I left the kitchen radio on while reading Jacqueline Rose‘s Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018) in preparation for this interview. It was June. Putting the book down for a minute to get a glass of water, I heard a news report that the children of refugee women were being removed from them at the American border.
Rose is n ... Show More
Today
Sebastian Truskolaski, "Adorno and the Ban on Images" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Adorno and the Ban on Images (Bloomsbury, 2022) upends some of the myths that have come to surround the work of the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno – not least amongst them, his supposed fatalism.
Sebastian Truskolaski argues that Adorno's writings allow us to address what is argua ... Show More
58m 5s
Today
Amy Hughes, "An Actor's Tale: Theater, Culture, and Everyday Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
Harry Watkins was no one special. During a career that spanned four decades, this nineteenth-century actor yearned for fame but merely skirted the edges of it. He performed alongside the brightest stars, wrote scores of plays, and toured the United States and England, but he neve ... Show More
1h 4m
Yesterday
Heather Davis, "Plastic Matter" (Duke UP, 2022)
Plastic is ubiquitous. It is in the Arctic, in the depths of the Mariana Trench, and in the high mountaintops of the Pyrenees. It is in the air we breathe and the water we drink. Nanoplastics penetrate our cell walls. Plastic is not just any material—it is emblematic of life in t ... Show More
1h 1m
Sep 2023
Kristal Brent Zook, "The Girl in the Yellow Poncho: A Memoir" (Duke UP, 2023)
At five years old, Kristal Brent Zook sat on the steps of a Venice Beach, California, motel trying to make sense of her white father’s abandonment, which left her feeling unworthy of a man’s love and of white protection. Raised by her working-class African American mother and gra ... Show More
30m 20s
Jul 2023
Petra Bueskens, "Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract" (Routledge, 2018)
Why do women in contemporary western societies experience contradiction between their autonomous and maternal selves? What are the origins of this contradiction and the associated ‘double shift’ that result in widespread calls to either ‘lean in’ or ‘opt out’? How are some mother ... Show More
1h 9m
Jun 2020
#267 Candice Brathwaite: Motherhood, Business & Taking Up Space
My guest today is the brilliant Candice Brathwaite, Sunday Times Bestselling author of I Am Not Your Baby Mother. The book has been called 'an urgent part-memoir, part-manifesto about Black British motherhood' in Red magazine. When Candice fell pregnant and stepped into the mothe ... Show More
29m 50s
Jun 2023
On Reading ‘Beloved’ Over and Over Again
<p>For readers, a book’s meaning can change with every encounter, depending on the circumstances and experiences they bring to it each time. On this week’s podcast, Gilbert Cruz talks to Salamishah Tillet, a Pulitzer-winning contributing critic at large for The Times, about her a ... Show More
20m 29s
Nov 2021
Mary Robinson, Rose Tremain, Daddy Issues
Mary Robinson, once President of Ireland and now the Chair of The Elders, has been at COP26 in Glasgow all fortnight. She explains why the climate challenge ahead is so emotional.Rose Tremain's new novel called Lily begins with a baby being abandoned by her mother outside a Londo ... Show More
57m 29s
Oct 2023
Natalie Lue : The Joy Of Saying No
<p>Topics covered : Gut instinct, emotional unavailability, people pleasing, boundaries, toxic relationships, fear, conditioning, perimenopause, health concerns, parenting, breaking the cycle of dysfunction.</p><br><p>In this episode I speak to author and relationship expert, Nat ... Show More
1h 8m