More A-level bangers from The Book Club. ‘Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.’

The Common Reader

An excellent discussion of the enduringly fascinating Gulliver’s Travels. Zena Hitz is the founder of the Catherine Project, which sounds like something I should get involved with and therefore won’t.

The Honest Broker

Also with Zena Hitz.

How I Write

A conversation with Michael Pollan, whose new book is A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness.

The Lit Path

The first episode from Jack Aldane’s new Substack-based project, The Lit Path, also a discussion of Gulliver’s Travels – highly recommended.

The Lit Path

How Gulliver's Travels Drove Me Sane

On this first episode of The Lit Path, TV Writer, Producer and Author John Yorke sits down with the podcast’s host and producer Jack Aldane to explain why Gulliver's Travels redefined the point of reading for him, after he initially rejecting classical literature at a young age…

Listen now

a month ago · 1 like · Jack Aldane

The LRB Podcast

This kind of blue-chip LRB content is usually behind the paywall, but this series, Poetry and the Turning World, is free to listen. This is the most recent episode, about the weather in poetry.

Until next month.

Blindboy talks about autism.

The Book Club

The Book Club continues its appreciation of A-level bangers with an episode on the novel recently named the second best of all time in the Guardian’s list, Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987).

The Booking Club

Without Will Self there would be a Will Self-shaped hole in the culture. Many people recently learned the word ‘fissiparous’ – relating to fission, splitting into pieces – from a widely shared essay in which he says, ‘Britain is now a fissiparous society — fragmented into competing legal, managerial, ethnic, algorithmic and economic jurisdictions’. In this episode of The Booking Club he discusses his new novel, The Quantity Theory of Morality (2026).

Fresh Air

I can’t embed a Spotify link for this, but the episode is ‘David Sedaris wants to be better (at everything)’ (26.5.2026). Sedaris says, ‘I started writing in my diary one day, when I was twenty years old, and I’ve never not done it. […] oh my goodness, the thought of not doing that. Boy, the earth would just spin off of it’s axis.’

Growth Mindset Psychology

This is my favourite recent episode of my friend Sam’s podcast, an interview with Stephen Porges, the psychologist behind polyvagal theory.

My Martin Amis

Jack Aldane speaks to Irish writer and academic Kevin Power about Amis’s 1991 novel, Time’s Arrow.

Novara

I’d label these Novaran insights ‘To be used with some caution’, but I appreciate the way the hosts theorise the bleeding edge, in this case of what they call ‘British weirdness’.

Past Present Future

David Runciman begins a new series on ‘Great Political Fictions’ with Huxley’s Brave New World (1932). Like everyone since Neil Postman, Runciman finds the novel’s prophetic quality to be ageing like fine soma.

Subtext

My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow.

Until next month.

The Book Club

Dominic and Tabitha have released several episodes this month, and my favourite was this, on Sally Rooney’s Normal People. I liked the novel a lot, perhaps because I read it seven years late, post-hype.

The Booking Club

Two conversations from Jack Aldane, one with Ross Barkan, editor of Substack-based The Metropolitan Review, and the other with Jay McInerney, who wrote Bright Lights, Big City (1984).

The Common Reader

I have no particular interest in Agatha Christie but this was so good I loved it anyway.

The Exchange

New Statesman editor Tom McTague interviews Anthony Seldon about the latter’s book The Path of Light: Walking to Auschwitz.

The Honest Broker

The Godzilla vs. Kong of literary Substacks.

The Long Read

A thoughtful, first-hand exploration of what AI is doing to English teaching.

New Books in Literary Studies

This caught my eye because I attended David Womersley’s lectures on Jonathan Swift in 2011. He has written a new book called Thinking Through Shakespeare, and Womersley’s story of its origin alone is fascinating on Shakespeare’s uniqueness. He recounts what he was told, by the director of a theatre in Munich, about taking productions of Shakespeare around the world: ‘it was clear that there was always some kind of palpable connection between the audience and what was on-stage, and […] that was not true of other things they put on’. Incidentally, the New Books Network recently published its thirty thousandth episode!

The New Society

The title is clickbaited but this is a good episode: Haitian film-maker Raoul Peck on what Orwell means to him.

Past Present Future

And more Orwell. This is the first of a four-part miniseries on ‘Orwell’s War’ from David Runciman. I don’t agree with everything Runciman says – for example, I don’t think there was something ‘clownish’ about Orwell being anti-war up until 1939, even if that turned out to have been a mistaken position. But Runciman is always worth listening to, and I appreciate his treatment of Orwell as still indispensable. (I’ve written about Orwell here.)

Until next month.

I really like this series. I’ve thought for a long time that Podcastistan needs more literature, so this feels like it’s being made for me. If the subject I tutor, A-level English literature, isn’t quite dead yet, I like to think Dominic and Tabitha will enthuse a few sixth-formers by showing that novels can be read as novels, rather than unintentional indictments of the author, the period, or both. Another reviewer accused Tabitha of ‘bellowing into the mic’, but that’s all part of the fun for the ‘famous chums of yore’. The only question remaining is why this Goalhanger series is not called The Rest is Literature – perhaps they didn’t think they could compete with yours truly’s Substack.

The Book Club (2)

The Spectator’s books podcast had the name The Book Club first, and in this episode Howard Jacobson discusses his new novel, Howl. He has a sharp sense of dismay and is sharp in expressing it.

The Common Reader

I knew next to nothing about the antiquary and biographer John Aubrey (1626–97), known for his Brief Lives, so this was fascinating. Interview by Substack colossus Henry Oliver…

Conversations with Tyler

…himself interviewed here by Tyler Cowen on what is for my money the best podcast series of them all, in terms of minute-for-minute ‘value’.

The Honest Broker

The Honest Broker, from another Substack colossus, Ted Gioia, now has its own podcast series, presented by Jared Henderson. So far it’s been excellent. In this episode the guest is Naomi Kanakia. Quite a lot of the discussion is about publishing, from the writer’s point of view.

How I Write

Also about publishing but from the publisher’s point of view, namely that of Jon Yaged, CEO of Macmillan.

The London Review Bookshop Podcast

Recording of a live discussion about the British Jewish writer Alexander Baron (1917–99), featuring Iain Sinclair, Susie Thomas, and Ken Worpole. Good if Hackneycentric.

My Martin Amis

Jack Aldane’s My Martin Amis has been going since 2023, and in this episode Aldane welcomes two young New Statesman editors to discuss Amis’s memoir, Experience, one of his best (and most likeable?) books. I’m also looking out for Aldane’s new Substack series The Lit Path.

Novara

I’ve heard the authors of Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed speak in a couple of interviews and this is the more in-depth one.

Subtext

This is only new to me, since a friend put me on to it a few weeks ago. The hosts, Wes Alwan and Erin O’Luanaigh, have built up a fantastic archive of analyses of literature (and film). This is the first one I went to, The Great Gatsby.

Within Reason

Not a literature series, but the second appearance by Adam Aleksic, the ‘Etymology Nerd’, on Alex O’Connor’s Within Reason.

Thinking about it, the first appearance was better: here.

Until next month.