Little Atoms

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.

Cal Flyn is a freelance journalist from the Highlands of Scotland. She has been a reporter for the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph, and a contributing editor at The Week magazine. She has been published in the New Statesman, The Observer, The Independent, Telegraph Magazine and FT Weekend, and won the 2013 Brandt/Independent on Sunday travel writing prize. Her first book is Thicker Than Water. Dan Richards studied at UEA and Norwich Arts School. He is co-author of Holloway with Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood, and The Beechwood Airship Interviews, a book about the creative process and the importance of art for art’s sake, which we talked about last year on Little Atoms. His latest book is Climbing Days. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alex Marshall is a journalist who writes about music and politics. He has written previously for the BBC, Guardian and New York Times. Alex is the author of Republic or Death! Travels in Search of National Anthems. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Miranda Sawyer is a journalist and broadcaster. Formerly of Smash Hits and Select, she currently writes features and radio criticism for the Observer, and her writing has also appeared in GQ, Vogue and the Guardian. She is a regular arts critic in print, on television and on radio. The author of Park and Ride, a book about suburbia, her latest is Out of Time: Midlife, If You Still Think You’re Young. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marcus Du Sautoy is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. In 2008 he was appointed to Oxford University’s prestigious professorship as the Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science, a post previously held by Richard Dawkins. In 2009 the Royal Society awarded him the Faraday Prize for excellence in communicating science to the public, and in 2010 he received an OBE from the Queen for his services to science. He’s also recently been made a fellow of the Royal Society. Marcus is the author of The Music of The Primes, Finding Moonshine and The Number Mysteries; He’s presented numerous programs on TV and radio including the internationally acclaimed BBC series The Story of Maths and in 2006 gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. His latest book is What We Cannot Know. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Louise Doughty is the author of seven novels, most recently the top 5 bestseller Apple Tree Yard, which was chosen for the Richard & Judy Book Club, shortlisted for the Specsavers National Book Awards Crime & Thriller of the Year and the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, longlisted for the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize, and translated into over twenty languages. Her other novels include Whatever You Love, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She is a critic and cultural commentator for UK and international newspapers and broadcasts regularly for the BBC. Her latest novel is Black Water. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Francis Spufford was born in 1964. He is the author of five highly-praised books of non-fiction, most frequently described by reviewers as either 'bizarre' or 'brilliant', and usually as both. Unapologetic, has been translated into three languages; the one before, Red Plenty, into nine. He has been longlisted or shortlisted for prizes in science writing, historical writing, political writing, theological writing, and writing 'evoking the spirit of place'. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and lives near Cambridge. His latest book is his first novel, Golden Hill. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kate Moore is a Sunday Times bestselling writer with more than a decade's experience in writing across varying genres, including memoir and biography and history. She is the author of The Radium Girls, and previously she was the director of the critically acclaimed play about The Radium Girls called 'These Shining Lives'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

John Wray is the author of The Right Hand of Sleep, which won a Whiting Writers' Award, Canaan's Tongue and the critically-acclaimed Lowboy. He was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists in 2007. His latest novel is The Lost Time Accidents. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recorded live at the Stoke Newington Literary festival, we gathered together the crème of UK literary podcasting and put them on the same stage, and inevitably they talked about books; With Andy Miller (Backlisted), Carrie Plitt & Octavia Bright (Literary Friction), our own Neil Denny, and occasional remote interjections from Robin Ince (Book Shambles). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lucy Jones is a nature writer and journalist based in London. She was Deputy Editor at NME.com and previously worked at the Daily Telegraph. Her writing on culture, science and nature has been published in BBC Earth, BBC Wildlife, the Guardian, TIME and the New Statesman, and she has contributed to programmes on BBC Radio 4, 6 Music and Radio 1, the BBC World Service, VICE, Channel 5 and Channel 4. She runs the Wildlife Daily blog, featuring wildlife, nature and environment news from around the world, and is the recipient of the Society of Authors’ Roger Deakin Award for Foxes Unearthed: A Story of Love and Loathing in Modern Britain, which is her first book. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at Caltech in Pasadena, California, where he researches the foundations of quantum mechanics, the arrow of time, and the emergence of complexity. He received his PhD in 1983 from Harvard University, and has been awarded prizes and fellowships by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Sloan Foundation and the Royal Society. He is the author of From Eternity to Here, and The Particle at the End of the Universe among other books, his latest being The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Katie Roiphe is the author of several books, including The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism, Uncommon Arrangements, and In Praise of Messy Lives. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Harper’s, Vogue, Esquire, Slate, and Tin House, among many other places. She has a Ph.D. in literature from Princeton University, and is currently the director of the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at New York University. Her latest book is The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Duncan Campbell is a former crime correspondent of the Guardian, former chairman of the Crime Reporters’ Association and winner of the Bar Council’s newspaper journalist of the year. He has also written for the Observer, New Statesman, London Review of Books, Oldie, Esquire, Los Angeles Weekly and British Journalism Review. He was the original presenter of Crime Desk on BBC Radio 5 Live, presented the Radio 4 documentary Bandits of the Blitz, has appeared on the Today programme, LBC radio and numerous television documentaries, and has lectured and spoken widely on crime reporting. He is the author of six books including the bestselling The Underworld and an acclaimed crime novel, If it Bleeds. His latest book is We’ll All Be Murdered in Our Beds! The Shocking History of Crime Reporting in Britain. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rowan Moore is the architecture critic for the Observer and previously for the Evening Standard. He is also a trained architect, and between 2002 and 2008 was the Director of the Architecture Foundation. His award winning book Why We Build was published by Picador in 2012. In 2014 he was named Critic of the Year by the UK Press Awards. His latest book is Slow Burn City: London in the Twenty-First Century. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Josh Neicho speaks to Ben Judah, Heather Kennedy and Martin Skinner about housing, the hottest issue of the London mayoral campaign.Ben Judah is a journalist and author of This Is London, about the migrant experience of LondonHeather Kennedy is an organiser of Digs, a private renters' campaign group in Hackney which is part of the Radical Housing NetworkMartin Skinner is a micro-apartment developer who is CEO of Inspired Asset Management and Inspired Homes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In our second London mayoral election special, Josh Niecho and his panel discuss the issues affecting London's young and diverse community.Featuring:Kenny Imafidon is author of the award-winning Kenny Reports and Partnerships & Programmes Co-ordinator of Bite The Ballot. He lives in south London - kennyimafidon.com, @KennyImafidonShelly Asquith is Vice President (Welfare) of the National Union of Students, and former SU President of the University of the Arts - @ShellyAsquithAmina Gichinga is Take Back The City London Assembly candidate for City & East. She runs a community choir near the Royal Docks - @aminaminkyDia Chakravarty is political director of the Taxpayers' Alliance and a singer. She was born and educated until sixth-form in Bangladesh, and moved to London aged 24 - @DiaChakravarty Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stephen Trombley's most recent books are Fifty Thinkers Who Shaped the Modern World (2012) and A Short History of Western Thought (2011). For 15 years he co-edited The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought with Alan Bullock. His latest book is Wise Words: The Philosophy of Everyday Life. This show also features a catch up with Johann Hari on the paperback release of his book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of The War on Drugs. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alexander Jan leads the City Economics team at engineering and consultancy firm Arup and is a columnist for City AMAlex Ingram is a cycling campaigner with groups in Lewisham and Islington and with national campaigns. He blogs at Alex in the Cities(alexinthecities.co.uk)Kate Arnell is a TV presenter who currently presents BBC America's Anglophenia. She has a blog oneco-living at EcoBoost (eco-boost.co)Jonn Elledge is a journalist and edits New Statesman's urbanism magazine site (citymetric.com). He presents CityMetric's Skylines podcast (citymetric.com/content/skylines-podcast) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The last of our three shows for the 2016 Wellcome Book Prize, with shortlisted authors Steve Silberman & Sarah Moss. The Wellcome Book Prize 2016 winner will be announced on Monday 25th April. Thanks again to Chris, Alice and Fiona at FMcM Associates for arranging these interviews.Steve Silberman is an award-winning investigative reporter and has covered science and cultural affairs for Wired and other national magazines for more than twenty years. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, TIME, Nature and Salon. Steve is the author of the New York Times bestseller Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently, which won the 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, and is shortlisted for the 2106 Wellcome Book Prize.Sarah Moss was educated at Oxford University and is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick. She is the author of three novels: Cold Earth, Night Waking, which was selected for the Fiction Uncovered Award in 2011, and Bodies of Light which was shortlisted for the 2015 Wellcome Book Prize. She spent 2009-10 as a visiting lecturer at the University of Reykjavik, and wrote an account of her time there in Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland (Granta 2012), which was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2013. Sarah’s latest novel is Signs for Lost Children, which is shortlisted for the 2016 Wellcome Book Prize. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan has been a consultant in neurology since 2004, first working at The Royal London Hospital and now as a consultant in clinical neurophysiology and neurology at The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, and for a specialist unit based at the Epilepsy Society. In that role she has developed an expertise in working with patients with psychogenic disorders alongside her work with those suffering with physical diseases such as epilepsy. Suzanne’s first book It's All in Your Head, is shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize in 2016.Amy Liptrot has published her work with various magazines, journals and blogs and she has written a regular column for Caught by the River out of which her first book The Outrun emerged. As well as writing for local newspaper, Orkney Today, and editing the Edinburgh Student newspaper, Amy has worked as an artist's model, a trampolinist and in a shellfish factory. The Outrun is shortlisted for the 2016 Wellcome Book Prize. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The first of three shows for the 2016 Wellcome Book Prize, with shortlisted authors Cathy Rentzenbrink & Alex Pheby.Cathy Rentzenbrink was born in Cornwall, Grew up in Yorkshire and now lives in London. A former bookseller at Waterstones, she was until recently Project Director of the charity Quick Reads, and is currently books editor at the Bookseller magazine. Her first book, The Last Act of Love, has been shortlisted for the 2016 Wellcome Book Prize.Alex Pheby is a writer and academic. He is the co-founder and co-director of the annual Greenwich Book Festival, and is the programme leader of the University of Greenwich's creative writing programmes. His first novel, Grace, was published in 2009, and his latest novel Playthings is shortlisted for the 2016 Wellcome Book Prize. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A recording of the first Little Atoms live event at Waterstones Piccadilly in which we host the launch of Mollly Crabapple’s book Drawing Blood. An acclaimed artist and journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and The Paris Review, and in her regular column in Vice (among many other venues), Molly Crabapple has swiftly become one of the most provocative – and most-watched – voices at work today.Now, in her memoir, DRAWING BLOOD, Crabapple weaves together her fresh voice and acutely observed perspective with dazzling, irreverent, full colour illustrations. This singular artist traces how the power of art, which gripped her from childhood, has given her a vehicle for understanding – perhaps even for changing – the world. Hear Molly in conversation with acclaimed broadcaster Paul Mason, author of PostCapitalism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Penderyn Music Book Prize is organised by Richard Thomas, founder of the Laugharne Weekend Festival, and is the only UK-based book prize specifically for music titles including history, theory, biography and autobiography. The winner will be announced at the Laugharne Weekend Festival on 3rd April 2016. In this special edition of Little Atoms, Neil Denny talks with shortlisted authors Stuart Cosgrove and Peter Doggett, and prize judge Jude Rogers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ioan Grillo has reported on Latin America since 2001 for international media including Time magazine, Reuters, CNN, the Associated Press, the Houston Chronicle, the BBC World Service and the Sunday Telegraph.His first book, El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency, was translated into five languages and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Orwell Prize.A native of Britain, Grillo lives in Mexico City. His latest book is Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

DJ Taylor is the author of two acclaimed biographies, Thackerary (1999), and Orwell: The Life, which won the Whitbread Biography Prize in 2003. He has written eleven novels, the most recent being The Windsor Faction. He’s also well known as a critic and reviewer, and his other books include A Vain Conceit: British Fiction in the 1980s and After the War: the Novel and England since 1945. His journalism appears in the Independent and the Independent on Sunday, the Guardian, The Tablet, the Spectator, the Wall Street Journal and, anonymously, in Private Eye. His latest book is The Prose Factory: Literary Life in Britain Since 1918. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the last two years Little Atoms has partnered with the Wellcome Book Prize, broadcasting interviews with the shortlisted authors. We’ll be doing the same this year, and to mark the announcement of the 2016 shortlist on Monday 14th March, here’s a bonus episode. This is a recording of a conversation between previous winners Andrew Solomon and Marion Coutts, which took place at Libreria bookshop on 2nd March. Libreria director Sally Davies is the host. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Harry Parker grew up in Wiltshire. He was educated at Falmouth College of Art and University College London. He joined the British Army when he was 23 and served in Iraq in 2007 and Afghanistan in 2009 as a Captain. He is now a writer and artist and lives in London. Harry’s first novel is Anatomy of a Soldier. Andrew Hankinson is a journalist who was born, raised, and lives in Newcastle upon Tyne. He started his career as a staff writer at Arena magazine and in 2012 won a Northern Writers Award. He is now a freelance feature writer who has contributed to many publications, including Observer Magazine, The Guardian, and Huffington Post. His first book is You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jo Marchant is an award-winning science journalist based in London. She has a PhD in genetics and medical microbiology from St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College in London, and an MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College London. She has worked as an editor at New Scientist and at Nature and her articles have appeared in publications including The Guardian, Wired, and The Observer Review. She’s the author of Decoding the Heavens, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Royal Society Prize for Science Books, and The Shadow King. Her latest book is Cure: A Journey Into the Science of Mind Over Body. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Maria Konnikova was born in Moscow, Russia and came to the United States when she was four years old. She is a contributing writer for The New Yorker, where she writes a regular column with a focus on psychology and culture, and has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, The Wall Street Journal, The Observer, and Scientific American, among numerous other publications. She is the author of Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes and her latest book is The Confidence Game: The Psychology of the Con, and Why we Fall For it Every Time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kathryn Harkup is a chemist and author. Kathryn completed a PhD then a postdoc at the University of York before realising that talking, writing and demonstrating science appealed far more than spending hours slaving over a hot fume-hood. She went on to run outreach in engineering, computing, physics and maths at the University of Surrey, and is now a freelance science communicator delivering talks and workshops on the quirky side of science. Kathryn is the author of A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Helen FitzGerald is the bestselling author of Dead Lovely (2007) and nine other adult and young adult thrillers, including My Last Confession (2009), The Donor (2011) and most recently The Cry (2013), which was longlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. Helen has worked as a criminal justice social worker for over ten years. Now based in Scotland, she grew up in Victoria, Australia as one of thirteen children. Her latest novel is Viral. This show also features a repeat of our recent interview with Francesca Kay on her novel The Long Room. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Matthew Kneale studied Modern History at Oxford University. He is the author of several novels, including English Passengers which won the Whitbread Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His latest book is An Atheist’s History of Belief: Understanding Our Most Extraordinary Invention. Also this week, columnist Suzanne Moore on A Book of Dreams by Peter Reich. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Philip Hoare is the author of seven works of non-fiction, including an acclaimed biography of Noel Coward, and Leviathan or, The Whale, which won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. An experienced broadcaster, Hoare wrote and presented the BBC Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick, and directed three films for BBC’s Whale Night. He is Visiting Fellow at Southampton University, and Leverhulme Artist-in-residence at The Marine Institute, Plymouth University, which awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2011. He is also co-curator of the Moby-Dick Big Read. His latest book, The Sea Inside, was published by Fourth Estate in June 2013. Also this week, columnist Deborah Orr talks about Kate Bush’s debut album The Kick Inside. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rana Dasgupta won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book for his debut novel Solo. He is also the author of a collection of urban folktales, Tokyo Cancelled, which was shortlisted for the 2005 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First Century Delhi is his first work of non-fiction. Born in Canterbury in 1971, he has lived in Delhi for 13 years. Also this week, writer Sarah Ditum talks about Andrea Dworkin’s Intercourse. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Owen Hatherley writes regularly on architecture and cultural politics for Architects Journal, Architectural Review,Icon, The Guardian, The London Review of Books and New Humanist, and is the author of several books, including Militant Modernism, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain and A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys through Urban Britain. His latest books are Landscapes of Communism, and The Ministry of Nostalgia. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A special edition of Little Atoms for Resonance FM’s fundraising week. Recorded live at The Slaughtered Lamb on 10th February 2014.Is Music Journalism in a Critical Condition?The UK music scene once supported four weekly music papers, which wielded the power to form the musical agenda in a way that’s unimaginable today. Of these, only the NME staggers on in managed decline, along with an ever dwindling number of monthly magazines. The changing ways we consume music and the rise of the internet have radically changed the musical landscape, and perhaps this is a good thing. Those weeklies were notoriously bad at covering certain genres, and the internet has enabled a much wider range of writers to share the music they love. On the other hand it has yet to find a reliable way to pay them to do so. Are the days of making a living from music journalism over?Joining Neil Denny of the Little Atoms Radio Show to explore this question, and to share tales of private jets and rainy nights at the Northampton Roadmender, are the journalists Andrew Mueller, Charles Shaar Murray, Jude Rogers and David Stubbs.Andrew Mueller is a rock critic, travel writer, foreign correspondent, columnist, pundit and author. He is a Contributing Editor at Monocle, and also writes for The Guardian, The Telegraph, Uncut, and The New Humanist among others. His latest book is the memoir It’s Too Late to Die Young Now. When not writing, Andrew Mueller is the singer and songwriter with alt-country band The Blazing Zoos. Defunct music papers he’s written words for include Melody Maker, Vox and The Word.Charles Shaar Murray is an author, broadcaster and former NME journalist. He is the author of several books, most recently Crosstown Traffic: Jimi Hendrix and Post-war Pop. A founding contributor to Q and Mojo magazines, he made his print debut in 1970 in the notorious “Schoolkids Issue” OZ. Currently he’s a regular contributor to Madam Miaow’s Culture Lounge on Resonance FM.Jude Rogers is a columnist and music writer for The Guardian, Observer, The Quietus and the New Statesman. She’s the co-founder of quarterly magazine Smoke: A London Peculiar. She’s been on the Mercury Music Prize judging panel since 2007. Her radio documentary Mad About the Boy was on Radio 4 at the beginning of February.David Stubbs joined the music magazine Melody Maker in 1986, where he worked for 12 years. His most famous creation, Mr Agreeablehas recently reawakened over at The Quietus. He has also written for The Guardian, NME, The Wire, When Saturday Comes and Uncut, and was a presenter of the Resonance FM football show Café Calcio. David is the author of numerous books, including the upcoming Future Days, a history of Krautrock which is published in August by Faber. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Aleks Krotoski is an academic and journalist who writes about and studies technology and interactivity. She is currently a Visiting Fellow in the Media and Communications Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute. Aleks writes for the Guardian and Observer newspapers, and hosts Tech Weekly, their technology podcast. She presented the Emmy and Bafta-winning BBC 2 series Virtual Revolution, and more recently the BBC Radio 4 series Digital Human. Her first book is Untangling the Web: What the Internet is Doing to You. Also this week, critic Matthew Sweet on the Ealing WW2 propaganda film Went The Day Well? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

James Bridle is a writer, artist, publisher and technologist usually based in London, UK. His work covers the intersection of literature, culture and the network. He has written for WIRED, ICON, Domus, Cabinet, the Atlantic and many other publications, and writes a regular column for the Observer newspaper on publishing and technology. In 2011, he coined the term “New Aesthetic”, and his ongoing research around this subject has been featured and discussed worldwide. His work, such as the Iraq War Historiography, an encyclopaedia of Wikipedia Changelogs, has been exhibited at galleries in the Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia, and has been commissioned by organisations such as Artangel, Mu Eindhoven, and the Corcoran Gallery, Washington DC.Eleanor Saitta is a hacker, designer, artist and writer. She makes a living and a vocation of understanding how complex systems operate and redesigning them to work, or at least fail, better. Her work is transdisciplinary, using everything from electronics, software, and paint to social rules and words as media with which to explore and shape our interactions with the world. Her focuses include the seamless integration of technology into the lived experience, the humanity of objects and the built environment, and systemic resilience and conviviality. Eleanor is Principal Security Engineer at the Open Internet Tools Project (OpenITP), directing the OpenITP Peer Review Board for open source software and working on adversary modeling. She is also Technical Director at the International Modern Media Institute (IMMI), a member of the advisory boards at Geeks Without Bounds (GWoB) and the Calyx Institute, and works on occasion as a Senior Security Associate with Stach & Liu. She is a founder of the Constitutional Analysis Support Team (CAST), previously co-founded the Seattle-based Public N3rd Area hacker space, and works on the Trike and Briar projects. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Irving Finkel is an archaeologist and Assyriologist, currently Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian Script, Languages and Cultures in the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum. He’s also an expert on the history of board games, and the founder of the Great Diary Project. Irving is the author of numerous books, most recently The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood. Also on this week’s show, astrophysicist Lucianne Walkowicz on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Temple of Dendur. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paul Wolinski and Joe Shrewsbury are one half of 65daysofstatic, an instrumental band from Sheffield, as comfortable crashing samplers to mine glitches as they are putting guitars through too much distortion. Influenced by a technologically dystopian present and an apocalyptically likely future, they tend to be found filling venues, galleries or headphones with different kinds of noise in their ongoing efforts to find the limits of what ‘being a band’ can mean.The Space Lady is a street-performing singer based in Colorado, USA. Originally beginning on the streets of Boston in the late 70s, she has recently begun playing again. Often seen performing in 1980’s Boston, and then a decade later in San Francisco’s Castro community – where she would play and sing for hours on end for the gay scene, and got her apt moniker – The Space Lady’s winged helmet and setup of a Casio battery-powered keyboard, vocal mic and echo & phaser controls became a small but striking phenomenon. Her sound is a blend of synth-laden pop and proto-techno that evokes the iconic soundtrack artists and early electronic composers such as Suzanne Ciani. The Space Lady has been recognised alongside Daniel Johnston and Jandek on Irwin Chusid’s seminal Outsider compilation Songs in the Key of Z, and her lo-fi synth minimalist interpretation of Peter Schilling’s Major Tom featured on Erol Alkan’s Bugged Out mix last year, as well as John Maus’ 2011 Rough Trade set. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Born into a showbiz milieu in Sydney, Tim Baker left Australia to travel in his early 20s and lived in Rome and Madrid before moving to Paris, where he wrote about music and worked in film. He later ran consular operations in France and North Africa for the Australian embassy, liaising with international authorities on cases involving murder, kidnap, terrorism and disappearances. His fiction includes the collection of short stories, Out From the Past, and his film work includes writing the feature film Samsara. His debut novel is Fever City. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alex Fleetwood is the founder and director of Hide&Seek, a game design studio dedicated to inventing new kinds of play. Hide&Seek started life in 2007 as a festival of social games and playful experiences on London’s South Bank, and built into a studio occupied a unique position in the UK, creating innovative games, installations and events with organisations including Film4, the Cultural Olympiad, Tate Modern, Warner Bros, Gâité Lyrique, Nike, Sony, the Royal Opera House and Kensington Palace.Anab Jain was born and educated in India (NID), with an MA in Interaction Design from the Royal College of Art, and founded Superflux in 2009, leading the Consultancy’s client partnerships whilst balancing the Lab’s self-initiated conceptual projects. She has lead multidisciplinary design, strategy and foresight projects for businesses, think-tanks and research organisations such as Sony, BBC, Nokia, NHS, Design Council, Forum for the Future, Qatar Foundation and Govt. of UAE. Honoured as a TED Fellow, she is the recipient of several awards, including the Award of Excellence ICSID and Apply Computers, Innovation Award, Chicago International Film Festival and the UNESCO Digital Arts Award. Her work has been exhibited at MoMA New York, Apple, Mattel Toys, Tate Modern, Science Gallery Dublin, National Museum of China and the London Design Festival. She is on the Board of MzTek and Broadway Cinema and Media Centre, and is a guest lecturer at the Royal College of Art, VCUQatar, Architectural Association, Goldsmiths, Dundee Innovative Product Design and CIID. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Olivia Laing‘s first book, To the River, was a book of the year in the Evening Standard, Independent and Financial Times and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Dolman Travel Book of the Year. Olivia is the former Deputy Books Editor of the Observer and writes for a variety of publications, including the Observer, New Statesman, Guardian and Times Literary Supplement. She’s a 2011 MacDowell Fellow, and has received awards from the Arts Council and the Authors’ Foundation. Olivia ‘s latest book is The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Andy Miller is a reader, author and editor of books. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the Times, the Telegraph, the Guardian, Esquire and Mojo. He’s the author of Tilting at Windmills: How I Tried to Stop Worrying and Love Sport, among others. His latest book is The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cara Hoffman is the author of the critically acclaimed 2011 novel So Much Pretty. She grew up in northern Appalachia, where she dropped out of high school to work full time. Hoffman spent three years travelling and working as an agricultural labourer in Europe and the Middle East. She returned to the US, had a baby and found a job delivering newspapers which eventually led to work as a reporter covering environmental politics and crime. She has been a visiting writer at St. John’s, Columbia and Oxford, where she lectured on Violence and Masculinity for the Rhodes Global Scholars Symposium. Hoffman lives in Manhattan and teaches writing and literature at Bronx Community College. Cara ‘s latest novel is Be Safe I Love You. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week’s Little Atoms podcast, Neil Denny talks to Theoretical physicist Lisa Randall about her new book Dark Matter and The Dinosaurs, and then Francesca Kay on her latest novel The Long Room.Lisa Randall is one of the world's leading theoretical physicists and the Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University. She has received numerous awards and honours and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics. She is the author of numerous books including Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions, and Knocking On Heaven's Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate our Universe. Her latest book is Dark Matter and The Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe.Francesca Kay's first novel, An Equal Stillness, won the Orange Award for New Writers and was nominated for the Authors' Club First Novel Award and for Best First Book in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Europe and South Asia Region). Her second novel, The Translation of the Bones, was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her latest novel is The Long Room. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lee Rourke is the author of the short story collection Everyday, and the novel The Canal, which won the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize in 2010. He is writer in residence at Kingston University, where he is an MFA lecturer in creative writing and critical theory. He also lectures in creative writing at the University of East London. His latest novel is Vulgar Things. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Following a doctorate and subsequent research career in genetics, Kat Arney is now Science Communications Manager for Cancer Research UK, where she translates science into plain English to help people understand more about the disease. Kat is also a science writer and broadcaster, whose writing has appeared in the Guardian, Science, New Scientist, BBC Online and Al-Jazeera Online.She has presented several BBC Radio 4 science documentaries and programmes in the Costing the Earth series, is a regular presenter with the Naked Scientists, and presents and produces the Naked Genetics monthly podcast. Kat’s first book is Herding Hemingway’s Cats: Understanding How Our Genes Work. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this interview, recorded in Oxford ahead of the release of "God Is Not Great", Christopher Hitchens spoke to Neil Denny and Padraig Reidy about Richard Dawkins, Karl Marx, religion, blasphemy and nuclear apocalypse Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.