Literary editor of ‘The Spectator’ Sam Leith is surrounded by books of various genres every day. His latest non-fiction work ‘The Haunted Wood’ takes an exploratory look into childhood reading from Aesop’s fables to Malorie Blackman. He speaks to Georgina Godwin about the world of children’s literature, the first book he read as a child and the aut…

Magda Szubanski is known as Sharon Strzelecki in the comedy series ‘Kath and Kim’ in Australia and globally for the role of Esme Hoggett in the ‘Babe’ film series. The comedy actress won the 2016 Douglas Stewart Prize for her memoir, ‘Reckoning’, which describes her journey of self-discovery from a suburban childhood that was haunted by the demons …

Life for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank is often stalked by violence, heightened by the events following 7 October. When US journalist Nathan Thrall decided to write about their experience, he wanted to unveil the sheer catastrophe that they live through daily. The Pulitzer Prize-winning book, ‘A Day in the Life of Abed Salama’, focuses on …

Novuyo Rosa Tshuma is a Zimbabwe-born writer who spent her time writing instead of studying at university during one of the most turbulent times in the country’s history. She talks to Georgina Godwin about her childhood, the start of her writing career and her latest novel, “Digging Stars”, which probes the emotional universes of love, friendship, …

Best-selling author Elif Shafak is the most widely read female author in Turkey and her work has been translated into a staggering 57 languages. Her 2019 novel ‘10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World’ was nominated for the Booker Prize and her novels have been shortlisted in the Costa Award, the British Book Awards and the Women’s Prize for Fi…

It’s Good, Except It Sucks is a movie by movie – and television series by television series – hurtle through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hosted by Tim Worthington with a series of superpowered guests. This time we're both heading into the Multiverse and not with Deadpool And Wolverine from 2024, and joining Tim for a chat about Wade Wilson someh…

The Australian politician who popularised koalas in the 1980s and created the “throw another shrimp on the barbie” tourism ad joins Georgina Godwin in Sydney to talk about his new book, ‘Brownie: The Minister for Good Times’. John Brown, the first in his family to achieve school qualifications, went on to serve as an MP in the Federal House of Repr…

For years, author and satirist Gabby Hutchinson Crouch has scoured the week’s news for material to use on the programmes in BBC Radio 4’s Friday-night topical slot, ‘Dead Ringers’ and ‘Newzoids’. She has also written for ‘Horrible Histories’, the Bafta-winning children’s series inspired by ‘Blackadder’ and ‘Monty Python’. Today she discusses her la…

In Microsoft’s pioneering AI For Good Lab, data scientists and researchers’ use of artificial intelligence (AI) is helping to tackle disinformation, predict wildfires, track whales and even detect leprosy in vulnerable populations. But what are the dangers in AI being used for bad? Chief Scientist and Lab Director Juan M Lavista Ferres has co-autho…

Ever wondered what David Bowie liked to eat for dinner, or how the members of Queen wrote and rehearsed their famous “Galileos”? Tiffany Murray’s new memoir invites us into the lives of 1970s rock nobility. Set at two recording studios, including the legendary Rockfield Studios where she was raised, her mother Joan was a chef for the likes of Black…

The twentieth-century author Christopher Isherwood, made famous by his 1930s work in Berlin, approached his writing about queerness, politics and religion with frankness and wit. The writer repeatedly fictionalised himself and his friends in his novels. Katherine Bucknell, the editor of four volumes of Isherwood’s diaries and letters, explains that…

The 2024 UK general election is just days away. Speaking to Georgina Godwin is an expert on many aspects of UK government and politics, in particular, the support systems to ministers and prime ministers. Alun Evans CBE, a civil servant for more than three decades, lifts the lid on what’s happening behind the door of 10 Downing Street during import…

Today’s guest is perhaps the only playwright and novelist to have been an international athlete, teacher of those on death row at San Quentin prison in California and a tree surgeon – and he only began writing in his thirties. He won the inaugural Harold Pinter Playwright’s Award for ‘If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep’ at the Royal …

Taking home this year’s prize is US writer and journalist V V Ganeshananthan for her second novel, ‘Brotherless Night’, which took her almost two decades to complete. Her debut novel, ‘Love Marriage’, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize in 2009. ‘Brotherless Night’ is the story of Sashi, a 16-year-old aspiring doctor, growing up in Jaffna, Sri Lan…

The Berlin-based author and playwright was born in the then-USSR and emigrated to Germany in 1995. ‘Glorious People’, their second novel, now translated into English, was longlisted for the German Book Prize and won several others. Salzmann has since been awarded the prestigious Kleist Prize for 2024, the biggest prize for literature in Germany. Se…

It’s Good, Except It Sucks is a movie by movie – and television series by television series – hurtle through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hosted by Tim Worthington with a series of superpowered guests. This time it’s X-Men '97 from 2024, and joining Tim for a chat about Jean Grey's battle to save a timeline where Blame It On The Weatherman by B*W…

The British-Cambodian writer and editor initially wrote ‘The Ministry of Time’ – her gripping sci-fi rom-com debut – as a joke for a handful of friends. The genre-bending thriller, which explores themes including immigration and environmentalism, became an instant bestseller. Even before the novel landed on bookshelves last month, the BBC beat Netf…

Announced this week is the winner of the International Booker Prize 2024. The recipient of this year’s award is ‘Kairos’ by German writer Jenny Erpenbeck and translated by Michael Hoffman, who each take home half of the £50,000 prize money. Host Georgina Godwin speaks to the winning duo and the administrator of the prize, Fiammetta Rocco, who lifts…

Award-winning Scottish author and editor at large at the ‘London Review of Books’, Andrew O’Hagan has spent the past decade working on his state-of-the-nation novel, ‘Caledonian Road’. Employing the traditions of Victorian writing, his research took him to the homes of Russian oligarchs, the Old Bailey and even a ship from Venice to Trieste. Here, …

‘For me, beauty and disgust don’t really exist in binary.’ AK Blakemore’s discovery of tales of The Great Tarare, a French showman with an insatiable appetite, was the perfect setting for her to explore her love of the grotesque and abject. Shortlisted for this year’s Dylan Thomas Prize, her novel ‘The Glutton’ explores the almost folkloric life of…

“We left Iraq as Jews, and we arrived in Israel as Iraqis.” Acclaimed historian Avi Shlaim is a man with a complicated backstory as an Arab Jew. He has a very clear-eyed view of events leading up to the current crisis in the Middle East. He traces the origins of the conflict to antisemitism in the UK after the First World War and even to the Jews o…

In 1868 writer John William DeForest introduced the idea of the ‘great American novel’ – a work that succeeded in ‘the task of painting the American soul’. Now, the editors of ‘The Atlantic’ have published a list that offers a wider, deeper and weirder take on the idea. Author and senior editor Gal Beckerman talks us through the 136 books chosen by…

It’s Good, Except It Sucks is a movie by movie – and television series by television series – hurtle through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hosted by Tim Worthington with a series of superpowered guests. This time it’s Avengers: Endgame from 2019, and joining Tim for a chat about Ant-Man's determination to restore Universal balance and bring back c…

“Education for girls is the family business”, says Sudanese-British broadcast journalist Zeinab Badawi. She tells us about her family, career and what it’s like to interview the world’s most notable politicians on ‘BBC Hard Talk’. Badawi explains how her groundbreaking TV series, ‘The History of Africa’, for which she visited 34 African countries o…

The Melbourne-based author talks about how his life has changed since his multi-award-winning 2008 novel ‘The Slap’ made him one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. Born to immigrant Greek parents, his writing confronts themes ranging from social and cultural tensions in modern Australia to faith, sexuality, class, race and the blights of commu…

Is the near-universal game of “cowboys and Indians” just positive propaganda for genocide? When a Vietnamese-American watches ‘Apocalypse Now’, does he identify with the victim or perpetrator? As the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s book ‘The Sympathizer’ comes to HBO, we explore these themes and discuss his triumphant new memoir, ‘A Man of Two Face…

Author Tom Baragwanath hails from New Zealand and lives in France. He grew up in the remote farming community of Wainuioru, separated from Wellington by the Rimutaka mountain range. While working for the government on Māori land policy in his mid-twenties, he began reading extensively and writing short stories. After relocating to Paris with his wi…

Nairobi-based nonprofit Book Bunk, the brainchild of Wanjiru Koinange and Angela Wachuka, restores existing public libraries and installs new libraries in public spaces. Its flagship project in the Kenyan capital is the McMillan Memorial Library, which opened in 1931 but it was segregated only for the use of white people until 1962. Book Bunk’s fou…

UK author and journalist Helen Russell left her job in London as editor of Marie Clare and relocated to Jutland, Denmark, with her husband in 2013. What initially set out to be a year-long trip quickly turned into a decade. Her freelance career had seen her work as Scandinavia correspondent for ‘The Guardian’, write for publications such as ‘The Ob…

US cartoonist and illustrator, Denise Dorrance’s sharp, satirical work appears regularly in magazines and newspapers such as the ‘The Spectator’ and ‘The Sunday Times’. Her debut graphic novel, ‘Polar Vortex’, has been celebrated by the likes of Oprah Winfrey. She is best known for her character Mimi, a self-involved fashionista in dark sunglasses,…

Jane Cholmeley co-founded and opened the feminist Silver Moon Bookshop in London during the Thatcher era to promote the work of female authors. It quickly came to play a vital role in the second-wave feminist movement. Operating in a male-dominated space, the stop was often subject to threats of arson but maintained a safe space for customers, with…

It was the end of a relationship in London that led Tabitha Lasley to pack her bags, leave her journalism job and move to Aberdeen, Scotland, to pursue a story that she’d been sitting on for years. She grew up on the Wirral in northwest England, a place frequented by the men who worked on oil rigs in the Irish Sea. She initially set out to write an…

American novelist and screenwriter Michael Cunningham is best known for his 1998 novel ‘The Hours’, which became a ‘New York Times’ bestseller and won both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in ‘The New Yorker’ and ‘The Best American Short Stories’, and he has worked as a creative writing lecturer at Yale Universit…

In 2020, Alice Haddon and Ruth Field came together to develop an alternative offering to the traditional 50-minute therapy session, which became a wellness retreat designed for women known as The Heartbreak Hotel. Alice is a licensed counselling psychologist with more than 25 years of experience in private and public practice. Her writing has been …

It’s Good, Except It Sucks is a movie by movie – and television series by television series – hurtle through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hosted by Tim Worthington with a series of superpowered guests. This time it’s What If...?, first seen in 2023, and joining Tim for a chat about a mindbending glimpse of alternate realities with their own very …

After his mother was killed by a car bomb in 2017, Paul Caruana Galizia became a journalist and has since won several honours and awards for his reporting, including the Orwell Prize special award. The assassination of his mother Daphne Caruana Galizia – a Maltese journalist and anti-corruption activist best known for her investigation of the Panam…

UK screenwriter, TV producer and novelist, Daisy Goodwin has written the bestsellers ‘My Last Duchess’, ‘The Fortune Hunter’ and ‘Victoria’, as well as eight poetry anthologies, including ‘101 Poems That Could Save Your Life: An Anthology of Emotional First Aid’. During her 25 years working as a TV producer, she created and produced shows such as ‘…

US journalist, novelist, translator and professor Maureen Freely joins Georgina Godwin in the studio. She is best known as the translator of Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk’s work. Freely has also written ‘The Life of the Party’, set in Turkey, and ‘The Other Rebecca’, a contemporary take on Daphne du Maurier’s classic 1930s novel. Her latest book, ‘My …

It’s Good, Except It Sucks is a movie by movie – and television series by television series – hurtle through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hosted by Tim Worthington with a series of superpowered guests. This time it’s The Marvels from 2023, and joining Tim for a chat about Nick Fury declining to audition for a part in Aspects Of Love is writer Una…

It’s Good, Except It Sucks is a movie by movie – and television series by television series – hurtle through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hosted by Tim Worthington with a series of superpowered guests. This time it’s The Marvels from 2023, and joining Tim for a chat about Monica Rambeau, Carol Danvers and Kamala Khan joining forces to synchronise…

American researcher, scholar, writer and poet Cat Bohannon speaks to Georgina Godwin about her debut book, ‘Eve’, a whistle-stop tour of mammalian development that begins in the Jurassic Era and recasts the traditional story of evolutionary biology by placing women at its centre. She completed her PhD in 2022 at Columbia University, where she studi…

To welcome in the new year, we look back at one of our favourite conversations from 2023, with Lydia Sandgren. The Swedish psychologist and author spent 10 years writing her debut novel, which won the prestigious August Prize in 2020 and sold more than 100,000 copies. She joins Georgina Godwin to mark the publication in English of ‘Collected Works’…

We listen back to one of our favourite conversations from 2023. Calder Walton, a historian of global security, speaks to Georgina Godwin about what secret archives and interviews with former agents can tell us about the century-long secret intelligence war between Russia and the West. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.…

English novelist and screenwriter Louise Doughty joins Georgina Godwin in the studio. Doughty is the author of 10 novels, including ‘Platform Seven’, recently filmed for ITV, and the bestseller ‘Apple Tree Yard’, adapted for BBC One. She also wrote and created the hit 2022 BBC drama ‘Crossfire’. Her latest novel, ‘A Bird in Winter’, was published e…

It’s Good, Except It Sucks is a movie by movie – and television series by television series – hurtle through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hosted by Tim Worthington with a series of superpowered guests. This time we’re heading into the Multiverse for a look at Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends, first seen between 1981 and 1983, and joining Tim fo…

Georgina Godwin is joined by two authors who are both on a quest to find new ways to listen – and they invite you to do the same. Dutch-born writer Michel Faber has written several works of fiction including ‘The Crimson Petal and the White’. His first non-fiction book, ‘Listen: On Music, Sound and Us’ explores how psychological pressure influences…

Ahead of the next proper instalment of It's Good, Except It Sucks, here's a special extra surprise for subscribers with a chat from the Looks Unfamiliar archives with me and Garreth Hirons talking about the 1979 animated series based on the then newly-introduced Spider-Woman. So why are you getting this now? You'll find out when you listen to it!…

One of India’s best-known writers, Amish Tripathi, speaks to Georgina Godwin at Midori House. The author spent 14 years in the financial sector as a marketing and product manager but changed his direction to realign with his passion for writing, winning multiple awards for his books, largely based on Indian spirituality. He is also the director of …

Georgina Godwin speaks to Paul Lynch, the author of ‘Prophet Song’, winner of this year’s Booker Prize. Limerick-born Lynch is the fifth Irish writer to win the award, given to the best English-language novel of the year published in either the UK or Ireland. His fifth novel, written over four years, is set in an imagined dystopian Ireland. It depi…

British director, animator and author Kevin Jon Davies speaks to Georgina Godwin. With a career that has included writing and directing the documentary ‘Doctor Who: Thirty Years in the Tardis’ and working on animation for the TV adaptation of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ and the classic film ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’, Davies has now edite…