This week's Little Atoms consists of a number of interviews recorded backstage on 18th December at 9 Lessons and Carols for Godless People @ the Bloomsbury Theatre.

The show contains an extended interview with shows curator Robin Ince, and then short interviews with contributors Darren Hayman, Christina Martin, Waen Shepherd, Simon Singh, Natalie Haynes, Tim Minchin, Chris Addison and Josie Long.

First broadcast on 19th December 2008.

Philip Plait is a renowned astronomer with more than two decades of professional research and education experience. He has written articles for such magazines as Astronomy and Sky & Telescope, as well as national and international newspapers. He has appeared on television news and in documentaries many times, including the Sci-Fi Channel's Countdown to Doomsday and National Geographic's Is It Real? His website Bad Astronomy has won numerous awards, such as best Science Blog of 2007, and also a book of the same name (Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing Hoax).

Phil's latest book is Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End...

First broadcast 12th December 2008.

Kenan Malik is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster. Currently Senior Visiting Fellow at the Department of Political, International and Policy Studies at the University of Surrey. His new book, Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides are Wrong in the Race Debate was published in June 2008, and From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy will be published in early 2009.

First broadcast 5th December 2008

Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, he is now cosmology consultant of the weekly science magazine New Scientist. Marcus has written a number of popular science books, including The Magic Furnace, The Universe Next Door and The Never-ending Days of Being Dead. His latest book is Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You.

First broadcast on 28th November 2008

Adam Curtis is a producer, writer and director of television documentaries such as Pandora's Box, The Mayfair Set, The Century of the Self, The Power of Nightmares and The Trap. Curtis' programs, though always about serious issues, maintain a sense of tongue-in-cheek humour and are characteristic in their extensive use of archive footage. In his film making, Curtis strives to to find meaningful connections between historical situations and often focuses on the impact different ideologies have had on modern society.

First broadcast on 21st November 2008.

Colin Blakemore is Professor of Neuroscience at Oxford University. He studied Medical Sciences in Cambridge and completed a PhD in Physiological Optics at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1968. He also holds Professorships at the University of Warwick and the Duke University – National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School, where he is Chairman of Singapore's Neuroscience Research Partnership.

First broadcast on 14th November 2008.

Susan Jacoby is an independent scholar whose work now focuses on American intellectual history, the author began her writing career as a reporter for The Washington Post.

Jacoby's Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (2004), was hailed in The New York Times as an "ardent and insightful work" that "seeks to rescue a proud tradition from the indifference of posterity." Named a notable non-fiction book of 2004 by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, Freethinkers was cited in England as one of the outstanding international books of the year by the Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian.

First broadcast 7th November 2008

Jonathan Meades is a writer on architecture, culture and food, a novelist and television presenter. He was restaurant critic of The Times for 15 years. Jonathan's writing includes the short story collection Filthy English, the novels Pompey and The Fowler Family Business , as well as a collection food writing, a DVD box set, was released in September 2008.

First broadcast on 31st October 2008

Rose Shapiro has written for newspapers, magazines and medical journals including the Independent, the Observer, Time Out, Good Housekeeping and the Health Service Journal. Her book Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All is described as follows;

'Alternative' medicine is now used by one in three of us. In the UK we spend an estimated £4.5 billion a year on it and its practitioners are now insinuating themselves into the mainstream. There are methods based on ancient or far-eastern medicine, as well as ones invented in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Many are promoted as natural treatments. What they have in common is that there is no hard evidence that any of them work.

Douglas Murray is a bestselling author and commentator based in the UK. His most recent book is the critically acclaimed Neoconservatism: Why We Need It , which Christopher Hitchens praised in the Washington Examiner as "a very cool but devastating analysis" and which caused Andrew Roberts to hail him 'The right's answer to Michael Moore', continuing, 'This book shows how to fight and win the War on Terror'.

He appears regularly on the television and radio across Europe and America. He is a trustee of the newly founded European Freedom Fund and a member of the Advisory Board of the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism. Since April 2007 he has been Director of the Centre for Social Cohesion in Westminster, London.

First broadcast on 17th October 2008