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Little Atoms

Neil Dennylittleatoms.com
Little Atoms is a weekly show about books, with authors in conversation. Produced and presented by Neil Denny.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Episodes

501 - Jim Crace's The Melody

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. H...

Apr 02, 201830 min

Little Atoms 500! Philip Hensher’s The Friendly Ones

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.

Mar 26, 201842 min

499 - Cathi Unsworth’s Old Black Magic

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.

Mar 20, 201834 min

498: Matthew Sweet's Operation Chaos

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 Sil...

Mar 13, 201850 min

496 - Liam Drew's I, Mammal

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/...

Mar 06, 201856 min

495 - Tim Baker's City Without Stars

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'...

Feb 27, 201836 min

494 - Abi Andrews' The Word for Woman is Wilderness

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.

Feb 20, 201828 min

493 - Daniel Pink's When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.

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.

Feb 13, 201835 min

492 - Mohsin Hamid and Jon McGregor

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 ...

Feb 06, 20181 hr 6 min

Little Atoms 491 - Tony White's The Fountain in the Forest

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 Bl...

Jan 30, 201830 min

490 - Ausma Zehanat Khan & Valeria Luiselli

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 recentl...

Jan 23, 201851 min

489 - Caspar Henderson's New Map of Wonders

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 ...

Jan 16, 201830 minEp. 489

From the archive: Orwell in Tribune

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...

Jan 10, 201854 min

From the archive: Professor Brian Cox

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.

Dec 31, 201729 min

488 - Celeste Ng and Susie Boyt

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 a...

Dec 19, 201759 min

487 - Julie Bindel and John Crace

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 bo...

Dec 12, 20171 hr 3 min

486 John Higgs' Watling Street

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.

Dec 05, 201758 min

Converging Cultures - Apocalypse Now

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.

Dec 02, 201729 min

Little Atom 485 - Judith Matloff's The War Is In The Mountains

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 th...

Nov 28, 20171 hr 1 min

Converging Cultures Episode 3: Faces of war

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.

Nov 25, 201726 min

Little Atoms 484 - Joshua Cohen's Moving Kings

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.

Nov 21, 201742 min

Converging Cultures Episode 2 - All in your head

“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.

Nov 18, 201723 min

Angela Saini's Inferior - How Science Got Women Wrong

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.

Nov 14, 201748 minEp. 483

Little Atoms presents...Electric Enlightenment

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 Denny Produced by Thomas Glasse...

Nov 11, 201725 min

From the archive - Ann Druyan

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....

Nov 07, 20171 hr

482: Marcel Theroux's The Secret Books

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.

Oct 31, 201736 min

481: Marcus Du Sautoy and Jamie Perera's Sound of Proof

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....

Oct 24, 20171 hr 1 min

480 - David Eagleman and Anthony Brandt's Runaway Species

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 ...

Oct 16, 201738 min

479 - Dallas Campbell's Ad Astra

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 ba...

Oct 09, 201757 min
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