This week Neil Denny talks with David Adam, and there’s a repeat of our interview with Gaia Vince from August 2014. This show also marks the 10th anniversary of Little Atoms. We first broadcast on Resonance FM on 16th September 2005.

Dr David Adam is a writer and editor at Nature, the world’s top scientific journal. Before that he was a specialist correspondent on the Guardian for seven years, writing on science, medicine and the environment. During this time he was named feature writer of the year by the Association of British Science Writers, and reported from Antarctica, the Arctic, China and the depths of the Amazon jungle. David is the author of The Man Who Couldn’t Stop: OCD and the true story of a life lost in thought, which has been shortlisted for the 2015 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.

Gaia Vince is a journalist and broadcaster specialising in science and the environment. She has been the front editor of the journal Nature Climate Change, the news editor of Nature and online editor of New Scientist. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, The Times, Science, Scientific American, Australian Geographic and the Australian. She has a regular column, Smart Planet, on BBC Online, and devises and presents programmes about the Anthropocene for BBC radio. Her first book Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made, has been shortlisted for the 2015 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.

The second of three episodes of Little Atoms in association with the 2015 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.

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 University of Surrey, where he teaches and carries out research in quantum mechanics. He has written a number of popular science books, including Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science, and has presented several television and radio documentaries, including the BAFTA-nominated Chemistry: A Volatile History and The Secret Life of Chaos.

Professor Johnjoe McFadden is Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey and is the editor of leading text books on both molecular biology and systems biology of tuberculosis. For over a decade, he has specialised in examining tuberculosis and meningitis, inventing the first successful molecular test for the latter. He is the author of Quantum Evolution and co-editor of Human Nature: Fact and Fiction and writes for theGuardian on topics including GM crops, psychedelic drugs and quantum mechanics.

Together they are the authors of Life on the Edge: The Coming Age of Quantum Biology, which has been shortlisted for the 2015 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.

Jon Butterworth is a leading physicist on the Large Hadron Collider, and Head of Physics and Astronomy at UCL. He writes the popular Life & Physics blog for the Guardian and has written articles for a range of publications including the Guardian and New Scientist. He was awarded the Chadwick Medal of the Institute of Physics in 2013 for his pioneering work in high energy particle physics, especially in the understanding of hadronic jets. He’s the author is Smashing Physics: inside the World’s Biggest Experiment, which is on the shortlist for the 2015 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.