The TLS Podcast

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Unsilenced voices Feb 28, 2019

Show notes

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas

Toby Lichtig comes in to talk the wide scope of Jewish culture, the “lachrymose” theory of history and why it is Arthur Miller time once more. Roz Dineen deals with porn, pile-ons and goop podcasts. And we call Thea when she is “working from home” to check in on her new dog.

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Half glitzy, half dowdy Feb 21, 2019

Show notes

The writer and comedian Charlie Higson, half of the team behind The Fast Show, on the curious history of comedy written and performed by pairs; the novelist Margaret Drabble considers the dizzying new releases from the estate of Anthony Burgess, the man Philip Larkin once called “the Batman of contemporary letters”

Texts

Stan & Ollie, directed by Jon S. Baird

Morecambe & Wise: 50 years of sunshine, by Gary Morecambe

The Double Act: A history of British comedy duos, by Andrew Roberts

Soupy Twists!: The full, official story of the sophisticated silliness of Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie, by Jem Roberts

Beard’s Roman Women by Anthony Burgess, edited by Graham Foster

Puma by Anthony Burgess, edited by Paul Wake

The Black Prince by Adam Roberts

Obscenity and the Arts, a talk by Anthony Burgess, edited by Johnny Walsh

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Zadie Smith, in conversation Feb 21, 2019

Show notes

A conversation between the novelist and essayist Zadie Smith and the journalist Carolina, recorded at Hay Festival Cartagena in Colombia earlier this month. The full Hay Festival archive can be accessed by subscribing to Hay Player online at hayfestival.org

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: the inaugural Gabriel García Márquez lecture Feb 14, 2019

Show notes

A recording of the inaugural Gabriel García Marquez lecture given this February by the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, at Hay Festival Cartagena in Colombia. The full Hay Festival archive can be accessed by subscribing to Hay Player online at hayfestival.org

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Narratives of sexual assault Feb 14, 2019

Show notes

As the MeToo movement continues to focus our attentions on questions around abuse, consent and justice, Rebecca Watson joins us to discuss the various and prolonged impacts of sexual assault, and the warping effect of trauma on narrative; the TLS’s French editor Adrian Tahourdin considers the inexorable rise of “le globish” (by which English words supplant, or pervert, French ones), and presents the diverse and challenging books in contention for this year’s Society of Author’s Translation Prizes

Books

Not That Bad: Dispatches from rape culture, edited by Roxane Gay

A False Report: A true story by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong

On Rape by Germaine Greer

The President’s Gardens by Muhsin al-Ramli, translated by Luke Leafgren

Seeing Red by Lina Meruane, translated by Megan McDowell

Kruso by Lutz Seiler, translated by Tess Lewis

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How Macron went wrong Feb 07, 2019

Show notes

Eighteen months after Emmanuel Macron rode a wave of optimism to the Élysée Palace, the French are rioting and the President's approval ratings are desperately low – Sudhir Hazareesingh tells us what went wrong; James O'Brien reflects on another week of Brexit bafflement; Laura Freeman introduces the "Hungry Novel", a sub-genre of the post-war British novel in which writers, subsisting on meagre rations of stodge and tinned goods, channelled their appetites into their prose

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‘American Standard’, a new poem by Paul Muldoon Jan 31, 2019

Show notes

Read by Lisa Dwan. Full text available at the-tls.co.uk

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Everything points north Jan 31, 2019

Show notes

Catherine Taylor on bookish goings on in the north of England, from her family’s bookshop in Sheffield to the Northern Fiction Alliance of small presses; Diarmaid Ferriter considers the fraught matter of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland; Fríða Ísberg on the spectre of war in Icelandic film and fiction

Books

The Border: The legacy of a century of Anglo-Irish politics by Diarmaid Ferriter

Hotel Silence (Ör) by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

Woman at War, directed by Benedikt Erlingsson

Section 6 of “American Standard”, a new poem by Paul Muldoon published in this week’s TLS; read by Lisa Dwan (full recording available as a separate podcast episode)

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Reddit's new religions Jan 24, 2019

Show notes

Imogen Russell Williams on children's books that tackle grief and war, “offering distressed adults the calming certainty of a script, and baffled children the reassurance of straightforward answers”; Carl Miller discusses the creation, and squabbling continuation, of Reddit, one of the most popular websites in the world; A. N. Wilson considers the Travellers Club in London, now in its 200th year, where Britain's prime ministers "got stuff done"

Books

White Feather by Catherine and David MacPhail

The Skylarks’ War by Hilary McKay

An Anty-War Story by Tony Ross

Only One of Me by Lisa Wells and Michelle Robinson (illustrated by Tim Budgen and Catalina Echeverri)

The Afterwards by A. F. Harrold and Emily Gravett

We Are the Nerds: The birth and tumultuous life of Reddit, the internet's culture laboratory by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin

The Travellers Club: A bicentennial history (1819–2019) by John Martin Robinson

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Egos and experiments Jan 17, 2019

Show notes

Boyd Tonkin states the case – never overstated – for literature in translation, and reviews a commendable recent effort "to grasp, and to survey, the entire planet of words"; Andrew Scull considers the travails of social psychology and the egos and experiments that professed to tell us something essential about human nature by setting fire to forests or electrocuting dogs...

Books

Found in Translation: 100 of the finest short stories ever translated, edited by Frank Wynne

The Lost Boys: Inside Muzafer Sherif’s Robbers Cave experiment by Gina Perry

The Hope Circuit: A psychologist’s journey from helplessness to optimism by Martin Seligman

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