Little Atoms

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...

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 i...

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...

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 i...

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 gre...

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&nbs...

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, Th...

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 Prize...

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 Tri o. 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  Gua...

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...

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...

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 an...

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 Yo...

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 c...

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 t...

Susanna Moore is the author of the novels  The Life of Objects ,  The Big Girls ,  One Last Look ,  In the Cut ,  Sleeping Beauties ,  The Whiteness of Bones , and  My Old Sweetheart , and two books of nonfiction,  Light Years: A Girlhood in Hawai'i  and  I Myself Have Seen It: The Myth of Hawai'i . She lives in New York City. Her latest book is th...