you have a hearing impairment you can read that instead or you can listen and read at the same time. I know someone who has a hearing impairment and the first time she listened she had trouble because when people speak fast she can’t always hear all the words properly and it is hard to understand anything even if it is explained really well if some of the words are just like a blur of sound which doesn’t mean anything. But then she found out about the transcripts and listened to it again and read the transcript at the same time and it made a really big difference and she loved it.
Darragh Ennis explains everything really well and clearly in a way that shows how interesting it is and you can tell he is really enthusiastic which makes me feel enthusiastic too. He does speak quite fast because I think his brain moves a lot quicker than mine but you can pause or rewind or check the transcript and he says the future episodes will be slower. The first podcast is 35 minutes which is a good length for a podcast and it would obviously be longer if it was slower but I don’t think that would make it too long. Sometimes it’s easier to listen to something which is a bit longer but a bit slower because you don’t have to concentrate so hard which means you have more mental energy to spare and then you enjoy it even more.
I am really looking forward to the next episode which is
on a really interesting subject which we’ve all heard quite a lot about so that
will be really relevant as well as really good.
No comments:
Post a Comment