On this week’s Little Atoms, Neil Denny talks to Tom Standage.
Tom Standage is the business editor of The Economist. He started his career as the Science and Technology Editor at the Guardian, and has written several books which merge popular science and history including The Victorian Internet, The Neptune File, The Mechanical Turk. and A History of the World in 6 Glasses in which he explores a notion that six drinks in history — beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and cola — could be seen as technological catalysts in advancing culture. He says of his books “I think the right attitude to new technologies is to regard them with historically-informed scepticism. My approach is intended as a sort of antidote to the scourge of mindless product stories: when something new comes along, I like to point out that it isn’t new at all. This isn’t quite as gratuitous as it sounds; it is quite often possible to learn useful lessons from history, particularly the history of technology”
Tom’s latest book is An Edible History of Humanity, published in paperback by Atlantic in early March 2010. This is Tom’s second visit to Little Atoms.
Join us on Friday evening, 5th March at 19.00 to 19.30 on Resonance 104.4FM in London or via the live feed worldwide.
Stories in this week’s roundup include: the newly announced Jihad against Switzerland; the Secular Coalition for America’s meeting with the Obama administration; and a Danish newspaper’s apology for publishing cartoon depictions of the prophet Muhammad.
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It’s been an exciting week for the UK: A government committee is in the process of deciding the future relationship between homeopathy and the NHS; Simon Singh appeared in the Court of Appeal; and it was discovered that Noah’s ark was in fact, round.
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Discover the true meaning of Valentine’s Day, the latest initiatives of the JREF and Bill O’reilly’s skeptical side in this week’s roundup.
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On this week’s show, Neil Denny and special guest presenter Marcus Chown talk to Stuart Clark.
Stuart Clark is one of the UK’s most widely read astronomy journalists. A former editor of Astronomy Now, He has a PhD in astrophysics and until 2001 was director of public astronomy education at the University of Hertfordshire. In 2001 the Independent ranked him alongside Stephen Hawking and Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, as one of the ‘stars’ of British astrophysics teaching. A regular contributor to such magazines as New Scientist and BBC Focus, he is the author of several books, the most recent of which is Galaxy. But it was his first work of narrative nonfiction, The Sun Kings, that established him as a popular science writer par excellence.
Marcus Chown’s first book, Afterglow of Creation, has just been re-published in paperback by Faber & Faber.
Join us on Friday evening, 19th February at 19.00 to 19.30 on Resonance 104.4FM in London or via the live feed worldwide.
Neil Friday, 5 March, 2010
