You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy.

My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds.

The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that.

With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts to helping you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're all put together by people who know their stuff. So if you want some expertly curated music in your life, check out BBC Sounds. This is the BBC.

Hello, time and how to control it has long been a preoccupation of great writers.

From Marvell and his coy mistress, had we but world enough and time,

to David Mitchell and his recent fantasy novel, The Bone Clocks.

Stop all the clocks, said Ordenen in the poem, Funeral Blues,

made famous, of course, in four weddings and a funeral,

and now a new novel by my first guest, Matt Haig,

attempts to do just that.

Haig has passed form, as they say on the racetrack,

with a Nestle winning children's title, a best-selling

memoir about depression, and adult novels among his accomplishments. His latest, How to Stop

Time, follows the fortunes of Tom Hazard, who looks 40, but is actually over 400 years old,

thanks to a mystery condition called Anagiria. Lucky him, you might think.

It's a crest that keeps the cosmetic industry alive.

But eternal life, despite the encounters down the centuries,

with luminaries like Shakespeare, Scott Fitzgerald and Samuel Johnson,

starts to become wearying.

When Tom finds love again after several centuries,

the one thing he's forsworn, in exchange for his survival, he's tempted to throw longevity aside for human engagement. Matt Haig joins me now.

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