This Author Says You Shouldn’t Be Intimidated by ‘The Odyssey’
10 July - 43 mins explicitIf you can’t tell your Eurylochus from your Telemachus, fear not: Your primer on “The Odyssey” is here, just in time for Christopher Nolan’s new film adaptation of the 3,000-year-old epic.
Madeline Miller, who reinvented “The Odyssey” in her best-selling novel “Circe,” explains why you shouldn’t be intimidated by the classic.
Plus, our critic at large A.O. Scott explains how nearly every genre out there — sci-fi, romance, bloody revenge and more — can be found in this poem’s sprawling tale.
Books and Other Works Discussed on This Episode:
“Philoctetes,” by Sophocles
“The Iliad,” by Homer
“The Penelopiad,” by Margaret Atwood
“Watership Down,” by Richard Adams
“Aeneid,” by Virgil
“I,...
This Reporter Can Tell Us What Nuclear Apocalypse Looks Like (Encore)
We bring back an episode from our archives, in which Annie Jacobsen discusses her 2024 book “Nuclear War: A Scenario.”
45 mins
14 August Finished
Let’s Talk About the 50 Best Thrillers of the 21st Century
explicitFrom “Gone Girl” to “Mystic River,” Gilbert Cruz, Tina Jordan and Sarah Lyall revisit the books that changed the genre, discuss overlooked favorites and recommend the thrillers that everyone should read next.
51 mins
5 August Finished
Book Club: Let’s Talk About ‘John of John’
Douglas Stuart’s latest novel follows a profoundly isolated father and son, each grappling with long-held secrets.
55 mins
1 August Finished
Let’s Talk About the Best Books of the Year (So Far)
It’s time for our annual midyear check-in on the books that we can’t stop thinking about.
39 mins
24 July Finished
Sophie Elmhirst on the True Story of a Shipwrecked Couple
Host Gilbert Cruz's conversation from last year with author Sophie Elmhirst features "Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession and Shipwreck" — the gripping 1970s story of a couple shipwrecked by a whale — newly out in paperback this summer.
31 mins
17 July Finished