Karen Beddow is an entrepreneur, traveller, parent, and author. Frustrated by the lack of great travel books for children she began her own series, Extraordinary Travellers, to helo kids uncover the magic of exploring another country.

In this epsiode we talk putting up tents in the rain, the false dichotomy between fiction and nonfiction and the journey to publication.

Karen is bringing the Extraordinary Travellers and their adventures to Wild Words Festival - book now with 10% off with the code NonFicPod.

Order the books - and get travel inspiration - at minitravellers.co.uk

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Today on Nonfic pod we’re talking about how words get good - and if you enjoy a good word, you’ll love wild words festival. From the 3rd-5th June in Cuffley, hertfordshire. A brand new celebration of the written and spoken word for avid writers and readers alike. Get 10 % off with the code NonFicPod

Rebecca Lee is an editorial manager at Penguin Random House. She's spent twenty years managing hundreds of high-profile books from delivery of manuscript to finished copies, signing off millions of words as fit to go to print with only the occasional regret.

The transcript of this episode is available here

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The Unusual Suspect reads like a thriller, with a complex protagonist who just happens to be a real human being. Stephen Jackley was deeply affected by the poverty and inequality he saw in the world. There was only one thing he could think of to do. Rob a bank.

To tell us about Stephen Jackley is Ben Machell. Ben is a feature writer for The Times and The Times Magazine and a contributor to publications including VICE and Esquire. He has been shortlisted for Feature Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards.

The transcript can be found here

We're proud to be supporting Wild Words Festival - a brand new literary festival for the whole family. Find out more at wildwordsfest.com and get 10% off with the code NonFicPod.

Wild Words Fest is for everyone who enjoys the written or spoken word with performances, panels, workshops, and author talks. If Hay Festival is the Fortnum and Mason of literary festivals then Wild Words is your local farmers’ market. Book now for the best prices!

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On this episode of NonFicPod we’re talking bees vs wasps, the ethical case for genetic modification, and why large herbivores are ecological engineers.

My guest Rebecca Nesbit studies ecology, conservation ethics, food security, crop biotechnology, climate change, science policy and citizen science. In her previous book, is that fish in your tomato, she explored the science and ethics of genetic modification.  In her latest book, out on the 17th of February, Rebecca looks at what we choose to save in this age of extinction, and how we should decide.

And don't forget, you can get 10% off Wild Words Festival by using the code NONFICPOD at wildwordsfestival.eventbrite.com

Host: Emma Byrne

Mix and Tech: Mike Wyer

Guest: Rebecca Nesbit

Transcripts for this season's episodes can be found here

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In which we muse upon which humans get to go to space, how to stay human in space, and the banality of Elon Musk's intergallactic Tinder profile!

Kate Greene was the crew writer and second-in-command on the first simulated Mars mission for the NASA-funded HI-SEAS project. A poet, essayist, and former laser physicist, her work has appeared in multiple publications and radio shows. She’s taught writing at Columbia University, San Francisco State University, and the Tennessee Prison for Women. She joins us from New York City to talk about her moving and fascinating memoir Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars.

You can find Kate on Instagram at kate_greene and on Twitter at kgreene - you can also find her at kategreene.net

You can find out more about the upcoming Wild Words Festival here and use the code NONFICPOD for a 10% discount on tickets!

And you can find transcripts for all this season's episodes here

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What are your expectations for the year ahead? A depressing slog through a series of stressful situations or an exciting opportunity to tackle inspiring challenges?

We're excited and inspired to welcome award-winning science journalist David Robson to today's episode of NonFicPod. His latest book, The Expectation Effect offers an illuminating insight into the power of the prediction machine between our ears.

In this podcast we talk about

• the placebo effect,
• the connection between the way we describe food and how much we eat
• the ways to take the sting out of exercise, tricky mental problems, and even aging

And we also reveal the authors who inspired us.

A transcript is available here - please report any issues to [email protected]

Don't forget that reviewing the show on apple podcasts, or sharing it with a friend, will really help us!

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On this episode we are joined by historians Dr Mary Wellesley and Dr Amy Jeffs talking about their new books "Hidden Hands" and "Storyland." We talk about the myth of individual greatness, the way stories shape our view of the world, and imagine Gerald of Wales having a Kanye moment.

Please subscribe and share if you enjoy hearing about great new nonfiction. Look for the button in your podcasting app of choice.

You can follow NonFicPod on Twitter @NonFicPod amd you can follow @amy_historia and @marywellesley too!

The transcript of this episode can be found here

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Emily Mayhew is a military medical historian, and is the historian in residence in the Department of Bioengineering and a Research Fellow in the Division of Surgery within the Department of Surgery and Cancer, both at Imperial College London. 

Dr Mayhew wrote the Wounded trilogy, a series of books detailing medicine, conflict, and recovery. Her latest book, Four Horsemen looks at those extraordinary individuals and collaborations that are working to hold the line against war, pestilence, plague, and death. In this episode, we learn about Inca scientists, potatoes on Mars, and the importance of outcome studies. And your host, Byrne, learns how to pronounce cicada.

A full transcript is available here

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the archives comes this absolute BANGER of an episode from Dr Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, cosmologist and campaigner. Ahead of our new season in November we're bringing you some of our full-length back episodes that are usually reserved for our patrons. Like what you hear? Back us on Patreon to help keep us on the air!

And our new backers, All Good Bookshop will ship you a copy of The Disordered Cosmos - and any other book! - if you DM them your order. Tell 'em we sent you!

Humanity has stopped moving. The average person now spends 70% of our time sitting or lying around - and that was before the pandemic. It’s no surprise that this is linked to rising obesity rates, but it could also be increasing our levels of depression and reducing our cognitive skills.  

Our guest on this episode, Caroline Williams, was going to be a PE teacher before being seduced by neuroscience. She's spent several years researching the connection between movement and the mind. As a science writer and broadcaster she says that her aim is to learn new and exciting things and share them in the most entertaining way she can think of. She is regularly featured in New Scientist magazine as well as the Guardian, BBC Future, BBC Earth and the Boston Globe. ​

In her latest book, Move!, Caroline Williams investigates how movement moulds our minds including: how core strength is linked to stress control, why stretching tackles the mood-sapping effects of an overactive immune system, what dance can do for our emotional literacy, and why physical strength translates into emotional resilience.

You can find Caroline at https://www.carolinewilliams.net and on Twitter.

​​

Move! Is Caroline’s second book. Previously she wrote Override (published as My Plastic Brain in the US), and is the editor of two of New Scientist’s Instant Expert Guides: How Your Brain Works: Inside the most complicated object in the known universe (John Murray, 2017) and Your Conscious Mind: Unravelling the greatest mystery of the human brain (John Murray, 2017).

Ideas, People, and Works Mentioned:

- Rodolfo Llinás, neuroscientist

- Tecumseh Fitch, cognitive scientist

- Rubber Hand Illusion

- Marcus Scotney, ultramarathon runner

- MovNat Fitness

Find Us Online

- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/thenonficpod

- Bookshop.org: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/nonficpod (purchases here support us and independent booksellers in the UK)

- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thenonficpod

- Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/nonficpod

Credits

- Guest: Caroline Williams

- Episode Producer: Emma Byrne

- Series Exec Producers: Emma Byrne and Georgie Codd

- Series Senior Producer: Beatrice Bazell 

- Composer and consulting engineer: Mike Wyer

About Us

Brought to you by author and publishing rockstar Georgie Codd and author and broadcaster Emma Byrne, NonFicPod is your home for the latest nonfiction must reads. Our premium podcast, Sh*t I Wish I'd Known teaches you the lessons that we (and our guests) have learned about writing - and about life.

Episode transcript available here (Google doc)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the archives comes this absolute BANGER of an episode from Dr Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, cosmologist and campaigner. Ahead of our new season in November we're bringing you some of our full-length back episodes that are usually reserved for our patrons. Like what you hear? Back us on Patreon to help keep us on the air!

And our new backers, All Good Bookshop will ship you a copy of The Disordered Cosmos - and any other book! - if you DM them your order. Tell 'em we sent you!

Dr Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a theoretical cosmologist and a campaigner for inclusion in physics. She is an assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire and is working on the NASA Strobe-x mission. Dr Prescod Weinstein recently received the 2021 Edward A. Bouchet Award from the American Physical Society, in recognition "For contributions to theoretical cosmology and particle physics. The Disordered Cosmos, A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred is available now. 

You can find Chanda at http://www.cprescodweinstein.com and on Twitter

People, Articles, and Organisations Mentioned:

• NASA STROBE-X Mission
• Edward A. Bouchet Award
• Dr Prescod-Weinstein’s column in New Scientist
• Pillars of Creation, Eagle Nebula
• Windrush deportation scandal
• Joey Neilsen
• Benjamin Banneker 
• Onesimus
• Article on the Mauna Kea observatories expansion in Nature
• Haleakalā observatory
• ‘The James Webb Space Telescope Needs to Be Renamed’, article by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Sarah Tuttle, Lucianne Walkowicz, and Brian Nord
• ‘What I wanted when I called for a Strike for Black Lives’, article by Dr Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
• Article by Selma James on founding the Wages for Housework Campaign
• Margaret Prescod and Wilmette Brown, ‘Birth Announcement’ flyer for Black Women for Wages for Housework
• S. Zainab Williams, Managing Editor at Book Riot

Books Mentioned:

• Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
• Emma Byrne, How To Build a Human: The Art of Parenting Like a Scientist
• Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
• Kurt Kohlstedt & Roman Mars, The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design
• Brian Keating, Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science's Highest Honor
• Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe

Episode transcript available here (Google doc)

Find Us Online

- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/thenonficpod

- Bookshop.org: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/nonficpod (purchases here support us and independent booksellers in the UK)

- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thenonficpod

- Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/nonficpod

Credits

- Guest: Dr Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

- Episode Producer: Emma Byrne

- Series Exec Producers: Emma Byrne and Georgie Codd

- Series Senior Producer: Beatrice Bazell 

- Composer and consulting engineer: Mike Wyer

About Us

Brought to you by author and publishing rockstar Georgie Codd and author and broadcaster Emma Byrne, NonFicPod is your home for the latest nonfiction must reads. Our premium podcast, Sh*t I Wish I'd Known teaches you the lessons that we (and our guests) have learned about writing - and about life.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.