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The Pod Delusion turns two

The Pod Delusion (Twitter: @poddelusion) celebrated its second birthday tonight with a bash hosted by Skeptics in the Pub London (Twitter: @sitp) that featured a live recording of tomorrow's podcast, its 102nd, and the music and comedy of Helen Arney (Twitter: @helenarney).

James O'Malley, the podcast's founder and editor, started the service when he finished his Master's Degree in international relations and went to work for a company providing a service to make it easy for people to phone in audio recordings and post them online. The same technology also makes it easy to do podcasts, and accordingly O'Malley decided to try his hand.

"I had been doing political blogging and attempting to do satire for three years," he says, adding that he likes the community feel that's grown up around the weekly effort.

"I started it with relatively modest ambitions," he says. But it was something he'd long wanted to do. He began by emailing a number of his online friends asking if they were interested in doing a podcast and suggesting they send in five minutes of material if they were. "I just thought it would be something fun to do."

Among the best moments of the last two years, O'Malley names interviewing David Attenborough. Asked at the birthday party, listeners praised his coverage of human rights and free speech, and his efforts to look behind science stories in a critical way not generally seen in mainstream media.

The evening's talks included:

- John Treadway, arguing that rather than more science taught in the schools we need more artists and entertainers like Robin Ince and Douglas Adams to engage the public with science;

- Sean Ellis, who styles himself "OfQuack", critiquing the government's approach to punishing this summer's rioters;

- Marianne Baker, offering the latest update on her efforts to get the Science Museum to add more information about the lack of evidence for the alternative medical claims made in its Wellcome trust-sponsored exhibit, The Science and Art of Medicine;

- Sophie Scott, a neuroscientist from UCL, examining the workings of memory, particularly that of George W. Bush concerning his activities on September 11, 2001;

- Jessica Vega, examining the quaint, quirky workings of family law and asking why it's legal to have sex with many members of your family but not to marry them. From the audience: "Which member of your family do you want to marry?"

"I feel like we're making a bit of a difference," O'Malley says. "I feel I can do something worthy still."