Always Look On The Bright Side of Life

This week, Peter Filkins, winner of the inaugural Freudenheim Translation Prize, joins us with chair of the judges Boyd Tonkin to talk about the mercurial genius of Elias Canetti; and a poem in praise of Tuesdays by Jamie McKendrick.'The Book Against Death', by Elias Canetti, tra ...  Show more

This week, Mary Beard dons her VR set to experience a Roman cataclysm; and Mary Hitchman on the history of humanity's fascination with the moon.'The Last Days of Pompeii: The immersive exhibition', Immerse LDN, Excel, London, until March 15'The Medieval Moon', by Ayoush LazikaniP ...  Show more

Today’s book is: The Good-Enough Life (Princeton UP, 2022) by Avram Alpert. We live in a world oriented toward greatness, one in which we feel compelled to be among the wealthiest, most powerful, and most famous. This book explains why no one truly benefits from this competitive ...  Show more

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an ex ...  Show more

How often do you think about your life's purpose? Not the job or title you hold or the words and activities that you think may 'define' you—but the energetic mark you came here to leave on the planet?  Great stories hold a mirror to your soul and remind you what it means to be hu ...  Show more

What if facing mortality could unlock the secret to living fully? My guest Alua Arthur, a death doula and author of Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End</ ...