Credit: STFC

Podcasting pioneers expose to the world One of the pioneers of the podcast The award from STFC also allowed the The Naked Scientists team have recently has, with support from STFC and Naked Scientists team to overhaul the received additional funding from STFC other partners, created one of the website, which now contains over 70,000 to establish a programme of paid most popular science broadcasts pages of content and includes over 1,000 internships. PhD students from STFC- currently available to the public1. podcasts all of which are freely available supported institutions and facilities will for the public to download. The team be recruited into the Naked Scientists Dr Chris Smith from the University have received support from the Wellcome team. Participants will receive hands- of Cambridge was the creator of the Trust, the Engineering and Physical on training within a real-world media Naked Scientists, which began life as Research Council (EPSRC), the environment, including learning to one of the first ever podcasts in 2001. Royal Society of Chemistry as well as write and broadcast about science Since then it has grown exponentially STFC, demonstrating the interdisciplinary for general audiences. Interns will into a world renowned channel for nature of the science featured. contribute to the Naked Scientists science engagement. In total, the Naked flagship science radio programmes, as Scientists full suite of podcasts has The shows are broadcast in Australia, well as learning to produce and present achieved over 50 million downloads New Zealand and South Africa, allowing their own podcasts and programmes. and the website receives over 1.2 them to reach an international audience. million unique visitors every month. They also have a weekly one-hour radio programme broadcast nationally across Further support from STFC has allowed the UK by BBC Radio 5 live and also made Dr Smith to create the Naked Astronomy available as a podcast. They have won podcast. This is a spin-off podcast strand eight national and international awards from the Naked Scientists, intended to for science communication since 2006 enable the team to delve into space including the Royal College of Pathologists science, astronomy, cosmology and Furness Prize for Science Communication physics in more depth than time would 2010, the Society of Biology Science permit in the main Naked Scientists Communication Prize 20122 and the show. The Naked Astronomy Podcast has Royal Society’s Kohn Medal for public since been downloaded millions of times understanding of science, 2008. by consumers all over the world, and each new episode receives 15-20,000 downloads within a month of publication.

1. www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/11668186/ 2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Scientists The-10-best-ever-podcasts.html

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