The religion of science

Leo Enright was doing his science spot on Morning Ireland during last week's British Association's Festival of Science at Trinity College. On Friday morning his piece was on nanotechnology. "People think,'Oh nano, I understand that, it's amazing what you can squeeze onto a microchip nowadays.'" And then he yelled, building up our confidence, like. "That is NOT what we are talking about here!"

"So, what are we taking about?" asked Cathal Mac Coille, reasonably enough. To explain it, Leo blew up an orange he said he was holding in his hand, (which Cathal, failing to cooperate, told us was "a bottle of orange") to the size of the earth, thereby reducing the thingamajig ("a Bucky Ball", said Leo) outside Trinity that Mary Hanafin tripped in, to the size of an orange. Or something. It was before 8am. And listening to Leo turns me into an oppositional 14 year old. I'll tell you where to stick your science.

We'll have to get used to the science because there will be lots of it. Why? Well, Leo quoted Ed Walsh – "an expert in these things"– as saying that in five years, 10 per cent of Ireland's exports, valued at some €13 billion, will be in nanotechology. Where are they ever going to find enough Roses of Tralee to keep that going? Cloning, right?

In Dialogue on Saturday evening, Andy O'Mahony talked to Mark Patrick Hederman OSB like they were old friends – which they probably are – and they both cut to the chase and depended on us having grey matter and hearts and souls. Hederman's new book Walkabout sets out to prove that the Holy Spirit is a going concern.

Documenting how he devoted the first three years of the new millennium to the dictates of the Holy Spirit (never making a move unless there were signs "in triplicate from the Trinity"), Mark Hederman took us on a rollercoaster ride which involved visionaries in Zurich, Russian icons and underground cathedrals.

Hederman recounted how they thought the initial print run of 4,000 Glenstal Prayer Books, which carried photos of the luck-bringing Russian icons, was overly optimistic, but they sold out in a week. By the next summer, 150,000 of them were sold, making them more popular that the biography of Roy Keane.

He championed Joyce's Ulysses for breaking a passageway through to the unconscious, and Norah for fulfilling for Joyce the greatest need of us all – to have someone to completely trust and with whom we can be completely frank. Hederman is anxious that as a nation we have "a similar kind of conversation with our intestines and ourselves which is radically honest, rather than putting moral floorboards over the unconscious world". His own negotiations with the Holy Spirit are upfront, only waiting so long for "the prompt, the whisper" and then, with a word to the Holy Spirit to "stop me if I'm wrong", he acts. How many of us forget that last part?

The Karen Carpenter Story, the first part of which was on BBC 2 on Tuesday, recently topped the poll of documentaries that the British public most wanted to listen to again. And you could tell why. Radio removed us from the visual weirdness that surrounded The Carpenters, and all we were left with was that beautiful voice. The whole slew of contributors to Mark Radcliffe's programme spoke from the heart, none more so than the friend who claimed that at the heart of Karen's problems was a mother who favoured brother Richard and who never said "I love you" to Karen. A sad, controlling and obsessional woman began to emerge. When John Lennon stopped her coming out of a restaurant, saying, "I want to tell you, love, I think you've got an absolutely fabulous voice", she didn't think he meant it. The programme was a lovely but sad reminder of how right he was.