Going for gold
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 September 2024
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today we will be going for gold in more ways than one.
Inga Doak, the Head of Sustainability at The Royal Mint, reveals how the company plan to ‘urban mine’ gold from household electronic waste and turn it into jewellery. But with tens of millions of tonnes of e-waste piling up every year, the environment policy adviser at the Royal Society of Chemistry, Izzi Monk unpacks how the UK can clean up its act.
Vic puts her stable boots on to visit some very pampered thoroughbred foals to find out what their poo can reveal about their future success on the racecourse.
From horses to humanity, sports geneticist Alun Williams discusses how our genetic make-up could determine whether or not we are destined for gold at the Olympics.
Plus, Roland Pease channels his inner child to investigate his youthful obsession with Mars as NASA looks for new microbial life on the red planet.
Presenter: Victoria Gill Producers: Ben Mitchell and Ella Hubber Editor: Martin Smith Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | How did the richest people on the planet make their fortunes? |
| 0:05.0 | I'm Simon Jack and I'm Zing Singh. |
| 0:08.0 | Join us for good bad billionaire. |
| 0:09.0 | Each episode we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money like the comedian Jerry |
| 0:14.5 | Seinfeld the financier George Soros the golf star Tiger Woods then Simon and I |
| 0:19.6 | have a decision to make do we think they are good, bad or just another billionaire? |
| 0:24.3 | Good bad billionaire. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:27.8 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:34.0 | Hello, delightful curious-minded people, welcome to Inside Science. |
| 0:38.0 | I'm Victoria Gill. |
| 0:40.0 | Today, we are going for gold in more ways than one. We're digging into a recent |
| 0:44.5 | NASA announcement that hinted at the discovery of life on Mars. And right back down |
| 0:49.8 | to Earth I will be digging through the droppings of some thoroughly pampered thoroughbred |
| 0:53.8 | folds for clues about their future success on the racetrack. But first, we all have them, old phones, |
| 1:00.2 | cables with outdated connectors, bits of defunct technology that are just laid to rest somewhere in our homes. |
| 1:06.0 | We definitely need an inside science tech amnesty. |
| 1:09.0 | Between us, we've tallied six old phones, four laptops, and we've lost count of the number of charges |
| 1:14.2 | and forgotten what devices they were supposed to charge. But electronic waste is a |
| 1:18.5 | quickly growing global problem. The latest report from the UN revealed a record 62 million tons of e-waste |
| 1:26.0 | that was produced in 2022 and it's set to continue to pile up over the next decade. |
| 1:31.5 | Meanwhile, the demand for precious metals to make new technology |
| 1:34.4 | that so many of us rely on is increasing. So why aren't we just recycling all these old |
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