Science

Square Dog Radio LLP's chief science producer is Mike Hally. He was a senior engineer at British Aerospace for 17 years before 
making a complete change of career and moving into radio broadcasting, initially as a freelance reporter & producer.  In 2000 
he formed a small indie Pennine Productions with Mark Whitaker and 2 others.  In 2006 we split that company and Mark and I 
formed Square Dog Radio.

While at Pennine, Mike's first production as an indie was "Electronic Brains", four 15-minute stories from the dawn of the 
computer age, presented by Mark and aimed at a general audience in the Tuesday 9.30 am slot.  It was heard by a publisher 
in Granta who said she had no interest in computing but found the series fascinating and commissioned me to turn it into a 
book of the same name, which is still in print.  Mainly because of that we were accredited by Radio 4 for its specialist science 
slots

We have a regular science presenter, Hermione Cockburn, who has a PhD in geo-morphology and has been presenting science 
on radio and TV (eg "Rough Science") for some years.  We have several other associates, including Gerry Northam, probably 
best known as a presenter on Radio 4's "File on 4" but also with the unusual distinction of holding a joint honours degree in 
Physics and Philosophy.  Louise Batchelor, former Environment Correspondent for BBC Scotland is another associate presenter, 
who has made 1 programme for us to date.

More details of everyone above can be found on our 'about us' page

This is our full list of science programmmes:


'Thomas Midgley: A Cautionary Tale', about the extraordinary chemist who had the misfortune to invent both leaded 
petrol and CFCs one of a portfolio of programmes that won 'Best Writing for Radio' in the European Radio awards 2007]
'Sun, Spoor and Spots', a look at a Namibian research project into cheetahs and leopards, which was as much about 
the merits of using of non-science volunteers (through Biosphere Expeditions) to gather data
'Danger Fuels', for World Service, about the world-wide toll of death and disease due to cooking indoors over open fires 
[winner Society f Environmental Journalists radio award 2008]
'Clair Patterson: Scourge of the Lead Industry', the remarkable campaigning chemist who in the 50s and 60s revealed 
the extent of contamination throughout the environment by man-made lead products [runner-up 'Best Environmental 
Programme' in the world-wide New York Festivals awards 2009]
'Peer Review in the Dock', an examination of the shortcomings of the peer review system and effort being made to 
improve it
'Inside the Virtual Anthill', going behind the scenes at Linux and Mozilla to show how tens of thousands of programmers 
around the world collaborate to produce free software, the extent to which large corporations at IBM now contribute and 
the application of 'open source' principles in surprising ways such as gold-prospecting
'The Plight of the Bumblebee', while the media was focussed on honeybees, we looked at the work of Stirling University's 
Bumblebee Conservation Trust
'Geo-Engineering the Climate', a look at the various methods being proposed to combat global warming if CO2 emissions 
aren't effectively reined in
'The Death-Ray in Your Pocket' [ironic title] celebrating 50 years of lasers [runner-up 'Best Science Programme' in the 
world-wide New York Festivals awards 2011]

More details of the above can be found on our 'Programmes' pages

This page created and last updated 10 August 2011