On this week’s show, Neil Denny talks to Kat Banyard.

Kat Banyard is author of The Equality Illusion and is a founder and Director of UK Feminista - an organisation supporting grassroots feminist activism. She is also the founder of FEM Conferences – an acclaimed series of national feminist conferences.

Kat was previously Campaigns Officer at the Fawcett Society – the UK ‘s leading campaign for women’s rights, and was a regular spokesperson for the organisation in national print and broadcast media. In 2007 she was profiled in Observer Woman magazine as one of ‘The New Feminists’. Prior to her work at Fawcett, Kat worked for the Northern Refugee Centre in Sheffield setting up women’s groups.

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Michael Brooks, who holds a PhD in quantum physics, is an author, journalist and broadcaster. He is a consultant at New Scientist, and the author of the acclaimed non-fiction title 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense and the techno-thriller Entanglement. Michael’s latest book is The Big Questions: Physics.

His writing has also appeared in the Guardian, the Independent, the Observer, the Times Higher Education, the Philadelphia Inquirer and (his proudest byline) Playboy. He has lectured at New York University, The American Museum of Natural History and Cambridge University. As well as contributing to traditional outlets for science, such as BBC Radio 4′s Today Programme and Material World, he has a regular live slot on the George Lamb Show on BBC’s 6 Music radio station, where he is regularly asked to explain everything in the universe.

Stuart Clark is one of the UK’s most widely read astronomy journalists. A former editor of Astronomy Now, He has a PhD in astrophysics and until 2001 was director of public astronomy education at the University of Hertfordshire. In 2001 the Independent ranked him alongside Stephen Hawking and Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, as one of the ‘stars’ of British astrophysics teaching. A regular contributor to such magazines as New Scientist and BBC Focus, he is the author of several books, including Galaxy. But it was his first work of narrative nonfiction, The Sun Kings, that established him as a popular science writer par excellence. Stuart’s latest book is The Big Questions: The Universe.

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On this week’s show, Neil Denny and Padraig Reidy are joined by Ian Sample.

Ian Sample is an award-winning science correspondent at the Guardian. He was named investigative journalist of the year in 2005 by the Association of British Science Writers. He was previously a feature writer for New Scientist and holds a PhD in biomedical science from Queen Mary, University of London. Ian’s first book is Massive: The Hunt for the God Particle.

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On this week’s show, Neil Denny and Rebecca Watson talk to comedian Helen Keen.

Helen Keen is a stand-up comedian and writer, she was a finalist in the 2005 Funny Women competition and the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year competition and has been nominated for the Leicester Mercury Comedian of the Year award. She won the first Channel 4 New Comedy Writing Award in 2005. Since then she has written for, among others, Channel 4′s Friday Night Project and BBC Radio 4′s The Now Show and is currently developing scripts with BBC3, Channel 4 and BBC Radio 4. Helen’s award winning show about space, It is Rocket Science!, is being re-launched at this years Edinburgh Festival and is currently being developed into a show for Radio 4. Helen is also co-hosting a new show, Starstruck!, at Edinburgh with Astrophysicist Dr Sophia Khan.

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