Shereen: Getting the facts right
Last week on the show, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told me of his plans to black out the site for twenty-four hours in protest at proposed US laws on on-line piracy. This week we had that day without Wiki and it seems we survived it, and even had a bit of fun with it. Twitter was awash with "fake facts" like: "cats purr to imitate helicopters". (Who's to say that's not true?)
But Wikipedia hasn't been immune to accusations that it gets its facts wrong. In my interview with Jimmy (it's still on line if you want to have a listen) I asked him about the claim that the site was worth $3billion. "That's an exaggeration", he said. Where did I get the figure? .
My special guest on this week's show says his task is "to make sex boring". Fortunately Professor Steve Jones is anything but boring and, for a man whose specialty is human genetics, he's remarkably un "boffin-like" and manages to explain the complexities of evolution in an accessible and often humorous way. As well as attempting (and succeeding) to explain it all to me, he tells me about what it was like growing up speaking in two accents (Welsh and Liverpudlian), his fascination with snails, and why he's started work on re-writing the bible.
Also on the programme, I'll be taking a look at all the week's big news stories with my panel. This week I've got Bill Leckie, Graham Speirs, and Ewan Crawford joining me. Among the talking points, the sinking of the cruise liner in Italy and the vilification of "Captain Coward".
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