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The bestselling Irish author Sally Rooney and her publisher Faber have removed her books from UK shelves, due to current legislation which designates the group 'Palestine Action' as a terrorist organisation. Rooney has previously expressed support for the group and donated earnings. She explained in a statement that 'the fulfilment of contracts to publish my work in the UK could now constitute a serious criminal offence.' But does the Rooney affair amount to censorship?  Meanwhile, the Palestine Action ban will be reviewed by the UK Supreme court this week. 

• Guest: Tanjil Rashid, culture editor at the New Statesman
• Producer: Taryn Priadko

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Is the Enlightenment a force for good today?

One of Britain’s most provocative thinkers, John Gray is a political philosopher known for dismantling liberalism and exposing the illusions of human progress. Former Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, Gray has challenged orthodoxy across the political spectrum with a body of work that ranges from critiques of Enlightenment rationalism to meditations on the limits of secular humanism.

He is the bestselling author of Straw Dogs, The Silence of Animals, and Seven Types of Atheism as well as a frequent contributor to The Guardian, New Statesman, and The Times Literary Supplement. Gray’s sharp insights and contrarian stance continue to shape contemporary debates on ethics, politics, and the future of humanity.

"One of the most important thinkers alive." — ​The Times

Don't hesitate to email us at [email protected] with your thoughts or questions on the episode!

To witness such talks live buy tickets for our upcoming festival: https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/

And visit our website for many more articles, videos, and podcasts like this one: https://iai.tv/

Our Hallowe'en special from 2020 was on the Old English poem, Beowulf, composed somewhere in England more than a thousand years ago. The atmospheric tale of supernatural monsters and human heroes has inspired scores of translations over the centuries and we will discuss several, including versions by Seamus Heaney, J.R.R. Tolkien, Michael Morpurgo and the powerful new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley. Andy and John are joined by regular Backlisted Hallowe’en guest Andrew Male, the senior associate editor of MOJO magazine, and Dr Laura Varnam, who first appeared on our last Hallowe’en episode to discuss Daphne Du Maurier’s collection, The Breaking Point. As well as being a Du Maurier expert, Laura is also the Lecturer in Old and Middle English Literature at University College, Oxford and teaches Beowulf to undergraduates. Before that, to put everyone in a suitably spooky mood, we all discuss stories taken from Robert Shearman’s remarkable experiment in storytelling, We All Hear Stories in the Dark.

* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.

* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm

*If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and get extra bonus episodes and original writing, become a patron at ⁠www.patreon.com/backlisted⁠ + there's a free trial week.

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Beloved Australian literary voice and environmentalist Tim Winton is in conversation with Kim about how to keep going in a burning world.

Watch the video version of this episode on the RNZ website on YouTube or TVNZ+.

Season 2 Episode 7

Songs from the Firefront is published by Penguin.

(00:00) The voice of Australia
(03:36) The power of common good
(06:33) Juice - a dystopian reflection
(10:11) Tim’s cyclonic experience
(14:30) Protecting  marine ecosystems
(21:24) Environmental Advocacy and common good coming from a crisis
(35:17) Don’t live alone in Australia!
(42:15) Nihilism vs. action
(44:30) Ayn Rand's Influence and the strongman ideology
(52:28) Fiction in activism
(58:52) Mortality and legacy

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

On Point news analyst Jack Beatty looks back at a time when social values played a bigger role in American political life and hears a call for that ahead of this year’s midterms.

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Orson Welles was only 25 when his film Citizen Kane was released in 1941. It is widely acclaimed as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, films yet made.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Welles' film, in which he plays the lead role of Charles Foster Kane, a newspaper magnate. It was his first acting role. He also directed, produced and co-wrote this story of loneliness at the heart of a megalomaniac.

The production was influenced by Welles’ experience in radio and theatre, and expressed the potential of cinema as an artistic medium with its use of deep focus, long takes and other techniques.

The plot was partly inspired by the life of William Randolph Hearst, who then used the power of his own newspapers to try to suppress the film’s release. It was to take some years before Citizen Kane reached a fuller audience and, from that point, become so celebrated.

With:

Stella Bruzzi

Professor of Film and Dean of Arts and Humanities at University College London

Ian Christie

Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck, University of London

John David Rhodes

Professor of Film Studies and Visual Culture at the University of Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson

In Our Time is a BBC Studios production

A world-class seminar every week. Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time celebrates the pursuit of knowledge and the enduring power of ideas. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including The Art of Death, a National Book Critics Circle finalist; Claire of the Sea Light, a New York Times Notable Book; Brother, I’m Dying, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist; The Dew Breaker, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah’s Book Club selection; and Krik? Krak!, also a National Book Award finalist. A Neustadt International Prize for Literature winner and the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, she has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, and elsewhere.  Her new novel Dèy is shortlisted for the National Book Award.

Support this podcast at ⁠Patreon⁠. Listeners like you keep the podcast going. Thank you! Visit the website at www.firstdraftwriters.com

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The actor Ken Leung reads “God’s Arrow” from issue no. 256 (Summer 2026), written by Shuang Xuetao and translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Tiang—a time-bending chronicle of gods and dogs, mothers and sons, set against the turbulent backdrop of Shuang’s native Dongbei region.

This episode was produced by John DeLore, Dennis Zhou, Lori Dorr, and Hazel Byers. “God’s Arrow” was edited for audio by John DeLore and Dennis Zhou and recorded at the podcast studios at Moss New York.

“God’s Arrow” can be read online at:

https://www.theparisreview.org/fiction/8498/gods-arrow-shuang-xuetao

Subscribe to The Paris Review at www.theparisreview.org/subscribe.

Téa Obreht reads her story “Family Lore,” from the November 9, 2026, issue of the magazine. Obreht, who was included in The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” Fiction Issue, in 2010, and the subsequent anthology, in 2021, is the author of four novels, including “The Tiger’s Wife,” a winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, and “Sunrise,” which was published earlier this year.

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Catherine Lacey joins Deborah Treisman to discuss “Which Is More Than I Can Say About Some People,” by Lorrie Moore, published in The New Yorker in 1993. Lacey, a winner of the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award and a Lambda Literary Award, has published four novels, including “The Answers” and “Biography of X,” and the story collection “Certain American States.” A new story collection, “My Stalkers,” will come out in January.

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