Little Atoms

Julianne Pachico talks to Neil about her Colombia set debut novel The Anthill. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joyce Carol Oates talks to Neil about her latest novel Breathe, "a memoir that has been reimagined as a work of fiction" about grief. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ece Temelkuran returns to Little Atoms to tell Padraig about Together: Ten Choices for a Better Now, the sequel to the global hit How To Lose A Country. Ece discusses how criticism replaced action, the role of the exile, and the radical proposition of trust. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist whose work has been translated into 54 languages. Shafak's last novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize. She talks to Neil about her latest novel The Island of Missing Trees, set in Cyprus during the partition and contemporary London, and featuring a rather unusual narrator. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stephen Walker talks to Neil about the 60th annversary of Yuri Gagarin's incredible journey into space in his new book Beyond. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jean Hanff Korelitz talks to Neil about her latest novel The Plot, which centers around the literary world and the contested ownership of the right to tell a story. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Julian Sancton on his new book Madhouse at the End of the Earth, and incredible survival story of an ill-fated Antarctic expedition. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Laura Lippman talks to Neil about the gentrification of Baltimore and using elements of the horror genre in her new novel Dream Girl, and of writing about herself in her essay collection My Life as a Villainess. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brandy Schillace tells Neil the incredible story of Dr Robert White and his quest to perform the first head transplant. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Michael Spitzer talks to Neil about his new history of the world through the evolution of music, The Musical Human. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alice Bell talks to Neil about her history of climate change, Our Biggest Experiment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Neil talks to optogenetics pioneer Karl Deisseroff about the work of his Stanford lab, and about his new book Connections: A Story of Human Feeling. Also contains Karl's wind-chimes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stephanie Scott talks to Neil about her debut novel What's Left Of Me Is Yours. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alex von Tunzelmann is a bestselling author, screenwriter, broadcaster, and media commentator. Her latest book is Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History. Inspired by the toppling of the Edward Colson statue in Bristol, Alex tackles the bad faith arguments of the culture warriors head on, talking about some historical examples of other statues around the world that have fallen from favour. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Scott Weidensaul is one of the most respected natural history writers in the country. Among the more than 30 books he's written are Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. His latest book is A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.