Life and Art from FT Weekend

Queen Elizabeth II has died after a 70-year reign. This weekend, we reflect on her legacy, life and cultural impact with FT Weekend editor Alec Russell. Then, producer Lulu Smyth takes us to meet the people gathered outside Buckingham Palace. ------- Links:  Simon Schama, ‘Elizabeth II: an appreciation’: https://on.ft.com/3qsNI64 Jo Ellison, ‘The Queen’s constancy never went out of style’: ht...

This week, guest host Topher Forhecz is joined by Los Angeles bureau chief Chris Grimes to hear about the future of TV's streaming wars. Since the pandemic, streaming services have poured huge amounts of money into new content, but it's unclear how long this boom will last. Then, we talk to Nature Therapy columnist Jonathan Guthrie about bees. He's estimated that we owe bees nearly $160bn for thei...

This weekend, we meet a British pioneer of sound design. Errol Michael Henry invites us to the Air-Edel studios in London to show us how a song gets made. Errol is one of the few black sound designers in the UK. He’s been producing music through his independent label, Intimate Records, since the 1980s. He breaks down how he creates his distinct sound, layer by layer. Then, we explore what makes th...

This weekend, we go to Ukraine. FT columnist Gillian Tett introduces us to the tech entrepreneurs and engineers who have built strong links with Silicon Valley and western tech companies over the past few decades. These connections are helping them fight what she calls an ‘open source war’ against Russia. Then, data journalist Oliver Roeder invites us into the elite world of professional chess. No...

Welcome to the fourth and final episode of our summer Food & Drink mini-series, where every Wednesday an expert teaches us something new. Today, we meet pastry chef Natasha Pickowicz. Natasha used to lead pastry in fine dining kitchens such as Altro Paradiso in New York. Now she does DIY pop-up bake sales around New York City to raise money for good causes. She’s a three-time James Beard award...

This week Lilah goes to Savannah, Georgia, to visit chef Mashama Bailey. Mashama recently won Outstanding Chef at the James Beard Awards. Since 2014, she has been chef and partner at The Grey, a restaurant located in a formerly segregated bus station. And she has been redefining American food by reclaiming its African-American roots. But because so much of this history hasn't been documented, how...

Welcome to our summer Food & Drink mini-series, where every Wednesday for four weeks an expert teaches us something new. Lilah’s third guest, Jancis Robinson, is the FT’s wine columnist and one of the most respected wine experts in the world. She joins us from France to talk through today’s top wine trends: oak is out, concrete is in. Heavy reds are out, paler and more acidic reds are in. And...

This week, we talk to the author Elif Batuman about her new novel ‘Either / Or’. The book is set in the 1990s, and follows Elif’s fictionalised alter ego, Selin, as she navigates life as a Harvard student. Elif reflects on looking back at   the ’90s from a contemporary perspective and talks about what we’ve learnt since. Then, we hear about feedbac...

“I always like a bite of food to feel like the Fourth of July in your mouth: small explosions of flavour where each bite is different.” Welcome to our summer Food & Drink-themed mini-series, where every Wednesday for four weeks, an expert teaches us something new. Lilah’s second guest is Ayesha Nurdjaja, executive chef and partner of Shuka and Shukette in New York. Ayesha is an expert at flavo...

This week, we hear about a new 'miracle' weight-loss drug called Wegovy. It has unprecedented clinical results and endorsements from celebrities such as Queen Latifah. But critics say it deals with the symptom but not the cause. Then, we’re joined by Lauren Indvik, the FT's fashion editor. She explains how to efficiently pinpoint your personal style, and build a wardrobe that saves money, time and...

Welcome to our summer Food & Drink-themed mini-series! Every Wednesday for the next four weeks, an expert will teach us something new. Lilah’s first guest is the chef and well-known food writer Andy Baraghani, who recently came out with a cookbook called 'The Cook You Want to Be'. He teaches us how to take the food that excites us, the food we grew up on and the food that we like now, and buil...

This week, we look at the dark side of professional tennis, where underpaid players are selling matches just to break even. Ranked around 200th in the world, a player named Nicolás Kicker was found guilty of match-fixing in 2018. His story reveals a lot of systemic problems within the sport. Then, we hear about the phenomenon of 'vice signalling' from columnist Stephen Bush. It’s similar to 'virtu...

This week, Lilah talks to Martin Wolf about having the confidence to change your mind. Martin is our chief economics commentator and one of the most influential economics journalists in the world. He reflects on how he forms a worldview, and how his opinions have shifted over the past half-century. Then, we hear about the 'gentle parenting' craze on Instagram from Washington correspondent Courtney...

This week is our summer books and films spectacular, full of recommendations of things to read and watch. First, Lilah is joined by literary editors Fred Studemann and Laura Battle to explore the FT's Summer Books special. They suggest a range of light summer reads, sharp non-fiction, deep dives, thrillers and classics to take on your summer holiday, and talk trends in book publishing. Then, deput...

This week, we return to one of our favourite episodes to ask the question: what does it mean to defy death? Rock climber Leo Houlding tells us about his terrifying family holidays, scaling vertical cliff-faces with his two young kids. We also explore radical life extension with science writer Anjana Ahuja. How close are we scientifically to extending the human lifespan to 150 or 200? What are the...

This week we speak with Michael R. Jackson, playwright of A Strange Loop , which just won the Tony award for Best Musical and Best Book. Jackson is a queer, black writer whose musical is about a queer, black writer writing a musical about a queer, black writer.. Hence the strange, but incredibly entertaining loop. Then, we learn about the dark side of Copenhagen's world-famous fine dining restaura...

Last month, Andy Warhol's "Shot Sage Blue Marilyn" sold for $195mn, making it the second most expensive piece of art to sell at auction, ever. And as prices keep going up, the art market — auction houses, gallerists, dealers, collectors — want to keep it that way. On the heels of a ‘stonking’ art season, we invite two heavy hitters into the studio to walk us through it: arts editor Jan Dalley and...

This week, we explore new scientific research behind: pigs! They have far more sentience and complexity than we give them credit for. Chief features writer Henry Mance joins to discuss how pigs and other animals think and feel, and the bigger questions around how we farm and eat them. Then, we look at a New York City architectural phenomenon: skinnyscrapers. Architecture critic Edwin Heathcote tel...

A bonus episode! We’ve just launched a new podcast on porn, power and profit. When FT reporter Patricia Nilsson started digging into the porn industry, she made a shocking discovery: nobody knew who controlled the biggest porn company in the world. Now, she and her editor, Alex Barker, reveal who is behind it and much more. This eight-part investigative podcast reveals the secret history of the ad...

This weekend, we're marking the Queen's Platinum Jubilee with a spirited discussion on what’s next for the Windsors. Tina Brown, author The Palace Papers , speaks with historian Simon Schama and HTSI editor Jo Ellison about the state of the royal family. As Britain celebrates 70 years of Elizabeth II on the crown, what will the royal family look like over the next decade? We bring you this convers...

In the 1930s, Alice Urbach wrote a beloved cookbook in Vienna. But during the Holocaust it was stolen: Aryanized, peppered with Nazi ideology and republished under someone else's name. The publisher refused to change it back for more than 85 years. Alice got her intellectual rights restored by her granddaughter Karina Urbach, a historian, who joins us to tell the story.  Afterwards, we bring...

It’s about to become much harder to find safe abortion care in America, in a country where some states already make it almost impossible. This week, we make sense of what’s happening and how we got here. Lilah speaks with Rhiannon Hamam, a Texas public defender and host of the popular show 5-4 (“a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks”) to make sense of Roe vs Wade, the seminal law that i...

Behind the Money is back with all-new episodes! From hostile takeovers to C-suite intrigue, Behind the Money takes you inside the business and financial stories of the moment with reporting from Financial Times journalists around the world. The podcast returns May 25. You can follow the show now! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This weekend, Lilah talks to actor Michael Patrick Thornton, who appears in the buzzy new Broadway production of Macbeth . When Michael was 24, he had a series of spinal cord strokes. Reciting Shakespeare's sonnets taught him how to breathe and speak again, and continue his career. Michael is at present the only actor on Broadway who uses a wheelchair. We ask him about the power of language and hi...

This week, Lilah interviews Everything Everywhere All at Onc e directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, also known as Daniels. Their film, starring Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis, has received rave reviews for successfully combining genres from indie comedy to sci-fi to kung fu. Then our colleagues Leo Lewis and Eri Sugiura join us from Tokyo to explain Japan's succession crisis. Small and...