On the evening of 14th March 2010 the Palace Theatre in London was host to The Big Libel Gig, a fundraiser for the Libel Reform Campaign. Rebecca Watson and Neil Denny were present for Little Atoms and recorded interviews with: Simon Singh, Tim Minchin, Marcus Brigstocke, Tracey Brown, Richard Wiseman, Brian Cox, Ben Goldacre, Dara O'Briain, Ariane Sherine, Ed Byrne, Shappi Khorsandi and Robin Ince.

The show contains some bad language and a whole load of libel.

Music credit: Change the Libel Laws by Sly and Reggie, The Suburban Pirates.

The Libel Reform Campaign is supported by Index on Censorship, English PEN and Sense About Science.

http://www.libelreform.org/the-big-libel-gig

Stephanie Merritt  is a writer for the Observer. She has contributed to a variety of newspapers and magazines as well as radio and television. She is the author of two novels, Gaveston (Faber, 2002) and Real (Faber, 2005), one non-fiction, The Devil Within, (Vermilion 2008) and the screenplay for Real, commissioned by Gabriel Byrne's Plurabelle Films. She also previously curated the Talks and Debates programme at Soho Theatre. 

Stephanie's latest book, written under the pseudonym S.J. Parris is Heresy, a historical murder-mystery starring heretic astronomer Giordano Bruno.

www.guardian.co.uk/profile/stephaniemerritt

First broadcast on 12th March 2010

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 Victorian Internet, The Neptune File and The Mechanical Turk and A History of the World in 6 Glasses.

His latest book is An Edible History of Humanity, an account of the key role food has played in our history.

http://www.tomstandage.com

First broadcast on 5th March 2010

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, but it was his first work of narrative nonfiction, The Sun Kings, that established him as a popular science writer par excellence.

His most recent book is Galaxy.

http://www.stuartclark.com

First broadcast on 19th February 2010

N.B. Marcus Chown's first book, Afterglow of Creation, has just been re-published in paperback by Faber & Faber.