Freedom, Books, Flowers & The Moon

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – 'Few people are aware that every week the White House indulges in Terror Tuesday, where the US President personally approves people for death without any legal process at all' – so says Clive Stafford Smith, who joins us in the studio to chart the global proliferation of modern state-led assassination and the moral, legal and human 'collateral damage'; Lamorna Ash, fresh from a week's research aboard the Cornish deep-sea trawler Crystal Sea, offers insights into the distinct rhythms, language and politics of Britain's beleaguered fishing industry  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Every year we ask a selection of TLS contributors what they'll be reading with those extra hours of daylight. In this episode, we're joined by Fiction editor Toby Lichtig and Arts editor Lucy Dallas to pick through the results and discuss our own selections. Plus, an exclusive interview with 2017 Man Booker International-winner, the Israeli novelist David Grossman, and translator Jessica Cohen  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas. We discuss the election that nobody won and (almost) nobody predicted; varnishing day at the Royal Academy's summer exhibition; and the dubious merits of 1967's Summer of Love.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Distinguished social psychologist Carol Tavris discusses whether we are seeing the end of definition by gender and whether there is any benefit in trying to track, physiologically and psychologically, the differences between men and women; Brian Dillon tackles the past, present and future of the essay form, via the indolent and melancholic work of Cyril Connolly, whose book The Unquiet Grave is "one of the strangest, funniest, most formally daring if badly flawed contributions to the literature of depression, disarray and the decay of ambition"; finally, the TLS's Religion Editor Rupert Shortt joins us to consider the true meaning of Islam, a religion so full of contradictions that – according to one critic – “very few Muslims consciously understand what being Islamic truly means”.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – TLS Politics editor Toby Lichtig speaks to Assaf Gavron, author of a fascinating essay on the role of football in the politics of the Middle East, and runs us through a number of pieces from this week’s issue on the legacy of the Six-Day War, 60 years on; "No wild animal plays a more significant or ambivalent role in the imaginings of the British than the fox", so says Tom Holland, who joins us to consider this curiously divisive beast; fresh from a marathon production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, opera critic Guy Dammann explains the importance of this towering work of music and drama  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – TLS Philosophy editor Tim Crane grapples with the mind-body problem and "what it means to be the kind of creatures we are", plus the year that brightened Nietzsche's outlook, and Biscuit the dog's self-consciousness; Korean American author Min Jin Lee on how Korean literature approaches the difficult dream of reunification and what a new collection of stories, The Accusation by the pseudonymous author "Bandi", "the first work of fiction written by a North Korean author presumed still to be alive and living in the country”, tells us about life in that deeply mysterious land; finally, the great Alasdair Gray, author of Lanark, reads "From Vers Doré by Gérard de Nerval", a new work first published in this week's TLS.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Michel Foucault was so fascinated by lettres de cachet – pre-Revolutionary requests made by citizens to the lieutenant of police calling for the imprisonment without trial of a troublesome family member or neighbour – that he co-edited a little-known compendium of them: Biancamaria Fontana joins us to explain; Was the "plunder of black life" the driving force in making America great? Stephanie McCurry weighs in on a recent book, Slavery's Capitalism: A new history of American economic development; finally, in light of the Oxford Companion to Cheese, Paul Levy considers the politics of cheese and makes the case for a good strong Cheddar.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With Stig Abell and Lucy Dallas. Sudhir Hazareesingh gives his analysis of the French election and the rise of Macron; Toby Lichtig (sic) helps us tackle genre fiction, including our tips for the greatest ever historical novel; and Hal Jensen celebrates an 8-hour play about American identity.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On April 30, at London's Southbank Centre, an extraordinary cast of readers – including Philippe Sands, Tom Stoppard, Niklas Frank, whose father was Adolf Hitler's lawyer, and Susan Pollack, who survived the camp – gathered to mark 70 years since the publication of this seminal account of humanity at its most brutal. Across five episodes, in collaboration with the Southbank Centre, we bring you the full, live recording of the event, part of the Belief and Beyond Belief festival, exploring what it means to be human. This performance was directed by Nina Brazier with music directed by Tomo Keller and performed by Raphael Wallfisch, Tomo Keller, Robert Smissen, Simon Wallfisch and Lada Valesova; the event was devised by A. L. Kennedy and Philippe Sands, in collaboration with Ted Hodgkinson, Senior Programmer for Literature and Spoken Word at the Southbank Centre. You'll find all episodes on the-tls.co.uk Chapters 1–3 read by: human-rights lawyer Philippe Sands QC; author A. L. Kennedy; actors Samuel West... &

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Frances Wilson on how Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions of 1789 laid the foundations for the messy modern memoir; TLS commissioning editor Mika Ross-Southall on a strange new exhibition of Picasso's work that examines his career-long engagement with minotaurs and matadors; Lorna Scott Fox rediscovers Leonora Carrington, an almost-forgotten radical artist-thinker for our fragile times.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – The graphic artist Nicola Streeten discusses two new exhibitions, in Paris and London, linking comics to trauma theory, radical politics and feminism; Alexander van Tulleken on a new book by two "rock star professors" that purports to provide a bold new solution to the refugee crisis; a crackly clip just a few minutes long is all we have left of Virginia Woolf's voice – Emily Kopley fills us in on the fraught context behind "Craftsmanship", a talk broadcast by the BBC 80 years ago  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Philippe Sands discusses his forthcoming project which assembles an international cast of actors, writers, musicians and politicians to read Primo Levi's seminal account of survival in Auschwitz, seventy years after its publication; as part of our Shakespeare edition this week, TLS Commissioning Editor Michael "The Doctor" Caines considers how protective we should be of the man and the work; Rebecca Spang wades through the murky matter of money, the growth of "off shore" finance and the bewildering sexualization of monetary metaphors. Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – TLS editor James Campbell, Baldwin's biographer and friend, on the writer's complex presence and legacy on and off screen; Michael Rosen on the "disappearance" of Émile Zola and the long, dappled shadow of the Dreyfus Affair; Jane Yager on a sensational and problematic investigation into mass rapes committed by allied soldiers in Germany in the wake of the Second World War, and how attitudes have – and haven't – changed. Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Rory Waterman on the "uses" of poetry and Stephen Burt's admirable, if rather vexing, new collection The Poem is You: 60 contemporary American poems and how to read them; Barbara J. King on the cannibals in our midst (note: fragile-stomached listeners and lovers of banana slugs be warned); When did modern philosophy begin? And who is its godfather? – TLS Philosophy Editor Tim Crane tackles a new book by A. C. Grayling which seeks answers to these thorny questions. Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Libby Purves on the stranger-than-fiction life of Aimée Crocker, a nineteenth-century heiress with proto-PC views and an affection for boa constrictors; Gabriel Josipovici on a magisterial but contentious study of two of the greatest figures in European art history, Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder; and finally, the novelist and poet Colm Tóibín discusses his forthcoming novel, set in ancient Greece, and reads five new poems, published for the first time in this week's TLS Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Henry K. Miller on the cinematic progress of Christopher Isherwood, a novelist who wanted nothing more than to be a filmmaker; Lamorna Ash on All This Panic, a dreamy documentary about seven girls stumbling towards womanhood in Brooklyn; Richard Fortey tells the story of the British landscape, a sweeping tale spanning several millennia, from the retreat of the ice caps in 9700 BC to the crowded island of today.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – Sudhir Hazareesingh on the seemingly unstoppable rise of Emmanuel Macron, the only politician now standing between the far-Right Marine Le Pen and the French presidency; Claude Rawson on the complex rage of Jonathan Swift, and why we should resist all attempts to sanitise Gulliver's Travels; Diane Purkiss delves into the murky history of alchemy, a slippery amalgam of science and the make-believe of great importance to our ancestors – and which we would do better than to scoff at. Discover more at www.the-tls.co.uk.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – In these science fictional times, Jonathan Barnes considers the importance of sci-fi, plus a new sequel to H. G. Wells's satirical masterpiece The War of the Worlds; Thea reports from a new exhibition of Pop Art and print work at the British Museum, which showcases six decade's worth of American dreaming; Fiction Editor Toby Lichtig discusses George Saunders's new novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, a humorous, moving and formally inventive account of President Lincoln's grief following the death of his son.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this bonus programme, TLS fiction editor Toby Lichtig interviews George Saunders about his first novel, 'Lincoln in the Bardo'.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

With Stig Abell and Thea Lenarduzzi – D. J. Taylor on the bookish sensibilities of Paul Weller's post-punk romanticism (including a bizarre medley of Orwell's 1984 and Wind in the Willows); Stephen Brown considers a clutch of books about practising, playing and listening to music, how to think about Mahler, and the perfect aphorisms of Michael Hampe (“Develop a feeling for greatness. It protects against stupidity”)  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.