Little Atoms

It's the 700th episode of Little Atoms, and writer and filmmaker Jonathan Meades returns for the tenth time to talk to Neil about his new collection of journalism Pedro and Ricky Come Again. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Juliet Jacques is a writer and filmmaker based in London, and a fellow contributor to Resonance FM. She is the author of Trans: A Memoir, and now a collection of short stories Variations, which uses "found" documents and real-life events to rewrite and reinvigorate a history of transgender Britain. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Neil talks to Cherie Jones about her Women's Prize shortlisted debut novel How The One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, and to Kate Mosse about the Women's Prize Trust Discoveries programme. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Natasha Pulley talks to Neil about time travel, slavery and the UK under French occupation in her latest novel The Kingdoms. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonathan Ames talks to Neil about A Man Named Doll, the first in a series of detective novels about "A troubled man, aged 50", as coincidentally Neil is this week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Clare Chambers talks to Neil about her Women's Prize 2021 longlisted novel Small Pleasures, about repressed love and parthenogenesis in the South East London suburbs. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tabitha Lasley talks to Neil about her first book Sea State, a study of masculinity in the oil industry, which becomes an accidental memoir when she becomes to close to her story. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Philip Hoare returns to Little Atoms and talks to Neil about his fascination with Albrecht Dürer, and Dürer's fascination with painting a whale in his new book Albert & The Whale. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Helen Scales returns to Little Atoms and talks to Neil about exploring the deep oceans, how creatures survive the great depths, and how human activity threatens even the deepest places in her new book The Brilliant Abyss. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tom Higham talks to Neil about the hunt for the Denisovans, and our other hominid ancestors. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Claire Fuller talks to Neil about her 2021 Women's Prize shortlisted fourth novel Unsettled Ground. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Cat Jarman talks to Neil about how an Indian Carnelian bead ends up in a Viking grave in Derbyshire, in her new history of the Vikings, River Kings. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Una Mannion talks to Neil about her debut novel A Crooked Tree. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris Power talks to Neil about Russian oligarchs, paranoia and the ethics of using real life in fiction, in his debut novel A Lonely Man. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Born and raised in Canada, Sarah Leipciger lives in London with her three children, and teaches creative writing to prisoners. Her short fiction has been shortlisted for the Asham Award, the Fish Prize and the Bridport Prize. Her first novel, the critically acclaimed The Mountain Can Wait, was published in 2015. Coming Up For Air is her second novel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Little Atoms' favourite GP Gavin Francis returns to talk about his new book Intensive Care, which details his experiences of Covid 19. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tessa Norton and Bob Stanley talk to Neil about their new book Excavate! The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sam Byers is the author of Idiopathy (2013) and Perfidious Albion (2018). He talks to Neil about ideas of freedom, wellness and degradation in his new novel Come Join Our Disease. NB: For some reason Neil's end sounds like he was recorded at the bottom of a well, but Sam sounds fine and that's the main thing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melanie Challenger talks to Neil about her new book How To Be Animal, which combines popular science, history and moral philosophy in a wide-ranging and radical new take on the human story and what it means for us today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jess Walter talks to Neil about his new novel The Cold Millions, which features union organising, riots and the suppression of protest. Set in Spokane in 1909, but seemingly ripped out of today's headlines. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Courttia Newland is the author of The Scholar, Snakeskin and The Gospel According to Cane. He co-edited The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain, and his short stories have featured in various anthologies. He talks to Neil about working with Steve McQueen on Little Axe, and about taking 20 years to write his multiverse spanning, world decolonising novel A River Called Time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Author of Homegoing Yaa Gyasi talks to Neil about the American opioid epidemic, finding meaning through both faith and science, and growing up in Alabama in her latest novel Transcendent Kingdom, which is long-listed for the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction. Featuring an appearance by Yaa's dog. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Kat Arney talks about how cancer breaks the rules, via naked mole rats, nazi scientists and chimney sweep's scrotums in her new book Rebel Cell. See her website for more details: https://www.rebelcellbook.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the week of St Patrick's Day Neil talks to the current Laureate for Irish Fiction Sebastian Barry on the paperback release of his latest novel A Thousand Moons. Sebastian talks about finding his family through fiction, and how an Arshile Gorky painting, a pet dog, the writings of Peter Matthiessen and watching RuPaul's Drag Race all influenced Days Without End and A Thousand Moons. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robert Jones, Jr. is a writer from Brooklyn, N.Y. He earned both his B.F.A. in creative writing and M.F.A. in fiction from Brooklyn College. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Essence and The Paris Review. He is the creator of the social justice social media community, Son of Baldwin. He talks to Neil about his debut novel The Prophets. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rebecca Watson talks to Neil about her debut novel little scratch, which was published recently to critical acclaim. She is one of The Observer’s 10 best debut novelists of 2021. Watson writes for publications including the TLS, Granta and the Guardian, and is part-time Assistant Arts Editor at the Financial Times. In 2018, she was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Francis Spufford returns to Little Atoms to talk to Neil about his new novel Light Perpetual. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sara Seager is an astrophysicist and a professor of physics and planetary science at MIT. She talks about her new memoir The Smallest Lights in the Universe, about juggling being a MacArthur award winning astrophysicist with being a widowed single-mother, and brings Neil up to speed with the latest news in the hunt for exo-planets. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Max Porter is the author of Lanny, longlisted for the Booker Prize, and Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Goldsmiths Prize. He is the recipient of the Sunday Times/Peter, Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year award. He talks to Neil about painting with words in his latest book The Death of Francis Bacon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Torrey Peters lives in Brooklyn and holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and a Masters in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth. She is the author of two novellas, Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones and The Masker. She talks to Neil about ideas of motherhood, ethical surgery, the politically fraught concept of detransitioning and what trans women and divorced cis women have in common in her debut novel Detransition, Baby. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cal Flyn, author of the memoir Thicker Than Water, talks about her latest book Islands of Abandonment: Life In The Post-Human Landscape. She talks to Neil about her travels to post-industrial wastelands, nuclear exclusion zones and sites of natural disasters to see how nature can reclaim even the most polluted landscapes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jason “Timbuktu” Diakité is one of Sweden’s most well-known hip-hop artists. Born in Lund to American parents—an African American dad and a white mom—he has released eight solo albums and numerous singles, the majority of which have reached gold or platinum status. He talks to Neil about his new memoir A Drop of Midnight, in which he talks about growing up conflicted in Sweden, and his travels to South Carolina in search of his ancestors. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Andrew Harding is the BBC's Africa correspondent. He talks to Neil about his new book These Are Not Gentle People, about a crime that shook South Africa and split a community apart. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stuart Turton's debut novel, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, won the Costa First Novel Award and the Books Are My Bag Readers Award for Best Novel, and was shortlisted for the Specsavers National Book Awards and the British Book Awards Debut of the Year. A Sunday Times bestseller for three weeks, it has been translated into over thirty languages and has also been a bestseller in Italy, Russia and Poland. His latest novel is The Devil And The Dark Water. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ivy Pochoda is the author of The Art of Disappearing, Visitation Street - a Guardian and Amazon best book of 2013 - and Wonder Valley, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and a winner of the Strand Critics Circle Award. For many years she was a world-ranked squash player. She teaches creative writing at the Lamp Arts Studio in Skid Row. Ivy grew up in Brooklyn, NY and currently lives in West Adams, Los Angeles. Her latest novel is These Women. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's show, George Saunders, author of the Booker Prize winning novel Lincoln In The Bardo, talks to Neil about the genius of the Russian short story in his latest book A Swim In A Pond In The Rain. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Just in time for Christmas! John Lanchester joins Neil for some spooky stories in his first short story collection, Reality and Other Stories. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alex Ross graduated from Harvard in 1990. He wrote for the New York Times from 1992 until 1996 when he became staff writer at the New Yorker. His first book, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, won the Guardian First Book Award. It was also shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Pulitzer Prize. He is also the author of the essay collection Listen to This. His latest book is Wagnerism: Art and politics in the shadow of music. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Noreena Hertz is a renowned thought leader, academic, and broadcaster who was named by The Observer “one of the world’s leading thinkers” and by Vogue “one of the world’s most inspiring women.” Her previous bestsellers—The Silent Takeover, I.O.U. and Eyes Wide Open—have been published in more than twenty countries, and her opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Financial Times, El Pais, Die Zeit and South China Morning Post. Hertz holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD from Cambridge University. She is based at University College London, where she holds an Honorary Professorship. Her latest book is The Lonely Century. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gavin Francis is an award-winning writer and GP. He is the author of four books of non-fiction, including Adventures in Human Being, which was a Sunday Times bestseller and won the Saltire Scottish Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award, and Empire Antarctica, which won Scottish Book of the Year in the SMIT Awards and was shortlisted for both the Ondaatje and Costa Prizes. He has written for the Guardian, The Times, the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. His work is published in eighteen languages. His latest book is Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. He is the author of fifteen highly acclaimed, bestselling novels and five collections of stories. His latest novel is Trio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rebecca Wragg Sykes has been fascinated by the vanished worlds of the Pleistocene ice ages since childhood, and followed this interest through a career researching the most enigmatic characters of all, the Neanderthals. Alongside her academic expertise, she has also earned a reputation for exceptional public engagement as a speaker, in print and broadcast. Her writing has featured in the Guardian, Aeon and Scientific American, and she has appeared on history and science programmes for BBC Radio 4. She works as an archaeological and creative consultant, and co-founded the influential TrowelBlazers project, and Rebecca is now the author of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kate Summerscale is the author of the number one bestselling The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2008, winner of the Galaxy British Book of the Year Award, a Richard & Judy Book Club pick and adapted into a major ITV drama. Her first book, the bestselling The Queen of Whale Cay, won a Somerset Maugham award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread biography award. Her latest book, The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story is shortlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Natalie Haynes is the author of six books, her novels, A Thousand Ships, The Children of Jocasta, and The Amber Fury, and the non-fiction works, Pandora’s Jar, about women in Greek Myth, and The Ancient Guide To Modern Life.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gabriel Bergmoser is an award-winning Melbourne-based author, who grew up in a small rural town. In 2015 he won the prestigious Sir Peter Ustinov Television Scriptwriting Award for his pilot Windmills, and his plays include Heroes, which was nominated for the 2017 Kenneth Branagh Award for New Drama Writing. His musical, Moonlite, about a gay bushranger, was performed as part of the 2018 Midsumma Festival to critical acclaim, and was later selected for the Homegrown Grassroots development initiative. A film adaptation of his latest novel The Hunted is being developed in a joint production between Stampede Ventures and Vertigo Entertainment in Los Angeles. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Matthew Baker is the author of the story collection Hybrid Creatures. His stories have appeared in the Paris Review, American Short Fiction, New England Review, One Story, Electric Literature and Conjunctions, and in anthologies including Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions. A recipient of grants and fellowships from the Fulbright Commission and the MacDowell Colony, among many others, he has an MFA from Vanderbilt University, where he was the founding editor of Nashville Review. His latest story collection is Why Visit America. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Jo Marchant is an award-winning science journalist. She has a PhD in genetics and medical microbiology from St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College, London, and an MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College. She has worked as an editor at New Scientist and Nature, and her articles have appeared in the Guardian, Wired, Observer, New York Times and Washington Post. She is the author of Decoding the Heavens, shortlisted for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, and Cure, shortlisted for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books and longlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize. Her latest book is The Human Cosmos: A Secret History of The Stars. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Terri White is Editor-in-Chief of Empire magazine, having previously edited some of the most read titles in the UK and US, including Time Out New York and Shortlist, where she was named Men's Magazine Editor of the Year. She has also written for the Guardian and The Pool. Her first book is the memoir Coming Undone. NB: This interview contains discussion of domestic violence, sexual abuse and self-harm. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Michael Bond, who won the British Psychology Society Prize 2015 for The Power of Others, is a freelance journalist and former senior editor and reporter at New Scientist. His latest book is Wayfinding: The Art and Science of How We Find and Lose Our Way. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Stanford University, an internationally bestselling author, and a Guggenheim Fellow. He is the writer and presenter of The Brain, an Emmy-nominated PBS/BBC television series that asks what it means to be human from a neuroscientist's point of view. Eagleman’s research encompasses time perception, vision, synesthesia, and the intersection of neuroscience with the legal system. He is the author of many books, including Sum, Incognito, The Brain, and The Runaway Species. Dr. Eagleman appears regularly on National Public Radio and BBC to discuss both science and literature. His latest book is Livewired: The Inside Story of The Ever-Changing Brain. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.