The TLS Podcast

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  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“What we often forget in the daily drumbeat of abuses by the dominant tech companies is our complicity in these abuses, and in the fundamental and unsettling ways the internet has changed every one of us.” As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enters its seventieth anniversary, Dave Eggers, in the 2018 PEN H. G. Wells lecture, argues that urgent amendments are needed to mitigate the corrosive effects of technology on the societal and the personal. You can read an edited extract from the lecture on the TLS website. This is a recording of an event that took place on December 16, 2018, at the Bridge Theatre, London.    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Phil Baker guides us through the morbid, wistful and yet immensely charming world of the writer and illustrator Edward Gorey; Frances Wilson weighs the pleasures and pains of letter and email writing; Ian Sansom on the struggle to be funny Books Born To Be Posthumous: The eccentric life and mysterious genius of Edward Gorey, by Mark Dery What a Hazard a Letter Is: The strange destiny of the unsent letter, by Caroline Atkins Written In History: Letters that changed the world, by Simon Sebag Montefiore In Their Own Words: Volume 2: More letters from history Wit's End: What wit is, how it works, and why we need it, by James Geary Messing About In Quotes: A little Oxford dictionary of humorous quotations, compiled by Gyles Brandreth  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

David Coward celebrates the 400th anniversary of the birth of Cyrano de Bergerac, whose radical thought has long been obscured by his protuberant nose; Muriel Zagha on Molière, France’s most famous playwright, and a bold new adaptation of Tartuffe; finally, a poem by Stephen Knight: “Rail Replacement Bus Service” (sigh)   Molière’s ‘Tartuffe’, a new version by John Donnelly, at the National Theatre, London  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas Toby Lichtig comes in to talk the wide scope of Jewish culture, the “lachrymose” theory of history and why it is Arthur Miller time once more. Roz Dineen deals with porn, pile-ons and goop podcasts. And we call Thea when she is “working from home” to check in on her new dog.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A conversation between the novelist and essayist Zadie Smith and the journalist Carolina, recorded at Hay Festival Cartagena in Colombia earlier this month. The full Hay Festival archive can be accessed by subscribing to Hay Player online at hayfestival.org  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The writer and comedian Charlie Higson, half of the team behind The Fast Show, on the curious history of comedy written and performed by pairs; the novelist Margaret Drabble considers the dizzying new releases from the estate of Anthony Burgess, the man Philip Larkin once called “the Batman of contemporary letters”   Texts Stan & Ollie, directed by Jon S. Baird  Morecambe & Wise: 50 years of sunshine, by Gary Morecambe The Double Act: A history of British comedy duos, by Andrew Roberts Soupy Twists!: The full, official story of the sophisticated silliness of Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie, by Jem Roberts Beard’s Roman Women by Anthony Burgess, edited by Graham Foster Puma by Anthony Burgess, edited by Paul Wake The Black Prince by Adam Roberts Obscenity and the Arts, a talk by Anthony Burgess, edited by Johnny Walsh  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A recording of the inaugural Gabriel García Marquez lecture given this February by the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, at Hay Festival Cartagena in Colombia. The full Hay Festival archive can be accessed by subscribing to Hay Player online at hayfestival.org  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As the MeToo movement continues to focus our attentions on questions around abuse, consent and justice, Rebecca Watson joins us to discuss the various and prolonged impacts of sexual assault, and the warping effect of trauma on narrative; the TLS’s French editor Adrian Tahourdin considers the inexorable rise of “le globish” (by which English words supplant, or pervert, French ones), and presents the diverse and challenging books in contention for this year’s Society of Author’s Translation Prizes   Books Not That Bad: Dispatches from rape culture, edited by Roxane Gay A False Report: A true story by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong On Rape by Germaine Greer  The President’s Gardens by Muhsin al-Ramli, translated by Luke Leafgren  Seeing Red by Lina Meruane, translated by Megan McDowell Kruso by Lutz Seiler, translated by Tess Lewis   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Eighteen months after Emmanuel Macron rode a wave of optimism to the Élysée Palace, the French are rioting and the President's approval ratings are desperately low – Sudhir Hazareesingh tells us what went wrong; James O'Brien reflects on another week of Brexit bafflement; Laura Freeman introduces the "Hungry Novel", a sub-genre of the post-war British novel in which writers, subsisting on meagre rations of stodge and tinned goods, channelled their appetites into their prose  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Read by Lisa Dwan. Full text available at the-tls.co.uk  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Catherine Taylor on bookish goings on in the north of England, from her family’s bookshop in Sheffield to the Northern Fiction Alliance of small presses; Diarmaid Ferriter considers the fraught matter of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland; Fríða Ísberg on the spectre of war in Icelandic film and fiction   Books The Border: The legacy of a century of Anglo-Irish politics by Diarmaid Ferriter Hotel Silence (Ör) by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir Woman at War, directed by Benedikt Erlingsson Section 6 of “American Standard”, a new poem by Paul Muldoon published in this week’s TLS; read by Lisa Dwan (full recording available as a separate podcast episode)  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.