That difficult second post

I thought that the second post, like second albums, might be terrifyingly difficult. Fortunately, I seem to be on a (mini) roll. So here's something for you to listen to.

The Guardian produces a weekly science podcast, which I sometimes present. We discuss that week's science news, interview scientists about their work (and sometimes about other people's too) and try to have as much fun as possible in the process. We figured that if we're having fun making it, it might make it more fun to listen to. That's the theory anyway.

When we started doing the shows back in April, we were making things up as we went along to some extent. But we did have one thing clear - to try and reflect some of the relationship that the science and technology correspondents on the Guardian (that's me, James Randerson, Bobbie Johnson and Ian Sample) have in the way we decide what goes in the daily science page and in the other bits of the paper. We might all be interested in science (two of my colleagues have PhDs and I did physics a long time ago) but we never assume anyone else is. And, anyway, quite often we don't 'get' the stories at first ourselves. We'll sometimes grope around to find the story or the top line in a densely-written paper. In the podcast, our intention was to reflect some of that process, to ask the questions that an intelligent observer might have about a topic that seems, at first, alien to them.

Anyway, here's the September 11, 2006 podcast. Presented by Ian Sample, there's an interview with the neuroscientist Adrian Owen of Cambridge University, who has demonstrated, for the first time ever, a way of communicating with a woman in a persistent vegetative state. His work was published in Science last week. Sarah Franklin at the London School of Economics debates whether women should donate eggs for research. And there's also a report from James Randerson and myself on the British Association festival of science in Norwich.

All the past science podcasts are still available in our archives, so do listen away and send me or the Guardian podcast blog your thoughts. You can also listen to all the other Guardian podcasts here, including news, politics, arts, media and books.