The TLS Podcast

The comedian and writer Helen Lederer joins us to discuss gender and comedy and the new Comedy Women In Print Prize; Lucy Dallas considers a clutch of novels in which animals might offer a little respite from human company; the TLS’s philosophy editor Tim Crane guides us through the riches of this week’s philosophy issue, including how the advent of biological immortality might augur “the greatest inequality experienced in all human history” and what happened when Michel Foucault took LSD in Death Valley

To Leave with the Reindeer by Olivia Rosenthal, translated by Sophie Lewis

Animalia by Jean-Baptiste del Amo, translated by Frank Wynne

The Animal Gazer by Edgardo Franzosini, translated by Michael F. Moore

“The last mortals: why we are especially unfortunate to die, when our near-descendants could be immortal", by Regini Rini – see this week’s TLS (in print and online)

Foucault in California: A true story, wherein the great French philosopher drops acid in the Valley of Death by Simeon Wade

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Robert Macfarlane joins us to discuss our "peculiar times", the memory of ice, and the world beneath out feet; Margie Orford brings our attention to South Africa at a crucial moment in its history, twenty-five years since the first democratic election and as another makes its mark; Nicola Shulman offers a new theory about race in Disney's original Dumbo, from 1941

Underland: A deep time journey by Robert Macfarlane

The Café de Move-on Blues: In search of the new South Africa by Christopher Hope

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As Avengers: Endgame is released, Roz Kaveney sweeps us through the shifting cast of superheroes and, latterly, heroines that populate the Marvel Universe, considers the evolving politics of the comic-book film, and answers the question on (some) people's lips: "but why...?"; Imogen Russell Williams's introduces some of the best writing on LGBTQ themes for children and young adults

Avengers: Endgame 

Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse

Julian Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love

Aalfred and Aalbert by Morag Hood 

Death in the Spotlight by Robin Stevens 

Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) by L. C. Rosen

Proud: Stories, poetry and art on the theme of pride, compiled by Juno Dawson

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Ruth Scurr on the master biographer Robert A. Caro, whose subjects include Robert Moses, Lyndon B. Johnson and, now, himself; Dmitri Levitin talks us through Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, an eccentric and often inaccurate guide to early thinkers; Why bother with literary criticism? Whither this generation's Lionel Trilling? Michael LaPointe joins us to discuss

Working: Researching, interviewing, writing by Robert A. Caro

American Audacity: In defense of literary daring by William Giraldi

Hater: On the virtues of utter disagreeability by John Semley

Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, by Diogenes Laertius, translated by Pamela Mensch

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There is only one author to whom the TLS devotes an issue every year: William Shakespeare. Michael Caines talks us through the latest theories, research and reviews; Ian McEwan discusses his new novel, Machines Like Me  

‘Still a giddy neighbour’ – Shakespeare’s parish in the 1590s, by Geoffrey Marsh, the TLS

The Bible on the Shakespearean Stage: Cultures of interpretation in Renaissance England, edited by Thomas Fulton and Kristen Poole

Believing in Shakespeare: Studies in longing, by Claire McEachern

Religious Conversion in Early Modern English Drama, by Lieke Stelling

What Blest Genius?: The Jubilee that made Shakespeare, by Andrew McConnell Stott

Shakespeare’s Rise to Cultural Prominence: Politics, print and alteration, 1642–1700, by Emma Depledge

Shakespeare: The theatre of our world, by Peter Conrad

Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan (Cape)

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Shauneen Lambe on ephibiphobia, fear of the teenager, and why we get youth justice wrong; Alice Bloch considers new possibilities at the frontiers of sex and robotics; George Berridge explains why now is the time to take out shares in the novelist Max Porter 

Why Children Follow Rules: Legal socialization and the development of legitimacy by Tom R. Tyler and Rick Trinkner

James Garbarino

Miller’s Children: Why giving teenage killers a second chance matters for all of us by James Garbarino

Turned On: Science, sex and robots by Kate Devlin

Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter, adapted by Enda Walsh (Barbican Theatre, before heading to New York)

Lanny by Max Porter

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Anna Picard discusses the problems of subject matter and sensationalism in the new opera Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel; Anna Vaux talks us through the Bauhaus school and its global influence, as well as Lucian Freud's compulsion to create and control

Books

Jack the Ripper:The Women of Whitechapel by Iain Bell, ENO, until April 12

Walter Gropius: Visionary founder of the Bauhaus by Fiona MacCarthy

Josef Albers: Life and work by Charles Darwent

Lucian Freud by Martin Gayford

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Richard Fortey takes us on an energetic sprint through 65 million years of Europe's complex biological history; David Robey introduces the life and work of Emilio Salgari, the Italian Rider Haggard; Ella Baron, the TLS's regular cartoonist, discusses her work, including this week's European cover.

Books

Europe: A natural history by Tim Flannery

Emilio Salgari: Una mitologia moderna tra letteratura, politica, società (volumes I and II) by Ann Lawson Lucas

Ella Baron's work will be exhibited at Christie's in London, from April 5 to 10

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Carol Tavris considers new approaches to the old problem of old age (and the newer problem of old old age); as secularism wanes on the global scale, Rupert Shortt considers whether religion does more harm than good 

Books

Bolder: Making the most of our longer lives by Carl Honoré

Borrowed Time: The science of how and why we age by Sue Armstrong

Retirement and Its Discontents: Why we won’t stop working, even if we can by Michelle Pannor Silver

Women Rowing North: Navigating life’s currents and flourishing as we age by Mary Pipher

On the Brink of Everything: Grace, gravity and getting old by Parker J. Palmer

This Chair Rocks: A manifesto against ageism by Ashton Applewhite

Does Religion do More Harm than Good? by Rupert Shortt

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