Frank Close is a particle physicist, Emeritus Professor at Oxford University, science communicator, writer, and bestselling author of books from the Cosmic Onion and Neutrino, to histories of the atomic spies in 'Half-Life' and most recently 'Trinity: The Treachery and Pursuit of the Most Dangerous Spy in History'. He was head of communications at CERN and in 1993 gave the annual Royal Institution (RI) Christmas Lecture.

Frank is also one of the founders of the ATOM Festival of Science and Technology, and in this episode - the first of two parts - I talk to Frank about the responsibilities of communicating science to the wider world, how the UK almost pulled out of CERN in the 1980s - and how to create an explosion in your bare hands.