By Katherine May
How should we live in this world when so much is changed? Katherine May, author of Wintering and the Electricity of Every Living Thing, asks those most intimate wit
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The podcast currently has 63 episodes available.
This month, Katherine spoke to Lucy Jones about Matrescence, her book about the profound changes wrought by pregnancy and birth. Combining the biological, the social and the political with exquisite writing, this is a radical revision of a subject veiled in forced cosiness and obfuscation.
Lucy's frankness and curiosity - her utter realness - are an absolute balm for anyone who’s navigated the very particular environment of contemporary western maternity, whether that contact has been personal or at one remove. It helps us to understand why pregnancy feels like such a hinterland, and also why it doesn’t need to be this way.
Katherine's book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK
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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Katherine was excited to speak to Daniel Tammet about his latest book, Nine Minds: Inner Lives on the Spectrum. Katherine has been reading Daniel’s writing for a long time - his first book, Born on a Blue Day, came out in 2006. At the time, he was writing about his experience as a savant (his synaesthesia means that he conceptualises numbers and dates in a completely different way to most of us), and in this conversation Katherine and Daniel talk about the way that he was treated during those years. Daniel is a beautiful writer, but his talent was often invisible to people who only wanted to see him as a kind of specimen, not fully human. Hear as they talk about the way Daniel’s persisted, asserting his rightful place as a thinker and a master of prose.
Katherine's book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK
Links from the episode:
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Join Katherine as she talks with Tom Newlands about his debut novel, Only Here, Only Now. Katherine talks with Tom about his female main protagonist, the unforgettable Cora, setting the book in 1990s Scotland and how it offers a new way of writing about neurodivergence. She also explains the thinking behind choosing Only Here, Only Now for a non-fiction book club, and why it captivated her enough to break her own rules.
Katherine's book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK
Links from the episode:
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Join me for a recent conversation with comedian, essayist, blogger, and television writer Samantha Irby. Recorded as part of my True Stories Book Club hosted on Substack, we talked about realising you have a body again after lockdown, dogs that don’t love us enough/love us too much, writing about the darkest parts of our life, and terrorising Sex and the City fans by writing on And Just Like That… If you haven’t read it already, do check out her latest essay collection, Quietly Hostile.
Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK
Links from the episode:
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Join my conversation with Catherine Coldstream as we relax into a questing, rambling chat about the deep pull that many of us feel towards the quiet and gentle rhythms of the monastic life, and the risks of submitting so completely.
Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK
Links from the episode:
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
At a superficial level, Soil is a gardening memoir, full of gorgeous descriptions of plants and getting your hands in the soil. But the garden in question is a political gesture, an act of resistance and an assertion of belonging. Camille T. Dungy uproots the staid monoculture of the suburban garden, and takes a fierce, critical look at its assumptions.
In this conversation, we talk about the way that gardens can become a means of social control and conformity, but also an expression of freedom and solidarity that crosses generations. We also touch on the idea of outsidership, and the difference between choosing to stay at the edges, and being forced out of the centre.
Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK
Links from the episode:
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In the past few years, resistance has been a live issue for many of us, whether we’re wondering for the first time how to bring about social change, or realising that we need to find new ways to be activists.
For Kaitlin Curtice, this resistance is an ongoing practice, informed by her perspective as an Indigenous American, and imbued with gentleness, integrity and personal sustainability. In this episode, we talk about her book, Living Resistance, how her own perspective developed over time, and - appropriately for this podcast - how we can live in this unsettling moment.
Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK
Links from the episode:
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The wolf carries an almost unbearable amount of symbolism in western culture, encapsulating the predatory, the carnal, the supernatural and the ravenous. But in her book Wolfish, Erica Berry suggests that it’s time to understand wolves differently: as tender, as hunted, as guardians of the landscape.
What’s more, those evil qualities may be better attributed to ourselves than to wolves. Berry weaves memoir with natural history, cultural critique, folklore and conservation to show that wolves have too often been a cypher for all our fears, and that this has left them under threat of extinction.
In this fascinating and wide-ranging conversation, recorded as part of Katherine’s True Stories Book Club, Erica discusses her experiences with wolves real and imagined.
Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK
Links from the episode:
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
I stumbled across Dacher Keltner’s work when I was first researching Enchantment, and now - for the final episode in this season - I’m honoured to speak to him about Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.
Dacher’s research attempts to understand this very fleeting, ineffable emotion. He and his colleagues have shown that awe induces a feeling of being small within a vast universe - a radical shift into context. What’s more, by absorbing ourselves in awe, we become better people, more motivated to go out and do good. In this episode, we explore how it feels to experience awe, how we can seek it out in the everyday, and we share the personal experiences of awe that have inspired both of our books.
Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the director of the Greater Good Science Center. He has over 200 scientific publications and six books, including Born to Be Good, The Compassionate Instinct, and The Power Paradox. He has written for many popular outlets, from The New York Times to Slate. He was also the scientific advisor behind Pixar’s Inside Out.
Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK
Links from the episode:
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Marjolijn van Heemstra believes that we can change the world by gazing into the night sky. Her book, In Light Years There’s No Hurry, explores the ‘overview effect’, a personal transformation reported by astronauts who have seen the earth from space. People who’ve experienced this rare view often report an ethical shift taking place, a new sense of mission in their lives. They come to see themselves as guardians of their planet, rather than its passive citizens.
Clearly not all of us can - or want to - leave the atmosphere to gaze over the earth from space. But in this thought-provoking conversation, Marjolijn makes a case for us learning to draw on the overview effect from where we stand, suggesting that this could lead us to become better stewards of our environment, and form closer bonds with the communities around us.
Marjolijn is a Dutch theatre-maker, journalist and poet who has recently been named Amsterdam’s Poet Laureate. Her most recent work has focused on reacquainting ourselves with darkness, and this includes her creative project The Night Watch, and the Amsterdam Dark Festival, of which she is the founder.
Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK
Links from the episode:
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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