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Charlotte Metcalf talks to Dr. Miriam Stoppard about her new book Sex, Drugs and Walking Sticks, a must-read bible for oldies, full of anecdotes and her personal tips on how to age well. She talks frankly about her views on sex and alcohol, about her life and motherhood and reminisces about her 20-year marriage to the late Tom Stoppard. 

Negotiating is for more than just salary discussions. This episode, negotiation expert Joan Moon shares techniques to help you make decisions with more confidence and get the outcome you want in your everyday life. This episode originally published April 11, 2024

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When I called the emergency vet to ask a question about my dog Barnaby, her answer gave me an important insight into the challenge of decision-making.

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Topics discussed in this episode include:

R.S. Thomas's poems:

-Mediations

-Kneeling

-Via Negativa

-The Absence

-Revision

-Ernest Hilbert

-Alexander Fayne's essay on R.S. Thomas

-Pascal's "Night of Fire"

-Apophatic theology 

-John Scotus Erigena, Philo, Pseudo-Dionysius, Weil, etc. 

-Keats's "Ode On A Grecian Urn"

-Milton's "On His Blindness" 

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My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

Ian McMillan's guests this week are the singer and songwriter Richard Dawson, T.S. Eliot prize winning poets Jacob Polley and Sarah Howe and Children's Laureate Frank Cottrell Boyce - who celebrates Professor John Carey and the art of poetry criticism.

Richard Dawson and Jacob Polley light up the past and make the future of energy and community life seem more real - by bringing their different sensibilities to 'Ancestral Reverb' - an album created by north east organisation 'Threads in the Ground' (directed by Adam Cooper). 'Ancestral Reverb' contains music spanning over 100 years, and the words of those connected to coal. DJ and producer Bert Verso sampled historic music for this album, and wove it through with his own new compositions. The records are embedded with fragments of coal. Richard Dawson's latest album is 'End of the Middle' and Jacob Polley's 'Hymn to Water' can be heard on BBC Sounds (www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002mw7t)

Sarah Howe's new book is 'Loop of Jade' which beautifully takes on threads from her T.S. Eliot prize winning collection 'Loop of Jade'. Sarah explores a 'Neon Line' for us from the work of the American 20th century poet Elizabeth Bishop - a stand-out line that lets us into a poem. Sarah tells us about the power of the messy first draft, and where it can lead a poet.

Children's Laureate, novelist and writer of the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony - Frank Cottrell Boyce celebrates the wit, generosity, and pithy opening sentences of Professor John Carey, whose distinctive voice as teacher, critic and broadcaster led so many into a deep engagement with poetry.

Presented by Ian McMillan

About a famine graveyard in Sligo in the west of Ireland

On Point news analyst Jack Beatty on who stands to benefit from the so-called Dmitriev package, a reported $12 trillion economic cooperation proposal between the U.S. and Russia.

***

At the end of January, Trump’s Justice Department released what it said was the last tranche of the Epstein files: millions of pages of emails and texts, F.B.I. documents and court records. Much was redacted and millions more pages have been withheld. There is a lot we want to know that remains unclear.

But what has come into clear view is the role Epstein played as a broker of information, connections, wealth and women and girls for a slice of the global elite. This was the infrastructure of Epstein’s power — and it reveals much about the infrastructure of elite networks more generally.

Anand Giridharadas is something of a sociologist of American elites. He’s the author of, among other books, “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World” and the forthcoming “Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle and Belonging in an American City.” He also publishes the great newsletter The.Ink.

Back in November, after the release of an earlier batch of Epstein files, Giridharadas wrote a great Times Opinion guest essay, taking a sociologist’s lens to the messages Epstein exchanged with his elite friends. So after the government released this latest, enormous tranche of materials, I wanted to talk to Giridharadas to help make sense of it. What do they reveal — about how Epstein operated in the world, the vulnerabilities he exploited and what that says about how power works in America today?

Note: This conversation was recorded on Tuesday, Feb. 10. On Thursday, Feb. 12, Kathryn Ruemmler announced she would be resigning from her role as chief legal officer and general counsel at Goldman Sachs.

This episode contains strong language.

Mentioned:

“How the Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails” by Anand Giridharadas

“How JPMorgan Enabled the Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein” by David Enrich, Matthew Goldstein and Jessica Silver-Greenberg

“Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich” by David Enrich, Steve Eder, Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Matthew Goldstein

Nobody's Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre

Book Recommendations:

Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

Unpublished Work by Conchita Sarnoff

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

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, mixing by Aman Sahota and Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

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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A frank conversation with the leader of Reform UK.

Nigel Farage has put his party on a "general election war footing" and says he is preparing for power.

What has his party still got to learn before they're ready?

Who is he referring to when he talks about putting "our own people first"?

And what made him change his mind and return to politics?

Senior Producer: Daniel Kraemer

This episode is brought to you by Basecamp, the world’s simplest, most effective project management platform. Check them out at https://basecamp.com and tell them David Perell sent you.

Diarmaid MacCulloch is an author, a professor at Oxford, and he's obsessed with history. A real expert who's been studying it for decades.

In this episode, we talked about how to do history, the role of a historian in society, and how to take everything you learn in the research phase and turn it into clear, vivid, and entertaining writing.

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