In 1623, seven years after William Shakespeare died, two of his friends and fellow actors led an effort to publish a single volume containing 36 of the plays he had written, half of which had never been officially published before. Now known as the First Folio, that volume has become a lodestone of Shakespeare scholarship over the centuries, offering the most definitive versions of his work along with clues to his process and plenty of disputes about authorship and intention. In honor of its 400...
Nov 03, 2023•28 min•Ep 464•Transcript available on Metacast You dont need Halloween to justify reading scary books, any more than you need sand to justify reading a beach novel. But the holiday does give editors here a handy excuse to talk about some of their favorite spooky reads. On this weeks episode, the host Gilbert Cruz talks with his colleagues Tina Jordan and Sadie Stein about the enduring appeal of ghost stories, Gothic novels and other scary books. Titles discussed: Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After ...
Oct 27, 2023•34 min•Ep 463•Transcript available on Metacast In 2008 the same year that Robert Downey Jr. appeared in the action comedy Tropic Thunder, for which he would earn his second Oscar nomination he also appeared as the billionaire inventor and unlikely superhero Tony Stark in Iron Man, the debut feature from the upstart Marvel Studios. Downey lost the Oscar (to Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight), but Marvel won the day. In the 15 years since Iron Man came out, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has expanded to 32 films that have earned a staggering $26 ...
Oct 20, 2023•34 min•Ep 462•Transcript available on Metacast On this weeks episode, a look at the rest of the year in books new fiction from Alice McDermott and this years Nobel laureate, Jon Fosse, a journalists investigation of state-sanctioned killings in the Philippines, and a trio of celebrity memoirs. Discussed in this weeks episode: The Vulnerables, by Sigrid Nunez Day, by Michael Cunningham Absolution, by Alice McDermott A Shining, by Jon Fosse Romney: A Reckoniung, by McKay Coppins Class, by Stephanie Land Some People Need Killing, by Patricia Ev...
Oct 13, 2023•25 min•Ep 461•Transcript available on Metacast Madonna released her first single in 1982, and in one guise or another she has been with us ever since ubiquitous but also astonishing, when you consider the usual fleeting arc of pop stardom. How has she done it, and how have her various personae shaped or reflected the culture she inhabits? These are among the questions the renowned biographer Mary Gabriel takes up in her latest book, Madonna: A Rebel Life, which casts new light on its subjects life and career. On this weeks episode, the host ...
Oct 06, 2023•36 min•Ep 460•Transcript available on Metacast You love books. You love podcasts. Ergo, we assume you love audiobooks the way we do we hope you do, anyway, because this week weve devoted our entire episode to the form, as Gilbert Cruz is joined by a couple of editors from the Book Review, Lauren Christensen and Tina Jordan, to discuss everything from favorite narrators to regional accents to the ideal listening speed and the way audiobooks have to compete with other kinds of media. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore ev...
Sep 29, 2023•27 min•Ep 459•Transcript available on Metacast Zadie Smiths new novel, The Fraud, is set in 19th-century England, and introduces a teeming cast of characters at the periphery of a trial in which the central figure claimed to be a long-lost nobleman entitled to a fortune. Smith discusses her new novel with Sarah Lyall. Also on this weeks episode, the Times reporters Alexandra Alter and Julia Jacobs discuss a recent controversy involving the National Book Awards and their decision to drop Drew Barrymore as this years master of ceremonies in so...
Sep 22, 2023•35 min•Ep 458•Transcript available on Metacast Elon Musk, the billionaire South Africa-born entrepreneur whose business interests include the electric car company Tesla, the private rocket company SpaceX and the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), is the richest person in the world and the subject of an expansive new biography by Walter Isaacson, whose earlier subjects famously include the Apple founder Steve Jobs. Our critic Jennifer Szalai discusses her review of the Musk biography. Szalai also discusses her recent Times Magazine p...
Sep 15, 2023•24 min•Ep 457•Transcript available on Metacast Stephen Kings new novel, Holly, is his sixth book to feature the private investigator Holly Gibney, who made her debut as a mousy side character in the 2014 novel Mr. Mercedes and has become more complicated and interesting with each subsequent appearance. King appears on the podcast this week to tell the host Gilbert Cruz about Hollys hold on his imagination and the ways she overlaps with parts of his own personality. Along the way, he also tells a dad joke, remembers his friend Peter Straub, a...
Sep 08, 2023•39 min•Ep 456•Transcript available on Metacast The novelist Amor Towles, whose best-selling books include Rules of Civility, A Gentleman in Moscow and The Lincoln Highway, contributed an essay to the Book Review recently in which he discussed the evolving role the cadaver has played in detective fiction and what it says about the genres writers and readers. Towles visits the podcast this week to chat with the host Gilbert Cruz about that essay, as well as his path to becoming a novelist after an early career in finance. Also on this weeks ep...
Aug 18, 2023•53 min•Ep 455•Transcript available on Metacast Sarah Lyall discusses a new thriller in which a scuba diver gets swallowed by a sperm whale and Joumana Khatib gives recommendations for five August titles. Books discussed on this week's episode: Anansis Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World, by Yepoka Yeebo The Bee Sting, by Paul Murray The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil, and the Power of Philosophy in Dark Times, by Wolfram Eilenberger Pet, by Catherine Chidgey Happiness Falls, by Angie Kim ...
Aug 11, 2023•27 min•Ep 454•Transcript available on Metacast Ann Patchett returns to the podcast to talk about her new novel, "Tom Lake," waxes poetic on Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" (which plays a big part in her book), and talks about the joys of owning an independent bookstore. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Aug 04, 2023•37 min•Ep 453•Transcript available on Metacast The author Jeff Goodell joins to talk about his book The Heat Will Kill You First, about the consequences of a warming planet. Times critic Jennifer Szalai also discusses three books about the natural world. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Jul 28, 2023•42 min•Ep 452•Transcript available on Metacast Gilbert Cruz is joined by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead, who talks about his novel "Crook Manifesto" and Harlem in the '70s. He also reflects on his famous post-9/11 essay about New York City. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Jul 21, 2023•29 min•Ep 451•Transcript available on Metacast Gilbert Cruz is joined by fellow editors from the Book Review to revisit some of the most popular and most acclaimed books of 2023 to date. First up, Tina Jordan and Elisabeth Egan discuss the years biggest books, from Spare to Birnam Wood. Then Joumana Khatib, MJ Franklin and Sadie Stein recommend their personal favorites of the year so far. Books discussed on this weeks episode: Spare, by Prince Harry I Have Some Questions for You, by Rebecca Makkai Pineapple Street, by Jenny Jackson Romantic ...
Jul 14, 2023•38 min•Ep 450•Transcript available on Metacast The editors of The Book Review talk about the nitty gritty of literary translation. And then, a conversation about the legacy of the novel Bridget Joness Diary." What makes translation an art? How does a translators personality affect their work? Why do we see so many translations from some countries and almost none from others? These are just some of the questions addressed in a recent translation issue of the Book Review, which Gilbert Cruz breaks down with the editors Juliana Barbassa and Gre...
Jul 07, 2023•36 min•Ep 449•Transcript available on Metacast Recently, two giants of modern American literature died within a single day of each other. Gilbert Cruz talks with Dwight Garner about the work of Cormac McCarthys work, and with Pamela Paul and Emily Eakin about the life and legacy of Robert Gottlieb. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Jun 23, 2023•42 min•Ep 448•Transcript available on Metacast Jonathan Eigs book King: A Life is the first comprehensive biography in decades of Martin Luther King Jr., drawing on reams of interviews and newly uncovered archival materials to paint a fuller picture of the civil rights leader than we have received before. On this weeks podcast, Eig describes the process of researching and writing the book, and tells the host Gilbert Cruz how he tracked down resources that were unavailable to earlier biographers. I was a newspaper reporter for a long, long ti...
Jun 16, 2023•33 min•Ep 447•Transcript available on Metacast Theres no rule that says you have to read thrillers in the summer some people gobble them up them year round, while others avoid them entirely and read Kafka on the shore but on a long, lazy vacation day its undeniably satisfying to grab onto a galloping narrative and see where it pulls you. This week, Gilbert Cruz talks to our thrillers columnist Sarah Lyall about some classics of the genre, as well as more recent titles she recommends. Also on this weeks episode, Joumana Khatib offers a previe...
Jun 09, 2023•35 min•Ep 446•Transcript available on Metacast For readers, a books meaning can change with every encounter, depending on the circumstances and experiences they bring to it each time. On this weeks podcast, Gilbert Cruz talks to Salamishah Tillet, a Pulitzer-winning contributing critic at large for The Times, about her abiding love for Toni Morrisons novel Beloved in which a mother chooses to kill her own daughter rather than let her live in slavery and about the ways that Tillets personal experiences have affected her view of the book. I wa...
Jun 02, 2023•20 min•Ep 445•Transcript available on Metacast The writer Martin Amis, who died last week at the age of 73, was a towering figure of English literature who for half a century produced a body of work distinguished by its raucous wit, cutting intelligence and virtuosic prose. On this weeks podcast, Gilbert Cruz talks with The Timess critics Dwight Garner (who wrote Amiss obituary for the paper ) and Jason Zinoman (who co-hosts a podcast devoted to Amiss career, The Martin Chronicles) about the life and death of a remarkable figure who was, as ...
May 26, 2023•27 min•Ep 444•Transcript available on Metacast Are you ready to dive in to the work of the prolific and inventive fantasy writer Neil Gaiman? On this weeks episode, the longtime Gaiman fan J.D. Biersdorfer, an editor at the Book Review, talks with the host Gilbert Cruz about Gaimans work, which she recently wrote about for our continuing Essentials series. Also this week, Cruz talks with the Times critic Dwight Garner about The Death of the Author, a murder mystery that the novelist Stephen Marche wrote with the assistance of ChatGPT and oth...
May 19, 2023•32 min•Ep 443•Transcript available on Metacast The Pulitzer Prizes were announced on Monday, bestowing one of Americas most prestigious awards in journalism and the arts on writers across a range of categories. Among the winners were three authors who had also appeared on the Book Reviews list of the 10 Best Books of 2022: the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, for his memoir Stay True, and two novelists who (in a first for the Pulitzers) shared the prize in fiction, Barbara Kingsolver for Demon Copperhead and Hernan Diaz for Trust. On this we...
May 12, 2023•34 min•Ep 442•Transcript available on Metacast Book-banning efforts remain one of the biggest stories in the publishing industry, and on this weeks episode of the podcast, our publishing reporters Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth Harris chat with the host Gilbert Cruz about the current state of such attempted bans and how they differ from similar efforts in the past. It is amazing to see both the upward trend in book bans but also the ways that the process of getting bans has evolved, Alter says. This has happened really quickly. Weve seen a lo...
May 05, 2023•26 min•Ep 441•Transcript available on Metacast Eleanor Cattons new novel, Birnam Wood , is a rollicking eco-thriller that juggles a lot of heady themes with a big plot and a heedless sense of play no surprise, really, from a writer who won Britains prestigious Man Booker Prize for her previous novel, The Luminaries, and promptly established herself as a leading light in New Zealands literary community. On this weeks podcast, Catton tells the host Gilbert Cruz how that early success affected her writing life (not much) as well as her life out...
Apr 28, 2023•33 min•Ep 440•Transcript available on Metacast David Grann is one of the top narrative nonfiction writers at work today; a staff writer at The New Yorker, he has previously combined a flair for adventure writing with deep historical research in acclaimed books including The Lost City of Z and Killers of the Flower Moon. His latest, The Wager, applies those talents to a seafaring tale of mutiny and murder, reconstructing the fate of a lost British man-of-war that foundered on an island off the coast of Patagonia in the 18th century. On this w...
Apr 21, 2023•35 min•Ep 439•Transcript available on Metacast Its been more than 50 years since the publication of Judy Blumes middle-grade novel Are You There God? Its Me, Margaret, a coming-of-age tale that has become a classic for its frank discussion of everything from puberty to religious identity to life in the New Jersey suburbs. Despite its grip on generations of readers, though, the book has never been adapted for film until now, in a screenplay written by the director Kelly Fremon Craig and opening for wide release on April 28. To mark the occasi...
Apr 14, 2023•23 min•Ep 438•Transcript available on Metacast As you might guess, the folks who work at the Book Review are always reading and many of them like to juggle three or four books at once. In this episode, Gilbert Cruz talks to the editors Tina Jordan and Greg Cowles about what theyve been reading and enjoying, and then, in honor of National Poetry Month, interviews Cowles who, in addition to about a million other things, edits the Book Review's poetry coverage about how he came to love it. Ive always loved good sentences and surprising language...
Apr 07, 2023•28 min•Ep 437•Transcript available on Metacast After a spate of more or less contemporary horror novels set in and around New York, Victor LaValles latest book, Lone Women, opens in 1915 as its heroine, Adelaide Henry, is burning down her familys Southern California farmhouse with her dead parents inside, then follows her to Montana, where she moves to become a homesteader with a mysteriously locked steamer trunk in tow. Nothing in this genre-melding book is as it seems, Chanelle Benz writes in her review . The combination of LaValles agile ...
Mar 31, 2023•35 min•Ep 436•Transcript available on Metacast It should come as no surprise that writers and editors at the Book Review do a lot of outside reading and, even among ourselves, we like to discuss the books that are on our minds. On this weeks episode, Gilbert Cruz talks to the critic Jennifer Szalai and the editors Sadie Stein and Joumana Khatib about what theyve been reading (and in some cases listening to) recently. For Szalai, that includes a novel shes revisiting some two decades after she first read it: Kazuo Ishiguros The Remains of the...
Mar 17, 2023•23 min•Ep 435•Transcript available on Metacast 
