Little Atoms

Jeff Sparrow is a writer, editor, and broadcaster. He writes a fortnightly column for The Guardian and contributes regularly to many other Australian and international publications. Jeff is a member of the 3RRR Breakfasters team and the immediate past editor of literary journal Overland. He is the author of a number of award-nominated books, including Money Shot and Communism: a love story. Jeff's latest book in No Way But This: In Search of Paul Robeson. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Elena Lappin is a writer and editor. Born in Moscow, she grew up in Prague and Hamburg, and has lived in Israel, Canada, the United States and – longer than anywhere else – in London. She is the author of Foreign Brides and The Nose, and has contributed to numerous publications, including Granta, Prospect, the Guardian and the New York Times Book Review. Elena is the author of a memoir, What Language Do I Dream In? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rachel McCormack is a regular panellist on BBC Radio 4s The Kitchen Cabinet, and has also broadcast on the station's From Our Own Correspondent, the Food Programme and appeared as an expert guest on BBC Radio 2 on both the Simon Mayo show and the Chris Evans show. Rachel is the author of Chasing the Dram: Finding the Spirit of Whisky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jean Hanff Korelitz was born and raised in New York City and graduated from Dartmouth College and Clare College, Cambridge. She is the author of the novels A Jury Of Her Peers, The Sabbathday River, The White Rose and Admission. A film version of Admission starring Tina Fey, Paul Rudd and Lily Tomlin was released in 2013. Jean’s latest novel is The Devil and Webster.Kanishk Tharoor is a writer based in New York City and the author of the short story collection Swimmer Among the Stars. His stories and essays have appeared in publications in India, the US, the UK, and the Middle East. He has been nominated for the National Magazine Award. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

John Grindrod grew up on 'the last road in London' on Croydon's New Addington housing estate, surrounded by the Green Belt. He is the author of Concretopia: A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain, described by the Independent on Sunday as 'a new way of looking at modern Britain'. He has written for the Guardian, Financial Times, Big Issue and The Modernist and has worked as a bookseller and publisher for over twenty-five years. He runs the popular website dirtymodernscoundrel.com and his latest book is Outskirts: Living Life on the Edge of the Green Belt. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason Hickel is an anthropologist at the London School of Economics. Originally from Swaziland, he spent a number of years living with migrant workers in South Africa, studying patterns of exploitation and political resistance in the wake of apartheid. Alongside his ethnographic work, he writes about development, inequality, and global political economy, contributing regularly to the Guardian, Al Jazeera and other online outlets. His work has been funded by Fulbright-Hays Program, the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Charlotte Newcombe Foundation and the Leverhulme Trust. Jason Hickel is the author of The Divide. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Beau Lotto is Professor of Neuroscience at University of London Goldsmiths, and a visiting scholar at NYU, where he specialises in the biology and psychology of perception. He has conducted research on human perception and behaviour for more than 25 years. In 2001 Beau founded Lab of Misfits, which had a two year residency at the Science Museum, London. Beau is the author of Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions and Gods Without Men, and the story collection Noise. His latest novel is White Tears. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from Boston. Her novel Eileen was awarded the 2016 Pen/Hemingway Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her short fiction has earned her the Paris Review Plimpton Prize, a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, and an O. Henry Award. Her collection Homesick for Another World was published in January 2017. McGlue was her debut novel, and the winner of the Fence Modern Prize for Prose and the Believer Book Award, and is being published in the U.K. for the first time.Lucy Hughes-Hallett is the author of The Pike, a biography of Gabriele d’Annunzio, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non Fiction, the Costa Biography Award, the Duff Cooper Prize and the Paddy Power Political Biography of the Year Award. Her other books are Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions which was published in 1990 to wide acclaim, and Heroes: Saviours, Traitors and Supermen, published in 2004, which garnered similar praise. Cleopatra won the Fawcett Prize and the Emily Toth Award. Lucy Hughes-Hallett is also a respected critic who has reviewed for all the major British newspapers, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Lucy's first novel is Peculiar Ground. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This interview was first broadcast on 21 November 2008.Adam Curtis is a producer, writer and director of documentaries such as Bitter Lake, HyperNormalisation, The Century of the Self, and The Power of Nightmares. In this episode, Adam talks about the concept of hyper-individualism and his series All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Natalie Haynes is a writer and broadcaster. She is the author of The Amber Fury, which was shortlisted for the Scottish Crime Book of the Year award, and a non-fiction book about Ancient History, The Ancient Guide to Modern Life. She has written and presented two series of the BBC Radio 4 show, Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics. In 2015, she was awarded the Classical Association Prize for her work in bringing Classics to a wider audience. Her latest novel is The Children of Jocasta. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Phillip Lewis was born and raised in a small town called West Jefferson in the mountains of North Carolina. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and later received a law degree from Campbell University. While his law practice is based in downtown Charlotte, much of his work has been in the western part of North Carolina, in the mountains. Phillip's debut novel is The Barrowfields. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mark O'Connell is a writer based in Dublin. He is Slate’s books columnist, a staff writer at The Millions, and a regular contributor to The New Yorker’s “Page-Turner” blog; his work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Observer, and The Independent. Mark’s first book is To Be a Machine. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Neil Woods was an undercover cop whose brief was to infiltrate Britain’s most dangerous drug gangs. Starting out in the early 90s and making the rules up as he went, Neil was at the forefront of police surveillance. He quickly earned a name as the most successful operative of his time and his expertise was called upon by drugs squads around the country to tackle an ever growing problem. But after years on the streets, spending time with the vulnerable users at the bottom of the chain, Neil began to question the seemingly futile war he was risking both his life and sanity for. Good Cop, Bad War is an intense account of the true effects of the War on drugs and a gripping insight into the high pressure world of British undercover policing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The second of two episodes of Little Atoms with shortlisted writers for the 2017 Wellcome Book Prize. This week, Ed Yong on his book I Contain Multitudes, plus a repeat of our interview with the winner of the 2016 Wellcome Book Prize Suzanne O'Sullivan on her book It's All In Your Head. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The first of two episodes of Little Atoms with shortlisted writers for the 2017 Wellcome Book Prize. This week, Sarah Moss on her novel The Tidal Zone, David France of his history of AIDS How To Survive a Plague, and novelist Maylis de Kerangal on Mend the Living. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of East Anglia. She is the author of The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, writes regularly for the Guardian and the New Statesman, and often appears on television and radio talking about the arts, culture and all things American. In this podcast, Sarah discusses Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby.First broadcast on 10th September 2013. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Little Atoms from 2009, Noam Chomsky examines the Obama administration and asks what has really changed.Chomsky describes the first term of the Bush administration as “off the spectrum” in both aggression and arrogance. US international prestige sank to the lowest point since measured. It is hardly surprising therefore that the next candidate should have moved towards the centre.Violent interventionism has gone hand in hand with American exceptionalism for centuries, says Chomsky. Obama’s ideology, according to Chomsky has been “less extreme but basically hasn’t changed.”Chomsky explores the history and dangers of humanitarian intervention.“You can’t say it can never be benevolent but there is a heavy burden of proof. It makes sense to talk about the responsibility to protect, but it should not be left in the hands of violent, aggressive powers”.The internet played a prominent role in changing popular activism and proliferating conspiracy theories under the Bush regime. Through the internet, the 9/11 movement diverted people away from activism on serious issues.“It stopped questions on things the administration would rather keep secret.”But Obama has found the internet useful. Chomsky argues has it been “a very effective cult generator” and crucial in the construction of Brand Obama.Obama, like Bush, used the internet to distract activists from protesting state crimes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

458: George Saunders & Kathryn HughesGeorge Saunders is the author of nine books, including Tenth of December, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the inaugural Folio Prize (for the best work of fiction in English) and the Story Prize (best short-story collection). He has received MacArthur and Guggen­heim fellowships and the PEN/Malamud Prize for excellence in the short story, and was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2013, he was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University. His debut novel is Lincoln in the Bardo.Kathryn Hughes is the author of award-winning biographies of Mrs Beeton and George Eliot, both of which were filmed for the BBC. For the past fifteen years she has been a literary critic and columnist for the Guardian. Educated at Oxford University, and with a PhD in Victorian Studies, she is currently Professor of Life Writing at the University of East Anglia and Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Historical Society. Her latest book is Victorians Undone: Tales of Flesh in the Age of Decorum. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A journalist, aviation blogger, documentary producer and crash investigator, Christine Negroni has more than fifteen years' experience observing and participating in the international effort to create safer skies. She currently reports for the New York Times, ABC News and Air & Space. Christine is the author of The Crash Detectives: Investigating the World’s Most Mysterious Air Disasters. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brenna Hassett is an archaeologist who specializes in using clues from the human skeleton to understand how people lived and died in the past. She has worked on excavation sites all over the world including Roman-period burials near the Giza pyramids, remote Greek islands, a Buddhist monastery in northern Thailand, and the famous central Anatolian site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey. Brenna is one-quarter of the TrowelBlazers project, an outreach, advocacy and academic effort to celebrate women’s contributions to archaeology. Brenna is the author of Built on Bones: 15,000 Years of Urban Life and Death. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mark Stevenson is a writer, broadcaster, futurologist and founder of The League of PragmaticOptimists. He has written for Radio 4, The Times, Wall Street Journal, Guardian and New Statesman,and is the author of the critically acclaimed An Optimist’s Tour of the Future. He lives in London and is an adviser to (among others) The Virgin Earth Challenge, Civilised Bank and The Atlas of the Future.Mark’s latest book is We Do Things Differently: The Outsiders Rebooting Our World.Rory Clements won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award in 2010 for his second novel, Revenger.He is the author of the John Shakespeare series of novels which are currently in development for TVby the team behind Poldark and Endeavour. Since 2007, Rory has been writing full-time in a quietcorner of Norfolk, England, where he lives with his family. Rory’s latest novel is Corpus. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sheena Kamal has been a stunt double (for children), a stand-in (most notably Archie Panjabi) and a film/TV extra. She has been a producer’s assistant and most recently, a researcher for a gritty TV crime drama series set in Toronto. Sheena’s debut novel Eyes Like Mine is inspired by one issue that kept cropping up during her research- the plight of the missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada. Sheena holds an HBA in Political Science from the University of Toronto, which she attended on Canada's most prestigious scholarship and was awarded a TD Canada Trust Scholarship for community leadership and activism around the issue of homelessness.Kate Hamer grew up in Pembrokeshire and has recently been awarded a Literature Wales bursary. Her bestselling novel The Girl in the Red Coat was a no 3. Sunday Times bestseller and shortlisted for the Costa First Book Award, the Bookseller Industry Awards Debut Fiction Book of the Year, the John Creasey New Blood Dagger and Wales Book of the Year. Her second novel is The Doll Funeral. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cordelia Fine is a Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of much-acclaimed A Mind of Its Own (Icon, 2006) and Delusions of Gender (Icon, 2010), described as ‘a truly startling book’ by the Independent, ‘fun, droll yet deeply serious’ by New Scientist and an ‘important book … as enjoyable as it is timely and interesting’ by the West Australian. Her latest book is Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds. This show also features a short interview with Nichi Hodgson on her book The Curious History of Dating. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The third and final Little Atoms Two Cultures in Conversation events took place in London on 17 January 2017, when Little Atoms’ Neil Denny was joined by novelist Naomi Alderman and science writer Adam Rutherford. Neil began by asking Naomi about her latest book, The Power. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Olivia Laing is a widely acclaimed writer and critic. Her work appears in numerous publications, including the Guardian, Observer, New Statesman, Frieze and New York Times. She's a Yaddo and MacDowell Fellow and was 2014 Eccles Writer in Residence at the British Library. Her first book, To the River, was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Dolman Travel Book of the Year. The Trip to Echo Spring was shortlisted for the 2013 Costa Biography Award and the 2014 Gordon Burn Prize. Her latest book The Lonely City has been shortlisted for the 2016 Gordon Burn Prize.Joshua Jelly-Schapiro is a geographer and writer whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, New York, Harper's, the Believer, Artforum, and the Nation, among many other publications. Educated at Yale and Berkeley, he is the co-editor, with Rebecca Solnit, of Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas, and a visiting scholar at New York University's Institute for Public Knowledge. He is the author of Island People: The Caribbean and the World. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Peter Swanson's debut novel, The Girl With a Clock for a Heart (2014), was described by Dennis Lehane as 'a twisty, sexy, electric thrill ride' and was nominated for the LA Times book award. His follow up The Kind Worth Killing (2015), a Richard and Judy pick, was shortlisted for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and named the iBook stores Thriller of the Year. His latest novel is Her Every Fear. He lives with his wife and cat in Somerville, Massachusetts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chibundu Onuzo was born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1991. Her first novel, The Spider King's Daughter, won a Betty Trask Award, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Commonwealth Book Prize, and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Etisalat Prize for Literature. She is completing a PhD on the West African Student's Union at King's College London. Her latest novel is Welcome to Lagos.Alexandra Kleeman is a NYC-based writer of fiction and nonfiction, and a PhD candidate in Rhetoric at UC Berkeley. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope: All-Story, Conjunctions, Guernica, and Gulf Coast, among others. Nonfiction essays and reportage have appeared in Harpers, Tin House, n+1, and The Guardian. She is the author of the short story collection Intimations, and a debut novel You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Laura Cumming has been the art critic of the Observer since 1999. Previously, she was Arts Editor for the New Statesman, presenter of Nightwaves on BBC Radio 3, and arts producer at the BBC World Service. Her previous book, A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits received widespread critical acclaim. Laura’s latest book is The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Luke Dormehl is a journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film. He writes and has written for Fast Company, Wired, The Observer, Empire, SFX, The Sunday Times, Politico and Cult of Mac. He is the author of The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems (And Create More) and The Apple Revolution. Luke’s latest book is Thinking Machines: The inside story of Artificial Intelligence and our race to build the future. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recorded live at Waterstones Piccadilly on 1 December 2016, here's the last Little Atoms of 2016. Neil Denny chats with comedy legend Michael Palin about his book A Sackful of Limericks, followed by an audience Q&A. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Raoul Martinez is a writer, artist, and award-winning filmmaker. Creating Freedom is his first book. It is informed by over a decade of research and is accompanied by a documentary series of the same name. Episode One, The Lottery of Birth - produced, written and co-directed by Raoul - premiered in 2012. It was nominated for Best Documentary at London's Raindance Film Festival and went on to win the Artivist Spirit 2012 Award at Hollywood's Artivist Festival. It has been translated into several languages and the second film is currently in production. Raoul lives and works in London, where his paintings have been selected for exhibition in the National Portrait Gallery. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With performance, presentation, music and discussion, Lucie Green and Simon Barraclough look at the different ways of understanding "a thing so simple a thing as a star".Poet Simon Barraclough, whose series Sunspots is the culmination of four years of writing, travelling, researching and obsessing over the Sun, and Lucie Green, author of 15 Million Degrees: journey to the centre of the Sun, and Professor of Physics and Royal Society University Research Fellow based at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UCL’s Department of Space and Climate Physics.The first of Little Atoms' Two Cultures autumn events series took place at Waterstones flagship store in Piccadilly, London, on 14 September 2016. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Helen Czerski is a lecturer in the Mechanical Engineering Department at University College London. As a physicist she studies the bubbles underneath breaking waves in the open ocean to understand their effects on weather and climate.Helen regularly presents BBC programmes on physics, the ocean and the atmosphere – recent series include Colour: The Spectrum of Science, Orbit, Operation Iceberg, Super Senses, Dara O’Briain’s Science Club, as well as programmes on bubbles, the sun and our weather. She is also a columnist for Focus magazine, shortlisted for PPA columnist of the year in 2014, and has written numerous articles for national newspapers. Helen's first book is Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tim Marshall is a leading authority on foreign a­ffairs with more than 25 years of reporting experience. He was diplomatic editor at Sky News, and before that was working for the BBC and LBC/IRN radio. He has reported from forty countries and covered conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Israel. He is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics, and his latest book is Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Adam Rutherford is a science writer and broadcaster. He studied genetics at University College London, and during his PhD on the developing eye, he was part of a team that identified the first genetic cause of a form of childhood blindness. He has written and presented many award-winning series and programmes for the BBC, including the flagship weekly Radio 4 programme INSIDE SCIENCE, THE CELL for BBC Four, and PLAYING GOD on the rise of synthetic biology for the leading science strand HORIZON, as well as writing for the science pages of the GUARDIAN.His first book, CREATION, on the origin of life and synthetic biology, was published in 2013 to outstanding reviews and was shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Prize. Adam’s latest book is A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Simon Ings began his career writing science fiction stories, novels and films, before widening his brief to explore perception (The Eye), 20th-century radical politics (The Weight of Numbers), the shipping system (Dead Water) and augmented reality (Wolves). He co-founded and edited Arc magazine, a digital publication about the future, before joining New Scientist as its arts editor. Out of the office, he lives in possibly the coldest flat in London, writing for the Guardian, Times, Telegraph, Independent and Nature. Simon's latest book is Stalin and The Scientists. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recorded live at the first London Podcast Festival at King’s Place, Guardian writer Hadley Freeman brings us her personalised guide to American movies from the 1980s – why they are brilliant, what they meant to her, and how they influenced movie-making forever. Growing up in New York in the 1980’s Hadley learned everything she knows from films like Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Top Gun, The Princess Bride, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Beverley Hills Copand When Harry Met Sally… We’ll be talking about how the changes between movies then and movies today say so much about pop culture’s and society’s changing expectations of women, young people, masculinity, class and art, and explains why Pretty in Pink and Ghostbusters should be put on school syllabuses immediately. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Naomi Alderman is the author of four novels. In 2006 she won the Orange Award for New Writers, and in 2007 she was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, as well as being selected as one of Waterstones' 25 Writers for the Future. All of her novels have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime. In 2013 she was selected for the prestigious Granta Best of Young British Writers. Naomi's latest novel is The Power.Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean writer with law degrees from Cambridge, Graz University and the University of Zimbabwe. Her debut story collection, An Elegy for Easterly, won the Guardian First Book Prize in 2009. She is the author of a novel, The Book of Memory, and now a second short story collection Rotten Row. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mike Massimino served as an astronaut for NASA between 1996 and 2014, going on two Space Shuttle missions to service the Hubble telescope, spending more than 30 hours on spacewalks. He has appeared as himself on The Big Bang Theory and is now a professor at the University of Columbia. Mike is the author of a new memoir Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thomas Frank is the author of Pity the Billionaire, The Wrecking Crew, and What's the Matter with Kansas? A former columnist for The Wall Street Journal and Harper's and a regular contributor to The Guardian, Frank is the founding editor of The Baffler. His latest book is Listen, Liberal or, Whatever Happened to The Party of The People. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mark Greif studied history and literature at Harvard, and English at Oxford as a British Marshall Scholar. In 2004, he co-founded the literary journal n+1 in New York and has been a principal at the magazine since then. He earned a PhD in American studies from Yale in 2007. Since 2008, he has been on the faculty of the New School in New York, where he is currently an associate professor. His previous book, The Age of the Crisis of Man: Thought and Fiction in America, 1933–1973, was published in 2015. Greif has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and, for 2016–17, is a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Mark’s latest book is the essay collection Against Everything. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After graduating from West Point with a degree in Military Science, and from The University of Michigan with a Masters in Astronautical/Aeronautical Engineering, Colonel Alfred “Al” Worden had a career in the US Air Force as a fighter pilot and a test pilot, before joining NASA and becoming part of the Apollo program. Having served as a member of the astronaut support crew for the Apollo 9 flight and as backup Command Module Pilot for the Apollo 12 flight, Al Worden was chosen as Command Module Pilot for Apollo 15, becoming one of only 24 people to have flown to the moon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this interview from 2007, Neil and Padraig talked to journalist Nick Cohen about his book What's Left?, which examines the ideas of the British far left and their effects on mainstream politics. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

First broadcast 11 September 2009, Francis Wheen discusses Strange Days Indeed, his brilliant book on the mad, paranoid world of 70s politics. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

First broadcast on 14th January 2011Hailed as one of the most original non-fiction books in recent years, Francis Spufford's Red Plenty tells the story of the men and women who strived to deliver technological and economic Utopia for the Soviet Union in the Kruschev era Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mary Roach is the New York Times bestselling author of several popular science books, including Stiff, Spook, Bonk, Packing for Mars and Gulp. She has written for the Guardian, Wired, BBC Focus, GQ and Vogue. Her latest book is Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Laurie Winkless is a physicist and writer, currently based in London. Following a degree at Trinity College Dublin, a placement at NASA's Kennedy Space Centre, and a masters in Space Science at UCL, Laurie worked at the National Physical Laboratory, specialising in materials. Laurie has been communicating science to the public for more than a decade, working with schools and universities, the Royal Society, Forbes, and the Naked Scientists, amongst others. She's given TEDx talks, hung out with astronauts, and appeared in The Times magazine as a leading light in STEM. Science and the City is her first book Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Travis Elborough is the author of four acclaimed books: The Bus We Loved, a history of the Routemaster bus; The Long Player Goodbye, which lamented the passing of vinyl; Wish You Were Here, a history of the British beside the seaside; and London Bridge in America, which tells the transatlantic story of the sale of the world's largest antique. Travis regularly appears on Radio 4 and writes for the Guardian. His latest book is A Walk in The Park: The Life and Times of a People’s Institution. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Maverick British filmmaker Alex Cox is responsible for directing a host of acclaimed films including Repo Man, Sid & Nancy, Straight to Hell, Walker and Highway Patrolman. From 1987 to 1994, he presented the acclaimed BBC TV series ‘Moviedrome’, bringing unknown or forgotten films to new audiences. He’s also the author of X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker, 10,000 Ways to Die, and The President and the Provocateur, and has written on the subject of film for publications including Sight and Sound, The Guardian, The Independent and Film Comment. His latest book is Alex Cox’s Introduction to Film. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.