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Meghan O’Rourke joins Kevin Young to read and discuss “Poem to My Litter,” by Max Ritvo, and her own poem “Sectioned.” O’Rourke is the author, most recently, of the New York Times best-seller “The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness,” a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction. Her other books include the best-selling memoir “The Long Goodbye” and three poetry collections, including “Sun in Days,” named a Top Ten Poetry Book of 2017 by the New York Times. She has also edited two anthologies, “The Story of the Body: Poems of Illness & Recovery”—which was released earlier this month—and “A World Out of Reach: Dispatches from Lockdown.” She is a professor of creative writing at Yale University and the editor of The Yale Review.

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Kant was born in 18th century Prussia. He showed great intellectual promise as a child, but didn't make a name for himself until his late forties, when he published his lengthy tome on the scope of Metaphysics, called The Critique of Pure Reason, which unleashed what he himself referred to as a 'Copernican revolution' in thought.

Renowned for his clockwork routine, strict diet and for barely ever leaving his home town of Konigsberg, Kant was in fact a lively and well-loved lecturer and dinner party host, who had many friends.

Choosing the great philosopher is Professor Lea Ypi, from the London School of Economics, who first read Kant at a turbulent time in her life, during a civil war in Albania, when she felt that Kant could help her steer a path between dogmatism and scepticism.

In studio with Lea Ypi and the presenter Matthew Parris, is Kings College Kant scholar, Dr John Callanan.

The Producer in Bristol is Ellie Richold

On Point news analyst Jack Beatty on why Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proposal for Medicare for All warrants more scrutiny than it's getting in progressive political circles.

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During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the city of Paris was besieged by the Prussian army.

The citizens of Paris experienced starvation and fuel shortages during a period of extreme cold.

They resorted to eating horses, cats, dogs, rats and even animals from the city's zoo.

Mrs Sydney Snell was 10 years old during the siege and spoke to the BBC about her memories of that time in 1946.

Produced and presented by Tim O'Callaghan in collaboration with the BBC Archives.

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.

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: Painting by Henri Felix Philippoteaux of a bombing scene during the Siege of Paris 1871. Credit: Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images)

Are you ready for a poetry brew? Ian McMillan is and he's joined by:

Graeme Richardson, Anglican priest and the Sunday Times poetry critic, with his debut poetry collection, Dirt Rich;

Dr Julie Blake, cofounder and director of Poetry By Heart - the schools and colleges poetry recitation competition, on why learning poetry when young is a gift for life;

Artist Simeon Barclay, shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize for his spoken word performance, The Ruin, on making art from language; and

Hasti, winner of the Michael Marks Award 2026 for their debut pamphlet, Young, Dumb, and Full of Poems.

Presenter Ian McMillan

The acclaimed Irish writer Andrew Meehan talks about his novel Hey Man and explores its link to three other works with presenter James Crawford.

Hey Man tells the story of a unique, challenging and beautiful friendship between Ian and Tommy as they navigate three chapters of their lives, from a care-free summer in London to the ritual and peace a Benedictine monastery.

For his three influences, Andrew chose Amy Bloom's White Houses (2018), Lorrie Moore's Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? (1994), and Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (2004).

Producer: Caitlin Sneddon

“The rules of engagement have changed already.”

Novelist Min Jin Lee (Pachinko) is a beacon of wit and wisdom. She returns to the show this week with American Hagwon, the long-awaited third installment in her Korean diaspora quartet.

We begin with the ten-year process of writing American Hagwon (3:25), the thesis guiding the novel (4:00), and her experiences with education after immigrating from South Korea to Queens, New York (8:53). Then, Lee describes her process conducting thousands of interviews for the book (14:20), her relationship to security (18:18), and the staggering effects of media on young people (21:55).

On the back-half, we talk about her years at Yale (32:58), how her legal training at Georgetown shaped her approach to fiction (44:32), and the risks of artificial intelligence (45:55). To close, Lee unpacks the dreams we defer for our families (1:10:22), her advice to “choose the important over the urgent” (1:20:07), and the premise for her next novel, Marshall Plan (1:26:30).

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Souvankham Thammavongsa read her story “Wall Cano,” from the November 2, 2026, issue of the magazine. Thammavongsa has published four volumes of poetry, along with the story collection “How to Pronounce Knife” and the novel “Pick a Color,” both of which were winners of the Giller Prize. A new story collection, “Crush,” will be published in 2027.

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Tom McCarthy, writing in the LRB, described James Joyce's Ulysses as a ‘heavy book, a book full of weight, a fallen book’; a ‘properly obscene book’; ‘a book in which the central stake is the coming into being of the book itself’; a book for which ‘people should desist, once and for all, from using the term “interior monologue” to describe the novel’s outbreaks of unassigned first-person narrative. This is not interior monologue: it’s exterior consciousness, embodied (or encorpsed) consciousness that has ruptured the membrane of conventional syntax.’ In this episode, Toms McCarthy and Jones discuss all that and more, including why Ulysses is both a ‘book to be read with relish’ and a ‘monumental event in the development of human consciousness’.

This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/closereadingsmbtc

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In this show, Robert Harrison discusses the remarkable evolutionary theories of French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck with Stanford professor Jessica Riskin. Dr. Riskin is the Frances and Charles Field Professor of History at Stanford University. She is the author of The Restless Clock (2019), Science in the Age of Sensibility (2002), and most recently The Power […]