“The Indian to His Love” by William Butl...

It’s Valentine’s Day in the state of Victoria, Australia in the year 1900. A group from a local girls’ school goes on an excursion to the foot of an eerie, vast geological formation called Hanging Rock. Three girls and one schoolteacher climb up to explore it. All but one are nev ... Show More

Wes & Erin discuss "Leda and the Swan." 

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Yeats’s "Sailing to Byzantium," and whether creativity can help us transcend mortality, and how artists should conceive of their relationships to nature and posterity. 

A poet, performer, novelist and screenwriter, Olivia Gatwood has received international recognition for her writing, which has focused on topics including coming of age, feminism, gendered violence and true crime. Her debut novel is Whoever You Are, Honey, a dark and brilliant st ... Show More

When it comes to writing, Anne Lamott’s philosophy is to take things one step at a time, keep moving, and give yourself permission to be who you are. She expressed it most famously 30 years ago in her seminal book on writing and life, Bird by Bird. But it also appears across her ... Show More

Novelist Alex Michaelides (The Silent Patient, The Fury) joins Andy and John to discuss Ford Madox Ford's classic novel The Good Soldier (1915), a tale of passion in which, owing to a narrator of almost comic unreliability, nothing can be taken for granted. It is a book that seem ... Show More

In this episode, Israeli poet Tahel Frosh talks to us about her debut poetry collection Betsa (Avarice, 2014), financial crisis, and the value of culture. We revisit the summer of 2011, when a series of protests spread across Israel sparked by rising housing costs, the increased ... Show More

Sylvia Townsend Warner's debut novel 'Lolly Willowes' is the main book under discussion in this episode. It's nominated by journalist, author & playwright Samantha Ellis, and she discusses witchcraft, spinsters and the Chilterns with John, Andy and Mathew. Also touched on: epic p ... Show More

On today’s show, Giles Alderson and co-host Lucinda Rhodes Thakrar sit down with Alex Noyer, the writer and director of Sound of Violence, which premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2021. Alex dives deep into Clubhouse of Horror, what the room is about, what it’s ... Show More

This week Ione and Gina are joined for an extra special long episode with writer, actor, producer and all round internet legend Tavi Gevinson! The three centre their conversation around class differences in the dying days of influencer culture, the changing face of fandom, and th ... Show More

Situated on the cusp of the Romantic era, Thomas Gray’s work is a mixture of impersonal Augustan abstraction and intense subjectivity. ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ is one of the most famous poems in the English language, and continues to exert its influence on contempo ... Show More

In this episode, we're talking about the HBO series The Last of Us, which was adapted from the popular video game of the same name! If you like the show, zombie content, playing video games, or thinking about how art gets transcoded across mediums, then this episode is for you! A ... Show More

Today, Giles Alderson and his co-host Andrew Rodger welcome screenwriter Gemma Hurley to the podcast. She is one of the writers on the upcoming show The Rising and the co-writer of the amazing streaming horror hit Host, which took the internet by storm in 2020. Gem dives deep int ... Show More