The Character of Science

Dr Jon Roberts completed his PhD in 2018, having explored how families communicate about genetics. Further, his research explored how families’ knowledge and enjoyment of pop culture can be used to facilitate engagement with genomics.

The Character of Science is a 3 episode limited series podcast, hosted by Jon and elaborating on his doctoral work. Designed for an audience beyond academia, Jon will conduct casual interviews with people who bring different expert points of view to the topic, from bioethics, science, genetic counselling and social science.

Each of the three episodes will focus on a specific theme drawn from topical ethical issue in science, particularly genetics, which has been explored in mainstream film. The films and themes to be examined are: Contagion (Life Imitating Art), The Martian and Ex-Machina (Scientists as Heroes and Villians on screen), and Gattaca (Pay-to-Play Genetics).

The episodes were released in the summer and autumn of 2022 on major podcast platforms. Click the link below to find the series’ page on Buzzsprout.

The Character of Science on Buzzsprout