The TLS Podcast

Joining Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas this week: Muriel Zagha, to discuss the redolent funk of French cinema; and James O'Brien, to summarise the rancid political mess of Great Britain. Meanwhile, Sam Graydon goes to see the National Poetry Library in London. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – As a new anthology of stories brings the thrills-and-chills of genre writing to bear on the experiences of the "wrongfully convicted", the author and essayist Leslie Jamison discusses competing impulses in the writer–convict–reader relationship, why we need to talk about guilt rather than innocence, and her own correspondence with three prisoners; Federico Gar...

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – "For every competent feminist book”, Camille Paglia wrote in 1995, “there are twenty others shot through with inaccuracies, distortions, and propaganda.” Charlotte Shane runs us through a clutch of recent books by, among others, Laurie Penny, Rebecca Solnit and Paglia herself; How do we account for the extraordinary and enduring popularity of the French theori...

A bonus episode: Stig Abell hosts a debate at the Brooklyn Literary Festival in which the New Yorker's Jelani Cobb, the New York Times' Michelle Goldberg and Pen America's Suzanne Nossel consider what is going on in American universities and beyond when it comes to debates about race, gender and identity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Would you take fashion advice from Beckett? Was John Updike an early advocate of "norm-core"? We're joined in the studio by Laura Freeman to discuss a new book, Legendary Authors and the Clothes they Wore; addiction represents the height of paradox: the quest for fulfilment of individual desire that embraces the destruction of the individual self. Eric Iannell...

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas - we are in the studio with Ian Thomson discussing the unlikely collaboration between a Neo Dadaist and Dante; we talk to Mark Ford about Weldon Kees, the American poet you should have heard of; and Michael Caines delves into the theatrical mind of the great Peter Brook. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this bonus episode, visionary director Peter Brook talks about his life in the theatre – and explains why Shakespeare is like a skyscraper Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – The meaning of the 15th-century Voynich manuscript – a strange compendium of undecipherable signs, astrological symbols and pictures of nude bathing women – has long eluded scholars. We're joined by bibliographical sleuth Nicholas Gibbs, who appears to have discovered the manuscript's secret; to mark the double anniversary of one of America's greatest poets, R...

With Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas – Alexander van Tulleken on what makes popular science books – including Neil deGrasse Tyson's Astrophysics for People in a Hurry – so popular, and is there a hidden danger in making science the subject of water-cooler conversations?; Clair Wills joins us in the studio to discuss the forgotten stories of Punjabi migrants who came to England in the 1950s and ear...

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – We're joined in the studio by Sam Leith, Literary editor of the Spectator and self-professed rhetoric geek, discusses the problem of fake news in a post-truth world, with recourse to Aristotle and economic theory; we're running an extract, in this week's summer double issue, from My Absolute Darling, the new American novel everyone seems to be talking about –...

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Novelist Neel Mukherjee discusses the vexed state of Modern India and the legacy of Partition 70 years on; Frances Wilson considers a problematic clutch of books that look to describe a "sisterhood" of female writers from Jane Austen to Virginia Woolf and beyond Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With Lucy Dallas and Toby Lichtig. The TLS critic David Collard explores the idiosyncratic worlds of Ian Nairn – architectural critic, psychogeographer, “a cross between Anthony Burgess and Tony Hancock” – and describes Nairn’s influence on a generation of authors, including Simon Okotie, whose new novel he’s also reviewed in this week’s TLS. The paper's biography editor Catharine Morris tells the...

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Former US Government consultant Edward Luttwak explains how the rising cost of cars in the US lies behind Donald Trump's election, and why the Democrats' sustained failure to address the problem may lead to consecutive terms for The Donald and his progeny; Humans are, more or less, logical and rational beings, aren't they? Cecilia Heyes, Senior Research Fellow...

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – We're joined in the studio by Claire Harman, author of Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen conquered the world, to discuss the life and legacy of this perhaps most-loved of all authors: what makes her so special, so alive in the modern world? And will there be no end to (stranger and stranger) adaptations of her work? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more i...

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi: Politicians – Theresa May foremost among them – always begin their obfuscations and delusional self-justifications by pretending to offer clarity. Journalist James O'Brien joins us to discuss the past thirty-odd days in the world of Prime Minister May, from the flunked general election to the travesty of Grenfell Tower, in a quest for that most elusive of thing...

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi: David Bromwich dips into the newly published letters, spanning 1920–8, of Robert Frost, the farmer-cum-teacher-cum-giant of American poetry who believed that a master writer should 'invade' younger writers 'to show them how much more they contain than they can write down'; 'Conversations around race and racism tend not to happen as much in Britain as in America...

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – 'Few people are aware that every week the White House indulges in Terror Tuesday, where the US President personally approves people for death without any legal process at all' – so says Clive Stafford Smith, who joins us in the studio to chart the global proliferation of modern state-led assassination and the moral, legal and human 'collateral damage'; Lamorna...

Every year we ask a selection of TLS contributors what they'll be reading with those extra hours of daylight. In this episode, we're joined by Fiction editor Toby Lichtig and Arts editor Lucy Dallas to pick through the results and discuss our own selections. Plus, an exclusive interview with 2017 Man Booker International-winner, the Israeli novelist David Grossman, and translator Jessica Cohen Hos...

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas. We discuss the election that nobody won and (almost) nobody predicted; varnishing day at the Royal Academy's summer exhibition; and the dubious merits of 1967's Summer of Love. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Distinguished social psychologist Carol Tavris discusses whether we are seeing the end of definition by gender and whether there is any benefit in trying to track, physiologically and psychologically, the differences between men and women; Brian Dillon tackles the past, present and future of the essay form, via the indolent and melancholic work of Cyril Connol...

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – TLS Politics editor Toby Lichtig speaks to Assaf Gavron, author of a fascinating essay on the role of football in the politics of the Middle East, and runs us through a number of pieces from this week’s issue on the legacy of the Six-Day War, 60 years on; "No wild animal plays a more significant or ambivalent role in the imaginings of the British than the fox"...

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – TLS Philosophy editor Tim Crane grapples with the mind-body problem and "what it means to be the kind of creatures we are", plus the year that brightened Nietzsche's outlook, and Biscuit the dog's self-consciousness; Korean American author Min Jin Lee on how Korean literature approaches the difficult dream of reunification and what a new collection of stories,...

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Michel Foucault was so fascinated by lettres de cachet – pre-Revolutionary requests made by citizens to the lieutenant of police calling for the imprisonment without trial of a troublesome family member or neighbour – that he co-edited a little-known compendium of them: Biancamaria Fontana joins us to explain; Was the "plunder of black life" the driving force...

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas. Sudhir Hazareesingh gives his analysis of the French election and the rise of Macron; Toby Lichtig (sic) helps us tackle genre fiction, including our tips for the greatest ever historical novel; and Hal Jensen celebrates an 8-hour play about American identity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On April 30, at London's Southbank Centre, an extraordinary cast of readers – including Philippe Sands, Tom Stoppard, Niklas Frank, whose father was Adolf Hitler's lawyer, and Susan Pollack, who survived the camp – gathered to mark 70 years since the publication of this seminal account of humanity at its most brutal. Across five episodes, in collaboration with the Southbank Centre, we bring you th...