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Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

2: 'I want to be Elizabeth Zott.'

Duration: 14 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 LWLatest broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 FM

Available for years

Bonnie Garmus' comic bestseller featuring the gloriously idiosyncratic feminist icon, Elizabeth Zott.

It's the early 1960s and Zott's all-male team at Hastings Research Institute take a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans, the lonely, brilliant, Nobel-prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with - of all things - her mind. True chemistry results.

Like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later, Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America's most beloved cooking show, Supper at Six. Elizabeth's unusual approach to cooking proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn't just teaching women to cook, she's daring them to change the status quo.

Today: Although their perfect relationship, based on a meeting of brilliant minds, is making their colleagues sick, Elizabeth and Calvin share everything -except their difficult pasts....

Writer: Bonnie Garmus
Reader: Julianna Jennings
Abridger: Katrin Williams
Producer: Justine Willett Show less

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