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Ian McMillan brings you poems and poets to shake up autumn from the Contains Strong Language Festival.

Ian's guests, Alice Oswald, Paul Farley, Karen McCarthy Woolf and Liz Berry tread through the mellow fruit of John Keats' Ode to Autumn, but then turn their eyes and ears towards other surprising ways to write about this season of falling leaves, as well as exploring the art of poetry itself.

Paul Farley's latest book is his virtuosic poetry collection 'When it Rained for a Million Years' , Liz Berry's verse novel about forced child emigration is called 'The Home Child', Alice Oswald reads from 'Rhapsody- a manifesto' - a new book that looks at the origins (and the future) of poetry, Karen McCarthy Woolf's 'Unsafe' looks at nature, land and who has permission to walk it freely.

Presented by Ian McMillan

Rachel Heng reads her story “A Very Safe Place,” from the October 12, 2026, issue of the magazine. Heng is the author of the novels “Suicide Club” and “The Great Reclamation,” which won the New American Voices Award in 2023.

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Isabel Allende (The House of the Spirits, Paula) is one of the most widely-read authors in the world, alternating gracefully between the political and personal on the page for over forty years. 

We sat with Allende in Los Angeles for a special evening presented by How To Academy, beginning with her upbringing in Chile (4:45), the roots of her feminism (8:45), and her early pieces as a journalist at Paula magazine (13:15). Then, Allende recalls the 1973 military coup that eventually forced her into exile in Venezuela (17:00), the making of her debut novel (20:00), and nearly losing the manuscript in the process (27:30).

On the back-half, Allende reflects on the thousands of letters she exchanged with her late mother (34:42), the loss of her daughter Paula and the book born from that grief (38:56), and the rituals that continue to shape her writing (47:00). We also talk about therapy and divorce (51:55), the questions that inspire each new book (1:05:15), finding love again at 74 (1:07:05), and the daily gratitude practice that keeps her returning to the page (1:10:30).

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For the final episode in our series on living in an ageing world David talks to Lyndsey Stonebridge about one of the most interesting and challenging of all writers on the subject of old age – Simone de Beauvoir. Why did Beauvoir believe that we are all duplicitous about the elderly? How did she experience her own ageing body and the prospect of her own death? What did she learn from watching Sartre age and die? And what makes her a prophet for the world we live in today?

Lyndsey Stonebridge’s 'Old Women: A History of Our Future' will be published next year.

Out now on PPF+: part two of David’s conversation with Samuel Moyn about the problem of gerontocracy. How can older people be encouraged to stop hoarding wealth and power? Is socialised care the solution? And is that ever going to happen in a place like America? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening – and to help support everything we do – subscribe to PPF+ no https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

You can find out everything else you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus our free online courses and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes – on our website https://www.ppfideas.com

Next Time: The Curious History of Transhumanism

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In the third of five episodes to mark the 500 episode milestone, an expert on Paul's letters tells us how Stoic ideas shaped his philosophy and theology.

He renounced his fortune and lived amongst animals so does the example of St Francis help us think about issues like the wealth gap and our relationship with the environment and the natural world. October 4th is his feast day and this year the Catholic church is marking the 800th anniversary of his death.

For Radio 4's Friday night roundtable discussion programme about ideas past and present Anne McElvoy is joined by:

Peter Stanford is an author of articles and books on religion including about pilgrimage, angels, 50 religious ideas you really need to know and most recently Gaudí: God’s Architect.

New Generation Thinker Dr Jakub Kowalewski, a Senior Research Fellow at St Mary's University Twickenham, author of A Philosophy of Climate Apocalypticism. He is working on the Guardians of Creation Project investigating paths to sustainable and ecologically sensitive change in the Catholic Church.

Carmody Grey, is professor of Integral Ecology at the Laudato Si’ Institute at Radboud University. She also appears as a panelist on some episodes of Radio 4's Moral Maze.

Rupert Read is Emeritus Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and Co-Director of the Climate Majority Project.

Daniel Susskind is Professor of Business at Gresham College, a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University and the author of What Should My Children Do? How to Flourish in the Age of AI

Producer: Ruth Watts

President Trump and the modern right have a theory of beauty. You see it in Trump’s gilded Oval Office, his imagined arch and his executive order requiring classical and traditional styles for certain federal buildings. 

This isn’t my theory of beauty, but it is a theory. And it’s a response, in part, to something that a lot of people have been feeling, and not just on the right: that the modern world is ugly, or getting uglier. 

I’ve seen at least a dozen articles or videos over the last few years asking, “Is the world getting uglier?” They point to the drabness of new apartment blocks, the sameness of new cars and the reign of “greige” in homes and fashion. 

So I’ve wanted to do an episode on this for a while. Why does the world seem to be getting uglier, or drabber? And at a moment when the right has a clear answer to this feeling, does the left have any answer at all? 

Debbie Millman teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and hosts the long-running podcast “Design Matters,” where she talks to creative people about design. In her long career as a brand designer, she revamped the logos for companies like Burger King, 7 Up and Häagen-Dazs. She’s also written a number of books on design, and recently wrote an article for Time magazine, “Is the World Getting Uglier?” 

Mentioned:

“Is the World Getting Uglier?” by Debbie Millman

“Why Is Everything So Ugly?” by n+1

“How Did The World Get So Ugly?” by Sheehan Quirke

Book Recommendations:

“The Voice That Is Great Within Us” by Hayden Carruth

“Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel García Márquez

“Ulysses” by James Joyce

“Hunger” by Roxane Gay

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 Annie Galvin and Marie Cascione. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our recording engineer is Aman Sahota. Cinematography by Marina King and Kyle Kelley. Video editing by Kristen Williamson. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, 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. Special thanks to Vanessa Friedman.

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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We’re staring down the life-and-death hazard of artificial intelligence. That phrase “AI apocalypse” sounds a little panicky, but when the masters of the craft started arguing this summer about how soon, in the next 10 years, their science might wipe out human life forever, we had to say attention must be paid.

Ben Hurlbut.

We’re joined by Ben Hurlbut, professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. He’s been a wary eye on science in general, the teacher and guide we reach for on issues that we simply don’t know how to talk about. Five years ago, he led us through the CRISPR conundrum around editing the human genome. How did we get to killer AI, lethal AI, and how might we get past it?

The post AI Apocalypse? appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

On this Selected Shorts, host Meg Wolitzer invites us on a literary tour of Ireland with bestselling author Colum McCann, who hosted a live event at Symphony Space celebrating the rich heritage of Irish literature, and some gifted contemporary voices.  The program includes, “Lucy’s Boyfriend,” a sharp-witted story about contemporary dating mores by Anne Enright, read by Crystal Dickinson; a touching reflection on the loss of Ireland’s young to jobs overseas, “Fishing in the Sloe-Black River,” by McCann himself, read by Aedin Maloney; and “Toronto and the State of Grace,”  a wild social comedy by Kevin Barry that takes place at a bar at the end of the world and is read by Santino Fontana.

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Dr Iain McGilchrist has dedicated decades of neuroscience research to unravelling the inner workings of the human mind. But now, a new form of ‘consciousness’ has come to compete with the very idea of being a person. Could artificial intelligence overtake its creators? Join the psychiatrist, philosopher and author of the bestselling book The Master and His Emissary, for a live on-stage conversation with UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers.

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