Author Archives: thomas

US Electoral Maths – Seeing the funny side

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Back in 2012, I had a go at doing some stand-up comedy on the maths of US presidential elections for Bright Club (a public engagement scheme for academics). Given that the US is currently careering headlong into another election, it seems a good time to post the video, along with a brief discussion of the maths (or possibly an apology for the maths):

CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO AND DISCUSSION

New Global Lab – Pinning it Down

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I have produced the May 2016 episode of The Global Lab.

It features a second interview with Sophie Coulombeau (after this one), this time on her academic specialism of eighteenth century literature, specifically the influence of binary classification (e.g. the genus species biological naming convention) on the work of novelist Frances Burney, and why botany was once considered a dangerously racy subject for young ladies. Continue reading

Little Written Podcast – Brian Coyle, Page to Stage

BannerMy final Little Written episode covering the Page to Stage Festival featured playwright, Brian Coyle, who would later go on to win the festival’s Best Script award:

Episode 6: Brian Coyle, Page to Stage

The episode is again part of the Little Written Extra podcast, which you can subscribe to using the second of these links (though I’m not sure what else will go into it, now that Page to Stage is over). The first is for the regular podcast, which will have some new content imminently:

Little Written on iTunes
Little Written Extra on iTunes

Little Written Podcast – Clarke McWilliam, Page to Stage

Here’s my second ten-minute Little Written episode, featuring another writer from the Page to Stage Festival:

Episode 5: Clarke McWilliam, Page to Stage

Unfortunately, due to space limits on Soundcloud, I have had to hive these Page to Stage related episodes off into a second podcast that I’ve called Little Written Extra. The main annoyance of this is that the two podcasts are separate on iTunes, so if you have to subscribe to each one separately:

Little Written on iTunes
Little Written Extra on iTunes

Little Written Podcast – Michael Rumney, Page to Stage

Episode Four of the Little Written Podcast is out. At only ten minutes long, this is more of a bite-sized offering than the previous entries. This episode features Michael Rumney, the writer of Bricks, one of the eight one-act plays that have been selected for the festival:

Episode 4: Michael Rumney, Page to Stage

I’m intending this to be the first of a series of episodes where I talk to the writers involved with Page to Stage 2016 (I will try to persuade someone to interview me, at some point!). The next one should be out pretty soon, so keep an eye out for that.

2 x Half-Marathon = Marathon

The fabulous Emilie Oléron Evans & Agata Zukowska are running a half-marathon (i.e. one whole marathon in total) in North London in March to raise money for Save the Children’s Syria appeal. If you fancy donating to that cause, you can sponsor them here:

Agata & Emilie’s Fundraising Page

As an added incentive, have a look at this photo, which depicts the last time that Emilie entered a race:

Emilie_Runner