Neil Denny is the producer and presenter of the Little Atoms Radio Show and podcast. Neil was the recipient of a Travelling Fellowship from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, and in May 2012 he embarked upon a month long, 6614 mile road trip across America. The aim of the trip was to produce a series of podcasts which present a wide-ranging overview of science and skepticism from an American perspective. While many in Europe consider America to be the home of conspiracy theories, creationism and climate scepticism, the USA is also a scientific powerhouse.
However many of those involved in science in the US are also fighting encroaching irrationality. To be an atheist in America is still considered to be a brave and transgressive act. Creationists continue to push for the teaching of “intelligent design” alongside evolution in science classes. Campaigners are fighting to protect the right to legal and safe abortion, for the use of stem cells in medical research, and are fighting against the growing anti-vaccination movement.

Driving from San Francisco to Boston and calling in at Phoenix, Santa Fe, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York along the way, Neil recorded 39 interviews with scientists and science writers including Ann Druyan, Leonard Susskind, Kip Thorne, Priya Natarajan, Paul Davies, George Church, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Mary Roach, Edward Stone and Sara Seager. He recorded interviews at some major sites of scientific interest, including NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, The Los Alamos National Laboratory, and The American Museum of Natural History. He also spent a less scientific day visiting Kentucky’s Creation Museum. The podcasts from Neil’s trip can be found here : Little Atoms Roadtrip. Find out more about Little Atoms on their website www.littleatoms.com, and follow Neil on Twitter @littleatoms. 

Tom Cruise and John Travolta say the Church of Scientology is a force for good. Others disagree. Award-winning journalist John Sweeney investigated the Church for more than half a decade. During that time he was intimidated, spied on and followed and the results were spectacular: Sweeney lost his temper with the Church’s spokesman on camera and his infamous ‘exploding tomato’ clip was seen by millions around the world.

John Sweeney tells the story of his experiences for the first time and paints a devastating picture of this strange organisation, from former Scientologists who tell heartbreaking stories of families torn apart and lives ruined to its current followers who say it is the solution to many of mankind’s problems. 

Magic boffin Oliver Meech meddles with forces we barely understand, in a comedy magic show for the QI generation. Expect brain-boggling tricks inspired by mind-blowing science. It’s the Natural Selection!

After melding magic with Neuropsychology (Ed Fringe 2011) and Time (Ed Fringe 2010) in previous hit shows, Oliver turns his attention to the rest of the universe.

Oliver Meech studied Experimental Psychology at Oxford University, Creativity at top London ad agencies and Trickery at The Magic Circle. He fuses all three to produce magic that’s ‘fascinating and different from other magicians’ (GWJWTBE blog). When not performing at Fringe festivals around the country, he hops between the UK’s Science, Cabaret and Comedy circuits.

You can catch up with Oliver on Facebook, Twitter @magicmeech, watch him on YouTube and check out his website Magicmeech.com 

Electric cars? They’re rubbish aren’t they?! Nothing but glorified golf carts that take forever to charge and then run out of power on the way to the shops. Try finding somewhere to charge them. They cost a fortune to buy and another fortune to replace the battery when its range drops to half. You don’t want to believe all that nonsense about them being environmentally-friendly. They are actually worse than petrol-powered cars because the batteries are made from dirty lithium and use electricity made from dirtier coal. There isn’t even enough lithium in the world to make all the new batteries we’d need anyway. Electric cars are just rubbish. Aren’t they? – Robert says no. This evening he’ll tell us why he thinks we need to put away our prejudices and think seriously about electric vehicles as the future of transport.

Robert Llewellyn is an actor, writer, comedian, TV presenter and self-described wishy-washy liberal best known for playing the android Kryten in the long-running BBC sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf. He presented Scrapheap Challenge for 10 years and these days he can be seen on TV presenting the shows Car-Pool on Dave and How Do They Do It? on Channel 5. He is probably the UK’s most prominent advocate of electric vehicles (EV) and presents a YouTube-based show called Fully Charged which documents current developments in the electric vehicle industry. He also writes a column for the EV website The Charging Point. He has been notably critical of BBC Top Gear’s position on electric vehicles – a case in point being the Top Gear review of the Tesla Roadster in 2008. Tesla Motors response to Top Gear’s review is here. This February he debated the motion “This House Believes Electric Cars are the Future of Transport” at the Oxford Union. The motion was carried.
You can catch up with Robert on Twitter : @bobbyllew