100-bookshop tour to launch The Importance Of Being Interested

Robin Ince has written a new pop science book – and will tour 100 bookshops to launch it.

The Importance Of Being Interested:  Adventures in Scientific Curiosity is to be published in October and has been inspired by his renewed interest in the subject.

The comic  abandoned science at school, saying he was ‘bored by a fog of dull lessons and intimidated by the barrage of equations’.  But, 20 years later, he found a new passion and now presents Radio 4’s science show The Infinite Monkey Cage alongside Professor Brian Cox.

He has also toured with the physicist, playing to 250,000 people and setting a record for a science show, and curated live shows such as Nine Lessons and Carols for Curious People, Brian and Robin’s Christmas Compendium of Reason.

The book deals with some of the big ideas about our universe and ourselves, with Ince describing how his understanding has changed  through personal stories and interviews with the likes of Rusty Schweickart and Helen Sharman, ground-breaking primatologist Jane Goodall, Nobel prize winning geneticist Paul Nurse and Brian Eno.

His last book. I’m A Joke And So Are You, was nominated for The Chortle Book Award.

The Importance Of Being Interested is published by Atlantic Books on October 7, priced £16.98.

Published: 8 Jul 2021