Episodes

  • M. John Harrison: The Course of the Heart

    M. John Harrison: The Course of the Heart
    Jul 9 2025

    My guest this week is the writer M. John Harrison, who joins me to talk about the rerelease of his 1992 novel The Course of the Heart – a deeply strange and riddling story of grief, friendship, memory and occult magic. We talk about why this book is so personal to him, what he learned from Charles Williams and Arthur Machen, turning his back on science fiction/fantasy and returning to it – as well as how probably the most acclaimed of all his novels, Light, came about after Iain Banks told him he wasn't having enough fun.

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    35 mins
  • Karin Slaughter: We Are All Guilty Here

    Karin Slaughter: We Are All Guilty Here
    Jul 2 2025

    Sam Leith's guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is one of the most popular living thriller writers. Karin Slaughter has made her native Georgia her fictional territory, and she joins Sam as she launches a new series set in a whole new county, with the book We Are All Guilty Here. They talk 'planning versus pantsing', what it means to write violence against women as a woman and how becoming the showrunner for television compares to the sovereignty of the novelist.

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    For more Spectator podcasts, go to spectator.co.uk/podcasts.


    Contact us: podcast@spectator.co.uk
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    36 mins
  • 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.
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    44 mins
  • 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.
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    49 mins
  • 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.
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    34 mins
  • 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.
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    37 mins
  • 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.
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    41 mins
  • 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.
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    39 mins