The TLS Podcast

By The TLSSociety & Culture Arts Fiction

The TLS Podcast episodes

June 06, 2018 Those are pearls . . . and Michael Jackson's performative drama
We explore the complex, brutal, swaggering history of pearls and those who found, traded and wore them, with Kathryn Hughes. Sam Byers talks about the self-authored creation that was Michael Jackson and the public's response to him.
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33 min
May 30, 2018 Philip Roth and the translatable
Philip Roth, who died last week aged eighty-five, has left behind a vast literary canon and a complicated legacy. But is there more to this great American novelist than just sordid sex? Ben Markovits shares his thoughts; TLS Features editor, Roz Dineen interviews Man Booker international prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, and her translator, Jennifer Croft; Eric Ormsby explores the significance of context when translating the seemingly immutable text of the Qur’an.

Books

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
The Koran in English - A biography by Bruce B. Lawrence
The Qur'an - A historical-critical introduction by Nicolai Sinai
The Sanaa Palimpsest - The transmission of the Qur'a n in the first centuries by Asma Hilali
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53 min
May 25, 2018 The making of me
We’re joined by the novelist Margaret Drabble, whose books have for decades chronicled the difficult path to selfhood, particularly for women, and the actor and writer Robert Webb, whose recent memoir How Not To Be a Boy, focuses on how notions of masculinity shape identity. Recorded in front of a live audience at Bath Festival.
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33 min
May 16, 2018 Roman emperors and football managers
The world is being slowly poisoned, the environment destroyed. Why don’t we care about such an apocalypse more? Clare Saxby joins us to discuss; Mary Beard considers the cultural legacy of Caligula, that most reviled of all emperors, via a revisionist work of fiction told from the perspective of the emperor's exiled sister; as Arsène Wenger's twenty-two year tenure as Arsenal manager draws to a close, the TLS's History editor and Arsenal fan David Horspool shares his thoughts on football's modern myth-making

Books

Mourning Nature: Hope at the heart of ecological loss and grief, edited by Ashlee and Karen Landman Cunsolo
Walking on Lava: Selected works for uncivilised times, edited by Charlotte Du Cann, Dougald Hine, Nick Hunt and Paul Kingsnorth
Energy Humanities: An anthology, edited by Imre Szeman and Dominic Boyer
Caligula by Simon Turney
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46 min
May 09, 2018 BONUS: Madeline Miller on Circe
Lucy Dallas is joined by Madeline Miller to discuss her new book, Circe.
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28 min
May 09, 2018 Mothers and millennials
With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas
Real-life millennial Samuel Earle pops in to consider the status of young people in an unequal society, keeping avocado references to a minimum; Ruth Scurr analyses the role of mothers in life and literature; and Madeline Miller talks about inhabiting the role of Circe.
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41 min
May 02, 2018 Carlo Rovelli's time – a special episode
In popular science books, including 'Seven Brief Lessons on Physics' and 'Reality Is Not What It Seems', the Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli has studied the phenomena – namely time and space – that structure our very existence. In doing so, he has become something of a phenomenon himself, praised for his charm, clarity and humour – things we might not immediately associate with the field of quantum gravity. Here, the TLS's Samuel Graydon asks him about his new book The Order of Time
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30 min
May 02, 2018 Why does everyone hate Nixon?
How do we account for Richard Nixon's stubborn unpopularity? Sure, he was a liar and a crook, but that has not stopped the rehabilitation of many a politician – as a new biography appears Barton Swaim joins us to discuss; why is it that certain ailments suffered by women are so scarcely discussed or resolved? Leonore Tiefer considers endometriosis and a "legacy of disinterest"; “The world is far more complicated than what we see”, says the theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, putting it mildly. Reality “is mind-blowing” – here, he discusses the structure of time with the TLS's Samuel Graydon

Books

Richard Nixon: The Life by John A. Farrell
The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli
Ask Me About My Uterus: A quest to make doctors believe in women's pain by Abby Norman
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42 min
April 25, 2018 The risky art of cartooning
Martin Rowson, cartoonist for the Guardian and elsewhere, joins us to discuss caricature as political hit-job; the TLS's Arts editor Lucy Dallas considers the jolly japes and scrapes of the Beano, as that publication marks its eightieth year; and our Features editor Rozalind Dineen goes to meet Jesmyn Ward, a writer described in our pages as “an important new voice of the American South – one developing, perhaps, into the twenty-first-century’s answer to William Faulkner”

Books
The Communist Manifesto: A Graphic Novel, adapted by Martin Rowson
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race by Jesmyn Ward
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46 min
April 18, 2018 Culture clash
With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas. Lionel Shriver castigates the arrogant British for snootiness over American English; David Coward tells the story of Simon Leys, "the man who did for Mao" and who called Sartre a "windbag"; and Kate Bingham reads her poem "This hair".
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31 min