At tonight’s Association of British Science Writers Awards, I got a runner-up prize in the Feature category for my profile of illusion master Henrik Ehrsson, and I won in the Science Communication in a Non-Science Context category for this podcast I did about the trillions of microbes that share our bodies and lives.

I’m delighted. The award is new, and it’s for a piece of science communication that exists outside science magazines, science sections of newspapers, or something similar. It’s for talking to people about science in places where they wouldn’t normally hear about it.

There’s a nice twist. The award is in memory of Stephen White, a science writer who passed away 2 years ago. Stephen taught the