Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchWhy is Shakespeare's First Folio So Important?
Episode 464
In 1623, seven years after William Shakespeare died, two of his friends and fellow actors led an effort to publish a single volume containing 36 of t…
2 years, 6 months ago
Happy Halloween: Scary Book Recommendations
Episode 463
You don’t need Halloween to justify reading scary books, any more than you need sand to justify reading a beach novel. But the holiday does give edit…
2 years, 7 months ago
How Did Marvel Become the Biggest Name in Movies?
Episode 462
In 2008 — the same year that Robert Downey Jr. appeared in the action comedy “Tropic Thunder,” for which he would earn his second Oscar nomination — …
2 years, 7 months ago
What Big Books Have Yet to Come Out in 2023?
Episode 461
On this week’s episode, a look at the rest of the year in books — new fiction from Alice McDermott and this year’s Nobel laureate, Jon Fosse, a journ…
2 years, 7 months ago
What It's Like to Write a Madonna Biography
Episode 460
Madonna released her first single in 1982, and in one guise or another she has been with us ever since — ubiquitous but also astonishing, when you co…
2 years, 7 months ago
Audiobooks are the Best
Episode 459
You love books. You love podcasts. Ergo, we assume you love audiobooks the way we do — we hope you do, anyway, because this week we’ve devoted our en…
2 years, 8 months ago
Zadie Smith on Her New Historical Novel
Episode 458
Zadie Smith’s new novel, “The Fraud,” is set in 19th-century England, and introduces a teeming cast of characters at the periphery of a trial in whic…
2 years, 8 months ago
Elon Musk's Biography and Profiling Naomi Klein
Episode 457
Elon Musk, the billionaire South Africa-born entrepreneur whose business interests include the electric car company Tesla, the private rocket company…
2 years, 8 months ago
Talking to Stephen King and September Books to Check Out
Episode 456
Stephen King’s new novel, “Holly,” is his sixth book to feature the private investigator Holly Gibney, who made her debut as a mousy side character i…
2 years, 8 months ago
Amor Towles Sees Dead People
Episode 455
The novelist Amor Towles, whose best-selling books include “Rules of Civility,” “A Gentleman in Moscow” and “The Lincoln Highway,” contributed an ess…
2 years, 9 months ago