" Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact". - Thomas Huxley
The seeds of the idea that became Little Atoms were sown in the garden of the George Inn, Borough, on the afternoon of July 7th 2005 while Richard Sanderson and Neil Denny waited for the trains to start running again. While they had long discussed working together on a radio show about science and rationalism, and were both lifelong atheists, they were also both slowly becoming disillusioned with what they saw as a malaise amongst sections of the progressive left*. At the same time, the world was facing problems: Global warming, the rise of political and religious extremism, security and freedom issues, whose solutions didn't fit neatly into the traditional Left/Right political spectrum. The attacks on the Underground that morning by Mohammad Sidique Khan and his fellow jihadists, and the reaction to this of some nominally progressive commentators, served as the final catalyst. They decided that very afternoon to create a show that would actively promote the intellectual legacy of the enlightenment, and would defend freedom of expression, free inquiry, empirical rationalism, scepticism, the scientific method, secular humanism and liberal democracy. At the same time the show would cast a critical eye over the bien-pensants who attribute all the world's ills to the actions of America, Israel and "The West", over the purveyors of dogma, superstition and magic potions, over the adherents of deranged conspiracy theories. The idea was pitched to Resonance FM, and in September 2005 Little Atoms was born. In August 2006 Padraig Reidy joined the show as a presenter, having previously been on the show as a guest. Between September 2005 and July 2007 Little Atoms was a fortnightly programme of one hours duration. Over the summer of 2007 Resonance FM moved from its home in Denmark Street to a new studio on Borough High Street. Little Atoms was asked to become a weekly show, and was re-launched in September 2007 as a half hour weekly programme. At this point the team was briefly joined by Tom Hamilton, who left again a few weeks later due to work commitments. In March 2008 Richard Sanderson left the show to embark on fatherhood, and was replaced by Anthony Burn.
*For an excellent distillation of this argument see Nick Cohen's book What's Left?
All our previous shows are downloadable in mp3 format from our archive. Click on the link to the right to go to each guest's page for more information.
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