The Cosmic Shed

For Small Creatures Such As We is a wonderful book by Sasha Sagan. The title of the book comes from Contact, the science fiction novel written by her father Carl Sagan and her mother, Ann Druyan. Sasha's love for them, and vice versa shines throughout the book and she joins Andrew to discuss her life and work so far.

How can we find meaning in a secular world? Are traditions and rituals still relevant today? Just what made Andrew and Sasha laugh so much?

For Small Creatures Such as We is part memoir, part guidebook, and part social history and sees Sasha exploring the world around us, searching for...and finding...meaning, romance and humour in the rituals and everyday that punctuate our lives. 

Sasha is an author and television producer and joins us for this special episode of The Cosmic Shed.

Download to your favourite podcast app or simply press play on this page. 

Black Lives Matter

This podcast was recorded before the Black Lives Matter protests began and we, The Cosmic Shed, wish to add our voices and support to the protests.

There are so many wonderful podcasts on the topic, so many books, so many films. But our request to you, dear listeners, is that you don't let that be the sum total. Add your voice through whatever means you have. Donate if you can. Speak out if you can.

We can't put it better than Sonequa Martin-Green (Michael Burnham in Star Trek).

Black Lives Matter

show notes

The Cosmic Shed is part of the Stimulus Network

Assassin 33 AD is a Christian Science Fiction film in which a group of Muslim Extremist Terrorists go back in time to stop the Resurrection of Jesus (as reported in The Bible) from happening. We tracked down the writer/director Jim Carroll and talked to him about just why he made it.

A Time Travel film about religion. The Cosmic Shed couldn't really avoid it so we invited Jordan Collver, former Creationist, to join us once again as we delve into the storytelling and science behind this...errm...compelling film.

A lot of fun. Thanks Jim.

show notes

Jordan first joined us to discuss the Spectrum between Science and Religion

Join NASA Astronaut and Artist Nicole Stott for this episode of The Cosmic Shed.

The first person to paint a watercolour in Space. The last person to return to Earth from the International Space Station in the Space Shuttle and now, the most recent guest on The Cosmic Shed podcast - it's been quite a life for Nicole Stott so far.

Nicole chats to Andrew for this very special episode of the Cosmic Shed as America prepares to launch people to the ISS once more. Nicole talks with Andrew about her Space missions, her art and what we can all learn from Astronauts as we find ourselves in this unprecedented lockdown. 

Download, listen and be inspired.

Nicole Stott was launched to the International Space Station with the crew of STS-128, participating in the a spacewalk that lasted over 6 hours. When Nicole returned on STS-129, she became the last Expedition crew-member to return to Earth via the space shuttle. Nicole completed her second spaceflight on STS-133.

One for the quiz buffs - STS stands for Space Transportation System or The Shuttle as it's more commonly known.

Nicole served as a Flight Engineer on ISS Expedition 20 and Expedition 21 and was a Mission Specialist on STS-128 and STS-133. 

Nicole is also part of the wonderful Space For Art Foundation who put together large-scale community art projects to inspire and unite children in hospitals, refugee centers, and schools around the world. They have a new project called BEYOND which we'd recommend anyone who knows any children or is a child to get involved in. Go here to see how.

You can see Nicole's Artwork here and, if you are really clever, you'll notice that you can actually email to ask about how you might go about actually owning some...

The Cosmic Shed. Science Fact, Science Fiction and Everything in between.

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On something of a locked down Planet Earth, we turn our attention to the massive science fiction hit film The Wandering Earth.

Set in the far future, The Wandering Earth follows a group of astronauts and rescue workers guiding the Earth away from an expanding Sun, while attempting to prevent a collision with Jupiter. The film was theatrically released in China on 5 February 2019 (Chinese New Year's Day), by China Film Group Corporation, followed by North America and Australia on 8 February 2019.

The film has  grossed $700 million worldwide. It is China's third highest-grossing film of all time and the third highest-grossing non-English film to date. Now it's the subject of an episode of The Cosmic Shed podcast.

The film is loosely based on the 2000 novella of the same name by multi-award-winning author Liu Cixin, he of the Three-Body Problem. It stars Qu Chuxiao, Li Guangjie, Ng Man-tat, Zhao Jinmai, Wu Jing and Qu Jingjing. 

Andrew, Ti, Tushna and Steve gather in the virtual shed to discuss it and wonder just how plausible is taking the planet on a one way trip to Alpha Centauri, using Jupiter to get us there?

show notes

The Wandering Earth is on Netflix

Dr Rebecca Harrison is the author of the BFI's forthcoming book to mark the 40th anniversary of Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, out in October 2020. Her project Decoding Star Wars explores the use of code, such as software and algorithms, to produce and distribute the Star Wars franchise. She is a Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow and a film critic for places such as Screen Queens and Sight and Sound.

Rebecca is the founder of the Glasgow Feminist Arts Festival, which launched in November 2018 at the Centre for Contemporary Arts. The biannual festival provides a platform for women (including non-binary people and trans women) to share film, performance (theatre, dance and spoken word poetry), music, and other visual arts in the city. 

This is the tweet by Rebecca which caught our attention:

I have FINALLY ranked all of #StarWars based on screen time for women. This is now canon. Don't @ me.

Download this episode of The Cosmic Shed to your favourite podcast app and listen now to find out where The Rise of Skywalker comes in this list. The answer might just surprise you...

show notes

You can read Dr Rebecca Harrison's review of Rise of Skywalker here

In other words, you might as well subscribe to The Cosmic Shed podcast.

The Cosmic Shed is part of the Stimulus Network

Riding our luck dragon all the way, we bring you a brand new episode of The Cosmic Shed from deep in the Coronavirus Lockdown. It's The Neverending Story.

We're joined by Professor Melanie Johnston-Hollitt, Director of the 60 million dollar Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope which is operated by a consortium of 21 institutions spanning 6 countries and involving 270 individual researchers...which is nice but also exceedingly relevant as Melanie and her team have just discovered the biggest explosion in space since the Big Bang. The radio data which the scientists have been studying changes the way we think about Supermassive Black Holes.

Andrew manages to spend most of the podcast pretending that this is the reason why he decided to do an episode of The Cosmic Shed on The Neverending Story. After all, Black Holes are pretty much as close to The Nothing as Nature gets...but later on in the episode we discover what might just have been his true reasoning...

In "the shed" are Andrew, Maddy, Steve, Ti and Tushna and Ben even drops in for a poem. It's been too long.

Download to your favourite podcast delivery system and listen in now...

show notes

We're delighted to be able to bring you this panel discussion from Bristol's Festival of Ideas, in collaboration with Bristol's Women's Literature Festival and Handheld Press, recorded live in Foyles in Bristol.

The Panel

Emma Geen is a Bristol based author and lecturer in Creative writing. Her first novel The Many Selves of Katherine North was published by Bloomsbury. Several of her short stories feature in Stories of the Stranger, published by Bene Factum Publishing, Her articles have appeared in The Guardian, Lit Hub and The New Statesman. She is an associate lecturer at Bath Spa University.

Liz Williams is a British science fiction writer. The Ghost Sister, her first novel, was published in 2001. Both this novel and her next, Empire of Bones (2002) were nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. She is also the author of the Inspector Chen series. She is the daughter of a stage magician and a Gothic novelist. She holds a PhD in Philosophy of Science from Cambridge. She has had short stories published in Asimov’s, Interzone, The Third Alternative and Visionary Tongue.

Cheryl Morgan is a science fiction critic and publisher. She is the owner of Wizard’s Tower Press and the Wizard’s Tower Books ebook store. Previously she edited the Hugo Award winning magazine, Emerald City (Best Fanzine, 2004). She also won a Hugo for Best Fan Writer in 2009. She is a Co-Chair of Out Stories Bristol and lectures regularly on both trans history and science fiction and fantasy literature.

Kate Macdonald is a literary historian and has taught and researched science fiction and fantasy fiction for many years. She reviews sff for Foundation and other critical organs, and has recently had some of her own sff short stories published. She runs Handheld Press, an independent publishing company based outside Bath, which specialises in the recovery of forgotten fiction, and has republished classic fantasy fiction by Sylvia Townsend Warner, and science fiction by Rose Macaulay and Vonda N McIntyre.

Download, relax and listen. Then buy all the books.

show notes

The Cosmic Shed was named as one of the Guardian's Favourite podcasts and you can subscribe here

Stanley Donwood's Bad Island is an extraordinary book. A Graphic Novel with no words. The story told only with pictures. Ideal for a podcast...

We're joined by artist Stanley Donwood, perhaps best known for producing all the cover art for all of Radiohead's albums, or perhaps for creating much of the artwork alongside the Glastonbury Festival or perhaps very soon to be best known for Bad Island.

Jess Howard interviews Stanley for this episode, her first appearance on The Cosmic Shed podcast. Stanley tells Jess about working on Radiohead's album covers, working on the book and a whole lot more besides.

Settle in, download, pop on some headphones and press play.

show notes

You can get Bad Island here

The legendary author of the Neuromancer Trilogy, William Gibson joins us for this special episode of The Cosmic Shed. He gave us the term "cyberspace", is widely credited with inspiring much if not all of "cyberpunk". The concept of the Matrix is from his mind and he has won multiple awards for his science fiction writing.

He joins Andrew and Steve to discuss his new novel Agency and what goes into his celebrated works.

You'll also hear William's thoughts on the forthcoming, big budget adaptation of his novel Peripheral for Amazon Prime.

show notes

William Gibson was talking to Andrew and Steve at Bristol's Festival of Ideas