The Week Unwrapped: Hazardous heat, nuclear fusion and divisive dieting

Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.

In this week’s episode, we discuss:

Too hot to handle

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The Pakistani city of Jacobabad has long been famed for its blisteringly high temperatures. But new research has cast its climate into a new light after it was found that it is one of only two places on earth to have reached temperatures too high for the human body to cope. So what does the discovery tell us about the climate crisis - and is it a sign of things to come?

Powerful progress

Nuclear fusion is a way of generating power that could potentially provide us with an infinite amount of electricity with zero carbon emissions. It’s been a dream of physicists for a long time but is incredibly complicated work; a global project bringing together 20 governments won’t see results until around 2050. But now, a private Canadian company called General Fusion is saying it can get nuclear fusion onto the grid by the end of the 2020s - and they’re building their experimental reactor in the UK. What does this mean for local residents in Oxfordshire - and should we be feeling sceptical or optimistic?

Jaw-locking device

A device that magnetises patients’ mouths almost completely shut has been slammed by social media commentators this week, with some comparing the Dental Slim Diet Control to a “medieval torture device”. The team behind the technology say it provides a non-invasive and temporary solution for patients who may face clinical complications from obesity, with study participants losing an average of 6.36kg during the two week trial. But is the device a step too far?

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