Join Neil Denny this Sunday on his 6,000-mile road trip across America. Neil interviews scientists working on ground-breaking, cutting edge science, educators combating the encroachment of anti-science and irrationality into politics and the classroom, and writers attempting to popularise amazing ideas and concepts to the wider public.
And he's going to explore some major scientific (and some not so scientific) sites of interest along the way.
Creationism comes under scrutiny from Andrew Snelling, Eugenie Scott and Ian Tattersall and a range of speakers at the Freethought Alliance Annual Conference join the debate. Jerry Coyne discusses evolutionary genetics and from the fruit fly to the wooly mammoth, expert geneticists explore origins to extinction.
At the Beyond Center, Neil talks to a range of scientists investigating the big questions of science and philosophy. Things like how the universe came to exist, where the laws of nature came from and how life began.
Along the way, Mary Roach discusses what one might pack on a weekend to Mars; and delving into the darker side of cosmology, Sean Carroll and Priya Natarajan talk Dark Energy, Dark Matter, and the physics of extra dimensions.
Not to be missed is Neil’s trip to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. In part one he speaks to historian Alan Carr about the history of the lab and the unique town that grew up around it. In part two, hear from biologist Babs Marrone and chemical engineer Jim Coons, about how the lab has advanced with their pioneering biofuels project.
Marc Abrahams, editor and co-founder of the science humour magazine, Annals of Improbable Research is another one to tune in for. As he discusses the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, the unorthodox science prize designed to make you laugh, and then think. Previous winners range from the physicist who investigated why discus throwers get dizzy but hammer throwers don’t, to the disparate group of mathematicians, all who predicted the end of the world, and then outlived it.
The Little atoms road trip brings you a wide-ranging overview of science and scepticism from an American perspective. Starting in Massachusetts and traveling to California, join Neil for his usual mix of challenging ideas and fascinating conversation. All right here on www.littleatoms.com, from 9 am GMT
