The Essay Podcast
Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.
Episodes to download
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Fate—My Life in Food
Fri 28 Sep 2018
Joanna Robertson now lives in France, but more despite the food than because of it.
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Family—My Life in Food
Thu 27 Sep 2018
Joanna Robertson's deep connection with food has created families, and changed them.
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Disorder—My Life in Food
Wed 26 Sep 2018
Joanna Robertson's deep and intimate relationship with food goes disastrously wrong.
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Artists—My Life in Food
Tue 25 Sep 2018
Joanna Robertson's deep connection with food leads her to top artists and musicians.
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Origins—My Life in Food
Mon 24 Sep 2018
Since early childhood, Joanna Robertson has been lured by both real and fictional food.
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Why the Lloyd George museum is so small—A Bard's Eye View of Wales
Fri 21 Sep 2018
Twm Morys looks into the reputation of Lloyd George in the village of his birth
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Devils—A Bard's Eye View of Wales
Thu 20 Sep 2018
Twm Morys tells the story of Jack Ystumllyn, an African man in North Wales in the 1770s
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Saint Teilo - A Surplus of Arms—A Bard's Eye View of Wales
Wed 19 Sep 2018
Poet Twm Morys delves into the cultural links between Brittany and Wales
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Dinogad's Jerkin 鈥� The oldest lullaby in Britain—A Bard's Eye View of Wales
Mon 17 Sep 2018
Poet and musician Twm Morys tells the story of the oldest lullaby in Britain.
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Dear Agatha Christie...
Fri 20 Jul 2018
Novelist Ian Sansom has a theory to put to Queen of crime, Agatha Christie.
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Dear Virginia Woolf...
Thu 19 Jul 2018
A letter of apology to Virginia Woolf from novelist, Ian Sansom.
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Dear Geoffrey Chaucer...
Mon 16 Jul 2018
Novelist Ian Sansom fires off a letter to Geoffrey Chaucer...
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Sonny's Blues
Sun 1 Jul 2018
How James Baldwin's short story helped break down divisions of class, age and race.
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Never Let Me Go
Sun 1 Jul 2018
What does it mean to be human, and how can physicians respond to life's mysteries?
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To The Lighthouse
Sun 1 Jul 2018
Dr Rita Charon traces literary parallels in the responses of New Yorkers to 9/11.
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The Underground Railroad
Sun 1 Jul 2018
How a novel about American slavery is used to train medical students.
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Women's Rights—New Generation Thinkers
Fri 29 Jun 2018
5/5 Joanna Cohen looks back at the manifesto which remodelled the Declaration of Independence.
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John Gower, the Forgotten Medieval Poet—New Generation Thinkers
Thu 28 Jun 2018
4/5 Curing lovesickness or learning alchemy's secrets. Seb Falk on Chaucer's friend John Gower
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Sarah Scott and the Dream of a Female Utopia—New Generation Thinkers
Wed 27 Jun 2018
3/5 Lucy Powell tells the story of a radical community of women set up in 1760s rural England.
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The Forgotten German Princess—New Generation Thinkers
Tue 26 Jun 2018
2/5 The tale of Mary Moders, a C17 bigamist and media sensation, is retold by John Gallagher.
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Rehabilitating the Reverend John Trusler—New Generation Thinkers
Mon 25 Jun 2018
1/5 Sophie Coulombeau challenges the way we look at failure in the story of a C18 entrepreneur
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Forest Fire—Forests
Fri 22 Jun 2018
What's the most creative force in the forest? Andrew C Scott believes that it's fire.
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Scents of the Forest—Forests
Thu 21 Jun 2018
Perfumer, Roja Dove, explains the power of the heady scents of the forest.
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Outlaws of the Forest—Forests
Wed 20 Jun 2018
Forests are the perfect place for outlaw artists to hide, says writer Will Ashon.
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Forest Folk—Forests
Tue 19 Jun 2018
Singer Nancy Kerr explains why forests provide such perfect metaphors in folk music.
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Forests of the Imagination
Mon 18 Jun 2018
Fiona Stafford asks why artists are drawn to the imaginative possibilities of the forest.
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Mab Jones on Jane Eyre—Wisdom from fictional females
Fri 1 Jun 2018
5/5 Mab Jones on her favourite fictional female. Recorded at the Hay Festival 2018.
Death in Trieste
A 1760s murder still informs ideas about aesthetics, a certain sort of sex, and death.
Watch: My Deaf World
Five compelling experiences of what it is like to be deaf in 21st-century Britain.
The Book that Changed Me
Five figures from the arts and science introduce books that changed their lives and work.
Download The Essay
Download all the episodes from the series and listen at your leisure.
