Victoria Moul has been reading and memorising poetry since she was nine. She recites it at the dentist (‘ Aubade ’, rather alarmingly) and she recited poems all through her labours when she gave birth. We talked about all sorts of poetry, from ancient to living poets. What I really admire about Victoria is how at ease she is with poems across many centuries and how she can read as a scholar and with great personal emotion. Her Substack Horace & friends is one of my favourites. For the last q...
Jun 22, 2025•1 hr 4 min
In this interview, Lamorna Ash, author of Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: A New Generation's Search for Religion , and one of my favourite modern writers, talked about working at the Times Literary Supplement , netball, M. John Harrison, AI and the future of religion, why we should be suspicious of therapy, the Anatomy of Melancholy , the future of writing, what surprised her in the Bible, the Simpsons, the joy of Reddit, the new Pope, Harold Bloom, New Atheism’s mistakes, reading J.S. Mill. I ...
Jun 12, 2025•1 hr 8 min
I was delighted to talk to the historian Helen Castor (who writes The H Files by Helen Castor ) about her new book The Eagle and the Hart. I found that book compulsive, and this is one of my favourite interviews so far. We covered so much : Dickens, Melville, Diana Wynne Jones, Hilary Mantel, whether Edward III is to blame for the Wars of the Roses, why Bolingbroke did the right thing, the Paston Letters, whether we should dig up old tombs for research, leaving academia, Elizabeth I, and, of cou...
May 18, 2025•1 hr 12 min
Clare Carlisle’s biography of George Eliot, The Marriage Question , is one of my favourite modern biographies, so I was really pleased to interview Clare. We talked about George Eliot as a feminist, the imperfections of her “marriage” to George Henry Lewes, what she learned from Spinoza, having sympathy for Casaubon, contradictions in Eliot’s narrative method, her use of negatives, psychoanalysis, Middlemarch , and more. We also talked about biographies of philosophers, Kierkegaard, and Somerset...
Apr 27, 2025•1 hr 21 min
Interview with Matt Yglesias about reading classic novels, like Middlemarch, and some discussion of his favourite movies. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk/subscribe
Apr 13, 2025•1 hr 18 min
The Shakespeare Book Club meets tonight to talk about A Midsummer Night’s Dream . Zoom link here for paid subscribers . Paid subscribers can also join this chat thread and ask me (or other subscribers) whatever they want . Tell us what you are reading, what you disagreed with me about this month. Ask niche questions someone here might be able to answer. Ask me anything you like (I might not answer!) This is an experiment... let's see where it goes... Join the chat. Katherine Dee Interview When w...
Mar 23, 2025•54 min
After enjoying her new book Open Socrates so much (and having written about her previous book Aspiration in Second Act ), I was delighted to talk to Agnes Callard , not least because, as she discusses in Open Socrates , she is a big Tolstoy admirer. We talked about Master and Man , one of my favourite Tolstoy stories, but also about the value of reading fiction, the relationship between fiction and a thought experiment, and other topics of related interest. George Eliot makes an appearance too. ...
Mar 09, 2025•1 hr 7 min
In this episode, James Marriott and I discuss who we think are the best twenty English poets. This is not the best poets who wrote in English, but the best British poets (though James snuck Sylvia Plath onto his list…). We did it like that to make it easier, not least so we could base a lot of our discussion on extracts in The Oxford Book of English Verse (Ricks edition). Most of what we read out is from there. We read Wordsworth, Keats, Hardy, Milton, and Pope. We both love Pope! (He should be ...
Feb 23, 2025•1 hr 40 min
Paid subscribers can join this chat thread about Pride and Prejudice . The book club meets on 16th February . I was gripped by a. natasha joukovsky ’s novel The Portrait of a Mirror , which I went through in almost one sitting (life gets in the way, alas). And I am enjoying her series of analyses of Austen’s men . Natasha works at Accenture, so we talked about what is it like to be a novelist working in consulting, as well as discussing her love of Austen, which began when she was ten-years-old ...
Feb 02, 2025•1 hr 9 min
Atlas Shrugged seems to be everywhere today. Randian villains are in the news. Rand remains influential on the right, from the Reagan era to the modern libertarian movement. Perhaps most significantly, entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen who are moving into government with DOGE, have been influenced by Rand, and, fascinatingly, Andreessen only read the novel four years ago . Hollis Robbins (@Anecdotal) and I talked about how Atlas Shrugged is in conversation with the great novels of...
Jan 18, 2025•1 hr 47 min
Tyler and I spoke about view quakes from fiction, Proust, Bleak House , the uses of fiction for economists, the problems with historical fiction, about about drama in interviews, which classics are less read, why Jane Austen is so interesting today, Patrick Collison, Lord of the Rings… but mostly we talked about Shakespeare. We talked about Shakespeare as a thinker, how Romeo doesn’t love Juliet, Girard, the development of individualism, the importance and interest of the seventeenth century, Tr...
Jan 01, 2025•1 hr 9 min
Who else in literature today could be more interesting to interview than Brandon Taylor, the author of Real Life , Filthy Animals , and The Late Americans , as well as the author of popular reviews and the sweater weather Substack? We talked about so much, including: Chopin and who plays him best; why there isn’t more tennis in fiction; writing fiction on a lab bench; being a scientific critic; what he has learned working as a publisher; negative reviews; boring novels; Jane Austen. You’ll also ...
Dec 21, 2024•1 hr 2 min
I’ve been a big Zena Hitz fan since I read Lost in Thought in 2020, a book I am still recommending to people nearly five years later. We talked about Shakespeare, children’s books, St John’s College , the Catherine Project , whether you should read secondary literature, Tolkien, nuns, and we had a giggle while we did so. Zena is one of the best public intellectuals who remains deeply committed to reading the Great Books and I was very pleased to record this conversation with her. This is a publi...
Dec 01, 2024•1 hr 1 min
I spoke to Samuel Arbesman about late bloomers . He asked many splendid questions no-one has asked before. With Mark Crowley I discussed some practical aspects of late blooming. On December 5th I am talking to professor Stephen Greenblatt and psychoanalyst Adam Philips about their new book Second Chances , which combines Shakespeare and late blooming. What more could I ask for? I was delighted to talk to Marion Turner, the J.R.R. Tolkien professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford . W...
Nov 17, 2024•1 hr 1 min
It was a delight to talk to Naomi Kanakia who writes the Woman of Letters Substack. We talked about the homogeneity of modern fiction, whether the Great Books are really great (and which ones she found boring), as well as economics and fiction. I enjoy Naomi’s literary criticism on Substack very much and I am anticipating her new book about the Great Books. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk...
Oct 27, 2024•51 min
I was delighted to talk to the novelist Catherine Lacey , whose book Biography of X I admired very much indeed. We talked about personal websites , how she learned to code in HTML, 9 Beet Stretch , her writing on Substack ( Untitled Thought Project ), biography as a genre, modern novels, figurative art, Derek Parfit , MFAs, fiction and non-fiction, short stories, Merve Emre, W.S. Merwin, television, and plenty more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers o...
Oct 13, 2024•1 hr 26 min
There’s a profile about me and Second Act in the New Zealand Listener . It’s very good so if you’re in NZ and have a subscription (it’s paywalled) do take a look. I chuckled at this line: “Speaking by Zoom from London, Oliver is a serious fellow, and has the manner of someone older.” This was nice too: “He also has a strong sense of his own mortality. For someone still in their 30s, this seems surprising until he talks about his penchant for poetry… Our interview is peppered with quotes from poe...
Sep 17, 2024•1 hr 13 min
I always enjoy corresponding with Hollis Robbins (@Anecdotal) and was therefore delighted to talk to her about poetry and literature. It’s a wonderful conversation that ranges across so many books and ideas. We covered why there is no crisis in the humanities, why you should read Walter Scott, our favourite modern poets (Hollis: Terrance Hayes ; Henry: Sally Read — I like her book Day Hospital very much), Regency video games, the role of AI in teaching, AI and poetry, how Hollis would change the...
Aug 27, 2024•51 min
What a delight to talk to James Marriott, the Times columnist who writes about literature, culture, and being a millennial. James is very well-read and we covered the ground from Iris Murdoch to Harry Potter, from why men should read novels to whether the crisis of modernity is actually modern. You can read James’s columns at the Times or see his Twitter feed here . I found James’ comments on the important of being pretentious interesting and they reminded me of what the philosopher Agnes Callar...
Aug 08, 2024•1 hr 1 min
NB The first two or three minutes have some audio glitches but the rest of the recording is much better quality. I was delighted to talk to A.N. Wilson, novelist, journalist, biographer, and historian, whose books on Iris Murdoch, Dante, and Prince Albert I very much admire, as well as his memoir Confessions . Wilson’s new book Goethe. His Faustian Life comes out in September (December in the USA) and is a splendid account of Goethe’s lifelong work on Faust . In this interview we talk about Goet...
Jul 28, 2024•45 min
In Tyler Cowen’s new book there is a whole chapter about John Stuart Mill, and I think Tyler really gets Mill, and draws on many of the key sources, both primary and secondary. So I’m pleased to offer you this conversation about Mill and biography, economics ideas where Mill remains relevant, how to read Mill properly, why Mill isn’t so influential today, whether Mill was a coherent thinker, the gap in the intellectual heritage of Effective Altruism, when the different arts peaked, why you shoul...
Dec 11, 2023•43 min
Writing Elsewhere Recently I have written for The Critic about how to find somewhere to live in London , solving the problem of modern architecture, and in praise of stupid politicians . I also produced some epigrams framed as advice for young people . Noah Smith is an economics blogger with his own Substack (highly recommended). We talked about late bloomers, motivation, modelling effects, peer effects, culture, and Anime. I’ll leave you to decide what you believe about the disagreement half wa...
Sep 05, 2022•1 hr 6 min
NEWS * Podcasts are now available in places like Spotify and Apple Podcasts. If you listen to them there, please rate or like the episodes as this helps other people to find them. * I am writing films reviews on Letterboxd. You can find them here . You might enjoy this one about The Truman Show . Again, hit like to help other people find the review. Thanks! Anna Gát was a showbiz child in Budapest. She converted to Catholicism aged twelve under her own initiative. After an exciting but then disp...
Aug 08, 2022•1 hr 16 min
This conversation with economist and late bloomer Robin Hanson probably peaks towards the end, when we were bouncing ideas around, but the whole thing is highly interesting. Robin has a habit of rephrasing questions to make sure he is answering something specific, something I have seen in successful lawyers. Robin talked about his idea for a polymath department in universities, why desperation not inspiration was what made him change his life, how to talent spot late bloomers, and whether Robin ...
Jul 04, 2022•1 hr 25 min
It was such a pleasure to talk to Sarah Harkness . Sarah is a former partner at Arthur Andersen who had a career in corporate finance and then as a non-executive director. She is now a literary late bloomer. She has self-published a book about the Victorian artist Nelly Erichsen . She has an MA in Biography from the University of Buckingham, where she studied with with Jane Ridley. She won the Tony Lothian Prize, 2022 . And she is now writing a biography of the Victorian publisher Alexander Macm...
Jun 06, 2022•45 min
Before we get started… Writing elsewhere I have recently written about modern Russian literature for CapX , as well Victorian YIMBYs and Katherine Mansfield and 1922 , for The Critic . Tours of London Sign up here to get updates when we add new tour dates. There will be three tours a month, covering the Great Fire, Barbican, Samuel Johnson and more! Helen Lewis is a splendid infovore, which is how she has come to be one of the most interesting journalists of her generation. You will see in this ...
Apr 18, 2022
I was very pleased to talk to Charles Moore , who I have read admiringly for many years. His three volume biography of Margaret Thatcher is one of the most interesting biographies published in the last few years. He also edited a volume of T.E.Utley’s journalism . In this discussion you will hear (or read the transcript below!) whether Margaret Thatcher is more left-wing than we think, what Charles thinks of political biography, how his footnotes work, who are the most underrated Thatcher cabine...
Mar 01, 2022•38 min
