5 Podcasts for Book Lovers
This piece was originally written for paid subscribers in October 2024 and has been lightly edited since. It is now free for everyone.
Listening to podcasts is the only way my house gets cleaned, my dog gets walked and my children get fed. I listen to them on public transport and on the treadmill, and my family do a good impression of me mouthing “Can’t hear you” while pointing at my earbuds.
Podcasts help to eliminate the untidy noise in my head, replacing it with well-told stories. I’m fussy about them because the first podcast I ever listened to, ten years ago, spoiled me forever: that was Serial, Season 1, an investigation of the 1999 killing of Hae Min Lee by the excellent host and producer Sarah Koenig.
My favourite ones are careful investigations with a single storyline that employ all the tension and tactics of a good mystery novel. This year’s standout series by a considerable way has been Ghost Story, in which a normally cynical journalist finds out that as a boy he lived next door to a house where his wife’s great-grandmother was murdered.
I also enjoyed Sweet Bobby, a mind-blowing cat-fishing story about a thirty-something woman in London’s Sikh community, now also a Netflix documentary, and Wild Boys, in which two starving young men show up in a small town in Canada with a story that doesn’t quite make sense. This morning I finished The Shamima Begum Story, about one of three teenagers who left Britain to join the Islamic State group in 2015.
For today’s listicle I’ve gathered a small literature-themed collection. I hope there’s something here for you.
1. Season 1, Episode 2 of Things Fell Apart by Jon Ronson: Dirty Books
I’ve enjoyed both seasons of Things Fell Apart but this is the episode that has stayed with me the most — it relates to banning books in schools and libraries. The story goes back to the mid-1970s in West Virginia when a parent (the wife of a church minister) learns about a new curriculum in her children’s school and decides to read the suggested textbooks — everything snowballs from there, but wait for the twist because it says so much about culture wars generally.
2. Season 4, Cautionary Tales: The Poet Who Toppled The British Empire
The story of Indian poet and activist Sarojini Naidu, an important figure during the Indian independence movement, a promoter of women’s rights, and a leading voice in non-violent resistance. Naidu was arrested five times and imprisoned, went on to become India’s first female governor, and was known as The Nightingale of India.
The nations that in fettered darkness weep
Crave thee to lead them where great mornings break . . . .
Mother, O Mother, wherefore dost thou sleep?
Arise and answer for thy children’s sake
3. Episode 3 of The Lion, the Witch and the Wonder by Katherine Rundell: The Ingredients
Katherine Rundell has put her intellect, her fierce passion and her influence to brilliant use by writing these five short essays about children’s books for the BBC. I for one am grateful — listening to these felt like Katherine had reached into that room in my brain where I’ve stored the last twenty-five years of frustrations, and made everything sound calm and reasonable. I especially enjoyed this episode, ‘The Ingredients’, in which she explores what makes a great children’s book.
4. Episode 4 of Fakes & Frauds by Sarah L’Estrange: Fake identity and Helen Demidenko's The Hand that Signed the Paper
In the mid-90s, a young Queensland author wrote a novel called The Hand That Signed the Paper, which went on to win one of Australia’s most prestigious literary awards, the Miles Franklin. It was the controversial story of a Ukrainian-Australian woman and the actions of her Ukrainian uncle Vitaly during WWII, which included siding with the Nazis against Bolshevik Jews. The author, calling herself Helen Demidenko, claimed she was the daughter of an illiterate Ukranian taxi driver and a working-class Irish woman, who’d met on a refugee ship. But both her name and the elaborate family history she spun to justify her novel were fictional.
5. Scamtown: The Book Thief
Some book-related true crime for us: in the 1980s, a police officer took the case of hundreds of missing rare books from university libraries in the USA. Eventually this lead to the FBI discovering tens of thousands of them in one location in Iowa, and a twenty-year heist. And if that particular book thievery doesn’t take your fancy, try Scamfluencers: The Book Bandit, about Filippo Bernardini, an Italian citizen who worked at UK publisher Simon & Schuster, and was arrested in the US with the FBI alleging he had “impersonated, defrauded, and attempted to defraud, hundreds of individuals” to obtain unpublished and draft works.
Thank you for reading Voracious.
Wow - what a great list - thank you!