Little Atoms - podcast cover

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.

Episodes

Little Atoms 679 - Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom

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....

Mar 23, 202130 min

Little Atoms 678 - Kat Arney's Rebel Cell

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....

Mar 19, 202131 min

Little Atoms 677 - Sebastian Barry's A Thousand Moons

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....

Mar 16, 202130 min

Little Atoms 676 - Robert Jones Jr's The Prophets

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....

Mar 09, 202132 min

Little Atoms 675 - Rebecca Watson's little scratch

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....

Mar 05, 202129 min

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

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....

Feb 26, 202128 min

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

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 info...

Feb 23, 202129 min

Little Atoms 671 - Torrey Peters' Detransition, Baby

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 inf...

Feb 16, 202142 min

Little Atoms 670 Cal Flyn's Islands of Abandonment

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....

Feb 09, 202138 min

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

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 informat...

Feb 02, 202128 min

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

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.

Jan 29, 202125 min

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

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 ...

Jan 26, 202130 min

Little Atoms 666 - Ivy Pochoda's These Women

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...

Jan 18, 202133 min

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

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.

Jan 12, 202131 min

Little Atoms 663 - Alex Ross' Wagnerism

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. Host...

Dec 08, 202030 min

Little Atoms 662 - Noreena Hertz's The Lonely Century

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 ...

Dec 01, 202031 min

Little Atoms 661 - Gavin Francis' Island Dreams

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 &nbs...

Nov 24, 202029 min

Little Atoms 660 - William Boyd's Trio

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.

Nov 17, 202029 min

Little Atoms 659 - Rebecca Wragg Sykes' Kindred

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 ...

Nov 10, 202054 min

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

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 i...

Oct 31, 202026 min

Little Atoms 657 - Natalie Haynes' Pandora's Jar

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....

Oct 27, 202031 min

Little Atoms 656 - Gabriel Bergmoser's The Hunted

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 Grassroo...

Oct 19, 202033 min

Little Atoms 655 - Matthew Baker's Why Visit America

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 th...

Oct 12, 202028 min

Little Atoms 654 - Jo Marchant's The Human Cosmos

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,  sh...

Oct 05, 202027 min

Little Atoms 653 - Terri White's Coming Undone

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/...

Sep 28, 202029 min

Little Atoms 652 - Michael Bond's Wayfinding

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....

Sep 21, 202028 min

Little Atoms 651 - David Eagleman's Livewired

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 Runawa...

Sep 17, 202020 min

Little Atoms 650 - Susanna Moore's Miss Aluminium

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 the memoir Miss Aluminium . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....

Sep 14, 202027 min