Little Atoms

Little Atoms 700 - Jonathan Meades' Pedro and Ricky Come Again

28 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 o...

Little Atoms 699 - Juliet Jacques' Variations

21 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 co...

Little Atoms 698 - Cherie Jones and Kate Mosse

14 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 Wome...

Little Atoms 697 - Natasha Pulley's The Kingdoms

07 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 acas...

Little Atoms 696 - Jonathan Ames' A Man Named Doll

31 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Little Atoms 695 - Clare Chambers' Small Pleasures

24 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Clare Chambers talks to Neil about her Women's Prize 2021 longlisted novel Small Pleasures, about repressed love and parthenogenesis in the South East...

Little Atoms 694 - Tabitha Lasley's Sea State

20 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 b...

Little Atoms 693 - Philip Hoare's Albert & The Whale

17 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 h...

Little Atoms 692 - Helen Scales' The Brilliant Abyss

10 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Little Atoms 691 - Tom Higham's The World Before Us

06 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 informati...

Little Atoms 690 - Claire Fuller's Unsettled Ground

29 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 in...

Little Atoms 689 - Cat Jarman's River Kings

26 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Little Atoms 688 - Una Mannion's A Crooked Tree

22 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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

Little Atoms 687 - Chris Power's A Lonely Man

19 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 A...

Little Atoms 686 - Sarah Leipciger's Coming Up For Air

15 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Born and raised in Canada, Sarah Leipciger lives in London with her three children, and teaches creative writing to prisoners. Her short fiction has b...

Little Atoms 685 - Gavin Francis's Intensive Care

12 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Little Atoms 684 - Bob Stanley and Tessa Norton's Excavate!

08 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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.c...

Little Atoms 683 - Sam Byers' Come Join Our Disease

05 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Sam Byers is the author of Idiopathy (2013) and Perfidious Albion (2018). He talks to Neil about ideas of freedom, wellness and degradation in hi...

Little Atoms 682 - Melanie Challenger's How To Be Animal

01 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 a...

Little Atoms 681 - Jess Walter's The Cold Millions

29 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Little Atoms 680 - Courttia Newland's A River Called Time

26 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Courttia Newland is the author of The Scholar, Snakeskin and The Gospel According to Cane. He co-edited The Penguin Book...

Little Atoms 679 - Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom

23 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Little Atoms 678 - Kat Arney's Rebel Cell

19 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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. Se...

Little Atoms 677 - Sebastian Barry's A Thousand Moons

16 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 T...

Little Atoms 676 - Robert Jones Jr's The Prophets

09 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Little Atoms 675 - Rebecca Watson's little scratch

05 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Little Atoms 674 - Francis Spufford's Light Perpetual

02 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 informat...

Little Atoms 673 - Sara Seager's The Smallest Lights in the Universe

26 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 Un...

Little Atoms 672 - Max Porter's The Death of Francis Bacon

23 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Max Porter is the author of Lanny, longlisted for the Booker Prize, and Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, winner of the International Dylan ...

Little Atoms 671 - Torrey Peters' Detransition, Baby

16 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Little Atoms 670 Cal Flyn's Islands of Abandonment

09 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Little Atoms 669 - Jason Diakité's A Drop of Midnight

02 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 w...

Little Atoms 668 - Andrew Harding's These Are Not Gentle People

29 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 Afri...

Little Atoms 667 - Stuart Turton's The Devil And The Dark Water

26 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 Be...

Little Atoms 666 - Ivy Pochoda's These Women

18 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Ivy Pochoda is the author of The Art of Disappearing, Visitation Street - a Guardian and Amazon best book of 2013 - and ...

Little Atoms 665 - George Saunders' A Swim In A Pond In The Rain

12 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 sho...

Little Atoms 664 - John Lanchester's Reality and Other Stories

24 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Just in time for Christmas! John Lanchester joins Neil for some spooky stories in his first short story collection, Reality and Other Stories. Hosted ...

Little Atoms 663 - Alex Ross' Wagnerism

08 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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 Y...

Little Atoms 662 - Noreena Hertz's The Lonely Century

01 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Little Atoms 661 - Gavin Francis' Island Dreams

24 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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 w...

Little Atoms 660 - William Boyd's Trio

17 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Little Atoms 659 - Rebecca Wragg Sykes' Kindred

10 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Rebecca Wragg Sykes has been fascinated by the vanished worlds of the Pleistocene ice ages since childhood, and followed this interest through a caree...

Little Atoms 658 - Kate Summerscale's The Haunting of Alma Fielding

31 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Kate Summerscale is the author of the number one bestselling The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 200...

Little Atoms 657 - Natalie Haynes' Pandora's Jar

27 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Natalie Haynes is the author of six books, her novels, A Thousand Ships, The Children of Jocasta, and The Amber Fury, and the non-ficti...

Little Atoms 656 - Gabriel Bergmoser's The Hunted

19 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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 Tele...

Little Atoms 655 - Matthew Baker's Why Visit America

12 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Matthew Baker is the author of the story collection Hybrid Creatures. His stories have appeared in the Paris Review, American Short Fic...

Little Atoms 654 - Jo Marchant's The Human Cosmos

05 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Jo Marchant is an award-winning science journalist. She has a PhD in genetics and medical microbiology from St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical ...

Little Atoms 653 - Terri White's Coming Undone

28 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Terri White is Editor-in-Chief of Empire magazine, having previously edited some of the most read titles in the UK and US, including&nb...

Little Atoms 652 - Michael Bond's Wayfinding

21 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Michael Bond, who won the British Psychology Society Prize 2015 for The Power of Others, is a freelance journalist and former senior editor and r...

Little Atoms 651 - David Eagleman's Livewired

17 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Stanford University, an internationally bestselling author, and a Guggenheim Fellow. He is the writer and presen...

Little Atoms 650 - Susanna Moore's Miss Aluminium

14 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Susanna Moore is the author of the novels The Life of Objects, The Big Girls, One Last Look, In the Cut, Sleeping Beauties,&n...

Little Atoms 649 - Sophie Mackintosh's Blue Ticket

07 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Sophie Mackintosh is the author of The Water Cure, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018 and won a Betty Trask Award 2019. Sophie talks t...

Little Atoms 648 - Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain

31 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Douglas Stuart talks to Neil about his Man Booker longlisted, Glasgow set debut novel Shuggie Bain. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more in...

Little Atoms 647 - Maria Konnikova's The Biggest Bluff

24 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Maria Konnikova talks to Neil Denny about her latest book The Biggest Bluff, in which she sets out to study luck and instead becomes a professional po...

From The Archive - Luke Turner's Out Of The Woods

17 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Luke Turner is a writer and editor based in London. He co-founded the influential music website The Quietus where he runs a regular podcast and radio ...

From The Archive - Chris Power's Mothers

10 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

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 p...

From The Archive - Amy Sackville's Painter To The King

03 Aug 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Amy Sackville was born in 1981. She studied English and Theatre Studies at Leeds, and went on to do an MPhil in English at Exeter College, Oxford, and...

Little Atoms 646 - Frances Cha's If I Had Your Face

27 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Frances Cha is a former editor for CNN in Seoul and Hong Kong. A graduate of Dartmouth College and the Columbia University MFA writing program, she li...

Little Atoms 645 - Jenny Kleeman's Sex Robots and Vegan Meat

20 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Jenny Kleeman is a journalist and documentary-maker who has travelled the world finding extraordinary characters to turn into film, print and audio. S...

Little Atoms 644 - Adam Hart's Unfit For Purpose

13 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Adam Hart is a biologist, broadcaster, academic and author. Professor of Science Communication at the University of Gloucestershire, Adam is a regular...

Little Atoms 643 - Emily Anthes' The Great Indoors

06 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Science Writer Emily Anthes on her new book The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behaviour, Health, and Happiness. Emi...

Little Atoms 642 - Simon Stephenson's Set My Heart To Five

29 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Simon Stephenson is an author and screenwriter based in Los Angeles. His previous book Let Not The Waves Of The Sea won Best First Book...

Little Atoms 641 - Lars Iyer's Nietzsche And The Burbs

22 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Lars Iyer is the author of the novels Nietzsche and the Burbs (2020) and Wittgenstein Jr (2014). He has also written a trilogy of novels, Spurious, Do...

Little Atoms 640 - Richard Atkinson's Mr Atkinson's Rum Contract

15 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Richard Atkinson is a publisher who has been behind some of the most successful cookbooks of recent years. He lives in London but has a deep-rooted af...

Little Atoms 639 - David Farrier's Footprints

08 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

David Farrier teaches English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. In 2017 he was the recipient of the Royal Society of Literatur...

Little Atoms 638 - Mark O'Connell's Notes From An Apocalypse

01 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Mark O'Connell is the author of To Be a Machine, which won the Wellcome Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2017. He lives in...

From The Archive - Fern Riddell's Death In Ten Minutes

25 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Fern Riddell is a historian specialising in sex, suffrage and culture in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. She appears regularly on TV and radio, a...

Little Atoms 637 - Garth Greenwell's Cleanness

18 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Garth Greenwell is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, where he was an Arts Fellow. His novella Mitko won the Miami Univ...

Little Atoms 636 - Kiran Millwood Hargrave's The Mercies

11 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Kiran Millwood Hargrave is an award-winning poet, playwright, and novelist. The Mercies is her first novel for adults. Her bestselling works...

Little Atoms 635 - Ingrid Persaud's Love After Love

04 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Born in Trinidad, Ingrid Persaud won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2017 and the BBC Short Story Award in 2018. She read law at the LSE and was...

Little Atoms 634 - Philip Hensher's A Small Revolution in Germany

27 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Philip Hensher has written eleven novels, including The Mulberry Empire, the Booker-shortlisted The Northern Clemency, King of the Badgers, ...

Little Atoms 633 - Eimear McBride's Strange Hotel

20 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Eimear McBride is the author of the novels The Lesser Bohemians (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize) and A Girl Is a Ha...

Little Atoms 632 - Rosanna Amaka's The Book of Echoes

13 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Rosanna Amaka was born to African and Caribbean parents. She began writing her debut novel The Books of Echoes twenty years ago to give voice to the B...

From The Archive - Damian Barr's You Will Be Safe Here

06 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Damian Barr is an award-winning writer and columnist. Maggie & Me, his memoir about coming of age and coming out in Thatcher's Britain, was a...

Little Atoms 631 - Stephen Moss' The Accidental Countryside

30 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Stephen Moss is a naturalist, broadcaster, television producer and author. In a distinguished career at the BBC Natural History Unit his credits ...

From the Archive - Yara Rodrigues Fowler's Stubborn Archivist

24 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Yara Rodrigues Fowler is a novelist from South London. She is also a trustee of Latin American Women's Aid, an organisation that runs the only two ref...

Little Atoms 630 - Ben Halls' The Quarry

17 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ben Halls is a London-based writer and journalist. He worked in pubs, off licences and several minimum wage jobs before deciding to return to school t...

Little Atoms 629 - Peter Swanson's Rules For Perfect Murders

10 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Peter Swanson's novels include The Girl With a Clock for a Heart, nominated for an LA Times book award, The Kind Worth Killing, a ...

Little Atoms 628 - Rosamund Lupton's Three Hours

03 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Rosamund Lupton is the author of Sister, a BBC Radio 4 "Book at Bedtime", a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller, winne...

Little Atoms 627 - Gaia Vince's Transcendence

25 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Gaia Vince is a science writer and broadcaster interested in the interplay between humans and the planetary environment. She has held senior edit...

From the Archive - Melissa Harrison's All Among The Barley

18 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Melissa Harrison is the author of the novels Clay and At Hawthorn Time, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted ...

From the Archive - Lauren Groff's Florida

11 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Lauren Groff is the author of three New York Times bestselling novels – Fates and Furies (named by Barack Obama as his favourite...

Little Atoms 626 - Eoin Colfer's Highfire

04 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Eoin Colfer is the author of the internationally bestselling Artemis Fowl series, which has been translated into over forty languages. A Disney film a...

Little Atoms 625 - An Yu's Braised Pork

28 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

An Yu was born and raised in Beijing, and left at the age of eighteen to study in New York at NYU. A graduate of the NYU MFA in Creative Writing, she ...

Little Atoms 624 - Ziya Tong's The Reality Bubble

21 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ziya Tong is on the board of WWF International and was formerly the Vice Chair of WWF Canada. She presented Daily Planet, Discovery Channel'...

Little Atoms 623 - Susannah Cahalan's The Great Pretender

14 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Susannah Cahalan is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, a memoir abou...

Little Atoms 622 - Romesh Gunesekera's Suncatcher

17 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Romesh Gunesekera is the author of many acclaimed works of fiction including Reef, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, The Sandglass...

Little Atoms 621 - James Meek's To Calais, In Ordinary Time

10 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

James Meek is the author of six novels including The People's Act of Love which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won both th...

Little Atoms 620 - Caleb Klaces' Fatherhood

06 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Padraig Reidy hosts this episode, joined by Caleb Klaces to discuss his debut novel Fatherhood. They talk about the place of being a father today, the...

Little Atoms 619 - Emma Forrest's Royals

03 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Emma Forrest has published three novels, an essay collection and the memoir Your Voice In My Head. An Anglo-American currently based in London, s...

Little Atoms 618 - Amelia Gentleman's The Windrush Betrayal

26 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode Neil speaks to Guardian reporter Amelia Gentleman. She was named journalist of the year (Press Gazette) and won the 2018 Paul Foot jou...

Little Atoms 617 - David Keenan's For The Good Times

19 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

David Keenan was born in Glasgow and grew up in Airdrie, in the west of Scotland, in the late-70s and early-1980s. He is the author of two novels, the...

Little Atoms 616 Téa Obreht's Inland

15 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Téa Obreht is the author of The Tiger's Wife, winner of the Orange Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award, and her latest novel is Inland. ...

Little Atoms - Henry McDonald's Two Souls

12 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Padraig Reidy hosts this week, speaking to Guardian journalist and author Henry McDonald about his novel Two Souls. They talk punk, football and param...

Little Atoms 614 - Sarah Perry's Melmoth

05 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This week Neil speaks to Sarah Perry, author of the bestselling The Essex Serpent, which won Waterstones Book of the Year 2016 and Book of the Year 20...

Little Atoms 613 - Elle Nash's Animals Eat Each Other

29 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Elle Nash is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine and a fiction editor at Hobart Pulp. Her work has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Elle, NAI...

Little Atoms 612 - Casey Cep's Furious Hours

24 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Casey Cep is a writer from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. After graduating from Harvard with a degree in English, she earned an M.Phil in theology at ...

Little Atoms 611 - Mars by 1980

21 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Author and music journalist David Stubbs joins Neil to talk about his latest book Mars by 1980: The Story of Electronic Music. They chat about the evo...

Little Atoms 610 - Fatima Bhutto's New Kings of the World

14 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Fatima Bhutto was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and grew up between Syria and Pakistan. She is the author of five previous books of fiction and nonf...

Little Atoms 609 - Lillian Li's Number One Chinese Restaurant

10 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Lillian Li joins Neil to talk about her debut novel, Number One Chinese Restaurant, which was longlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for fiction. Hoste...