The Best Of the Penguin Podcast 2023

brought to you by penguin

hello ho ho there you go a festive greeting i'm nihal arthanaika and welcome back to the

penguin podcast where we unwrap the world of writing the air is filled with festive cheer

the tinsel is a twinkling and i'm here with more holiday puns than you can shake a candy cane at

as the temperature drops and the days grow shorter it can only mean one thing it's time

to snuggle up with your favorite authors as we revisit the highlights of the past year

on the penguin podcast it's been a challenge as you can imagine to narrow down the selection for

this compilation because let's face it every episode is a gem but we've chosen six of the

best for our end of year roundup

if you want to hear any of the conversations in full don't worry our podcast library is an

absolute treasure trove waiting for you to explore so whether you're a long-time listener

or just joining the penguin podcast family there's a sleigh full of literary delights

for you to discover just head to www.penguin.co.uk slash podcasts to find all our episodes

i began

a year talking to jane fallon about her latest release just got real few authors have mastered

the art of blending humor suspense and biting wit as skillfully as jane has and it was great to be

able to ask her why revenge is such a recurring theme in her work you kind of want to stay in

your wheelhouse really because i might have a brilliant idea for a completely different genre

but i think it would alienate people um there was a thing when getting rid of matthew first came out

someone called it chick

noir which i really liked because obviously as a female writer you get the chick lit where even if

you're not writing about relationships are you comfortable with that well it hasn't got a k on

the end so i kind of let it off if you can kind of read it as chic chic noir i mean no it's kind

of annoying like no one's saying all men's books are lad whatever so it's a bit infantilizing but

i liked the fact that i got my own little label that wasn't chick lit because you know i've seen

it with all other women writers that i know and i've seen it with all other women writers that i

know and i've seen it with all other women writers that i know and i've seen it with all other women

they all get called chick lit if there's any kind of a relationship even if it's just two friends

doing something together so i thought okay well that's kind of my thing my thing is chick noir

so i've sort of clung on to that so that i've got a thing but it's a thing that i feel is my own

unique little usp and similarly with the revenge thing more and more um you know i started a few

books ago i remember there was a review that said or the queen of revenge and i thought oh i like

that that's that's my thing um so i think as long as you're happy that you can make each book as

individual i think

it's a bit like saying every thriller has a murder in it most of my books have revenge in them it's

my thing it's what i do but hopefully they're all very different okay so what is it about your own

nature your own personality that draws you towards revenge i don't know i think it's one of those

feelings that's universal the desire for it but i also think it's a dreadful mistake i don't think

it's anything you know i've often fantasized in my head about what i would do to someone that's

wronged me i mean what i can do now is i can put a nasty version of them in a book and it's a joy

but you know you think about it but it's not a good it's a terrible thing it backfires on

everybody i think that tries it and it turns you into the kind of person i would never want to be

but i'm sort of fascinated by what would happen if we act on one of those really dark

feelings that we have what would that do to you as a person how far would you go i just find it

an endlessly sort of fascinating subject really do you need to be quite in control of everything

or okay right okay yeah okay because revenge can spiral and does right yeah because things have

unforeseen circumstances that come from these things and that's chaos yeah definitely because

i think in people's heads they think oh you know i'll just do this one thing i'll write this nasty

comment about her on twitter and now you know that'll teach her but then you get sucked in i

think either you do it once and you think oh that was good i'll do it again or they fight back and

it's it's not a healthy way to be at all i don't think um and i am a massive control freak about

most things but i also know myself well enough that i know that it i just know it would all go

horribly wrong if i ever tried to take revenge on someone it would be so much worse for me than

it ever would be for them so i kind of get it out my system by writing about it and being a producer

presumably that is controlling all aspects of what is happening around you i guess then there's not

much difference being an author but i often speak to authors jane who talk to me about it taking on

a life of its own even though you are ultimately control of it it takes you to directions you never

thought you would go yeah that's definitely true and that's one of the joys actually i find of

writing a first draft because writing a first draft as i'm pretty sure you know it is it's hard

it's hard and it's painful and you never quite know if you've made the right decisions but

actually what's lovely about it is it

characters do sort of start to come alive in your head and they do start to drive how the story is

going to go and you have to be happy to move away from your original plan i think you have to go with

where the story is kind of taking you where it logically will go next and i that's what for me

is one of the most exciting things is finding out the ways the story can completely change track

from what you're imagining because of what you've already written does it get more difficult uh yes

and no it's to a large extent it gets easier in that i know that the story is going to be

i know that i can do it now i know i can pull it off i know i always say this but it's so true i

know that at a certain point in the book approximately 40 000 to 60 000 words i'll have

a nervous breakdown and throw things around and cry a lot and say this is rubbish and i want to

put it all in the bin but now i know that's going to happen and every time all my friends say to me

you know you do this every time and i'm like but this time it's real but in my head now i know it's

not i know i can get through it i know it's not the end of the world if i can't get through it

and i have to throw all that away and i can't get through it and i have to throw all that away and i

start something else i know i can practically do it it gets harder i think in the expectations

become bigger you know you don't want to keep repeating yourself i'm now i'm writing quite

quickly now i'm writing and at the beginning i was very kind of oh yeah i'll knock out another

one in a year and a half but the last sort of eight books i've been writing a book a year and

although that really suits me it also puts a lot of pressure on you to come up with an original

idea so that side of it gets a bit harder but generally i would say it does kind of get easier

because it's the devil you know you know recently i i heard um someone talking about the fashion

designer virgil abloh and described that he had a zero attachment to ideas therefore once it wasn't

working he could just drop it without feeling any remorse or anything just what's your attachment

like to ideas i'd love to have that one that sounds great and really healthy actually i'm i

don't get really attached but i do get a bit attached and you mostly get attached i think

because you're thinking my brain

has put all this work in already can i really throw that away but actually i learned on my

second book got you back i wrote um 30 000 words which is like a third nearly of the book

and then i realized it really wasn't working and i panicked and i thought i can't it's not

going to work i've got to start a new book so i junked what i'd written it's the only time i've

ever done it but then when i came to write my next book i got that out of the bin and i had

time in

you know and my i was relaxed enough to rethink it reform the idea and that became my third book

so at that point i realized actually nothing's ever wasted if you an idea is not working and

you junk it you can revisit it later on and come at it from a different angle and so i've got much

better at being not too attached just goes to show no effort is truly wasted

julian barnes is an author whose work resonates for its thoughtful exploration of the human

experience

he joined me in february to talk about his latest novel elizabeth finch and to tell us

how he was inspired by his friend and mentor anita brookner and in a funny way building up

elizabeth finch i started with anita brookner's shoes and a certain sort of moral component to

her and then i put elizabeth finch in and she walked away in anita brookner's shoes and going

in the direction that she wanted to go in you used an interesting word in front of friend

which was controlled what does that mean in the context of your friendship with anita brookner

oh i can tell you very straightforwardly i was her junior and it's interesting we became friends

because we met the year she won the booker prize and i didn't and i could have been resentful but

i tell you why i wasn't because about a week before the booker prize and i didn't know her

i think i'd met her socially once she dropped me a card and it said i think you will win the

booker prize and you should

and i thought what an astonishing thing to write you know a week before the great ceremony in the

guild hall i thought this is a most unusual woman i can't think of i can't think of any man who would

write that and i can think of few women who would anyway she did and so when she won it i sort of

didn't really resent it and we met and then we would have lunch every so often at first it was

about twice a year sometimes it was three times she would always decide where we're having

lunch this is what i mean by controlling she would always pay the bill she would always be

there before i arrived she would usually be smoking a cigarette and she would at the beginning she

would have a glass of wine or a glass of champagne or something like that and she liked going to

stylish places and then it was perfectly clear after approximately 70 minutes that that was it

we had an espresso and she called for the bill and we kissed one another goodbye and in that 70

minutes we had spent

what in other with other friends other sort of more loosely textured friends was like three hours

of company so you know i adored her and and she was obviously very fond of me but i had no other

i think she came to dinner in my house once and lunch once but on the whole it was always

out in a restaurant and she was very witty you see this is the other side of elizabeth finch

you would arrive for lunch and she would say

so what are you doing here

what have you got for me and you're immediately you were there you had a function which was to

tell her something entertaining or funny or witty or gossipy she loved gossip and we sort of went

from there and we talk about you know art because she was a professor of art and we talk about

writing and we talk about people we knew but she laid down the rules she laid down all the rules i

didn't resent it at all i thought these are the terms and conditions for having a friendship with

such a person the only time i got it wrong was when i was in a restaurant and i was in a restaurant

i was looking at a catalogue of the forthcoming season at the national film theater and there was

a program of the first moving pictures of paris back in the sort of around about 1900

bit before bit afterwards and they were all short films i mean the first the first film shown in

paris was of it was filmed in a station and it was just the train arriving and the train was just

coming towards people in the street and i was looking at a catalogue of the forthcoming season

the cinema and getting bigger and bigger and they all ran out there was panic they thought this was

going to come through the screen it was so realistic they thought the train was going to

come through the screen and just run over them so they all they all buggered off and thought i don't

know something like it's a 90 minute program so there were maybe sort of 10 or 12 short films of

paris street life and that sort of thing and i thought i need to be fascinated by this so i rang

her up and i started describing it as i have to you and i got about a third of the way through

and she said no i don't think so and i felt quite hurt i have to tell you i i didn't say but anita

you're interested in this you're interested in france you you must love these films it was just

you know her social life was very ordered and going to the movies with a friend and his wife

who she'd never gone to the movies with before was sort of just outside her thinking at that point

and i respected that but i was i was

hurt by it i've thought in longer term in retrospect i find it funny have you always

been waiting for an opportunity to include an anita brookner because what you've just

described to me those meetings with her are an exact copy of what occurs in the book between

neil and elizabeth finch and it's so extraordinary have you been waiting for the opportunity to

include these details of meeting someone so controlling no i mean it's not as if i

and i must stress it's it's not a roman a clay it's not a novel about anita brook it's a novel

about someone who shares some of her traits and her quirks and i and there's some things about

anita that i just i mean i just couldn't resist putting in straight from life but uh i didn't

obviously i didn't use the uh will you come to the cinema with me thing no that's true but um

i suppose if you'd ask me in the what was it 30 years perhaps

i knew anita i would have said no why would i you know i wouldn't write about her i mean i

admire her i admire her novels um and indeed when she died i read a piece about her and maybe it

was that that set me off in some way on wanting to make a sort of parallel fictional character

out of her you don't quite know what will set you off fortunately it'd be awful if you knew

what set you off to write a novel if you knew in advance somehow or if you knew

certain things would set you off to write a novel then it would just be like painting by numbers

and that wouldn't be interesting it's an amazing book and if you haven't read it do get yourself a

copy june saw us pitching a tent at latitude festival where among the music stages issy

sati spoke to shaparat korsandi about her new book scatterbrain which explores her recent adhd

diagnosis appropriately enough for someone with a busy

brain shaparat chose somewhere very peaceful for her first object somewhere where i was happy

is a pear tree in a garden in maidley road in west london i can tell you that because i don't

live there anymore so i used to live at it was like this massive victorian house that was divided

into six flats and it no one had attended to it for decades we had to wear um

slippers in the house because it was rented uh rented flat and the carpets were so dirty you had

to wear slippers and you know if windows got broken nobody mended them the garden was clearly

once beautiful but no one had looked after it and my brother and i shared a room so we were very very

close growing up and we spent all our time in that garden and it had this old pear tree that

we used to climb up whenever our parents were rowing we'd run downstairs we'd run down the

talk a lot about that as well with my very kind permission from my parents but my brother and i

used to run up the pear tree we'd climb up the pear tree and sit there take snacks and just sit

there all day and then um when they sold the house and we had to move out they did something

dreadful it had an old um had a bomb shelter in the garden underground bomb shelter they

concreted it over made it mostly a car park but the pear tree stayed and then um i was going through a

really really horrible time in my divorce and my brother went to the house took a picture of the

pear tree and said this is always there oh oh and so that's what i'm happy i think part of the

crying is also perimenopause you know this talk can be about whatever you want it to be

who's in perimenopause give us a cheer yeah i think i am um well i don't mind i loved it i i often cry

during the day i cry a lot i cry a lot i cry a lot i cry a lot i cry a lot i cry a lot i cry a lot i cry a lot i cry a lot

i think it's great it's great to cry it's so good and did you ever eat the pears were they part of

the snacks no they were great the pears were great big juicy pears and it had like four apple trees

and i took when my son was born this is gonna sound really weird and definitely trespassing

i took him to meet the pear tree so yeah it's still there because i also took my daughter

don't tell anyone i go into people's gardens i've got a little dream of buying that house back

one day and restoring the garden to its former dilapidated state oh i so hope that happens

i love that image of her taking her children to visit her tree i hope you get to climb it again

shappy dr chris van tulleken hit the bestseller list this year with ultra processed people

looking at the way a processed diet affects our bodies but his second object was something a

little less intellectual

his yellow toy cow teddy um well let's move on to your next object this is something to treasure

this is my yellow cow it is teddy so i've had yellow cow slightly older than me he was given

to me before i was born in fact he was given to zand but i liked yellow cows i don't have a blue

cow we don't know what's happened to blue cow anyway i kept yellow cow i put yellow cow in

because i still sleep with him every night i feel like i'm a reluctant science communicator

there are a lot of people on the bbc who talk about science who are evangelists who believe

that science is an amazing way of understanding everything about the world and as someone who has

a phd in molecular biology and and uses science i find science a really limited way of understanding

the world and something about yellow cow represents this because i have some belief

about yellow cow as being more than an inanimate object that he has some property that i can't

quite name that's quite important to me and i i would be almost as upset today if i lost him

as if i've had a child lose a teddy bear and it's it's grief it's real grief so he speaks to

something i guess in my psyche where i feel that i always want to caveat all scientific discussions

by saying this is just a very limited tool for predicting a few very small things about the

future it doesn't help us understand anything about the world and if we're going to understand

food the science won't help us with the inequality the

context and the immorality of the way our food system works i think the other thing that that

brings to your work is a sense of fun and the book is also very funny that wouldn't be there if you

didn't have this openness to there's a kind of softness around the edges of what you do that

makes what you say far more compelling than if it was just dry information perhaps a sense of fun

about life or a sense of uncertainty yeah i'm quite i'm quite the edge

is maybe just slightly softened yeah and it's a problem when you're communicating about this

stuff because i think what a lot of people want is just people say like tell me what to do what

should i do with my diet tell me chris and i i'm like i i've no idea what you should do here is

some information and i i can't tell you how to behave because you will you will fail and it will

be my fault or you'll succeed and it will be my success i feel very unsure about exactly what to

tell anyone to do there aren't clear answers and maybe

yellow cat helps with all that a lovely insight into chris's brain there if you haven't read

ultra processed people i heartily recommend it it's one of the most talked about books of the

year and for very good reasons jyoti patel had a great year too her debut novel the things we

lost was the observer's best debut novel of 2023 it is a truly beautiful book but jyoti was inspired

by something rather more prosaic

for one of her objects so i chose the great gig in the sky by pink floyd because it was a song that

i grew up hearing so much my dad would blast it through the house whether we were in bangalore

or london wherever we were i just remember this song being like the thread of like my childhood

but it was it wasn't until i was a teenager that i really listened to it and it's a song that

whenever i get stuck when i'm writing and i don't know how to articulate

it and i don't know how to articulate it and i don't know how to articulate it

i don't know i can't crystallize a feeling that i want to articulate i listen to this song because

for me it is every emotion it is life and death and joy and happiness and love and heartbreak

it is every emotion and every experience and a whole life lived in a song and it's so much more

than a song it's like an experience you know it's it's everything and i think it's something that

really unlocks me as a writer when i hit a wall or when i can't quite reach into what i need to do

when i need to get to when i need to write so there are so many songs in the novel too because

music's such an important part of my life and an important part of what built me and i wanted to

show how music builds these characters and makes them who they are it was so hard for me to just

pick one song but i think that's a song that's been with me the longest and that continues to

move me in the greatest way let's move on to a piece of architecture something that reminds you

of home but not only a piece of architecture

but the fact that you mentioned the north circular which nobody nobody would i think

attach to feelings of sentimentality or nostalgia most people are annoyed by the a406 on a daily

basis twice daily basis usually absolutely and it actually features in the novel too i mentioned

nick learning how to drive on the a406 um because it's got that special place in my heart that it's

even been a moment of my life and i think it's a moment of my life and i think it's a moment of my

life in my novel but and yeah i chose the wembley stadium arc as this this thing that just makes me

reminds me so much of home and because i think for so long i lived you know outside of london

and i would drive home every weekend and whether i've been abroad and i'm coming back in a cab or

whether i'm literally driving back to london from living outside of it for so many years

the moment where i would feel this rush of god i'm home was when i would see the

wembley stadium arc as this this thing that just makes me reminds me so much of home and because i

arc this the arc of the stadium as i was you know turning that corner in the a406 and even now i live

in north london when i go back to northwest to visit my parents and my family and so many of

my loved ones who are still around wembley harrow those parts of london which are in the book when

i see that arc i just feel like i'm home i feel like i'm safe and it's almost like my shoulders

just inch a little bit lower down and i just feel that relaxed feeling that you feel when you're

home um and it's so strange because i know that that arc has got so much meaning for football fans

and for so many different kinds of people but for me it just means a cup of chai it means a cup of

peppermint tea with my mom it means like seeing all my my loved ones no matter where i've lived

it's it's always signified home amazing amazing well i i lived in dollis hill for many years

that part of northwest london wilson green and dollis hill exactly and we used to go to harrow

quite a lot for um some very good as you will know sri lankan vegetarian

restaurants in harrow uh it's a it's a great part of london an amazingly buzzy part of london as well

it must have been quite interesting when you were in norfolk i mean the juxtaposition between those

two places yeah it was it was a huge um the only reason i went there really was for university so

i studied english with creative writing for my undergrad because the uea there is so well known

for creative writing and then i stayed and went back and did my master's on like the big creative

writing course there and basically a

soon even before i finished that master's i was back in london i was like i'm gonna do my undergrad

work for a couple of years and as soon as i finished the master's i was like i'm done with

this place i'm going back home but even when i lived there i would i would come home every weekend

because and that's why i mentioned the a406 just because it is such a juxtaposition and it's

interesting because norfolk has had so much time in in literature it's mentioned in so many novels

whether it's books set there or whether it's people going on long weekends there but wembley

parts of london haven't seen they're either romanticized because of the school in harrow but

real harrow wembley you know driving on the a406 frightway like all those roads that i know so well

i've never seen in books and that's why i wanted to bring them into this novel too because there's

so many british gadratis and south asians who live there um and it's i feel like it's just been

a big part of becoming who i am is is northwest london my part of northwest london don't think

i'll ever quite look at the north circular

same again spent many hours on that road

anyway david mitchell scored a festive hit towards the end of the year with unruly

a book that takes a comic look at the kings and queens of england it's full of things you didn't

know about the founding fathers and mothers of britain and david chose one of the most iconic

weapons in english law as his first object yes the the arrow that may have been the way harold

godwin and king harold godwin and king harold godwin and king harold godwin and king harold godwin and

harold of hastings died uh that's my slightly virtual object an 11th century arrow the loss of

that back that battle could really have gone either way there was nothing inevitable about

that harold was a very capable professional king it had no real right to the throne but it seized

it with some vigor and was accepted completely within england which is rare for a fundamentally

a usurper he wasn't a usurper in some ways in that he claimed he'd been left the throne by ed

but william also claimed that but he definitely had the support of the next rung down because they

thought this is going to be the best the most peaceful the most stable way out he's he's got

all the power let him being charged he seems quite professional and not too psycho considering the age

and he'd done very well for the most of the year of 1066 he got himself crowned the day after

edward the confessor's funeral so he was he was aware he had to move quickly but things were

he'd got ready for william to invade he had a large force dotted around the south coast he

would directing operations from the isle of wight all ready to pounce on william and repel him

immediately but then the weather was bad and so william didn't come over the summer and then the

troops are hanging around the south coast and harold says well i'm gonna have to let them go

home yes he lets them go and then he has to recall them yeah and that obviously is a nightmare he

lets them go and then he discovers there's been an invasion in the north from harold's

harald hardrada the king of norway with harold of hastings his tricky brother tosti and they've

invaded in the north and harold hardrada was very good at fighting and had been a guard of the

byzantine emperors and basically lost very few battles and so this is a big problem and harold

godwinson gets his army together marches up to the north defeats harold hardrada and tosti

and then discovers that william has now finally turned up on the south coast

he has to turn around march all the way down tiring even to think about william's there on

the south coast harold gets there with quite a big army not what it would have been if william

had invaded when expected but positions this army in a good defensive position william's got to get

past them or he's screwed and harold says so guys we need to just stand here okay they come we hit

them we hit them we hit them but don't chase them unfortunately

his army gets a bit overexcited at one point when he thinks the normans are in retreat and they start

chasing them the normans turn around kill a load of them and this technique is used time after time

and that's basically why william won if they'd stayed still on the ridge in their defensive

formation william probably couldn't have got past them on that day and then every day later harold's

position is stronger because the noblemen are coming in from the rest of england so it could

so easily have gone to the north and harold's position is stronger because the noblemen are

on another way and i feel sorry for him yeah because actually it's not his fault his men

disobeyed him his men disobeyed obviously that's partly you know it's a managerial issue if people

aren't motivated to do what they're told who knows but yes it's basically really annoying it's one of

those you had one job scenarios your one job is do not run down the hill and then they ran down the

hill and i think you say they sort of almost like they're playing a game where the normans are kind

of going catch me if you can kind of retreating further back and then almost goading them yeah

first time there was you know genuinely a sort of mini route in the norman army because they thought

william might have been killed but then william hadn't been killed and so they turn around and

and start slashing at the people who'd followed them and this they realize this is very effective

and they managed to repeat this faint uh several times and they're just grinding the anglo-saxon

numbers down and yeah and then at some point harold gets killed maybe by an arrow in the eye

people like those stories don't they people

really like to have um a picture in their heads of this grim death an arrow in the eye i don't know

why that feels more compelling than just he died and we don't know how yes well it's i suppose it's

memorable yeah at school it's memorable and that little moment of gore and sort of thinking i

wouldn't like to be hit by an arrow but where would you particularly not like to be hit by an

arrow the eye yes it's like the worst yeah yeah what would you do if you

had an arrow in your eye would you leave it there would you snap it off would you try and pull it

out you know would it get to your brain would you you know would you and i think school children

like reflecting on that and then suddenly that bit of history will be with them forever until

some someone annoyingly says well we don't know that he was killed with an arrow in the eye and

i always find that a slight shame yes it's i was thinking about gcse history which for me made me

focused on the industrial revolution because of partly because of being in derbyshire

and and medicine as well in the american west later but anyway i was thinking about how the

things i remember are gross things like bloodletting and the four humors and phlegm and

trephining where you drill a hole in the back of the head to supposedly let evil spirits out

and it must be for exactly the same reason it's like you're going thank god i'm not having an

operation with no anesthetic yes the medical i mean the history of medicine is funny because

it's basically as far as i can tell doing more harm than good until the middle of the 19th century

and a lot of things are quite advanced before the middle of the i mean you've got the industrial

revolution and steam engines for example but still basically what the doctors are peddling

is some nonsense that their predecessors made up and this whole issue of bleeding that they're all

convinced that bleeding is is you know that's the first thing you want to do not take a couple

of paracetamol but bleed someone and because they've been saying that for so long to admit

that that does more harm than good becomes too terrible to do and so the bleeding happens for

longer than it needed to do because people can't say well you're saying we've been doing harm for

centuries and my father was doing harm so no no let's just tell ourselves that the bleeding is

probably still a good start but no there's never any reason to bleed people bleeding is bad yes

you're getting rid of a thing that you really need it's exactly one of the things that kills people

well you like that too were you when because you're

your love of history started young do you remember being fascinated by those gory bits

i know you love dates yeah i yeah i mean i like the gore but i do like the date what i like

is putting things in order and what i wanted always wanted to know is what happened before

and what happened next and i'm i've never been so interested in in getting deeper in but i wanted

to go broader and that's the you know a lot of the frustration of history at school and at

gcse is that there seems to be an urge to specialize and specializing pre-gcse is quite

early you know and i think what it's fun then to is to know the broader sweep the story obviously

you have to say well it isn't a story there's no received version this is all just something

that's been pieced together from sources and has been interpreted and that's an important

thing to know in the internet age more than any other but also the basics is pretty much agreed

on so why not learn the sequence of rulers and have that broad sense of there was the norman

conquest and then there was a bit of uh trying to be in charge of france and then there was the wars

of the roses and then there was the tudors you can tell people that without betraying the the nature

of sources yes and they're things we definitely know yes yes exactly these are indisputable so

then within that you can use your imagination or other knowledge to furnish what you think

happened yes yeah i think that the interpretation

of sources which i definitely had to do at gcse quite a lot when i could have been doing more

general knowledge of other bits of history the interpretation of sources is really a professional

historian's job it's not part of general knowledge and i think quite a lot of people would like to

have a bit more general knowledge of the past and the fun bits and the brutal bits and so that

phrases that refer to a bit of the past aren't a mystery to them do you still feel the same about

do you still like that

that rigorous element to it and and going broad rather than deep or as you've got older do you

like now to kind of learn a bit more about specific periods well i think i like to know

basically why things changed i'm fine with basically why and i think that if you ask a

historian a question what they often want to say is no it's not that and if you manage to ask them

a question they don't say no it's not that what they usually say is well it's a bit more complicated

than that and at that point i sort of think it's a bit more complicated than that and i think that's

okay i'm done yeah if it's if so i'm bait i'm there or thereabouts

if you're looking for a last minute stocking filler grab it now it's hilarious

and educational or as jesse armstrong put it delightfully contrary and hilariously cantankerous

and that's it for this episode and for 2023 the penguin podcast will be back in january

and we already have some amazing authors lined up for you

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to you i'm nihala thanika i'll see you next time