One of America’s newest literary stars, Bryan Washington (Lot) looks to Haruki Murakami and other modern storytellers to explore how surreal elements enrich the narratives of everyday life and magnify its strangeness. He connects Murakami’s str

Dreams of Her Real Self: Writers on Helen Garner

Mar 7th, 2018 56m 15s

Both celebrated and controversial, Helen Garner’s 40-year career has been distinguished by a trademark candidness. Garner fans Bernadette Brennan, Jennifer Byrne, Annabel Crabb, and Benjamin Law speak to Rebecca Giggs about her influence.See om

Bernadette Brennan: Writing Helen Garner

Feb 20th, 2018 1h 3m

Bernadette Brennan has completed the first full-length study of Helen Garner’s career in A Writing Life. Bernadette talks to Susan Wyndham about what is left to explore that Helen Garner hasn’t already shared about herself.

Nextness and Nearness: Bill Hayes on Oliver Sacks

Feb 13th, 2018 57m 42s

‘When Oliver Sacks died … the world lost a beloved author and neurologist. I lost my partner,’ Bill Hayes says. When they first became correspondents in 2007, Bill was grieving the death of a partner, and Sacks had lived in self-imposed celibac

A.C. Grayling: The Age of Genius

Nov 2nd, 2017 1h 7m

A.C. Grayling is one of the world’s most widely read and celebrated philosophers. His latest work The Age of Genius explores how the 17th century, fuelled by original and unorthodox thinking, war and technological invention, became the crucible

Don Watson - The Writer Who Saved Me

Jan 19th, 2017 1h

Don Watson first read Gabriel García Márquez around 1980 when he was an academic historian. He fancies García Márquez was one of the reasons why he drifted away from that profession. Not that anything Don has written since bears the faintest re

The Writer Who Changed Me: Tegan Bennett Daylight on S.J. Perelman

Oct 12th, 2016 55m 46s

S.J. Perelman, born at the beginning of the twentieth century, was a writer who thrived in two milieus – as a screenwriter for the Marx Brothers and as a comic essayist, most notably for The New Yorker. Perelman is an unusual influence for an A

Ferrante Fever: A Celebration of Elena Ferrante’s Novels

Jul 14th, 2016 1h 16m

Rarely does a writer inspire the kind of evangelical fervour that surrounds Elena Ferrante. The pseudonymous Italian author seems to evoke more than just literary appreciation – Ferrante readers are as passionate as the books’ characters themse

Curiosity Lecture Series: T.L Uglow: On Doubt - from Montaigne to Minchin

Jul 14th, 2016 50m 31s

While society generally espouses the value of logic and certainty, we grow because we doubt. Humans have not spent millennia traversing oceans and experimenting with explosives because of confidence in their beliefs. Culture and science are roo

Curiosity Lecture Series: Paul Muldoon On Seamus Heaney

Jul 7th, 2016 40m 10s

Upon Seamus Heaney’s death in 2013, Paul Muldoon delivered a beautiful eulogy in which he described his friend as a man who never took himself too seriously, and had a singular ability to make us feel connected to one another. In this podcast f

Claire Tomalin: On Charles Dickens The Inimitable

Jan 22nd, 2016 58m 32s

Charles Dickens was the most famous novelist in the world in his lifetime, making readers laugh, cry and rise up indignantly against wrongdoing. He was adored and revered for his goodness. England’s pre-eminent literary biographer, Claire Tomal

Daniel Mendelsohn and David Malouf on the Classics

Jul 6th, 2015 59m 45s

American memoirist and critic Daniel Mendelsohn and Australian writer and poet David Malouf share a deep appreciation for the classics. The pair sat down to muse on why ancient narratives hold such power, the key elements of artistic longevity,

Jonathan Bate and John Bell on Shakespeare

Jul 6th, 2015 1h 1m

Author and Oxford scholar Jonathan Bate shared the stage with actor and director John Bell to talk about their love of The Bard. Few people are more intimate with the work of Shakespeare than these two gentlemen (not of Verona). Jonathan Bate w

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