Little Atoms

The first of three episodes of Little Atoms in association with the 2015 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. This week Neil Denny talks with shortlisted authors Jim Al-Khalili & Johnjoe Mcfadden, and Jon Butterworth. Professor Jim Al-Khalili, OBE is an academic, author and broadcaster. He is a leading theoretical physicist based at the […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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. Her debut novel is The Book of Memory.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

John Higgs is the author of I Have America Surrounded: The Life of Timothy Leary, The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds, and the novel The Brandy of the Damned. His latest book is Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Michela Wrong is a distinguished international journalist, and has worked as a foreign correspondent covering events across the African continent for Reuters, the BBC and the Financial Times. She writes regularly for Foreign Policy magazine and the Spectator. Based on her experiences in Africa, In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz, her first book, won the […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Stephen Grey is a journalist based in London, who writes mainly about national security issues. He is best known for breaking the international exclusive story of the CIA’s secret rendition program. A former editor on the Sunday Times’ investigations unit, the Insight team, he continues to contribute to that newspaper, as well to the New […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Alok Jha is a journalist and broadcaster based in London. He is science correspondent for ITN and, before that, was science correspondent at the Guardian. He has presented science programmes for BBC2 and BBC Radio 4. Alok received a science-writing award from the American Institute of Physics in 2014, was named European Science Writer of […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Helen Scales is a marine biologist, a freelance researcher and broadcaster; she appears regularly on BBC Radio 4, Sky News and the BBC World Service, and has presented documentaries on topics such as whether people will ever live underwater, the science of making and surfing waves and the intricacies of sharks’ minds. Her doctorate involved […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Iain Sinclair a poet, film-maker, essayist and the author of many acclaimed books, including Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize), Lights Out for the Territory, London Orbital, Edge of Orison, Hackney: That Rose-Red Empire, Dining on Stones, Ghost Milk and American Smoke and London Overground, his account of a one-day walk around […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Antony Beevor was educated at Winchester and Sandhurst, where he studied under John Keegan. A regular officer with the 11th Hussars, he left the Army to write. He has published four novels, and numerous works of non-fiction. His books include The Spanish Civil War;  Crete — The Battle and the Resistance, which was awarded a […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On this week’s Little Atoms, Dylan Evans on The Utopia Experiment, and Andrew Mueller on his memoir It’s Too Late to Die Young Now. Dylan Evans is an academic, philosopher and journalist. He has written several popular science books, was named by the Independent as one of the 20 best young writers in Britain, and […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Nell Zink was born in 1964 in southern California and grew up in rural Virginia. She attended Stuart Hall School and the College of William and Mary, where she majored in philosophy. Rather late in life she got a doctorate in Media Studies from the University of Tübingen, Germany. She works as a translator for […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Emma Jane Unsworth is a journalist and won the Betty Trask Award for her novel Hungry, the Stars and Everything, and was shortlisted for the 2012 Portico Prize. Her short story ‘I Arrive First’ was included in The Best British Short Stories 2012. Emma’s latest novel Animals has won a 2015 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. After […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Nick Lane is a biochemist in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London and leads the UCL Origins of Life Programme. His first book, Oxygen, was one of the Sunday Times Books of the Year in 2002. Power, Sex, Suicide was named as a book of the year in The Economist in 2005 and was short-listed for The Aventis […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On this week's Little Atoms Podcast, Joanna Biggs on her book All Day Long: A Portrait of Britain at Work, and Stevan Alcock on his novel Blood Relatives.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On this week's Little Atoms, Neil Denny talks to Dr Gavin Francis about his latest book is Adventures in Human Being.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On this week's Little Atoms, Pulitzer Prize-winning Photojournalist Lynsey Addario on her Memoir It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On this week’s Little Atoms podcast, two books about Death. Brandy Schillace on Death’s Summer Coat, and Caitlin Doughty on Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. Dr Brandy Schillace writes about culture, the history of medicine, and the intersections of medicine and literature. She is Research Associate and guest curator for the Dittrick Medical History Center […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The day before the most uninspiring General Election in Decades, we talk to Zoe Williams about her new book Get it Together: Why We Deserve Better Politics.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Neil Denny talks to two more shortlisted writers, Henry Marsh and Marion Coutts.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On Wednesday 29th April the winner of the 2015 Wellcome Book Prize will be announced. In the first of two special editions of Little Atoms, Neil Denny talks to three of the shortlisted writers. This week: Miriam Toews, Scott Stossell and Sarah Moss. Miriam Toews was born in 1964 in the small Mennonite town of […]  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.