The TLS Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Is it too late? Sep 11, 2019

Show notes

The future of the planet is in question this week, or at least, humanity's place on it, as Gabrielle Walker discusses possible solutions to climate change and why we don't need to panic - yet - but we do need to act, together. The TLS's fiction editor, Toby Lichtig, talks us through the hype and hoopla around Margaret Atwood's sequel to The Handmaid's Tale - and what the book itself is like. And are you Team Scott or Team Zelda? Joanna Scutts looks at 'the messy intertextuality of a marriage', and the question of influence within the Fitzgerald ménage.

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben

Losing Earth: The Decade We Could Have Stopped Climate Change byNathaniel Rich

Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime by Bruno Latour

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Save Me The Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald

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What do the kids say? Sep 04, 2019

Show notes

We turn to children's and YA literature in this week's episode, with Rozalind Dineen and Toby Lichtig presenting new releases (as reviewed by a selection of young readers), as well as discussing some of the pros and cons of age-specific reading; Robert Douglas-Fairhurst reintroduces J. M. Barrie's classic work Peter Pan, where a wild imagination masks tragic, sometimes disturbing, realities

Alfie On Holiday by Shirley Hughes

The Fate of Fausto: A painted fable by Oliver

The Good Thieves by Katherine Rundell

The Burning by Laura Bates

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'We should all be interested in pigeons...' Aug 21, 2019

Show notes

What kind of son was Philip Larkin? The TLS's poetry editor Alan Jenkins finds insight in some of the 4,000-odd letters and postcards the poet sent home to his "Mop" and "Pop"; Helen Macdonald, the author of H is for Hawk, tells us more than we could ever hope to know about pigeons and pigeon fanciers; Norma Clarke considers the internet artist Cold War Steve, whose ‘furious absurdism’ has won him some 192.8K Twitter followers, and ponders connections with the eighteenth-century satires of Hogarth and Gillray

Letters Home, 1936–1977, by Philip Larkin, edited by James Booth

Homing: On pigeons, dwellings, and why we return, by Jon Day

Cold War Steve Presents...The Festival of Brexit, by Cold War Steve

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The most expensive mystery of all Aug 14, 2019

Show notes

The whereabouts of the "Salvator Mundi", the most costly artwork in the world, are still uncertain, as is its attribution to Leonardo da Vinci. Federico Varese, best known for his studies of the mafia, follows the trail; the TLS's history editor David Horspool considers the inner and outer worlds of Anne Frank’s diary, the actual anniversary of the Peterloo massacre, and a selection of other contributions to this week's special issue; Ladee Hubbard reflects on the late Toni Morrison, who died last week, and considers 'The Pieces I Am', a documentary that highlights Morrison's multifaceted life, work and legacy

The Collected Works, by Anne Frank, translated by Nancy Forest-Flier, Susan Massotty, Mirjam Pressler and Kirsten Warner and edited by Mirjam Pressler

Peterloo: The English uprising by Robert Poole

Legacy: One family, a cup of tea and the company that took on the world, by Thomas Harding

The Pieces I Am, by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

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How to be modern: conspiracy theory, free will and the avant-garde Aug 07, 2019

Show notes

Jill Lepore traces the history of conspiracy theories and the conditions that allow them to thrive; Tim Crane talks us through whether we have free will or not, and why it is still a problem; Michael Caines looks at non-traditional approaches to criticism

Books

CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND THE PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE THEM, edited by Joseph E. Uscinski

CONSPIRACIES OF CONSPIRACIES: How delusions have overrun America, by Thomas Milan Konda

THE STIGMATIZATION OF CONSPIRACY THEORY SINCE THE 1950s: ‘A plot to make us look foolish’, by Katharina Thalmann

THE AMERICAN CONSPIRACIES AND COVER-UPS: JFK, 9/11, the Fed, rigged elections, suppressed cancer cures, and the greatest conspiracies of our time, by Douglas Cirignano

REPUBLIC OF LIES: American conspiracy theorists and their surprising rise to power, by Anna Merlan

A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE SAYING:The new conspiracism and the assault on democracy, by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum

HARVESTER OF HEARTS: Motherhood under the sign of Frankenstein, by Rachel Feder

THE HUNDREDS, by Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart

TUNNEL VISION, by Kevin Breathnach

ON THE LITERARY MEANS OF REPRESENTING THE POWERFUL AS POWERLESS, by Steven Zultanski

The Limits of Free Will: Selected essays by Paul Russell

Aspects of Agency: Decisions, abilities, explanations, and free will by Alfred R. Mele

Self-Determination: The ethics of action – Volume One by Thomas Pink

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‘We don’t know what he has, we don’t know what he’s done with it’ Jul 31, 2019

Show notes

Following the discovery of a strange book, Sarah Green revises the story of the late nineteenth-century poet Lionel Johnson, whose legacy was distorted in the 1950s by a criminal with a taste for fancy bedding; in the US, of 70,000 cases that went to disposition in 2016, more than 99 per cent resulted in conviction. What does this tell us? Clive Stafford Smith explains why American justice is a mirage; since 2015, Refugee Tales – part walking pilgrimage, part protest, part collection of narratives about those unjustly treated by Britain’s immigration system – has become an annual event. David Herd tells us what ground remains to be covered

Doing Justice: A prosecutor’s thoughts on crime, punishment, and the rule of law, by Preet Bharara

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Nature for sale Jul 24, 2019

Show notes

Nick Groom ponders the fate of the beleaguered British countryside and shares new theories about the economics of the natural world; En Liang Khong takes us through the increasingly global phenomenon of Japanese manga (which translates as “pictures run riot”); Damian Flanagan on Mishima, a writer who yearned to transcend time and identity

Green and Prosperous Land: A blueprint for rescuing the British countryside by Dieter Helm

Who Owns England?: How we lost our green and pleasant land and how to take it back, by Guy Shrubsole

Manga, and exhibition at the British Museum in London

Star, by Yukio Mishima; translated by Sam Bett

The Frolics of the Beasts, by Yukio Mishima; translated by Andrew Clare

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Unromancing the Romantics Jul 17, 2019

Show notes

"The sociable side of nineteenth-century musical life is not acknowledged as often as it should be..." – Laura Tunbridge discusses the interconnected, complicated and often contradictory myths and realities that link Chopin, Schumann and Brahms; the TLS's music editor Lucy Dallas takes us through a selection of other pieces on music in this week's issue, including new histories of the blues and the poetic pop of Kate Bush and the Pet Shop Boys; when Irving Sandler wrote his seminal history of abstract expressionism, he neglected to mention Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, Grace Hartigan and Elaine de Kooning – Jenni Quilter joins us to put these artists back in the frame

Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler: Five painters and the movement that changed modern art, by Mary Gabriel

Fryderyk Chopin: A life and times by Alan Walker

Schumann: The faces and masks by Judith Chernaik

Brahms in Context, edited by Natasha Loges and Katy Hamilton

(with Liebeslieder Walzer, Opus 52, performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra)

Up Jumped the Devil: The real life of Robert Johnson by Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow

The Original Blues: The emergence of the Blues in African American vaudeville, by Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff

One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem by Neil Tennant

How To Be Invisible by Kate Bush

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Loving Iris Murdoch Jul 10, 2019

Show notes

It’s the centenary of the birth of Iris Murdoch, the novelist-philosopher who dominated the literary pages for much of the twentieth century. Where do we stand on her now? Michael Caines and Frances Wilson discuss; This was the week that the US women’s football team won the World Cup. Devoney Looser, the roller derby queen of academia, enjoys “a brief opportunity to revel in America’s better strengths”.

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Who reads John Updike? Jul 03, 2019

Show notes

Do the kids – in these times of identity politics – still read Updike? The answer is “probably not”. But should they? Claire Lowdon makes the case; Toby Lichtig discusses Chelsea Manning, the US Army data analyst turned whistle-blower, and a new documentary on her life; Eric Rauchway considers the prevalence of pro-Nazi feeling and policy in 1940s America and beyond

Novels 1959–1965: The Poorhouse Fair, Rabbit, Run, The Centaur, Of the Farm, by John Updike (Library of America)

XY Chelsea, directed by Tim Travers Hawkins

Hitler’s American Friends: The Third Reich’s supporters in the United States, by Bradley Hart

The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz, and a village caught in between, by Michael Dobbs

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