BBC radio continues to impress with its coverage of science, and this evening the estimable Dr Carl Sagan receives a whole hour of airtime with Archive on 4.
The programme is presented by Dr Brian Cox the rockstar physicist who in 1997, as keyboardist with the popular music combo D:ream serenaded the Labour Party into government with the anthem Things Can Only Get Better.
I hope a rockstar entomologist is currently penning the lyrics for the next change of government, since if the rumours about the size of the national debt facing the UK are true we will be needing an army of trained dung beetles to cope with the mountain of excrement left for future generations.
Did you get Clive James’s A Point of View on the cane toad last night? Unfortunately, it’s not available to listen to again (which is a pity, because it’s funnier listening to him read it), but the text can read here.
He talks of them becoming so populous they will soon demand the right to vote. Perhaps we should introduce them here…
I recall a report that some Australians (only some, I mean no national reflexion) in need of stimulation became addicted to licking the exudates from a gland on the heads of cane toads, and became quite disordered as a result.
Was this a cruel rumour? And if true who first tried licking a cane toad’s head. There should be a Blue Plaque.
I think the Clive James piece is available for a week as Letter From…, via the BBC World Service.