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Harriett Gilbert is joined by one of the boldest writers of her generation, Ottessa Moshfegh, to delve into her second novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation. This twisted Sleeping Beauty story is told from the perspective of an unnamed protagonist, a twentysomething art school graduate who, after the death of her parents, quits her gallery job to heal her pain by drugging herself into a year-long hibernation. Her only ties to the waking world are the bodega which she routinely slouches to for coffee, the most unscrupulous psychiatrist in New York, and her best friend, and object of contempt, Reva. We love this book because it’s a hypnotic, wickedly humorous character study of a woman who is broken, toxic, yet utterly fascinating. Even if you don’t take her to your heart, this character will linger in your mind every time you have a long lie in bed.

Image: Ottessa Moshfegh (Credit: Jake Belcher)

In this episode, hosts Maddie and Liam speak with Tim MacGabhann about his piece The Intransitive (published in Issue Seven of Tolka).

We discuss his insatiable reading and writing, Victor Serge, and the golden age of ape cinema.

For those curious about Tim's stellar playlist you can treat your ears to the mammoth Pan-African Conversation Pit playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6iamL1CQql9odQE5lHBKzc?si=ee214feb9fb64b19

Music by Lemzly Dale

Our intuitions are never wrong… right? In episode 124 of Overthink, Ellie and David wonder what intuition actually is. Is it a gut feeling, a rational insight, or just a generalization from past experience? They talk about the role intuition has played in early modern philosophy (in the works of Descartes, Hume, and Mill), in phenomenology (in the philosophies of Husserl and Nishida), and in the philosophy of science (in the writings of Bachelard). They also call into question the use of intuitions in contemporary analytic philosophy while also highlighting analytic critiques of the use of intuition in philosophical discourse. So, the question is: Can we trust our intuitions or not? Are they reliable sources of knowledge, or do they just reveal our implicit biases and cultural stereotypes? Plus, in the bonus, they dive into the limits of intuition. They take a look at John Stuart Mill’s rebellion against intuition, the ableism involved in many analytic intuitions, and Foucault’s concept of historical epistemes.

Works Discussed:

Maria Rosa Antognazza and Marco Segala, “Intuition in the history of philosophy (what’s in it for philosophers today?)”
Gaston Bachelard, Rational Materialism
Gaston Bachelard, The Philosophy of No
Gaston Bachelard, The Rationalist Compromise
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic
Moti Mizrahi, “Your Appeals to Intuition Have No Power Here!”
Nishida Kitaro, Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness

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Website | overthinkpodcast.com
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Email | [email protected]
YouTube | Overthink podcast

Presenter James Crawford speaks with multi-award-winning, Booker-longlisted French author Laurent Binet about his latest novel, Perspectives, and the three other works that influenced its creation.

Set in 16th-century Florence, the novel follows an investigation into the mysterious death of a renowned painter, found lying on a church floor with a fatal stab wound to the heart. Above him, the masterpieces he dedicated over a decade to completing. But who is responsible for his murder?

Laurent’s influences were: Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1782); The Story of my Escape from the Prisons of Venice by Giacomo Casanova (1788); and The Florentine Histories by Niccolo Machiavelli (1532).

The supporting contributor was poet, translator and lecturer in Creative Writing at Loughborough University, Dr Kerry Featherstone.

Producer: Rachael O’Neill

In The Almanac of Ireland presenter Manchán Magan investigates the quirks, conundrums and wonders of Ireland. In this episode, he meets Lorcán Ó Tuathail of the Golden Eagle Trust and learns about the importance of cranes in Irish history and mythology. A Red Hare Media production.

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Conor Gearty KC is a founder member of Matrix Chambers. His practice as a barrister is primarily in human rights law and in public law, together with work in the field of corporate social responsibility. 

Apart from his work as a barrister, Conor is Professor of Human Rights Law at the London School of Economics (LSE) where he has been Director of its Centre for the Study of Human Rights and LSE’s Institute of Public Affairs. Gearty is also a published author, with the acclaimed book on human rights law, On Fantasy Island (Oxford University Press) and Homeland Insecurity. The Rise and Rise of Global Anti-terrorism Law, which was published in 2024.

This was a shorter conversation that many, but no less engrossing for it! It's always a thrill for me when sitting down with someone so intelligent and articulate. His life story, which took Conor from Ireland to the heart of the English establishment, is absolutely fascinating - as are his musings on his own vulnerabilities (or lack of them).

As my editor said to me: "the clarity and precision of his mind is exhilarating." I hope you think so too! 

In this episode Manchán is enchanted by the Abbeyleix Bog Project, a community-based initiative that restored and rejuvenated a swathe of bogland in the Irish midlands. / A Red Hare Media production.

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Psssssssssst!  We've invited Ruth Padel to share work from her recent Chatto Poetry collection Girl. She talks about the power of girls, the mythologies woven around them and the responsibilities they must accept. She'll take us from Mary at the Annunciation (wearing a Primark T-shirt) to glimpsing a Serpent Queen from the 88 bus. 

Robin shares her long-held enthusiasm for 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem - also by Ruth Padel. And we celebrate  Siegfried Baber's spanking new pamphlet The Twice Turned Earth from Poetry Salzburg, discovering a poignant poem about Star Wars collectibles. 

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The premiere of David Hare’s play Plenty at the National Theatre in 1978 marked him out as one of the UK’s most skilled and socially conscious playwrights. Plenty transferred to Broadway, Hare adapted it into a film starring Meryl Streep, and in the following years he became known as a writer for whom the political and the personal are deeply entwined. Often referred to as Britain’s pre-eminent ‘state of the nation playwright’, his plays in the 1980s examined a wide range of social and political issues, including the Church of England in Racing Demon, the judiciary in Murmuring Judges and party politics in The Absence of War. He tackled international geopolitics in Via Dolorosa - about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - and the invasion of Iraq with Stuff Happens and the Vertical Hour. Equally skilled as a screenwriter, his film screenplays for The Hours and The Reader saw him twice nominated for Academy Awards. David Hare was knighted in 1998 for ‘services to theatre’.

He talks to John Wilson about how his lower-middle class background and family life in Bexhill-on-Sea stimulated his imagination. He pays tribute to some of the most formative people in his life: his Cambridge university tutor, the Welsh writer and academic Raymond Williams, whose maxim that ‘culture is ordinary’ had a profound effect on his life as a writer; the actress Kate Nelligan, who starred in several of Hare's plays, including Plenty; and his wife Nicole Farhi who, he says, transformed his idea of himself and who inadvertently helped inspire one of his best loved plays, Skylight.

Producer: Edwina Pitman

Manchán speaks to Marie Heaney about the importance of engaging with our old myths and stories. A Red Hare Media production.

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