Frankenpod 200: celebrating Mary Shelley’s masterpiece - Science Weekly podcast

Two hundred years after the publication of Frankenstein, how relevant are the themes and concerns of Shelley's gothic tale to today's readers?

Subscribe & Review on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud & Acast, and join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter

On 1 January 1818, a small publishing house in London produced 500 copies of a novel that would go on to define a genre and resonate for centuries to come: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Its reputation is now cemented as a classic gothic tale, but underneath the horror lie complex themes and explorations of ownership, what constitutes the essence of life and, of course, concerns around the progress of science. But how was it that Shelley came to write this masterpiece? Are we any closer to identifying the "spark" of life? And from a scientific point of view, what can this 200-year-old story tell us about our attitudes toward the "natural" and "unnatural" worlds?