Little Atoms

Travis Elborough is the author of four acclaimed books: The Bus We Loved, a history of the Routemaster bus; The Long Player Goodbye, which lamented the passing of vinyl; Wish You Were Here, a history of the British beside the seaside; and London Bridge in America, which tells the transatlantic story of the sale of the world's largest antique. Travis regularly appears on Radio 4 and writes for the Guardian. His latest book is A Walk in The Park: The Life and Times of a People’s Institution.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Maverick British filmmaker Alex Cox is responsible for directing a host of acclaimed films including Repo Man, Sid & Nancy, Straight to Hell, Walker and Highway Patrolman. From 1987 to 1994, he presented the acclaimed BBC TV series ‘Moviedrome’, bringing unknown or forgotten films to new audiences. He’s also the author of X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker, 10,000 Ways to Die, and The President and the Provocateur, and has written on the subject of film for publications including Sight and Sound, The Guardian, The Independent and Film Comment. His latest book is Alex Cox’s Introduction to Film.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Cal Flyn is a freelance journalist from the Highlands of Scotland. She has been a reporter for the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph, and a contributing editor at The Week magazine. She has been published in the New Statesman, The Observer, The Independent, Telegraph Magazine and FT Weekend, and won the 2013 Brandt/Independent on Sunday travel writing prize. Her first book is Thicker Than Water. Dan Richards studied at UEA and Norwich Arts School. He is co-author of Holloway with Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood, and The Beechwood Airship Interviews, a book about the creative process and the importance of art for art’s sake, which we talked about last year on Little Atoms. His latest book is Climbing Days.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Alex Marshall is a journalist who writes about music and politics. He has written previously for the BBC, Guardian and New York Times. Alex is the author of Republic or Death! Travels in Search of National Anthems.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Miranda Sawyer is a journalist and broadcaster. Formerly of Smash Hits and Select, she currently writes features and radio criticism for the Observer, and her writing has also appeared in GQ, Vogue and the Guardian. She is a regular arts critic in print, on television and on radio. The author of Park and Ride, a book about suburbia, her latest is Out of Time: Midlife, If You Still Think You’re Young.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Marcus Du Sautoy is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. In 2008 he was appointed to Oxford University’s prestigious professorship as the Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science, a post previously held by Richard Dawkins. In 2009 the Royal Society awarded him the Faraday Prize for excellence in communicating science to the public, and in 2010 he received an OBE from the Queen for his services to science. He’s also recently been made a fellow of the Royal Society. Marcus is the author of The Music of The Primes, Finding Moonshine and The Number Mysteries; He’s presented numerous programs on TV and radio including the internationally acclaimed BBC series The Story of Maths and in 2006 gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. His latest book is What We Cannot Know.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Louise Doughty is the author of seven novels, most recently the top 5 bestseller Apple Tree Yard, which was chosen for the Richard & Judy Book Club, shortlisted for the Specsavers National Book Awards Crime & Thriller of the Year and the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, longlisted for the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize, and translated into over twenty languages. Her other novels include Whatever You Love, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She is a critic and cultural commentator for UK and international newspapers and broadcasts regularly for the BBC. Her latest novel is Black Water.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Francis Spufford was born in 1964. He is the author of five highly-praised books of non-fiction, most frequently described by reviewers as either 'bizarre' or 'brilliant', and usually as both. Unapologetic, has been translated into three languages; the one before, Red Plenty, into nine. He has been longlisted or shortlisted for prizes in science writing, historical writing, political writing, theological writing, and writing 'evoking the spirit of place'. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and lives near Cambridge. His latest book is his first novel, Golden Hill.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Kate Moore is a Sunday Times bestselling writer with more than a decade's experience in writing across varying genres, including memoir and biography and history. She is the author of The Radium Girls, and previously she was the director of the critically acclaimed play about The Radium Girls called 'These Shining Lives'.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

John Wray is the author of The Right Hand of Sleep, which won a Whiting Writers' Award, Canaan's Tongue and the critically-acclaimed Lowboy. He was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists in 2007. His latest novel is The Lost Time Accidents.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Recorded live at the Stoke Newington Literary festival, we gathered together the crème of UK literary podcasting and put them on the same stage, and inevitably they talked about books; With Andy Miller (Backlisted), Carrie Plitt & Octavia Bright (Literary Friction), our own Neil Denny, and occasional remote interjections from Robin Ince (Book Shambles).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Lucy Jones is a nature writer and journalist based in London. She was Deputy Editor at NME.com and previously worked at the Daily Telegraph. Her writing on culture, science and nature has been published in BBC Earth, BBC Wildlife, the Guardian, TIME and the New Statesman, and she has contributed to programmes on BBC Radio 4, 6 Music and Radio 1, the BBC World Service, VICE, Channel 5 and Channel 4. She runs the Wildlife Daily blog, featuring wildlife, nature and environment news from around the world, and is the recipient of the Society of Authors’ Roger Deakin Award for Foxes Unearthed: A Story of Love and Loathing in Modern Britain, which is her first book.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at Caltech in Pasadena, California, where he researches the foundations of quantum mechanics, the arrow of time, and the emergence of complexity. He received his PhD in 1983 from Harvard University, and has been awarded prizes and fellowships by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Sloan Foundation and the Royal Society. He is the author of From Eternity to Here, and The Particle at the End of the Universe among other books, his latest being The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Katie Roiphe is the author of several books, including The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism, Uncommon Arrangements, and In Praise of Messy Lives. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Harper’s, Vogue, Esquire, Slate, and Tin House, among many other places. She has a Ph.D. in literature from Princeton University, and is currently the director of the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at New York University. Her latest book is The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Duncan Campbell is a former crime correspondent of the Guardian, former chairman of the Crime Reporters’ Association and winner of the Bar Council’s newspaper journalist of the year. He has also written for the Observer, New Statesman, London Review of Books, Oldie, Esquire, Los Angeles Weekly and British Journalism Review. He was the original presenter of Crime Desk on BBC Radio 5 Live, presented the Radio 4 documentary Bandits of the Blitz, has appeared on the Today programme, LBC radio and numerous television documentaries, and has lectured and spoken widely on crime reporting. He is the author of six books including the bestselling The Underworld and an acclaimed crime novel, If it Bleeds. His latest book is We’ll All Be Murdered in Our Beds! The Shocking History of Crime Reporting in Britain.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Rowan Moore is the architecture critic for the Observer and previously for the Evening Standard. He is also a trained architect, and between 2002 and 2008 was the Director of the Architecture Foundation. His award winning book Why We Build was published by Picador in 2012. In 2014 he was named Critic of the Year by the UK Press Awards. His latest book is Slow Burn City: London in the Twenty-First Century.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Josh Neicho speaks to Ben Judah, Heather Kennedy and Martin Skinner about housing, the hottest issue of the London mayoral campaign. Ben Judah is a journalist and author of This Is London, about the migrant experience of London Heather Kennedy is an organiser of Digs, a private renters' campaign group in Hackney which is part of the Radical Housing Network Martin Skinner is a micro-apartment developer who is CEO of Inspired Asset Management and Inspired Homes  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In our second London mayoral election special, Josh Niecho and his panel discuss the issues affecting London's young and diverse community. Featuring: Kenny Imafidon is author of the award-winning Kenny Reports and Partnerships & Programmes Co-ordinator of Bite The Ballot. He lives in south London - kennyimafidon.com, @KennyImafidon Shelly Asquith is Vice President (Welfare) of the National Union of Students, and former SU President of the University of the Arts - @ShellyAsquith Amina Gichinga is Take Back The City London Assembly candidate for City & East. She runs a community choir near the Royal Docks - @aminaminky Dia Chakravarty is political director of the Taxpayers' Alliance and a singer. She was born and educated until sixth-form in Bangladesh, and moved to London aged 24 - @DiaChakravarty  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Stephen Trombley's most recent books are Fifty Thinkers Who Shaped the Modern World (2012) and A Short History of Western Thought (2011). For 15 years he co-edited The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought with Alan Bullock. His latest book is Wise Words: The Philosophy of Everyday Life. This show also features a catch up with Johann Hari on the paperback release of his book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of The War on Drugs.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Alexander Jan leads the City Economics team at engineering and consultancy firm Arup and is a columnist for City AM Alex Ingram is a cycling campaigner with groups in Lewisham and Islington and with national campaigns. He blogs at Alex in the Cities (alexinthecities.co.uk) Kate Arnell is a TV presenter who currently presents BBC America's Anglophenia. She has a blog on eco-living at EcoBoost (eco-boost.co) Jonn Elledge is a journalist and edits New Statesman's urbanism magazine site (citymetric.com). He presents CityMetric's Skylines podcast (citymetric.com/content/skylines-podcast)  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.