There's a moment in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time — all seven volumes, 2,200 pages of it — when a man named Swann hears a few notes of a violin sonata at a Paris dinner party, and his entire world shifts. That little phrase of music becomes the anthem of a love story, a thread running through decades of memory, obsession, and loss.

The Little Phrase is a podcast about that thread. Each episode, hosts Eve and Elliot trace how an imaginary piece of music — the fictional Vinteuil Sonata — connects characters across generations in one of literature's greatest novels. We'll bring you readings from Proust, performed by Jane, alongside real music that might have floated through Proust's imagination when he invented Vinteuil: composers like César Franck, Gabriel Fauré, and the world of the 1890s Parisian salon.

Season One follows twelve short episodes — the love story of Charles Swann and Odette de Crécy, and the little phrase that binds them together. Whether you've read all of Proust or none of him, we think you'll find something here that stays with you.

New episodes every week. About eight minutes each. Come listen.