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Last Sunday - the day before he died - Jeffrey Archer was on stage at the Leicester Square Theatre in London celebrating the publication of his fiftieth book - his final novel, Adam and Eve - and talking with Gyles about his remarkable roller-coaster life. Jeffrey was in great form, telling stories even Gyles hadn’t heard before. This isn’t a regular Rosebud, but it was such a fun show, we wanted to share it with you. It’s poignant, too, because, as you will hear (and can see if you watch our interview episodes on the Rosebud Podcast channel on YouTube), at the end of the performance Jeffrey recites Puck’s farewell speech from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: ’So goodnight unto you all …'

Jeffrey Archer, Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare. Born 15 April 1940. Died 5 October 2026. Author, politician, MP, member of the House of Lords, served two years in prison for perjury, 2001-2003. Married to Mary Archer since 1966. Both Jeffrey Archer and Dame Mary Archer have featured in regular episodes of Rosebud, now available in the Rosebud archive.

The recording of this special episode has been made possible by Harper-Collins, publishers of Jeffrey Archer’s final novel, Adam and Eve, which was published yesterday. Our thanks to Elizabeth Dawson and the Harper-Collins team for all their help. Our thanks, too, to the Leicester Square Theatre where the recording was made on Sunday 4 October 2026.

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J.R.R. Tolkien created one of the most intoxicating imaginative worlds of the 20th century, but the man behind Middle-earth remains surprisingly elusive. A deeply religious, conservative Oxford academic, Tolkien was also an obsessive inventor of languages, myths and imaginary histories.

• Guest: DJ Taylor, author of The King under the Mountain
• Producer: Ali Benton

Last week, David Robinson resigned from OpenAI. He’d been in charge of writing the safety reports for new models and came to believe that OpenAI and the broader artificial intelligence industry lack the safety culture necessary to protect the world from what they’re building.

Robinson has an unusual background for an A.I. frontier lab staffer. He’s a Rhodes scholar and Yale Law graduate, he founded a civil rights nonprofit and he advised the Biden White House. He did not come up in the hothouse of Silicon Valley. And when he joined OpenAI in 2023, he says, he saw A.I. as a useful tool, not as a technology that could pose catastrophic risks.

That’s changed. In Robinson’s first interview since leaving OpenAI, he tells me why.

(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft claiming copyright infringement. The companies have denied those claims.)

This episode contains strong language.

Mentioned:

“On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots” by Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major and Shmargaret Shmitchell

“An OpenAI Engineer and His Friends Debate the Future”

“Jensen Huang Thinks A.I. Alarmism Has Gone Too Far” by The Ezra Klein Show

“The Merge” by Sam Altman

Sam Altman on Decoded

Book Recommendations:

“The Challenger Launch Decision” by Diane Vaughan

“Little Witch Hazel” by Phoebe Wahl

“The Sabbath” by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

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 Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Julie Beer. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our recording engineer is Aman Sahota. Cinematography by Kyle Kelley and Marina King. Video editing by Brandon Belk-Yee, Dani Dillon and Kristen Williamson. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. 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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Since Trump first took office in 2016 there has been a debate on the left as to whether he and other authoritarian right-wing leaders, such as Viktor Orbán and Narendra Modi, should be described as fascist. Some have dismissed the label as rhetorical excess, while others have chosen to describe this new formation of right-wing politics as ‘post-fascist’. But, as Primo Levi wrote, ‘every age has its own fascism’, and in their recent book Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor have identified ‘end-times fascism’ as a feature of our time, offering a portrait of arsonists and accelerationists who are knowingly pushing the world towards new and greater catastrophes.

On this episode Klein and Taylor join Adam Shatz to discuss what fascism looks like in the age of AI, drone warfare and influencers, and why we have reached a point where tech billionaires declare they are ‘unapologetically on Team Humanity’.

Further listening:

Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith on ecofascism:

Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/nicapplelrbpod

Spotify: https://lrb.me/nicspotifylrbpod

LRB wesbite: https://lrb.me/niclrbpod

From the LRB

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Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠

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Joining us are the novelist, playwright and memoirist Alice Jolly and novelist Patrick McCabe, to discuss the A Passage to India by E.M. Forster. First published in 1924, by the end of that year, A Passage to India had sold 17,000 copies in Britain and 54,000 in the USA and today is viewed as a seminal text in post-colonial literature. A Passage to India grapples with, among many themes, colonialism and faith, and is set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. In this episode we reflect on its legacy today.

This show was recorded at our first live event of 2023, at Dartington Hall, Devon as part of the Byline Festival.

* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.

* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm

*If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and get extra bonus episodes and original writing, become a patron at ⁠www.patreon.com/backlisted⁠ + the first week is free

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Iris Murdoch was born in Ireland in 1919, grew up in London and was educated in Bristol and Oxford. She's famous both as a novelist and a philosopher, and she won the Booker Prize in 1978 for The Sea, The Sea. Her nominator is Russell Kane, who is full of admiration for her work. This compelling discussion of what makes Iris great includes contributions from her friend and biographer, Peter Conradi; and from Miles Leeson, Director of the Iris Murdoch Research Centre in Chichester.

Great Lives is presented by Matthew Parris and produced by Miles Warde. Other guests in this final series of Great Lives include Ruby Tandoh on children's author Brian Jacques; Pauline Black of The Selector on Poly Styrene of X Ray Spex; and Mel Giedroyc on her ancestor, Russia's first female military surgeon, Princess Vera Gedroits.

Jam Jars Fiona vocals & Boo Hewerdine guitar by Fiona Keane

It's invisible, it drives us crazy, and we can't live without it. The wind has been worshipped, feared and cursed across cultures, referenced in the earliest forms of writing. Simon Winchester tells the stories of how we've mastered the winds, and when we've been humbled by it's awesome force. 

• Guest: Simon Winchester, journalist and author of The Breath of the Gods: The History and Future of the Wind
• Producer: Alex Tighe

This program was originally broadcast in November 2025.

On Point news analyst Jack Beatty brings historical context to analysis that President Trump’s war with Iran has no realistic off-ramp.

***

On the 22nd of August 1922, Michael Collins, the Commander in Chief of the National Army was shot dead. He was just 31.

Almost immediately the myth making around Michael Collins began, starting with the last words he’s alleged to have uttered.

But what is the real legacy of Michael Collins? He was a man who operated as a politician but was capable of ruthless violence.

On this week’s What Were We Like, we talk about Michael Collins, a man that has captured the imagination of the Irish public, film makers, artists and politicians like no other figure in modern Irish history.

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