Shauneen Lambe on ephibiphobia, fear of the teenager, and why we get youth justice wrong; Alice Bloch considers new possibilities at the frontiers of sex and robotics; George Berridge explains why now is the time to take out shares in the novelist Max Porter Why Children Follow Rules: Legal socialization and the development of legitimacy by Tom R. Tyler and Rick Trinkner James Garbarino Miller’s Children: Why giving teenage killers a second chance matters for all of us by James Garbarino Turned ...
Apr 10, 2019•49 min
Anna Picard discusses the problems of subject matter and sensationalism in the new opera Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel; Anna Vaux talks us through the Bauhaus school and its global influence, as well as Lucian Freud's compulsion to create and control Books Jack the Ripper:The Women of Whitechapel by Iain Bell, ENO, until April 12 Walter Gropius: Visionary founder of the Bauhaus by Fiona MacCarthy Josef Albers: Life and work by Charles Darwent Lucian Freud by Martin Gayford Hosted on ...
Apr 03, 2019•39 min
Richard Fortey takes us on an energetic sprint through 65 million years of Europe's complex biological history; David Robey introduces the life and work of Emilio Salgari, the Italian Rider Haggard; Ella Baron, the TLS's regular cartoonist, discusses her work, including this week's European cover. Books Europe: A natural history by Tim Flannery Emilio Salgari: Una mitologia moderna tra letteratura, politica, società (volumes I and II) by Ann Lawson Lucas Ella Baron's work will be exhibited at Ch...
Mar 28, 2019•48 min•Ep. 221
Carol Tavris considers new approaches to the old problem of old age (and the newer problem of old old age); as secularism wanes on the global scale, Rupert Shortt considers whether religion does more harm than good Books Bolder: Making the most of our longer lives by Carl Honoré Borrowed Time: The science of how and why we age by Sue Armstrong Retirement and Its Discontents: Why we won’t stop working, even if we can by Michelle Pannor Silver Women Rowing North: Navigating life’s currents and flo...
Mar 21, 2019•45 min
“What we often forget in the daily drumbeat of abuses by the dominant tech companies is our complicity in these abuses, and in the fundamental and unsettling ways the internet has changed every one of us.” As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enters its seventieth anniversary, Dave Eggers, in the 2018 PEN H. G. Wells lecture, argues that urgent amendments are needed to mitigate the corrosive effects of technology on the societal and the personal. You can read an edited extract from the l...
Mar 14, 2019•1 hr 8 min
Phil Baker guides us through the morbid, wistful and yet immensely charming world of the writer and illustrator Edward Gorey; Frances Wilson weighs the pleasures and pains of letter and email writing; Ian Sansom on the struggle to be funny Books Born To Be Posthumous: The eccentric life and mysterious genius of Edward Gorey, by Mark Dery What a Hazard a Letter Is: The strange destiny of the unsent letter, by Caroline Atkins Written In History: Letters that changed the world, by Simon Sebag Monte...
Mar 14, 2019•54 min
David Coward celebrates the 400th anniversary of the birth of Cyrano de Bergerac, whose radical thought has long been obscured by his protuberant nose; Muriel Zagha on Molière, France’s most famous playwright, and a bold new adaptation of Tartuffe; finally, a poem by Stephen Knight: “Rail Replacement Bus Service” (sigh) Molière’s ‘Tartuffe’, a new version by John Donnelly, at the National Theatre, London Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Mar 07, 2019•37 min
With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas Toby Lichtig comes in to talk the wide scope of Jewish culture, the “lachrymose” theory of history and why it is Arthur Miller time once more. Roz Dineen deals with porn, pile-ons and goop podcasts. And we call Thea when she is “working from home” to check in on her new dog. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Feb 28, 2019•50 min
A conversation between the novelist and essayist Zadie Smith and the journalist Carolina, recorded at Hay Festival Cartagena in Colombia earlier this month. The full Hay Festival archive can be accessed by subscribing to Hay Player online at hayfestival.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Feb 21, 2019•15 min
The writer and comedian Charlie Higson, half of the team behind The Fast Show, on the curious history of comedy written and performed by pairs; the novelist Margaret Drabble considers the dizzying new releases from the estate of Anthony Burgess, the man Philip Larkin once called “the Batman of contemporary letters” Texts Stan & Ollie, directed by Jon S. Baird Morecambe & Wise: 50 years of sunshine, by Gary Morecambe The Double Act: A history of British comedy duos, by Andrew Roberts Soup...
Feb 21, 2019•45 min
A recording of the inaugural Gabriel García Marquez lecture given this February by the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, at Hay Festival Cartagena in Colombia. The full Hay Festival archive can be accessed by subscribing to Hay Player online at hayfestival.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Feb 14, 2019•12 min
As the MeToo movement continues to focus our attentions on questions around abuse, consent and justice, Rebecca Watson joins us to discuss the various and prolonged impacts of sexual assault, and the warping effect of trauma on narrative; the TLS’s French editor Adrian Tahourdin considers the inexorable rise of “le globish” (by which English words supplant, or pervert, French ones), and presents the diverse and challenging books in contention for this year’s Society of Author’s Translation Prize...
Feb 14, 2019•35 min
Eighteen months after Emmanuel Macron rode a wave of optimism to the Élysée Palace, the French are rioting and the President's approval ratings are desperately low – Sudhir Hazareesingh tells us what went wrong; James O'Brien reflects on another week of Brexit bafflement; Laura Freeman introduces the "Hungry Novel", a sub-genre of the post-war British novel in which writers, subsisting on meagre rations of stodge and tinned goods, channelled their appetites into their prose Hosted on Acast. See ...
Feb 07, 2019•56 min
Read by Lisa Dwan. Full text available at the-tls.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jan 31, 2019•39 min
Catherine Taylor on bookish goings on in the north of England, from her family’s bookshop in Sheffield to the Northern Fiction Alliance of small presses; Diarmaid Ferriter considers the fraught matter of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland; Fríða Ísberg on the spectre of war in Icelandic film and fiction Books The Border: The legacy of a century of Anglo-Irish politics by Diarmaid Ferriter Hotel Silence (Ör) by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir Woman at War, directed by Benedikt Erlingsson Secti...
Jan 31, 2019•47 min
Imogen Russell Williams on children's books that tackle grief and war, “offering distressed adults the calming certainty of a script, and baffled children the reassurance of straightforward answers”; Carl Miller discusses the creation, and squabbling continuation, of Reddit, one of the most popular websites in the world; A. N. Wilson considers the Travellers Club in London, now in its 200th year, where Britain's prime ministers "got stuff done" Books White Feather by Catherine and David MacPhail...
Jan 24, 2019•57 min
Boyd Tonkin states the case – never overstated – for literature in translation, and reviews a commendable recent effort "to grasp, and to survey, the entire planet of words"; Andrew Scull considers the travails of social psychology and the egos and experiments that professed to tell us something essential about human nature by setting fire to forests or electrocuting dogs... Books Found in Translation: 100 of the finest short stories ever translated, edited by Frank Wynne The Lost Boys: Inside M...
Jan 17, 2019•46 min
Tom Stevenson offers a recent history of political assassination, from a CIA manual of 1953 to the Jamal Khashoggi affair; The literary achievements of Nancy Cunard have long been eclipsed by her image as the archetypal flapper-muse of the roaring 1920s – as Anna Girling reveals a previously unknown short story (published for the first time in this week's TLS), we reassess Cunard's legacy; Who killed Edwin Drood? In 1914, faced with Dickens's final, unfinished novel, prominent literary types gat...
Jan 10, 2019•47 min
With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas Lara Pawson drops in to tell the tale of David Wojnarowicz, the New York artist whose time has come. Elaine Showalter examines a new biography of Germaine Greer. Kim Addonizio, winner of the Mick Imlah Prize for Poetry, reads her victorious poem. Plus, Lucy admits to having an allotment, and Stig learns he has been introducing the show all wrong. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jan 03, 2019•42 min
Who is Odysseus? Why can't he get home? And will the gods help or hinder his journey? In this special episode, the TLS's Classics editor Mary Beard chairs a panel featuring the author and academic Simon Goldhill, the memoirist and translator Daniel Mendelsohn, the poet Karen McCarthy Woolf and the novelist Madeline Miller. This is a recording of a live event, staged in collaboration with the Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival in October 2018. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for...
Dec 27, 2018•1 hr
An end-of-year edition, bringing together some of our favourite bits from the past twelve months: Kathryn Hughes on whether and where Charlotte Brontë meets Jane Eyre; Margaret Drabble reviews the life and work of Muriel Spark, whose centenary we marked this year; David Baddiel discusses whether Jewishness is inherently funny; Clare Pettitt revisits the history of the Peterloo massacre of 1819. A refresher for regular listeners and a sampler for newcomers – with thanks to all. Hosted on Acast. S...
Dec 27, 2018•1 hr 15 min
TLS editors discuss some memorable arts events from the past twelve months; plus, food and drink in literature and a preview of the TLS's Christmas double issue, including how to do German food, M. F. K. Fisher, French food slang, pub stories, and a deconstruction of the traditional British Christmas dinner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Dec 20, 2018•56 min
Lucy Atkins charts our changing relationship with Orcinus orca, from "demon dolphin" to cuddly icon; Ruth Scurr on the lives and unlikely friendship of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn Books Orca: How we came to know and love the ocean’s greatest predator by Jason M. Colby John Evelyn: A life of domesticity by John Dixon Hunt The Curious World of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn by Margaret Willes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Dec 13, 2018•37 min
Michael Caines on the little-known romantic William Gilbert, a “man of fine genius” (according to William Wordsworth) who had “unfortunately received a few rays of supernatural light through a crack in his upper story”; Daniel Beer tells the tale of the Gulag at Solovki, a converted monastery known as “the Paris of the Northern concentration camps”, a place of brutality but also of resistant culture and ideas; finally, Laurence Scott considers the cultural history of shoeshining, from Dickens to...
Dec 06, 2018•47 min
Forty years since the controversial Spanish constitution of 1978, Rupert Shortt, Hispanic editor at the TLS, discusses the painful evolution of democracy in Spain; Siobhan Magee considers our problematic relationship with farmed animals, namely dairy cows, and crops, such as palm oil; Dwight Garner, a literary critic at the New York Times, offers glimpses into his commonplace book, in which four decades of favourite quotations converse with each other Books The Cow with Ear Tag #1389 by Kathryn ...
Nov 29, 2018•46 min
A handful of TLS editors gather for the yearly process of picking through contributors' Books of the Year selections, and nominate their own books to remember; Serhii Plokhy, the winner of this year's Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for 'Chernobyl: The history of a nuclear catastrophe', speaks to the TLS's History editor David Horspool Selected books The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey Charles de Gaulle: A certain idea of France by Julian Jackson Normal People by Sally Rooney Murmur by Wil...
Nov 22, 2018•52 min
Mary Beard joins us to answer the question: Is it accurate to call Donald Trump a fascist?, while the TLS's fiction and politics editor Toby Lichtig discusses how the President is presented, in books and on film; and Julia Bell looks back on her Oxford entrance interview - with no fondness - and wonders: "Was it a trap or a test?" Books Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis Nobody hates Trump more than Trump by David Shields Hosted on Acast. See acast.com...
Nov 15, 2018•51 min
To mark the centenary of the end of the First World War, the TLS's History editor David Horspool talks us through books, exhibitions and events that commemorate cataclysmic slaughter and scars that endure to this day; it’s easy to think of privacy invasion as a peculiarly modern phenomenon, but it has its own history dating back to the American Civil War – Sarah Igo tells us more; finally, the food writer Bee Wilson discusses two new cookbooks that capture a “fresh mood of experiment in the kitc...
Nov 08, 2018•47 min
As Mike Leigh's film of the Peterloo massacre of 1819 is released, Clare Pettitt revisits the history; Marina Benjamin offers a personal and literary account of the threshold between sleep and wakefulness; following the publication of a second volume of Sylvia Plath's letters, Hannah Sullivan looks for fresh insights into the poet's work, life and death; finally, Sam Riviere reads his new poem, "Sushi Tuesday" Works discussed Peterloo, directed by Mike Leigh Insomnia by Marina Benjamin The Lette...
Nov 01, 2018•48 min
Are authors, reviewers and publicists wasting their time on book coverage? The contemporary conversation about books and ideas goes way beyond traditional features and interviews. Book groups, academic seminars, Amazon user reviews, Goodreads, the press, radio, podcasts, and sometimes even TV: the form, tone and quality of coverage has infinite variety. But how much does any of it help the books business – if it can be measured at all? Do authors, reviewers, and publicists feel their efforts are...
Oct 24, 2018•35 min
