Standing ovation for science — Mark Lythgoe’s festival highlight

9 months
1 week ago

Mark Lythgoe, Co-director of The Times Cheltenham Science Festival, talked to Sue Harris about one of his festival highlights – Good Bugs, Bad Bugs by Mike Wilson, Professor of Microbiology at UCL.

I went to the most amazing talk I have been to in the last 2 years. The audience must have clapped for about 2 to 3 minutes continuously afterwards. I have never, ever felt that kind of electricity — when every single person in the audience just connected together, knowing that they had experienced a really special moment in their lives. Every single one of us would have walked out of that lecture theatre and looked at themselves and the world completely differently because of what I heard. It was one of the most unique experiences I have ever had.

I cannot tell you the efficiency by which he moved from slide to slide. Most people get over one or two concepts in a whole talk. This guy was getting in three or four concepts every few minutes. But the efficiency of language with which he took you from one concept to the next, and this story just unfolded about the microbiotica, the flora and fauna in our gut and how it sort of held us together — this glue in our body — how we would never have survived, we wouldn’t be here, how we couldn’t do anything that we do without this stuff that I’d never have thought about. The questions were coming about anything: deodorants, to mouth washing, to exfoliation products, to going on holiday, to getting bugs. There was not one aspect of people’s lives that this talk didn’t touch.

It’s been a long time since I’ve heard someone bring a subject to life in a way that I’ve never heard before and he just made it so relevant. But it wasn’t just that. He showed graphs and pie charts and figures in a way that nobody else could. He was so brave but every person got every element of it and he took them on to the next one.

There was genuine clapping for 2 minutes. It was like a standing ovation that you would only hear at the Royal Albert Hall. And I’ve never heard that about science. I’ve never heard people clap like that in my whole life.

There must have been 200 people in the room and maybe 100 people left the auditorium and walked to the Talking Point. We completely filled the Talking Point. People stood for an hour to carry on the same conversation we were having. It was what I’ve always dreamed of. It was a very special moment for me.

By Sue Harris for The Times Cheltenham Science Festival, photography by Conor Cahill.

We’ve tagged this post with interview, Mark Lythgoe, science on Thursday 11 June 2009.