The TLS Podcast

By The TLSSociety & Culture Arts Fiction

The TLS Podcast episodes

September 24, 2020 Murder at the Opera
From Poirot on the River Nile to Verdi's take on the infamous Scottish play. Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas talk to writer Laura Thompson about the work of Agatha Christie and how she managed to move with the times, and Professor Larry Wolff joins us from Florence to discuss the tentative return of live opera in Italy with Verdi's Macbeth at the Parma Verdi Festival.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
49 min
September 16, 2020 Books! Books! Books!
Toby Lichtig talks us through this year's Booker shortlisted novels, plus a couple of others, and Lucy Dallas reports on the French scene (where real life and fiction blur...); finally, we explore the situation in Israel and Palestine from three rather different perspectives.

An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defence Forces made a nation by Haim Bresheeth-Zabner
The Conflict over the Conflict: The Israel/Palestine campus debate by Kenneth S. Stern
The new peace? – Israel’s unexpected ray of light by Ari Shavit – www.the-TLS.co.uk
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
38 min
September 09, 2020 Sex and the City of Ladies
In 1405, Christine de Pisan took up the pen in defense of her maligned sex, imagining a 'City of Ladies' in which the most virtuous female leaders of history might be preserved from the distortions of misogyny. Six hundred years later, with Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great as her guides, the novelist and historian Lisa Hilton revisits the City to shake the foundations of the way we write about power
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
25 min
August 26, 2020 The TLS, rewind #4
Throughout August, we are revisiting our books roundups from previous years, and today we’re returning to last year’s suggestions. In 2019, our contributor Diana Darke said in the paper: "A lot of things need saving this summer – tangible things like bees, Notre-Dame, water … and intangible things like democracy, humanitarian ideals, community". Among the many subjects under discussion here are Oulipo, impeachment, and climate change.

We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
46 min
August 19, 2020 The TLS, rewind #3
Throughout August, we are revisiting our books roundups from previous years, to give you a chance to catch up on books you might have missed. Today we are sauntering back to the summer of 2018, and an episode in which we learnt which books our contributors – including Bernardine Evaristo, Claire Lowdon and Carlo Rovelli – were looking forward to. We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
37 min
August 12, 2020 The TLS, rewind #2
Throughout August, we are revisiting books roundups from previous years, to give you a chance once again to hear recommendations from our writers and editors, on subjects like Marcel Proust’s letters, tech-ensnared science fiction and Euripides. In this episode, from 2017, there is also an interview with that year’s Man Booker International Prize Winner, David Grossman, and his translator Jessica Cohen. We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
58 min
August 05, 2020 The TLS, rewind #1
Throughout August, we are revisiting books roundups from previous years, to give you a chance to catch up on all that good stuff. Today we’re skipping back to 2016’s books of the year recommendations. We’ll be back with new weekly episodes from September 10th. Until then, head to the website – the-tls.co.uk – to keep up with the weekly magazine.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
39 min
July 29, 2020 Climate change, from 'doomism' to optimism
Gabrielle Walker talks us through three unhelpful attitudes to global warming, as exemplified in the Michael Moore-produced film Planet of the Humans; Sudhir Hazareesingh discusses the complex relationship between charisma and celebrity in the age of Revolution (spoiler: it helps to have a horse)

Planet of the Humans - YouTube

Men on Horseback by David Bell
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
44 min
July 22, 2020 Life as a Roman emperor
What style of life did an ancient Roman emperor lead? How did he actually spend his time? Mary Beard fills us in; Frances Wilson on literary couples (and their pet names) and what they can, and can’t, tell us about marriage; Mika Ross-Southall on how gentrification works and who it works for

The Emperor in the Roman World by Fergus Millar
Literary Couples and 20th-Century Life Writing: Narrative and intimacy by Janine Utell
Parallel Lives: Five Victorian marriages by Phyllis Rose
Newcomers: Gentrification and its discontents by Matthew L. Schuerman
Us Versus Them: Race, crime, and gentrification in Chicago neighborhoods by Jan Doering
The Aesthetics of Neighborhood Change, edited by Lisa Berglund and Siobhan Gregory
Alpha City: How London was captured by the super-rich, by Rowland Atkinson
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
57 min
July 15, 2020 How the West was written
Geoff Dyer on why Larry McMurtry’s novel Lonesome Dove was one of the most memorable reading experiences of his life (a taster from his essay: “There was no book and no reader. There was just this world, this huge landscape and its magnificently peopled emptiness”); In April 1939, the black contralto Marian Anderson stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial and performed to a crowd of 75,000 people. Carol J. Oja sheds light on the twists and turns behind a moment when the history of Civil Rights intersected with that of classical music. Read more at the-tls.co.uk
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
46 min