Little Atoms

Lucy Wood is the critically acclaimed author of Diving Belles, a collection of short stories based on Cornish folklore, and Weathering, a debut novel about mothers, daughters and ghosts. She has been longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize, shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize, and was runner-up in the BBC National Short Story Award. She has also received a Betty Trask Award, a Somerset Maugham Award and the Holyer an Gof Award. Weathering was named as one of The New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2016. Lucy’s latest collection of short stories is The Sing of the Shore. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris Power lives and works in London. His 'Brief Survey of the Short Story' has appeared in the Guardian since 2007. His fiction has been published in The Stinging Fly, The Dublin Review and The White Review. Mothers is his first book. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur 'Genius' Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency and the Strauss Living Prize. She is the first female author to win two National Book Awards for Fiction, for Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Salvage the Bones(2011). She is also the editor of the anthology The Fire This Time, the author of the memoir Men We Reaped and the author of the novel Where the Line Bleeds. She is currently an associate professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Leo Benedictus is a freelance feature writer for the Guardian and other publications. His first novel, The Afterparty was published by Jonathan Cape in 2011. His latest novel is Consent. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the third of our shows featuring shortlisted writers for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize, Neil talks to Dr Kathryn Mannix about her book With The End in Mind.Kathryn Mannix has spent her medical career working with people who have incurable, advanced illnesses. Starting in cancer care and changing career to become a pioneer of the new discipline of palliative medicine, she has worked in teams in hospices, hospitals and in patients’ own homes to deliver palliative care, optimising quality of life even as death is approaching. Having qualified as a Cognitive Behaviour Therapist in 1993, she started the UK’s (possibly the world’s) first CBT clinic exclusively for palliative care patients. Her book With The End In Mind: Dying, Death and Wisdom in an Age of Denial, is shortlisted for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the Second of three shows featuring shortlisted writers for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize, Neil talks to Lindsey Fitzharris about The Butchering Art, and Ayobami Adebayo about her novel Stay With Me.Lindsey Fitzharris received her doctorate in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology at the University of Oxford and was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Wellcome Institute. She is the creator of the popular website The Chirurgeon's Apprentice, and she writes and presents the YouTube series Under the Knife. She has written for the Guardian, the Lancet, the New Scientist, Penthouse, the Huffington Post and Medium, and appeared on PBS, Channel 4 UK, BBC and National Geographic. Lindsey is the author of The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine.Ayobami Adebayo’s stories have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies. She holds BA and MA degrees in Literature in English from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife and also has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia where she was awarded an international bursary for creative writing. She has been the recipient of a number of fellowships and residencies. She was born in Lagos, Nigeria. Stay With Me is her debut novel and was shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Wellcome Book Prize. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jillian Scudder is an astrophysicist and assistant professor at Oberlin College, Ohio. She has been writing ‘Astroquizzical’, a blog answering space-related questions from the public, for over five years. Her writing has also been published in Forbes, Quartz, Medium, and The Conversation. Astroquizzical is Jillian’s first book. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the first of three shows featuring shortlisted writers for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize, Neil talks to Meredith Wadman about The Vaccine Race, and Sigrid Rausing about Mayhem: A Memoir.Meredith Wadman, MD, has a long profile as a medical reporter and has covered biomedical research politics from Washington, DC, for twenty years. She has written for Nature, Fortune, The New York Times, andThe Wall Street Journal. A graduate of Stanford University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she began medical school at the University of British Columbia and completed medical school as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford. She is the author of The Vaccine Race: How Scientists Used Human Cells to Combat Killer Viruses.Sigrid Rausing is the editor of Granta magazine and the publisher of Granta Books. She is the author of two previous books: History, Memory, and Identity in Post-Soviet Estonia, and Everything is Wonderful, which was short-listed for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. She is an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics and of St Antony's College, Oxford. Sigrid is the author of Mayhem: A Memoir. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr David Adam is the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Man Who Couldn't Stop and an editor at Nature, the world’s top scientific journal. Before that he was a specialist correspondent on the Guardian for seven years, writing on science, medicine and the environment. During this time he was named feature writer of the year by the Association of British Science Writers, and reported from Antarctica, the Arctic, China and the depths of the Amazon jungle. David’s latest book is The Genius Within: Smart Pills, Brain Hacks and Adventures in Intelligence. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Aminatta Forna is the author of the novels The Hired Man, The Memory of Love and Ancestor Stones, and the memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water. Her books have won multiple prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Book Award, and been shortlisted for many others, among them the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Neustadt Prize, the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Dublin International IMPAC Award. In 2014 Forna won the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prize, an award from Yale University in honour of an author's body of work. Forna has acted as judge for a number of literary awards, including the International Man Booker. She is currently Lannan Visiting Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University and Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. In 2017, she was awarded an OBE. Her latest novel is Happiness. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Hepworth has been writing, broadcasting and speaking about music and media since the seventies. He was involved in the launch and editing of magazines such as Smash Hits, Q, Mojo and The Word, among many others.He was one of the presenters of the BBC rock music programme The Old Grey Whistle Test and one of the anchors of the corporation’s coverage of Live Aid in 1985. He has won the Editor of the Year and Writer of the Year awards from the Professional Publishers Association and the Mark Boxer award from the British Society of Magazine Editors. David is the author of Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars, which is shortlisted for the 2018 Penderyn Book Prize. Little Atoms is the official podcast of the Penderyn Book Prize Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jim Crace is the prize-winning author of eleven previous books, including Continent (winner of the 1986 Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize), Quarantine (1998 Whitbread Novel of the Year and shortlisted for the Booker Prize), Being Dead (winner of the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award) and Harvest (shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize and winner of the International Dublin Literary Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize). His latest novel is The Melody. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The 500th Little Atoms! Philip Hensher has written nine novels, including The Mulberry Empire, the Booker-shortlisted The Northern Clemency, King of the Badgers and Scenes from Early Life, which won the Ondaatje Prize in 2012. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Bath Spa. Philip's latest novel is The Friendly Ones. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cathi Unsworth began a career in journalism at nineteen on the music weekly Sounds, and has since worked for music, arts, film and lifestyle journals. She is the author of five previous novels: Weirdo, The Not Knowing, The Singer, Bad Penny Blues and Without the Moon, and edited the award-winning compendium London Noir. Her latest novel is That Old Black Magic.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Matthew Sweet is a journalist and broadcaster. He presents Night Waves and Freethinking on BBC Radio 3, and is the summer presenter of The Film Programme on Radio Four. He is the author of The West End Front, Inventing the Victorians and Shepperton Babylon: The Lost Worlds of British Cinema, which he adapted as a film for BBC Four. He has edited and introduced the work of Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, William Thackeray, George Eliot and Edward Bulwer-Lytton. His TV programmes include Silent Britain, A Brief History of Fun, The Age of Excess, Truly, Madly, Cheaply and The Rules of Film Noir. Matthew’s latest book isOperation Chaos: The Vietnam Deserters Who Fought the CIA, the Brainwashers, and Themselves. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Neil talks feminist heroes with author Julia Pierpoint Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Liam Drew is a writer, former neurobiologist and mammal. He has a PhD in sensory biology from University College London, and spent twelve years researching the neural and genetic basis of schizophrenia, the biology of pain and the birth of new neurons in the adult mammalian brain at Columbia University, New York and at UCL. His writing has appeared in Nature, New Scientist, Slate and the Guardian. Liam's first book is I, Mammal: The Story of What Makes Us Mammals. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Born in Sydney, Tim Baker lived in Rome and Madrid before moving to Paris, where he wrote about jazz. He has worked on film projects in India, China, Mexico, Brazil and Australia, and currently lives in the South of France with his wife, their son, and two rescue animals, a dog and a cat. His debut novel, Fever City, was published in 2016 and went on to be shortlisted for the CWA’s John Creasey New Blood Dagger award and nominated for the Private Eye Writers of America’s 2017 Shamus Award. Tim's latest novel is City Without Stars. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Abi Andrews was born in 1991 in the Midlands, and now lives and works in South East London. She studied English and creative writing at Goldsmiths, and her work has been published in The Dark Mountain Project, Tender, Five Dials and The Bohemyth, amongst others. Her debut novel is The Word for Woman is Wilderness. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Daniel H. Pink is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestselling Drive, To Sell is Human and A Whole New Mind. His books have been translated into 35 languages and have sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. Dan's latest book is When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mohsin Hamid writes regularly for The New York Times, the Guardian and the New York Review of Books, and is the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Moth Smoke, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and Discontent and its Civilisations. Born and mostly raised in Lahore, he has since lived between Lahore, London and New York. His latest novel Exit West was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize. Jon McGregor is the author of four novels and a story collection. He is the winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literature Prize, Betty Trask Prize, and Somerset Maugham Award, and has twice been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham, where he edits The Letters Page, a literary journal in letters. Jon's latest novel Reservoir 13 was longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize, and then won the 2017 Costa Prize for Best Novel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tony White  is the author of novels including Foxy-T, the non-fiction work Another Fool in the Balkans and editor and co-editor of short story collections including Croatian Nights, with numerous short stories published in journals, exhibition catalogues and collections including All Hail the New Puritans. Tony has been writer in residence at the Science Museum, London and Leverhulme Trust writer in residence at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. Tony White collaborated with Blast Theory to write Ivy4evr, an SMS-based, interactive drama for young people broadcast by Channel 4 in October 2010 and nominated for a BIMA award in 2011 by the British Interactive Media Association. Tony White is currently chair of London's award-winning arts radio station Resonance 104.4fm, and his latest novel is The Fountain in the Forest. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ausma Zehanat Khan holds a Ph.D. in International Human Rights Law with a specialisation in military intervention and war crimes in the Balkans. She has practised immigration law and taught human rights law at Northwestern University and York University. Formerly, she served as Editor in Chief of Muslim Girl magazine, the first magazine to reflect the lives of young Muslim women. She is a longtime community activist and writer. Born in Britain, Ausma lived in Canada for many years before recently becoming an American citizen. Her debut novel, The Unquiet Dead, won the Barry Award, the Arthur Ellis Award and the Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award for Best First Novel. Her second novel The Language of Secrets is published in February 2018.Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City in 1983. Her novels and essays have been widely translated and her work has been published in magazines and newspapers including the New York Times, Granta, and McSweeney's. She is the author of the novels Faces in the Crowd and The Story of My Teeth, and the Essay Tell Me How it Ends. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Caspar Henderson is a writer and journalist. His work has appeared in the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Independent, New Scientist, the New York Review of Books, and other publications. From 2002 to 2005 he was a senior editor at OpenDemocracy. He received the Roger Deakin Award from the Society of Authors in 2009 and the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award in 2010. He is the author of The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, a bestiary for the 21st Century, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. His latest book is A New Map of Wonders: A Journey in Search of Modern Marvels. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

George Orwell wrote some of his most renowned essays for the British left-wing publication Tribune between 1940 and 1947, including Books vs Cigarettes, You And The Atom Bomb and the regular As I Please column. These works were compiled by Paul Anderson in the book Orwell in Tribune.Paul Anderson is a former editor of Tribune and deputy editor of the New Statesman. He talked to Little Atoms about Orwell's life and legacy.Interview first broadcast on 18 August 2006. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A classic Little Atoms from 2010 to ease you into the new year: Professor Brian Cox takes on the big questions, including what happens if you put a cat in a Large Hadron Collider Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Celeste Ng grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio. She attended Harvard University and earned an MFA from the University of Michigan. Her debut novel, Everything I Never Told You,won the Hopwood Award, the Massachusetts Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the American Library Association's Alex Award. She is a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, and her latest novel is Little Fires Everywhere.Susie Boyt is the author of five other acclaimed novels and the much-loved memoir My Judy Garland Life which was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize, staged at the Nottingham Playhouse and serialised on BBC Radio 4. She has written about art, life and fashion for the Financial Times for the past fourteen years and has recently edited The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories by Henry James. She is also a director at the Hampstead Theatre. Her latest novel is Love & Fame. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Julie Bindel is a renowned investigative journalist, and has written extensively on religious fundamentalism, violence against women, the international surrogacy trade, mail order brides, trafficking, and unsolved murders. She writes regularly for The Guardian, New Statesman, Truthdig and Standpoint Magazine, and frequently appears on the BBC and Sky News. She was Visiting Journalist at Brunel University, UK (2013 - 2014) and is now on the advisory board for www.byline.com. Julie's latest book is The Pimping of Prostitution: Abolishing the Sex Work Myth.John Crace is the Guardian's newspaper's parliamentary sketch writer, and author of their "Digested Read" column. He is the author of a number of books, the latest is I, Maybot: The Rise and Fall. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

John Higgs is the author of I HAVE AMERICA SURROUNDED: THE LIFE OF TIMOTHY LEARY; THE KLF: CHAOS, MAGIC AND THE BAND WHO BURNED A MILLION POUNDS; STRANGER THAN WE CAN IMAGINE: MAKING SENSE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY; and the novels THE BRANDY OF THE DAMNED and THE FIRST CHURCH ON THE MOON. John's latest book is WATLING STREET. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Contagion has haunted so much of 20th century culture, from Camus’s Plague to Romero’s zombies. In this episode, we examine real and imagined epidemics, and meet the people whose job it is to stop them. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Judith Matloff is a Harvard graduate and teaches conflict reporting at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Her articles have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, the Economist and the Financial Times. Matloff has pioneered safety training for journalists around the world, advising various international organisations including the Dart Center and International News Safety Institute. She has won several fellowships, including a Fulbright and MacArthur, and is the author of Fragments of a Forgotten War and Home Girl. Her latest book is The War is in the Mountains: Violence in the World's High Places. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Futurists like Marinetti and D’Annunzio revelled in the destructive energy of battle, but in Weimar Germany after world war 1, artists such as Otto Dix and Hans Fallada documented the horror of disfigurement, while scientists and medics tried to rebuild ruined men. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joshua Cohen was born in 1980 in Atlantic City. He has written novels (Book of Numbers), short fiction (Four New Messages), and nonfiction for the New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, London Review of Books, n+1, and others. In 2017 he was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. His latest novel is Moving Kings. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Mesmerism” was a part of mainstream medicine in the 19th century, with many believing the unprovable concept of “animal magnetism”. The idea influenced everyone from Robert Louis Stevenson to Sigmund Freud, creating lurid tales of split personalities and mind control, from Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to Trilby. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Angela Saini is an award-winning science journalist, author and broadcaster. She is the author of Geek Science: How Indian Science is Taking Over the World, and her latest book is Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong - and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 1 of Little Atoms' documentary series "Converging Cultures" explores the influence of science on the Romantic and Gothic imagination. Electricity captivated the greatest minds of the “age of wonder”. Gentlemen amateurs amazed audiences with their experiments, and some even believed electricity could conquer death itself. The young Mary Shelley was as enthralled as anyone - leading to the greatest horror creation of all time: Frankenstein.Presented by Neil DennyProduced by Thomas GlasserLittle Atoms' series Converging Cultures was created with the support of the Wellcome Trust Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ann Druyan is an author and television and film writer & producer whose work is largely concerned with the effects of science and technology on our civilization. She was co-writer with Carl Sagan and Steven Soter of the Emmy and Peabody Award winning television series COSMOS. This interview was first broadcast in March 2013. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marcel Theroux is the author of five novels: A Blow to the Heart, A Stranger in the Earth, The Paperchase (winner of the 2002 Somerset Maugham Award), Far North (shortlisted for America's prestigious National Book Award), and Strange Bodies. His latest novel is The Secret Books. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marcus Du Sautoy is Professor of Mathematics and Simonyi Professor for the Public understanding of Science at Oxford University, and Jamie Perera is a composer and sound artist. In this show we talk about and listen to their musical, mathematical collaboration The Sound of Proof. Click here for the experiment that Marcus mentions at the end of the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Stanford University. His scientific research is published in journals from Science to Nature, and he is also the author of the internationally bestselling books Sum and Incognito. He is the writer and presenter of the companion BBC television series The Brain.Anthony Brandt is an internationally acclaimed composer and a Professor of Composition and Theory at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. His musical output includes two chamber operas and works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, dance, theatre, film, and television. He is also Artistic Director of the award-winning new music ensemble Musiqa.Anthony and David are the authors of The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes The World. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dallas Campbell has presented some of the most ambitious landmark series across the BBC, such as City in the Sky with Dr Hannah Fry and Stargazing Live with Dara O'Brian and Brian Cox, which included broadcasting Astronaut Tim Peake's historic live launch to the International Space Station and was nominated for a BAFTA. In 2014, Dallas embarked on a six-part international series for National Geographic and he continues to regularly present for the Horizon Guide series on BBC4. In 2016 he went back in time to re-create 'Television's First Night', for the 80th anniversary of BBC television. Dallas is a regular contributor to the BBC's science magazine Focus, The Times' Eureka magazine and has written for The Observer. He is the author of Ad Astra: An Illustrated Guide to Leaving The Planet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Christopher Bollen is a writer who lives in New York City. He regularly writes about art, literature, and culture. He is the author of Lightning People and Orient and is currently the Editor at Large at Interview Magazine. Christopher's latest novel is The Destroyers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A former theologian, Sarah Sentilles completed her undergraduate degree at Yale and both a Masters and a Doctorate at Harvard. She was a college professor for over a decade before becoming a full time writer and is now a passionate advocate for life lived by peace and principle. Her previous books are Taught by America: A Story of Struggle and Hope in Compton, A Church of her Own: What Happens When A Woman Takes the Pulpit and Breaking Up With God: A Love Story. Her latest book is Draw Your Weapons. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonathan Meades is a writer on architecture, culture and food, a novelist and television presenter, and a longtime friend of Little Atoms. This episode, marking the release of a boxset of Jonathan's TV work, was first broadcast in October 2008. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nicole Krauss has been hailed by the New York Times as 'one of America's most important novelists'. She is the author of the international bestsellers, Great House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Orange Prize, and The History of Love, which won the Saroyan Prize for International Literature and France's Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, and was short-listed for the Orange, Médicis, and Femina prizes. Her first novel, Man Walks Into a Room, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. In 2007, she was selected as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists, and in 2010 she was chosen by the New Yorker for their 'Twenty Under Forty' list. Her fiction has been published in the New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, and Best American Short Stories, and her books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. Her latest novel is Forest Dark.Kamila Shamsie is the author of six previous novels: In the City by the Sea; Kartography (both shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize); Salt and Saffron; Broken Verses; Burnt Shadows (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction) and A God in Every Stone, which was shortlisted for the Baileys Prize, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Three of her novels have received awards from Pakistan's Academy of Letters. Kamila Shamsie is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2013 was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist. Her latest novel, Home Fire has been longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Misha Glenny is a distinguished journalist and historian. As the Central Europe Correspondent first for the Guardian and then for the BBC, he chronicled the collapse of communism and the wars in the former Yugoslavia. He won the Sony Gold Award for outstanding contribution to broadcasting. The author of four books, including the acclaimed McMafia, he has been regularly consulted by the US and European governments on major policy issues and ran an NGO for three years, assisting with the reconstruction of Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo. In this episode, broadcast in October 2011, Misha discussed DarkMarket: CyberThieves, CyberCops and You. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Naomi Alderman grew up in London and attended Oxford University and UEA. Her first novel, Disobedience, was published in ten languages; like her second novel, The Lessons, it was read on BBC radio's Book at Bedtime. In 2006 she won the Orange Award for New Writers. In 2007, she was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, and one of Waterstones' 25 Writers for the Future.Her prize-winning short fiction has appeared in Prospect, on BBC Radio 4 and in a number of anthologies. In 2009 she was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. Naomi broadcasts regularly, has guest-presented Front Row on BBC Radio 4 and writes regularly for Prospect and the Guardian. Her third novel, The Liars' Gospel, was published by Penguin in August 2012.This episode of Little Atoms was first broadcast in February 2013. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Writer Jon Ronson has been one of Little Atoms most regular guests. In his very first appearance on the show in 2005, he talked to Neil Denny and Richard Sanderson about the odd and unusual characters he met in his work, including Omar Bakri Muhammad, Jonathan King and the eponymous Men Who Stare At Goats. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Martin Rees is Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics and Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. He was the President of the Royal Society until 2010, and is the Astronomer Royal. A member of the House of Lords, he is a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His awards include the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Einstein Award of the World Cultural Council and the Crafoord Prize (Royal Swedish Academy). He was the recipient of the 2011 Templeton Prize. Martin's latest book is From Here to Infinity: Scientific Horizons, which expands on hIs 2010 BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures.THIS PROGRAMME WAS THE 200TH EDITION OF LITTLE ATOMS.First broadcast on 3rd June 2011. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Vanessa Potter spent 16 years as an award-winning broadcast producer in London's advertising industry, before one day fate conspired to turn the lights out on her. Suddenly losing then slowly regaining her sight led Vanessa to change direction, turning the camera upon herself to tell her story via immersive art and storytelling. Vanessa's collaborations have led to some exciting partnerships, and she is currently working on developing an interactive EEG science-art project that allows the public to see and understand the effects of mindfulness on their brains. She is also involved in several other scientific research projects. Her speaking engagements include a June 2016 TEDx talk in Ghent, Belgium. Vanessa is the author of Patient H69: The Story of My Second Sight.Pía Spry-Marqués gained her PhD in archaeology from the University of Cambridge, where, following post-doctoral research, she now works in communications. Her research took her across Europe and across time, from the late Iron Age back to the Ice Age, identifying, classifying and decoding the meaning of animal remains in human-associated deposits. Originally from Spain, Pía is predisposed to a keen understanding, awareness and love of the pig and the many tasty pork products that are so much a part of Spanish cuisine. Pia is the author of PigPork: Archaeology, Zoology and Edibility. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.