Dynamos, instabilities, inverse problems: Paul Roberts' legacy for experimental MHD

Retracing Paul Roberts' footsteps, I survey the recent experimental activities related to dynamo action, magnetically triggered flow instabilities, Alfvén waves, and magnetic flow tomography. I'm certain he will be most pleased by those developments that have superseded some of the pessimistic prognoses made in his seminal 1967 book: "Since processes of self-excitation are out of the question..." (p. 172), is just a case in point.