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 theorist Roland Barthes? Might it have something to do with his incurable boredom? Samuel Earle joins us in the studio to discuss the bundle of contradictions that was, and is, Barthes
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.
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 Iannelli considers a clutch of studies and memoirs that seek to describe the causes and consequences of the addict's “self-perpetuating vortex”; Charlottesville, the college city in Virginia, has impinged on the global consciousness in recent weeks, since a rash of neo-Nazi-instigated violence spread from the University of Virginia's campus into the streets. Krishan Kumar, a sociology professor at UVA, reflects on the institution's legacy, and that of its founder Thomas Jefferson
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.
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, Robert Lowell (1917-1977), Paul Muldoon – himself a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, and Poetry editor at the New Yorker – reads his new poem 'Robert Lowell at Castletown House'; finally, TLS Fiction editor Toby Lichtig discusses the latest releases from established writers (including John le Carré and Salman Rushdie) and debut novelists (Gabriel Tallent and Fiona Mozley)
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 early 60s, and introduces us to the fascinating, genre-blending works they composed and performed in pubs; and finally, the TLS's History editor David Horspool explains how Oliver Cromwell’s embarrassingly messy attempts to conquer the Caribbean in the mid-17th century nonetheless set the stage for modern overseas expansion – as well as giving us an early instance of fake news
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 – we'll discuss the dark material at its centre with the author himself, Gabriel Tallent; "Walid Jumblatt has the air of quiet dignity which befits a retired warlord with nearly half a million Twitter followers", so begins Alev Scott's essay on her experiences among the Druze of Lebanon, one of the country's eighteen recognised minorities. Alev joins us to describe an enlightening and troubling encounter. The podcast will take a break and return on August 31; keep up with the TLS at the-tls.co.uk
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
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 story of Tuco, the African grey parrot, and his influence on the life and work of the novelist Brian Brett. Lisa Hilton explains why the Marquis de Sade is a progressive moral satirist and a “rotten pornographer”.
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 in Theoretical Life Sciences and Professor of Psychology, discusses the irrationality of human thought and why it's easier to reason together; Michael Hoffman, the German-born poet, translator and, most recently 2018 Man Booker International judge, reads his new translation of a poem by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, "Female, 33"
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?
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 things – a clear and concrete plan; TLS Visual Arts editor Anna Vaux brings us a preview of Tate Modern's new exhibition, Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, an examination of the role of black artists in the Civil Rights movement; historian Roy Foster considers the fraught new relationship between the Conservative Party and the Irish Democratic Unionist Party, finding parallels, and missed warnings, dating back more than 100 years
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', says Bernardine Evaristo in a discussion of the state of race relations in Britain and the importance of a provocative new book, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race Book by Reni Eddo-Lodge
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 Ash, fresh from a week's research aboard the Cornish deep-sea trawler Crystal Sea, offers insights into the distinct rhythms, language and politics of Britain's beleaguered fishing industry
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
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.
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 Connolly, whose book The Unquiet Grave is "one of the strangest, funniest, most formally daring if badly flawed contributions to the literature of depression, disarray and the decay of ambition"; finally, the TLS's Religion Editor Rupert Shortt joins us to consider the true meaning of Islam, a religion so full of contradictions that – according to one critic – “very few Muslims consciously understand what being Islamic truly means”.
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", so says Tom Holland, who joins us to consider this curiously divisive beast; fresh from a marathon production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, opera critic Guy Dammann explains the importance of this towering work of music and drama
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, The Accusation by the pseudonymous author "Bandi", "the first work of fiction written by a North Korean author presumed still to be alive and living in the country”, tells us about life in that deeply mysterious land; finally, the great Alasdair Gray, author of Lanark, reads "From Vers Doré by Gérard de Nerval", a new work first published in this week's TLS.
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