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Yiyun Li reads her story “Calm Sea and Hard Faring,” from the March 9, 2026, issue of the magazine. Li is the author of eight books of fiction, including the novels “Must I Go” and “The Book of Goose,” and the story collection “Wednesday’s Child,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, in 2024. Her most recent book, “Things in Nature Merely Grow,” won this year’s Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.

Low key reflective 'search for meaning' song inspired by staring at trees on an island

‘Small Prophets’ has quietly taken the world by storm. A whimsy, magical and gentle show providing a tonic to modern life. Its creator, Mackenzie Crook, could arguably described in a similar way.

Born in Sutton-on-hone a village near Dartford in 1971, his creative brilliance was evident to friends early on but instead of drama school he started work at Pizza Hut. Moving to London in his early twenties he shared a flat where dry rot led to the stairs collapsing. But his luck began to change when he took his stand up comedy routine to Edinburgh. He caught the eye of comedian Bob Mortimer and shortly after was cast as Gareth in ‘The Office’ the oddball Territorial Army reservist with one of the worst haircuts on television.

Crook went on to star in quirky independent and blockbuster Hollywood films alike, but aged forty he decided he wanted to write his own material and move behind the camera to direct. His first offering was the critically acclaimed series ‘The Detectorists’. So who is the man behind the magic?

Production team:

Archive:

On Point news analyst Jack Beatty on the lack of justification for, and potential consequences of, a U.S. military strike in Iran.

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About a chance meeting with Leonard Cohen in a bookshop in LA.

Host Meg Wolitzer presents two stories by the extraordinary Japanese writer Haruki Murakami that demonstrate the breadth of his emotional imagination over a career of 35 years.  In an early story, “The Window,” a professional letter-writer recalls an intimate encounter with a woman, and a hamburger steak.  The reader is Mike Doyle.  In the later story, “Kahu,” read by Jennifer Ikeda, a woman goes on a blind date, only to be blindsided. Both stories were recorded at the Japan Society in New York City, as part of an ongoing collaboration with Selected Shorts.

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This episode is presented by Mercury, the banking platform that makes this show possible. I can’t imagine trying to run my business without them. Learn more at https://mercury.com

Robert Mac is on the show today to teach us what he's learned from great comics like Jerry Seinfeld and Mitch Hedberg. Robert has been doing stand up for more than a decade, and I wanted to know what he's learned about how to be funny, how to tell a good story.

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This is a catch-up version of James O'Brien's Mystery Hour. To join the game, call 0345 60 60 973, Thursdays at 12pm.

Former NSW Premier and former Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Bob Carr and his wife Helena were almost inseparable. When she suddenly died, while they were in Vienna on an opera and galleries tour of Europe, Bob was bereft. 

Back in Sydney, he took to walking the streets late at night.

His memoir 'Bring back yesterday' pays tribute to Helena, born to Chinese and Tamil parents in Taiping. Bob Carr reflects on their life together, and on the work and politics that they both, and separately, have been involved in.

• Guest: Bob Carr
• Producers: David Marr/Ann Arnold

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the countless venues across the Roman Empire which for over five hundred years drew the biggest crowds both in the Republic and under the Emperors. The shows there delighted the masses who knew, no matter how low their place in society, they were much better off than the gladiators about to fight or the beasts to be slaughtered. Some of the Roman elites were disgusted, seeing this popular entertainment as morally corrupting and un-Roman. Moral degradation was a less immediate concern though than the overspill of violence. There was a constant threat of gladiators being used as a private army and while those of the elite wealthy enough to stage the shows hoped to win great prestige, they risked disappointing a crowd which could quickly become a mob and turn on them.

With

Kathleen Coleman

John Pearce

And

Matthew Nicholls

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

C. A. Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster (Princeton University Press, 1993)

Roger Dunkle, Gladiators: Violence and Spectacle in Ancient Rome (Pearson, 2008)

Garrett G. Fagan, The Lure of the Arena: Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games (Cambridge University Press, 2011)

A. Futrell, Blood in the Arena: The Spectacle of Roman Power (University of Texas Press, 1997)

A. Futrell, The Roman Games: A Sourcebook (Blackwell Publishing, 2006)

Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard, The Colosseum (Profile, 2005)

Luciana Jacobelli, Gladiators at Pompeii (The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003)

Eckart Köhne and Cornelia Ewigleben (eds.), Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome (University of California Press, 2000)

Donald Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (Routledge, 1998)

F. Meijer, The Gladiators: History’s Most Deadly Sport (Souvenir, 2004)

Jerry Toner, The Day Commodus killed a Rhino: Understanding the Roman Games (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014)

K. Welch, The Roman Amphitheatre from its Origins to the Colosseum (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

T. Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators (Routledge, 1992)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Production