Episodios

  • Carl Zimmer: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe

    Carl Zimmer: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe
    Jun 25 2025
    My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is science writer Carl Zimmer, whose new book Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe explores the invisible world of the aerobiome – the trillions of microbes and particles we inhale every day. He tells me how Louis Pasteur's glacier experiments kicked off a forgotten scientific journey; how Cold War fears turned airborne research into a bioweapons race; and why the COVID-19 pandemic exposed a century-long misunderstanding about how diseases spread through the air.
    Más Menos
    44 m
  • William Dalrymple: The Golden Road

    William Dalrymple: The Golden Road
    Jun 18 2025
    My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the historian William Dalrymple, whose bestselling account of ancient India’s cultural and economic influence, The Golden Road, is newly out in paperback. He tells me why the ‘Silk Road’ is a myth, how Arabic numerals are really Indian – and how he responds to being Narendra Modi’s new favourite author.
    Más Menos
    49 m
  • Lucy Mangan: How Reading Shapes Our Lives

    Lucy Mangan: How Reading Shapes Our Lives
    Jun 11 2025
    In this week’s Book Club podcast I am joined by Lucy Mangan, author of Bookish: How Reading Shapes Our Lives. She tells me what teenagers did before they had Young Adult books to read, the bizarre demise of the author of Goodnight Moon, and the wisdom of forsaking the busy world for an armchair and a good book.
    Más Menos
    34 m
  • Alice Loxton: Eighteen – A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives

    Alice Loxton: Eighteen – A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives
    Jun 4 2025

    My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the historian Alice Loxton, whose new book Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives is just out in paperback. In it, she tells the story of the early lives of individuals as disparate as the Venerable Bede and Vivienne Westwood. On the podcast, Alice tells me about Geoffrey Chaucer’s racy past, what Bede was like before he was venerable, and why her editor wouldn’t let her take her characters to Pizza Express. She also reassures me that – in a post-Rest is History world, where history is more exciting and accessible than ever – there is still a place for the fusty old historians.
    Más Menos
    37 m
  • Robert Macfarlane: Is a river alive?

    Robert Macfarlane: Is a river alive?
    May 28 2025
    Sam Leith's guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Robert Macfarlane. In his new book Is A River Alive? he travels from the cloud forests of Ecuador to the pollution-choked rivers of Chennai and the threatened waterways of eastern Canada. He tells Sam what he learned along the journey – and why we need to reconceptualise our relationship with the natural world.
    Más Menos
    41 m
  • Geoff Dyer – the Proust of prog rock and Airfix

    Geoff Dyer – the Proust of prog rock and Airfix
    May 21 2025
    My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Geoff Dyer, who’s talking about his memoir Homework, in which he describes growing up as an only child in suburban Cheltenham, and how the eleven-plus and the postwar settlement irrevocably changed his life – propelling him away from the timid and unfulfilled world of his working-class parents. Geoff, in this new book, bids fair to be the Proust of Airfix models and prog rock.
    Más Menos
    39 m
  • Julie Bindel: Lesbians – where are we now?

    Julie Bindel: Lesbians – where are we now?
    May 14 2025
    My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the writer, activist and Spectator contributor Julie Bindel. In her new book Lesbians: Where Are We Now?, Julie asks why lesbian liberation seems – as she sees it – to have taken one step forward and two steps back. She traces the history of lesbian activism, explains why we’re wrong to assume that lesbians and gay men are natural allies, confronts the ‘progressive’ misogyny she identifies in a younger generation – and tells me whether she thinks the Supreme Court’s recent decision marks an end to the trans wars.
    Más Menos
    48 m
  • Daniel Swift: The Making of William Shakespeare

    Daniel Swift: The Making of William Shakespeare
    May 7 2025
    My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Daniel Swift. Daniel’s new book, The Dream Factory: London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare, tells the fascinating story of a theatrical innovation that transformed Elizabethan drama – and set the stage, as it were, for the rise of our greatest playwright.
    Más Menos
    50 m