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Editor Harry Mount chats to Supplements Editor Charlotte Metcalf about the theatre. 
Charlotte adores London's pre-eminence as the great theatre city of the world. And Harry, once an avid theatregoer, has given up - thanks to the expense, discomfort and the terrifyingly low hit rate of brilliant plays with brilliant actors.

This week's podcast is kindly sponsored by Baillie Gifford, Actual Investors, who take a long-term approach to investing in exceptional companies.

Asher remembers when Paul McCartney and John Lennon played “I Want to Hold Your Hand” for him for the first time. “I thought, am I losing my mind, or is this one of the best songs I've ever heard in my life?” McCartney, who was dating Asher’s sister at the time, was living with his family. A new documentary, ‘Peter Asher: Everywhere Man,’ chronicles Asher’s life in the record industry. He spoke with Terry Gross about his own band in the British Invasion (Peter and Gordon), discovering James Taylor and launching Linda Ronstadt. 


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The old solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict don’t seem to fit the present reality.

A two-state solution feels increasingly impossible, given the scale of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Palestinian determination for a right of return. And a one-state solution, in which Israelis and Palestinians would live as equal citizens in a single state, is hard to imagine, given how strongly both peoples seek political self-determination.

But what if those aren’t the only options?

A Land for All is an Israeli-Palestinian initiative that is proposing a confederation model: two sovereign states, structured to allow freedom of movement between them. It’s a theory of peace based on neither separation nor unification. It holds, first, that both peoples have a relationship to and claim on all the land and, second, that both peoples want to control their own political destinies.

I have been — and am — skeptical of solutions to a conflict that is so devoid of the political conditions for a settlement. But even if you’re far from your destination, it’s worth knowing where it is you hope to go. So could this be an answer for both peoples? How would it handle the problems that have bedeviled previous solutions, from security and violence to religious extremism?

Rula Hardal and May Pundak are the executive directors of A Land for All. Hardal is a Palestinian citizen of Israel who received her doctorate in political science from the University of Hannover in Germany, and Pundak is an Israeli lawyer, activist and social entrepreneur. They joined me to explain how A Land for All would work and why they think it might succeed where so much else has failed.

Mentioned:

A Land for All plan

Rula Hardal’s Book Recommendations:

The Holocaust and the Nakba, edited by Bashir Bashir and Amos Goldberg

States of Denial by Stanley Cohen

Israel: What Went Wrong? by Omer Bartov

May Pundak’s Book Recommendations:

Tomorrow Is Yesterday by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

The Moomin series by Tove Jansson

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

You can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.html

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kelsey Lannin. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Johnny Simon. Our recording engineer is Johnny Simon. Cinematography by Marina King and Eric Laplante. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin and Emma Kehlbeck. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser. Transcript editing by Filipa Pajevic and Marlaine Glicksman.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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In 1995, the British band Oasis released one of their biggest hits as a single from their number one album: (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?

The song Wonderwall was a departure from their usual music, but it has gone on to be one of their most successful songs and was a top 10 hit in 15 countries.

It has also become an anthem for the British public and has become a key part of England’s 2026 World Cup campaign.

Nick Brine was the sound engineer who worked with the band to record the iconic track at Rockfield Studios. He speaks to Tim O’Callaghan.

Witness History is a short BBC World Service podcast about history that takes you inside big moments from the past through first-hand testimony and archive. Each weekday, in around nine minutes, we revisit one moment that helped shape the world and hear it through the voice of someone who was there. Scientists, artists, campaigners, soldiers, leaders and everyday people tell their true stories.

When you subscribe to Witness History, you’ll be taken inside turning points in world affairs from West Africa’s fight back against Boko Haram in 2015 to the behind-closed-doors talks that led to the US-Cuba “thaw” and the surprise announcement of restored relations.

You’ll discover what it was like to experience disasters and how people recovered from them, including the Tabasco floods in Mexico, Portugal's worst train disaster, and the huge clean-up after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

You’ll explore culture and ideas too: Sweden’s Expedition Robinson, often credited as the first modern reality TV game show; the friendship between The Beatles’ George Harrison and Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar; and the night a tiger attack brought Las Vegas superstars Siegfried and Roy’s show to a sudden end.

And if you’re curious about inventions, we’ll tell you how air fryers, BlackBerry, YouTube, Alexa, GPS, superglue, the shopping cart (shopping trolley) and bubble tea were created.

If you’re new to Witness History, the appeal is simple: real voices, one strong true story, and a fresh way to understand today through events from history – all in the time it takes to enjoy a cup of tea or a walk around the block. Join millions of BBC World Service podcast listeners around the globe and enjoy the insight, context and detail Witness History will bring you.

(Photo: The Gallagher brothers performing in 1995. Credit: Des Willie/Redferns/Getty Images)

On 5 May 1981, 26-year-old Bobby Sands became the first of ten IRA hunger strikers to die at the Maze Prison, changing the course of history in Northern Ireland. In this episode, Diarmaid and Catriona assess his life, his status as a Republican icon, and how he impacted the career of his chief antagonist, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher among others.

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The most popular modern food poem is probably William Carlos Williams’s ‘This Is Just to Say’, in which the speaker confesses to eating the plums his wife was saving for breakfast. Food has often been a means for poetry to represent intimate relationships, but, as Sarah and Sandeep explore in this episode, it has also provided ways of thinking about alienation, societal change, survival and displacement. In Tony Harrison’s 'V.', supermarkets and food providers become central motifs in a discussion of Britain’s changing landscapes; Bhanu Kapil’s How to Wash a Heart uses the memory of a grandfather planting yogurt under a tree as a means of understanding the aftermath of Partition; and in Yousif M. Qasmiyeh’s ‘Communion’, set in the Beddawi refugee camp in Lebanon, lentils become part of a living archive through which experiences are transmitted across generations.

Read Tony Harrison's 'V.' in the LRB:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v07/n01/tony-harrison/v

Get 25% off a 12-month subscription to Close Readings with the code ’POETRY25’ at checkout here: https://lrb.me/crpoetry

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In Magic and Mechanics, the latest in Scratch Books’ ‘Reverse Engineering’ series, six writers – George Saunders, Claire-Louise Bennett, Mark Haddon, Camilla Grudova, Amber Medland and Colin Barrett – present and disassemble one of their recent short stories. To celebrate its launch, join Claire-Louise Bennett in conversation with novelist Ben Pester as they discuss their work, exploring the ways that their backgrounds in theatre have led them to create exhilarating and innovative prose writing.

You can buy a copy of Magic & Mechanics from the London Review Bookshop.

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As the United States celebrates 250 years of Independence, what were the driving motivations of America's revolutionary leader - and first president - George Washington? Professor Colin G. Calloway details Washington's intense interest in land speculation, in the vast native territories west of the Appalachian mountains.

Guest: 

• Colin G Calloway, Professor of history at Dartmouth College, author of The Indian World of George Washington 

Nige Tassell fell in love with the literary allusions of Prefab Sprout when at school and his new book ‘Truly Gifted Kids’ tells their unique and inscrutable story – and involves some delightfully off-road “deerstalker” investigation. You’ll find self-sabotage, square pegs in round holes, the eternal pressure to have hits, and a devoted portrait of ringmaster Paddy McAloon that leaves you convinced there’s never been anyone quite like him before or since. This sparks off in a million directions, these among them …

… the lure of bands who'd clearly been to the library and were unlikely to have a huge hit

... Paddy’s stoic defence of their name

… his distaste for “diary songwriting” of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen

… Jesse James, Elvis, Hey Manhattan: the obsession with the romance of America

… the archive of unrecorded songs (one box labelled ‘For Rod Stewart’)

… how the success of The King Of Rock ‘N’ Roll came to haunt them

… the inconceivable moment they appeared on the National Lottery with Bob Monkhouse and Mystic Meg

… pop tribalism on the school bus

… the dreadful circumstance that lead to I Trawl the Megahertz

… Paddy’s visual transformation from tousled pop star to hermetic semi-reclusive Gandalf

… and the fate of the Steve McQueen motorbike.

Order ‘Truly Gifted Kids’ here …

https://linktr.ee/newmodern_books?lt_utm_source=lt_share_link#566128608.

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This episode is presented by Wispr Flow, a tool that turns voice notes into clear writing. I use it every day and recommend it to every writer I know. Try it for free at ref.wisprflow.ai/howiwrite

David Sedaris has long been one of the funniest writers in the game, and he’s got a method for how he does it. It starts with observation, always looking for what’s surprising, ridiculous, or a little bit strange about the world. Then, every single day, he writes the best ideas down in a journal.

But there’s also a willingness to put himself in absurd situations, like working as a Christmas elf at Macy’s or cleaning up litter off English country roads for eight hours a day. He’s sold more than 16 million books, and he’s been writing for The New Yorker for more than 30 years. Today, he’s here to teach us how he does it.

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