The TLS Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Talk to the hands Jun 26, 2019

Show notes

Thea Lenarduzzi on the cultural history of gesture and body language; What is Chaucer to us today? When did he become known as the "Father of English poetry", and what did he get up to when he was not writing rude and memorable poetry? Julia Boffey explains; the Stonewall uprising in New York is remembered as a pivotal moment in LGBTQ rights – fifty years on, Hugh Ryan revisits the history

Books

Dictionary of Gestures: Expressive comportments and movements in use around the world by François Caradec

Silent History: Body language and nonverbal identity, 1860–1914, by Peter K. Andersson

The Stonewall Riots: A documentary history, edited by Marc Stein

The Stonewall Reader, edited by the New York Public Library

Pride: Photographs after Stonewall by Fred W. McDarrah

Love and Resistance: Out of the closet into the Stonewall era, edited by Jason Baumann

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Summer Books 2019 Jun 19, 2019

Show notes

TLS contributors – including David Baddiel, Mary Beard, Paul Muldoon and Elizabeth Lowry – give their seasonal reading recommendations; TLS editors wreak havoc and suggest their own. (Visit the-tls.co.uk to read the summer books feature in full.)

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Russian greats and fictional eats Jun 12, 2019

Show notes

A "new" ending to a Nabokov novel and the unregarded first volume of Vasily Grossman's epic, the "Soviet War and Peace"; Rebecca Reich guides us through these and the question of whether the West is paranoid about Russia or vice versa; Laura Freeman joins us to talk about dinner with the Durrells and pond life sandwiches.

Books

Stalingrad: A novel by Vasily Grossman

Vasily Grossman and the Soviet Century by Alexandra Popoff

Plots against Russia by Eliot Borenstein

The Russia Anxiety by Mark B. Smith

Dining with the Durrells by David Shimwell

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Ethical economics Jun 05, 2019

Show notes

If capitalism is broken, can it be fixed? And can it save the environment? Joseph E. Stiglitz discusses; as we mark seventy-five years since the D-Day landings, William Boyd considers a brilliant new "worm's-eye view" of historical events; a decade after leaving academia for the "wilderness of writing", Stephen Marche returns to report on the troubled field of the humanities

The Future of Capitalism: Facing the new anxieties by Paul Collier

Capitalism: The future of an illusion by Fred L. Block

Money and Government: A challenge to mainstream economics by Robert Skidelsky

Normandy ’44: D-Day and the battle for France by James Holland

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Celestial Bodies – winner of the 2019 Man Booker International prize for fiction May 29, 2019

Show notes

The Omani novelist Jokha al-Harthi and the translator Marilyn Booth won this year's Man Booker International prize for fiction in translation, for the novel Celestial Bodies, an account of three sisters living in the village of al-Awafi in an Oman on the brink of change. A couple of days after the announcement, at Waterstones book shop in Piccadilly, the winners spoke to the Turkish novelist Elif Shafak about the novel, Arabic culture and modernisation, translation, and women’s wisdom.

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Weighty matters May 29, 2019

Show notes

Anna Katharina Schaffner on the cultural history of fat and fat phobia; the TLS's travel editor Catharine Morris on why Paris will always be disappointing, the solitude of open spaces, and the problem with "Victor" the archetypal travel writer; an extract from the 2019 Man Booker International prize-winning Celestial Bodies by Jokha al-Harthi, read by the novel's translator Marilyn Booth

Books

Fat: A cultural history of the stuff of life by Christopher E. Forth

The Truth About Fat by Anthony Warner

Fearing the Black Body: The racial origins of fat phobia by Sabrina Strings

We’ll Never Have Paris, edited by Andrew Gallix

The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich

Heida: A shepherd at the edge of the world by Steinunn Sigurðardóttir and Heiða Ásgeirsdóttír, translated by Philip Roughton

Where the Hornbeam Grows: A journey in search of a garden by Beth Lynch

The Cambridge History of Travel Writing, edited by Nandini Das and Tim Youngs

Celestial Bodies by Jokha al-Harthi, translated by Marilyn Booth

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Victoria at 200 May 22, 2019

Show notes

To mark the bicentenary of Queen Victoria's birth, the TLS's history editor David Horspool guides us through all manner of Victorian matters, including the Widow of Windsor's mastery of soft power, how different things might have been had she been born a boy, how the Victorians amused themselves, and the Rebecca Riots; we also have a symposium in this week's paper, asking writers and thinkers – including Steven Pinker and Bernardine Evaristo – to tell us about the important books from their childhoods. To discuss this – and to share our own youthful reading – we're joined in the studio by a [insert collective noun here] of TLS editors

Go to www.the-tls.co.uk/ to read a selection of articles from our Victorian special issue, and much more.

Our symposium was prompted by an initiative – Books To Inspire – launched by Hay Festival Wales, aiming to compile a crowd-sourced list of titles to inspire the next generation. Find out more at hayfestival.com

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Knowing laughter May 15, 2019

Show notes

The comedian and writer Helen Lederer joins us to discuss gender and comedy and the new Comedy Women In Print Prize; Lucy Dallas considers a clutch of novels in which animals might offer a little respite from human company; the TLS’s philosophy editor Tim Crane guides us through the riches of this week’s philosophy issue, including how the advent of biological immortality might augur “the greatest inequality experienced in all human history” and what happened when Michel Foucault took LSD in Death Valley

To Leave with the Reindeer by Olivia Rosenthal, translated by Sophie Lewis

Animalia by Jean-Baptiste del Amo, translated by Frank Wynne

The Animal Gazer by Edgardo Franzosini, translated by Michael F. Moore

“The last mortals: why we are especially unfortunate to die, when our near-descendants could be immortal", by Regini Rini – see this week’s TLS (in print and online)

Foucault in California: A true story, wherein the great French philosopher drops acid in the Valley of Death by Simeon Wade

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Journey to the centre of the earth May 08, 2019

Show notes

Robert Macfarlane joins us to discuss our "peculiar times", the memory of ice, and the world beneath out feet; Margie Orford brings our attention to South Africa at a crucial moment in its history, twenty-five years since the first democratic election and as another makes its mark; Nicola Shulman offers a new theory about race in Disney's original Dumbo, from 1941

Underland: A deep time journey by Robert Macfarlane

The Café de Move-on Blues: In search of the new South Africa by Christopher Hope

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To infinities – and beyond May 01, 2019

Show notes

As Avengers: Endgame is released, Roz Kaveney sweeps us through the shifting cast of superheroes and, latterly, heroines that populate the Marvel Universe, considers the evolving politics of the comic-book film, and answers the question on (some) people's lips: "but why...?"; Imogen Russell Williams's introduces some of the best writing on LGBTQ themes for children and young adults

Avengers: Endgame

Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse

Julian Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love

Aalfred and Aalbert by Morag Hood

Death in the Spotlight by Robin Stevens

Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) by L. C. Rosen

Proud: Stories, poetry and art on the theme of pride, compiled by Juno Dawson

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