Category Archives: Science
How the Space Shuttle Broke My Heart
This weekend’s Radio 4 Extra Floating In Space 3-hour special (9am and 7pm Saturday Mar 1th and iplayer after) with Simon Guerrier explores the history and the fantasy of manned space exploration from the cosmonauts to dreams of Mars … Continue reading
Posted in Children, Culture, Design, Film, History, Politics, Radio, Science, Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV, Uncategorized
Tagged 70s, Carl Sagan, culture, film, FTW, nasa, Obama, politics, Space shuttle
Leave a comment
On location for HG Wells and the H Bomb
As well as this documentary I’ve written this feature for BBC Culture about how the Atom Bomb changed our culture and imagination. And I discuss it with Robert Elms on BBC London here. Listen from 1 hr 39 minutes. In … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Film, History, Politics, Radio, Science, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Uncategorized, War
Tagged Atomic bomb, BBC Sunday Feature, HG Wells, Jacob Bronowski, Leo Szilard, literature, politics, Radio 3, The World Set Free, Things to Come, war, Winston Churchill
22 Comments
Plankton of the midsummer air
This week’s Something Understood takes its title Inebriate of the Air, from an Emily Dickinson poem about the insect heavy honeyed thickness of midsummer light and air. And insect and bird sounds (swifts) dominate this programme. Entomologist Ross Piper helps us … Continue reading
Posted in Music, Radio, Science
Tagged bjork, emily dickinson, john agard, midsummer, ross piper, Something Understood, summer solstice
7 Comments
Interstellar’s Heart of Darkness & the Dust Bowl
I like to go to the cinema to escape the gloom of a Sunday evening and what better escape than Interstellar? An epic journey to other worlds. It begins in a rural America devastated by environmental disaster. Real survivors of … Continue reading
Posted in Environment, Film, History, Media, Politics, Religion, Science, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Uncategorized
Tagged adam rutherford, ann druyan, Carl Sagan, cold war, contact, dustbowl, fdr, george pal, Hollywood, humanism, interstellar, jodie foster, joseph conrad, ken burns, mathew mcconaughey, michael caine, nasa, Outer space, roosevelt, Space shuttle, when worlds collide
Leave a comment
The Outer Limits: A fantastic voyage
“To God there is no zero. I still exist.” – Richard Matheson’s The Incredible Shrinking Man screenplay (1957) The summer solstice has just passed — marking the extreme tipping point of the earth’s axis and the longest day. It was … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Film, Radio, Religion, Science, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Uncategorized
Tagged BBC, Cern, Disneyland, Hinduism, Journey Into Inner Space, Kevin Fong, Large Hadron collider, Mozart, Richard Matheson, Shard, Shiva, Something Understood, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Queen of the Night, The Shrinking Man, The Tower of Babel, Willam Beebe
5 Comments
Transience: Clocks, Voyager & Potsdamer Platz
My programme for this week’s Something Understood on BBC Radio 4 is about transience: the fact that all things must pass. It begins in the clock room of the British Museum, where time is made physical by its embodiment in … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Germany, History, Radio, Religion, Science
Tagged Berlin, Carl Sagan, potsdamer platz, saga narada, star trek tng, vishnu
7 Comments
Frogs, Freud and Frankenstein: Behind the scenes at the Science Museum’s Mind Maps exhibition
This is my blog post for the Science Museum’s Mind Maps exhibition. All slideshow photos: copyright Samira Ahmed It looks like a kind of over-engineered Victorian executive toy: A semicircle of metal with carefully marked grooves and two long wooden … Continue reading
Only connect: Charles Correa and the power of the empty centre
(Jun 18th 2015) I was saddened to hear the news of Charles Correa’s death. An international name who declared he was proudly an Indian architect first, I was fortunate to interview him for Radio 3’s Night Waves in May 2013. … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Design, Radio, Science, Uncategorized
Tagged architecture, BBC, Charles Correa, EM Forster, India, modernism, Mumbai, Night Waves, Pune, RIBA
11 Comments
Concorde: How a dead end can be a glorious high point of innovation
1976 Paris-Rio First commercial Concorde flight to Brazil Photo: Jean-Claude Deutsch Paris Match I chose Concorde out of a 100 Great British Innovations for a National Museum project to mark National Science and Engineering Week. You can vote for it … Continue reading
Posted in Business/Economics, Design, Science, Travel
Tagged 70s, Concorde, Engineering, FTW
Leave a comment
How The Middle East Became Another Planet
From Flash Gordon’s Ming the Merciless with his harem and his war rocket Ajax, to Frank Herbert’s prophecy-obsessed desert tribes in Dune battling over a valuable resource, the Middle East has always been another planet to western science fiction creators. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Culture, History, Politics, Religion, Science, Uncategorized
Tagged 70s, Arab Spring, Argo, books, cinema, culture, Egypt, film, Iran, literature, Planet of the Apes, politics, terrorism, war, zombies
Leave a comment
