New podcast from Little Atoms tells the hidden story of science’s cultural influence
The team behind Little Atoms, one of the UK’s longest-running podcasts, is launching a new series exploring how medical and scientific advances changed how writers and artists view the world.
Converging Cultures is a new four-part series from Little Atoms, one of Britain’s most highly acclaimed and established podcasts.
Supported by the Wellcome Trust, Converging Cultures explores the hidden history of science’s influence on art and literature, exploding the “two cultures” myth.
Produced by Thomas Glasser, with scripts and additional production by Caroline Christie, and presented by Neil Denny, Converging Cultures takes listeners on a journey from the 18th century enlightenment all the way to the future.
Join Neil Denny and the Little Atoms team as they talk to leading artists, authors and academics, creating a complex chronology of the past and future of art, literature, medicine, science and humanity itself.
The series will be broadcast on online digital station NTS on four consecutive Thursdays at 11am (London), starting 9 November.
Listen to episode 1 now
Episodes include:
- Episode 1: Electric enlightenment:Electricity captivated the greatest minds of the “age of wonder”. Gentlemen amateurs amazed audiences with their experiments, and some even believed electricity could conquer death itself. The young Mary Shelley was as enthralled as anyone - leading to the greatest gothic creation of all time: Frankenstein.
- Episode 2: All in your head: “Mesmerism” was a part of mainstream medicine in the 19th century, with many believing the unprovable concept of “animal magnetism”. The idea influenced everyone from Robert Louis Stevenson to Sigmund Freud, creating lurid tales of split personalities and mind control, from Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to Trilby.
- Episode 3: Faces of war: Futurists like Marinetti and D’Annunzio revelled in the destructive energy of battle, but in Weimar Germany after world war 1, artists such as Otto Dix and Hans Fallada documented the horror of disfigurement, while scientists and medics tried to rebuild ruined men.
- Episode 4: Apocalypse now: Contagion has haunted so much of 20th century culture, from Camus’s Plague to Romero’s zombies. In this episode, we examine real and imagined epidemics, and meet the people whose job it is to stop them.
With high production values and an a huge range of guests, Little Atoms’ Converging Cultures represents a new standard for independent British podcasting.
