The Naked Scientists
The Naked Scientists is a one-hour audience-interactive science radio talk show, broadcast live by the BBC in the east of England, and internationally as a podcast. The programme was created by Cambridge University clinical lecturer Chris Smith. He also hosts the show with other scientists.
Each episode is one hour long and includes a digest of topical science news stories, audience questions answered live on the air, a competition phone-in, and interviews with two or more guest scientists. These individuals join the hosts in the studio to talk about their work and to take questions live from listeners. Previous featured guests include the discoverer of the DNA fingerprint, Alec Jeffreys, the astronomer royal Sir Martin Rees, and the co-discoverer of DNA structure, James D. Watson.
The Naked Scientists were in the top 5 finalists in the 2006 World Podcast Awards.
The team were ejected from three successive webhosts in as many months for "excessive use of resources" - (4 terabytes of data per month) [citation needed]. Currently, the podcast and website are supported by Manchester-based hosting company UKFast. In 2006, the team celebrated "going platinum" when their download counter reached 2 million hits.
The show won the Bioscience Federation Prize for Science Communication, 2006.