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Laurence Olivier, Baron Olivier of Brighton, was born in Dorking in 1907. He's best known these days for roles in films ranging from Wuthering Heights to Spartacus to the ageing Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman in The Boys from Brazil. He received twelve Oscar nominations but was in his pomp on stage, particularly in John Osborne's The Entertainer, and in multiple Shakespearean roles. He was also the first director of the National Theatre.

Nominating Olivier is political writer turned playwright Tim Walker, author of When Maggie Met Larry. This is the extraordinary tale of how Olivier, who was known for over the top performances, helped to shape Mrs Thatcher's appearance as she rose to become prime minister. Also joining the discussion is Sir Derek Jacobi, who confirms this story and who was a good friend of Olivier in his later years. Derek Jacobi was one of the founding members of the National Theatre alongside Maggie Smith, Frank Finlay and Joan Plowright, who became Olivier's third and final wife.

"He was a god. To me he was a god. I remember him saying, 'Call me Larry.' I could no more call him Larry than fly to the moon." Sir Derek Jacobi.

Olivier was also famously married to Vivien Leigh, star of Gone with the Wind, and before that to Jill Esmond.

This is presenter Matthew Parris's 61st and final series of Great Lives. He's been the presenter since April 2006. His guests in this final run include Mel Giedroyc, Russell Kane, Ruby Tandoh and Pauline Black of The Selector who has picked singer Poly Styrene of X Ray Spex.

"I adore presenting this show, and believe my series editor and I have done a good job. The programme goes from strength to strength. But I'll be 77 soon. Quit when you're winning." Matthew Parris in The Times, June 2026

The popularity of calming 'night' music to help people sleep is the latest iteration of compositions that reflect the coming of the night. It was composer John Field at the end of the 19th century, followed by Chopin and others, who first brought us the musical concept of 'nocturnes'.

• Guest: Susan Tomes is an award-winning pianist and writer,  'Nocturnes, and the fascination of night music' (Yale University Press)
• Producer: Ann Arnold

Music excepts, in order of appearance:

• Frederic Chopin's Nocturne Op.27, No.2 in D-flat Major, played by Artur Rubenstein
• John Field's Nocturne No.4  in A Major, H.36, played by Alice Sara Ott
• Max Richter, Yuki Namata, Caleb Burhans, Clarice Jensen, Brian Snow and Ben Russell playing Richter's 'Sleep. Patterns. (Cypher)'
• Gabriel Faure's  Nocturne No.6 in D-flat major, op.63, played by Angela Hewitt. 

What if your mortgage was illegal, your taxes were voluntary and you could simply opt out of the law? Sovereign citizens believe they’ve discovered a hidden legal system that can set them free from the state. Outlawed explores the strange world of pseudolaw, and what its rise tells us about trust, power and the law.

• Guest: Harry Hobbs, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law and Justice at the University of New South Wales, co-author with Stephen Young, of Outlawed: Responding to the Global Rise of Sovereign Citizens and legal conspiracies published on August 18, 2026.
• Producer: Ali Benton

The great German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who died in March, wrote in his later works about what he called Unheimlichkeit — roughly translated as "the unease of the times" — to describe the global retreat of liberal democracy, the fraying of the rules-based international order, and the increasing polarisation and hostility of public discourse. And yet, to the end he defended Enlightenment reason and the utility of rational debate. In a world that seems to be losing its democratic bearings, has Habermas' day passed? Or is the problem more that we haven't read him carefully enough?

Guest: Peter J. Verovšek, Assistant Professor in the History of European Integration, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Producer: David Rutledge

Did Jürgen Habermas's death also mark the end of his vision of democratic life? - Peter Verovšek for ABC Religion & Ethics

Learn more about Alpha School at ⁠https://go.alpha.school/howiwrite

We also talked about his writing process: how he tells great stories, develops great characters, and writes good sentences. He shared his mantras, such as the idea that when you're editing, the editor is the patient, and you, the writer, are the doctor. He also explained why it's better to be honest than witty if you want to write great comedy.

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Nothing can devastate us more than the loss of a loved one. In this episode of Overthink, David and Ellie talk about mourning. What kinds of losses hurl us into a state of mourning? Are there healthy and unhealthy ways of mourning? Or does this distinction not apply in cases when we are dealing with irreparable loss? And how do we deal with the loss of someone when the feeling of loss doesn't naturally resolve but rather stays with us like “an open wound,” as Freud says? To shed light on this difficult experience, your hosts explore Sigmund Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia, Roland Barthes’ account of grieving the death of his mother, as well as Emilio Uranga’s analysis of the role that culture plays in our experience of death. In the Substack bonus segment, Ellie and David discuss how Freud’s notion of ambivalence can help to make sense of mourning.

Works Discussed:

Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary

Julie Alev Dilmaç, “The new forms of mourning: Loss and exhibition of the death on the internet”

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time

Corina Sas and Alina Coman, “Designing personal grief rituals: An analysis of symbolic objects and actions”

Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”

Emilio Uranga, “Dos teorias de la muerte: Sartre y Heidegger”

Emilio Uranga, “Notas para un estudio del mexicano”

Emilio Uranga, Analysis of Mexican Being

Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to Quince.com/overthink for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too.

If you’re ready to stop talking yourself out of finding care and making progress, then head to rula.com and take the first step. 

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Journalist Gil Durán argues that a small circle of Silicon Valley billionaires and venture capitalists have concluded that democracy is in their way — and that they should be governing in its place. Durán traces their fringe ideologies from blogs, manifestos and private talks straight to the White House. “The weird stuff these guys say in their blogs or in their speeches is not just eccentric fluff. Because they have so much money, they can turn these weird ideas into policy and cause tremendous damage.” His book is The Nerd Reich. 

Also, Ken Tucker has a 50th anniversary appreciation of the Sparkle soundtrack. Loosely based on the girl group The Supremes, the 1976 film starred Aretha Franklin and the music was written and produced by Curtis Mayfield. 

In the audio of this story, we incorrectly say the theme music of the movie Shaft was by Curtis Mayfield. It was by Isaac Hayes.

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On Point news analyst Jack Beatty on how “affective polarization” and partisan hatred has come to define American political culture.

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We're back with a bang this week with some of our toughest subjects to date. They include my advice for a blind date, I refuse to go back to..., and the last time I made a citizen's arrest. Plus who makes the classic repetition mistake of saying BBC?

This Comedy of the Week features the first episode of series 97 of Just a Minute.

Host: Sue Perkins

An EcoAudio certified production.

We’re at sea this time on our own Odyssey, a voyage between the ancient epic that refuses to die and Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster movie version for us in this summer of 2026. It’s the story of course we all half-know about the wily old Greek warrior-king coming home ten years late from a horrible war against Troy, in maybe 1200 BC.

Daniel Mendelsohn.

Nobody knows the grip of it all better than our guest Daniel Mendelsohn, who sailed the route Odysseus took with his 81-year-old father and made an intimate mission of family discovery in it. He’s published his own translation of Homer’s whole poem, and now he’s reviewing this summer’s big movie for the New York Review of Books.

The post Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.