@heliconiuscydno.bsky.social on the "fantastic odyssey of our languages and the migrating peoples that carried them"

City St George’s Narrative Non-Fiction. Course starts Tuesday 20 January “It was a real joy getting to work alongside people from all over the world and the diversity of the group was fantastic for challenging and extending my own writing.” (recent student) www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/prospective-...

“To writers seeking a jumpstart, I recommend the Narrative Nonfiction course taught by @heliconiuscydno“ - Ciaran Thapar, Penguin author and former student. Starts Jan 20 www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/prospective-...

City St George’s Narrative Non-Fiction. New course starts Tuesday 20 January: “Peter is a really good, experienced tutor with a long and distinguished publishing history; the perfect teacher for this course” (recent student). www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/prospective-...

City St George’s Narrative Non-Fiction. New course starts Tuesday 20 January: “To writers seeking a jumpstart, I recommend the Narrative Nonfiction course taught by @heliconiuscydno“ - Ciaran Thapar, Penguin author and former student. www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/prospective-...

Now booking: Narrative Non-fiction (NNF) at City. Alumni books books from Penguin, Faber, Granta etc. New course starts Tuesday 20 January: “Terrific teacher! Encouraging, practical, demystifying and lots of specific feedback” (recent student) www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/prospective-...

A great book list from Shepherd on the Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything. Declaration of interest: I'm one of the recommenders shepherd.com/books-like/t...

Q&A for the Sunday Post on my book Thinking Small and Large: How microbes made and can save our world. www.pressreader.com/uk/the-sunda...

My W&A in the Sunday Post (print) today on Thinking Small and Large: How microbes made and save our world www.sundaypost.com

The astonishing deep role of carbon dioxide in 4 million years of life revealed in several powerful books recently. Every living thing is made from CO2 and our industrial civilisation depends on the CO2 captured and stored by many milliennia of ancient photosynthesis: shepherd.com/best-books/n...

The deep history of carbon dioxide is powerful explainer for 4 billion years of earth history and a vital way of understanding the world now. It’s at the heart of my Thinking Small and Large and the 5 books highlighted here: shepherd.com/best-books/n...

Seven years ago I wrote a backgrounder on Huntington’s disease at a time of great hope for treatment and/or cure: medium.com/mosaic-scien... Those hoped were dashed but now there is a real breakthrough: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Dramatic news of a treatment for Huntington's disease www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Last 7 places on City St George’s Narrative Non-Fiction Sept 30. “To writers seeking a jumpstart, I recommend the Narrative Nonfiction course taught by @heliconiuscydno.bluesky.social” - Ciaran Thapar, Penguin author and former student. www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/prospective-...

The great synthesis - earth history as the story of energy, firstly biological and then human-industrial using fossil photosynthesis - is everywhere now. This is very similar to Peter Brannen's The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything www.quantamagazine.org/how-humanity...

The Gecko’s Foot is still going strong at 20 but J. E. Gordon’s Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down is still in print at 47. And he still outsells me! www.amazon.co.uk/Geckos-Foot-... www.amazon.co.uk/Structures-T...

The Gecko’s Foot still going strong at 20. My inspiration was J. E. Gordon’s Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down. He was THE biomimetics pioneer; I'm pleased his book and mine are both on the Cambridge Engineering syllabus. www.amazon.co.uk/Geckos-Foot-... www.amazon.co.uk/Structures-T...

Thank you very much - it’s been a pleasant surprise to see it’s longevity

Celebrating 20 years of The Gecko’s Foot ‘The Gecko's Foot is an act of two-cultures healing. One page quotes Miroslav Holub, "immunologist and poet", the next Vladimir Nabokov, "Russian novelist and serious amateur lepidopterist".’ (The Independent, 2005)

Twenty years of The Gecko’s Foot. “Forbes is consciously trying to blur the distinction between a proper awe for the intricacy and beauty of Nature's nanostructures and an appreciation of the ingenuity of human engineers who try to emulate them.” (the 2005 Guardian review)

Narrative Non-Fiction at City St George’s. Open taster evening this Thursday. If you sign up for this there's a 10% course fee discount available until midnight the day after the open evening. Full details of registering are here: www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

The story behind CO2 being The Story of Everything heliconiuscydno.medium.com/how-over-4-b...

First published 20 years ago, The Gecko’s Foot is today the Amazon No 1 Bestseller in Nanotechnology www.amazon.co.uk/Geckos-Foot-...

The route to publishing non-fiction is long and winding but City’s narrative Non-Fiction members increasingly make the cut: books published or forthcoming from Viking, Faber, Granta, Hachette, MIT Press, History Press. New course starts September 30 www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/prospective-...

Peter Brannen’s message, that everyone should heed: “Simply put, life is organic carbon. It's almost all C’s, H’s, and O’s…98 percent of the atoms in your body are C, H, and O.” www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0...

Peter Brannen’s message: “Carbon dioxide… isn't some niche, industrial by-product that billows from smokestacks and just so happens to be a twenty-first century regulatory bugbear… CO2 is the very stuff of life” www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0...

Peter Brannen’s The Story of CO2 Is The Story of Everything observer.co.uk/culture/book... shows how CO2 is the origin of every living organism: bodily makeup, its energy and, in fossilised carbon, the basis of our industrial energy, synthetic materials: plastics, fibres, chemicals, concrete.

Readers of the print Observer will now have seen the review of Peter Brannen’s The Story of CO2 Is The Story of Everything, also here observer.co.uk/culture/book... How astonishingly this misses the point. It isn’t just Brannen’s idea: CO2 IS all the things he says it is.

Follow in the footsteps of City Narrative Non-Fiction alumna Emily Kasriel (Summer 2022) Deep Listening - Transform your Relationships with Family, Friends and Foes, HarperCollins, May 2025 www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/prospective-... www.amazon.co.uk/Deep-Listeni...

Pratinav Anil’s review of The Story Of CO2 Is The Story Of Everything captures the quality of the writing: “a gift for translating recondite scientific facts into gorgeous psychedelic passages that verge on pure poetry” Must read of the year and more www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

Review of The Story Of CO2 Is The Story Of Everything that is as pithily well written as the book itself : “Like life, death can be viewed unsentimentally as a slow unspooling into water and carbon dioxide” www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

Brilliant, judicious review in the Times of Peter Brannen's The story Of CO2 Is The Story Of Everything. Rush to the newsagent if you're not an online subscriber

A powerful extract from Peter Brannen's epic The Story of CO2 Is The Story of Everything lithub.com/what-would-h...

Copepod eggs! These eggs have become detached from the mama, but you can see their little eyespots! This is a timelapse of them twitching around, and you can see photos in the thread below. #marineplankton 🦑

The Statue Defenders guarding a monument to George Eliot remains one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen

“Scientists may be the first to observe, find or understand something - and for a glimpse of time, they are the only ones to know it - but after science is communicated to their peers and to the public, that piece of knowledge ... follows its own path.” medium.com/@anaritaponc...

C. flexa is a choanoflagellate, a link between single- and multi-cellular life. There's a chapter on the topic in my book Thinking Small and Large: How Microbes Made and Can Save Our World

A dream come true: the first expansion microscopy images of C. flexa 🤩 Generated by Mylan & Uzuki who learned from the best (@hiralshah.bsky.social @gautamdey.bsky.social @dudinlab.bsky.social). We will learn so much from these!

There's a whole chapter on Nicole King's work on multicellularity in my book Thinking Small and Large: How Microbes Made and Can Save Our World www.amazon.co.uk/Thinking-Sma... Amazon.co.uk

For some three billion years, unicellular organisms ruled Earth. Then, around one billion years ago, a new chapter of life began go.nature.com/3JyRV4S

There's a whole chapter on Nicole King's work on multicellularity in my book Thinking Small and Large: How Microbes Made and Can Save Our World www.amazon.co.uk/Thinking-Sma...

Another vivid longform taster for Peter Brannen’s The Story Of CO2 Is The Story Of Everything. nautil.us/when-our-wor...

Published today: Peter Brannen's The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything. The epic must-read that that takes CO2 from the origin of life, through the oxygen in the air, regulation of the planet, to the burning of fossil fuels www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0...

Narrative Non-Fiction at City St George’s: “It’s like “sitting in a circle with a group of friends around a pot-bellied stove in a delicious old bookshop somewhere” (former student). New course starts Tuesday September 30 www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/prospective-...

With a terrific record of publishing success, Narrative Non-Fiction at City St George’s is the course to take. Join from anywhere in the word (timezone permitting). New course starts September 30. www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/prospective-...

A quite remarkable interview in Scientific American with Peter Brannen, author of The Story of CO2 is the story of everything. A perfect resume of the book and the best way into this must read www.scientificamerican.com/article/carb... And my take on the subject: medium.com/@heliconiusc...

To know why “Carbon Dioxide is the Story of Everything” you need “Thinking Small and Large”. medium.com/@heliconiusc... www.theguardian.com/environment/... www.amazon.co.uk/Thinking-Sma...

Peter Brannen’s “Carbon Dioxide is the Story of Everything” is a powerful perspective-changing paradigm: basis of all life, climate regulator, powerful contributor to Earth geology, and increasing in the air 10 times faster than the 252 myrs ago Great Dying. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Join the online non-fiction class with a 13-year great publication record. Forthcoming: Ed Morgan (Class Spring 2024) Chasing Mallory’s Dream, Bodleian Library Publishing, Spring 2026. Narrative Non-Fiction at City St George’s, London. New course starts Sept 30. estore.city.ac.uk/short-course...