Shelf Life is a show about books and the people who love them. In each episode, we invite a celebrated bibliophile (think Alan Cumming, John Waters, and Joyce Maynard) to select two of their favorite books, and then we chat about them, drawing connections between their lit choices and their lives and careers.
Francis Spufford on Blitz London, archangels, and the temptation to change history.
Send a text Francis Spufford’s new novel, Nonesuch, drops us into Blitz London—blackouts, random acts of violence, food rationing—and then, almost imperceptibly, the world acquires another layer. In this episode, Spufford, the author of Golden Hill and Light Perpetual, among others, talks about the “daft mixture of wartime finance, early TV, archangels, Renaissance magic, and falling bombs," that makes Nonesuch such an epic and invigorating read. We talk about the Blitz as a kind of permissio...
9 Feb 2026
Madeleine Dunnigan on heated rivalries, women writing desire, and boyhood’s pressure systems
Send us a text Madeleine Dunnigan’s fierce, unnerving coming-of-age novel, Jean, is set in the final weeks at Compton Manor, an all-boys school that sells itself as enlightened where desire moves like weather, and cruelty is a kind of social sport. In this episode Dunnigan explains why the boarding-school setting is such a useful framing device; what drew her to the late 1970s punk-era—close enough to the Second World War to feel its aftershocks, but far enough to watch a new, disillusioned g...
26 Jan 2026
Jonathan Mahler on the 1980s New York that made Trump — and Michael Chabon’s comic-book Gotham
Send us a text Few cities lend themselves to myth quite like New York, a city that reinvents itself so often that each generation claims its own version. In this episode, we speak with journalist Jonathan Mahler about The Gods of New York, his sweeping portrait of the 1980s city of ambition and excess, when figures like Ed Koch, Donald Trump, and Al Sharpton weren’t just characters in the story—they were battling, in public, for the city’s soul. Mahler, best known for Ladies and Gentlemen, th...
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
37 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
13 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 40 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
48
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
82
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