The TLS Podcast

By The TLSSociety & Culture Arts Fiction

The TLS Podcast episodes

November 21, 2019 Two phat ladies
“Apart from capitalism itself, is there any cultural and economic manifestation in the world today as ubiquitous, powerful and globalized as football?” John Foot assesses two new studies of the game; just over ten years ago, Elizabeth Strout introduced readers to a frustrated maths teacher called Olive Kitteridge. The novelist speaks to Roz Dineen about bringing Olive back onto the scene; the famously over-the-top cookery show ‘Two Fat Ladies’ last graced our television screens twenty years ago. Anna Girling celebrates the legacy of this unlikely union

‘The Age of Football: The global game in the twenty-first century’ by David Goldblatt
‘Ultra: The underworld of Italian football’ by Tobias Jones
‘Olive, Again’ by Elizabeth Strout
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40 min
November 14, 2019 How to read
TLS editors talk about Virginia Woolf's writing for the TLS, as we publish a collection of the reviews she wrote for us over a period of thirty years; on the eve of George Eliot's bicentennial, Rosemary Ashton talks about how she came to conclusions, moral and otherwise, in her novels; Caryn Rose sees Bruce Springsteen's new film and looks over his 'storied fifty-year career'

Genius and Ink: Virginia Woolf on How to Read by Virginia Woolf
Long Walk Home: Reflections on Bruce Springsteen, edited by Jonathan D. Cohen and June Skinner Sawyers
Western Stars by Bruce Springsteen
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51 min
November 07, 2019 Cold War machinations
Sarah Lonsdale recounts how writers became enmeshed in national struggles; Jane Yager tells the surprising story of DIY punk in the DDR; we talk to Robert Potts about the pleasures of reading John le Carré ("I was never happier than when I was reading John le Carré")

Cold Warriors: Writers who waged the literary Cold War, by Duncan White
Burning Down the Haus: Punk rock, revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall, by Tim Mohr
Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré
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47 min
October 31, 2019 Morals and mysteries
Michael Caines reports on an unprecedented gathering of work by William Hogarth, “replete with a bitter exuberance, folly finely observed and sin satirized”; “Sometimes a dark and stormy night calls for nothing more innovative than a classic chilling tale.” Joanna Scutts considers three new compendiums of the spooky and the macabre; Les Green makes a case for changing the UK's constitution (writing it down in one place being a good start...)

Hogarth: Place and progress, at the Sir John Soane’s Museum, until January 5, 2020

A Quaint and Curious Volume: Tales and poems of the gothic

Women’s Weird: Strange stories by women, 1890–1940, edited by Melissa Edmundson
Promethean Horrors: Classic tales of mad science, edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes

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50 min
October 23, 2019 Magazine love
Having asked a selection of writers to nominate their favourite magazines/journals, for a symposium in this week’s TLS, we pick through the results; as Granta turns forty, Alex Clark dives into the magazine’s archives, recently given to the British Library, and emerges clutching gems and old boots (including meeting minutes and evidence of fantasy commissioning); finally, the novelist and translator Lydia Davis talks us through her Thoreau-inspired approach to gardening
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56 min
October 17, 2019 Bernardine Evaristo – winner of the 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction
Bernardine Evaristo speaks to the TLS's fiction editor Toby Lichtig about her novel 'Girl, Woman, Other'
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24 min
October 17, 2019 David Greig – revisiting 'Solaris'
Having been staged in Edinburgh and Melbourne, David Greig's adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 'Solaris' is now at the Hammersmith Lyric Theatre in London. The TLS's Arts editor Lucy Dallas asks him about returning to this strange story of contact, consciousness and how to avoid using "fremulators" on stage
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44 min
October 16, 2019 Prize controversies
As the Nobel in Literature and the Booker Prize break the rules, split opinion, and (probably) boost sales of a few books, a bunch of TLS editors share their thoughts on the whole endeavour of prize-giving (Michael: "you may as well throw a stone..."); Alexander van Tulleken considers 'War Doctor: Surgery on the front line', David Nott's tales from the operating tables, and floors, of war-torn places; as his stage adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 'Solaris' comes to London, David Greig, the artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, talks to the TLS's arts editor Lucy Dallas
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55 min
October 09, 2019 How to grow a human
In this bonus edition of the podcast, William Collins have taken over the feed to play a new episode of their podcast, Ideas Matter. In this exclusive extract, science writer Phillip Ball talks to his editor Myles Archibald about the ideas explore in his book, How To Grow A Human.

To subscribe to Ideas Matter and discover more authors by William Collins, click here.
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41 min
October 09, 2019 Patronizing writers of colour
As #PublishingSoWhite continues to shame publishers into diversifying their lists, Colin Grant discusses some of the anxieties and complexities beneath the surface; Andrew Motion on why he keeps returning to William Wordsworth; Kate Miller reads a new poem, "Turned-down"

Wordsworth’s Fun by Matthew Bevis
The Making of Poetry: Coleridge, the Wordsworths and their year of marvels by Adam Nicolson
Wordsworth’s Poetry: 1815–1845 by Tim Fulford
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44 min