Best Howard Jacobson Podcasts (2024)

1
Marcus Chown – A Crack In Everything: How Black Holes Came in from the Cold and Took Cosmic Centre Stage 37:35

2M ago37:35

37:35

Black holes aren’t black! If there is one thing everybody knows about black holes it is that they are so dense that even light can’t escape. And yet, as Marcus Chown explains, black holes are some of the most prodigiously luminous objects in space. So they’re not holes. And they’re not black. But they are among the most fascinating and counter-intu…

1
Scarlett Thomas – The Sleepwalkers 28:55

4M ago28:55

28:55

You tell yourself “It’s OK, it’s OK … ” but it’s really not! Scarlett Thomas is a tricky novelist to categorise. She has a playful, restless, sleeves-rolled-up approach to writing, in which she seldom ducks the dark turn and the big idea. And you can’t doubt her commitment. She once earned an MSc in Ethnobotany by way of research for a book. Tim ha…

1
Death and the Victorians – Adrian Mackinder 32:27

5M ago32:27

32:27

The origins of modern death Let’s face it – nobody did death like the Victorians. From Highgate Cemetery to the high drama of seances, from Jack the Ripper to Madame Blavatsky, from Waterloo Station to Brookwood Cemetery (there was an actual train!) the Victorians invented our modern response to death, its iconography and its – yes – romance. The a…

1
Alwyn Turner – Little Englanders – Britain in the Edwardian Era 39:35

5M ago39:35

39:35

End of Empire History sometimes provides us with neat dividing lines. Queen Victoria helpfully died just weeks into the new century, making way for a new era, but the nightmarish Twentieth Century didn’t really get into its stride until the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. Between those landmarks is the Edwardian era. There is apprehension abroad…

1
Howard Jacobson – What Will Survive of Us 32:21

6M ago32:21

32:21

Being in love is an act of carelessness of your own safety. It’s risk! Sam and Lily are middle-aged lovers in Howard Jacobson’s new novel and, in bed, they talk as much as anything else. Jacobson is rightly celebrated for his dialogue and, as so often before, it is rich with allusion and steeped in his passion for English literature. The novel is e…

1
Philip Norman: George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle

10M ago

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Was George Harrison really the “Economy Beatle”? Philip Norman wrote Shout!, the first grown-up biography of The Beatles, shortly before John Lennon was murdered. People told him he was crazy, that The Fabs were yesterday’s news, that everybody already knew everything there was to know about the band. He wasn’t crazy. Fifty-three years after they b…

1
The Dictionary People – The Unsung Heroes Who Created The Oxford English Dictionary 35:30

11M ago35:30

35:30

A goldmine of nutters, obsessives, murderers, vicars and, above all, readers! In a time before the internet, the compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary was the Wickipedia of its day, crowdsourcing its contributions from thousands of readers across the world. Over decades, millions of slips inscribed with words and quotations poured into a met…

1
Mike Jay – Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind 32:35

11M ago32:35

32:35

Don’t knock it ’till you’ve tried it! 😉 We are familiar with some of the names: William Burroughs in the 1950’s. Timothy Leary in the ‘60’s, Hunter S Thompson in the ‘70’s, those two guys who started the craze for smoking cane-toad venom in ‘90’s. Investigators who became their own guinea pigs. But “the heroic tradition of discovery”, as Mike Jay p…

1
Neil Jordan – The Well Of Saint Nobody 23:50

1y ago23:50

23:50

Have you never forgotten someone you’ve slept with? Neil Jordan is best known as an internationally famous film director, of course – The Crying Game, Mona Lisa, Interview With The Vampire and many others. But he is also an accomplished novelist. The Well Of St Nobody is a story of legend, of music and eroticism, of consequences and of identity. “T…

1
Cathi Unsworth – Season Of The Witch: The Book Of Goth

1y ago

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Margaret Thatcher and Goth Culture It was the Age of Thatcher, and beyond the playgrounds of the red-braces wide boys and the Sloane Square privileged, it was grim. Unemployment was a weapon in the class war. The Yorkshire Ripper ran riot. Bitter industrial disputes divided communities, while the police was brutally remade into a national instrumen…

1
Lawrence Krauss – The Known Unknowns: The Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos 41:14

1y ago41:14

41:14

Lawrence Krauss – Head Of Zeus – £20.00 Professor Lawrence Krauss has made major contributions to the field of theoretical physics and is one of the world’s great scientific communicators with a gift for illuminating complex ideas. His new book, The Known Unknowns makes a tour d’horizon of the frontiers of current knowledge, touching on such questi…

1
Barry Forshaw – Simenon: The Man, The Books, The Films: A 21st Century Guide 26:35

1y ago26:35

26:35

Barry Forshaw – Oldcastle Books – £12.99 Is there any man or woman in England who knows more about crime writing than Barry Forshaw? Here at The Books Podcast he is our go-to man. He is also delightful company. Simenon’s Maigret books are the most successful non-anglophone crime series in the world. Easily up there with Sherlock Holmes and Philip M…

1
Joanne Harris – Broken Light 22:53

1+ y ago22:53

22:53

Joanne Harris – Broken Light – Orion £20.00 If every piece about Joanne Harris starts by reminding us that she is the author of Chocolat, she can live with that. It might be close to a quarter of a century ago, but it was a dazzling success and made her a household name, while the film adaptation took her to the Oscars, where Alfred Molina made sur…

1
Steve Richards – The Prime Ministers We Never Had: Success And Failure From Butler to Corbyn 29:44

1+ y ago29:44

29:44

Steve Richards – Atlantic Books – £10.99 Steve Richards’ last book was an entertaining and penetrating discussion of the last ten Prime Ministers (or at any rate, the last ten at the time of publication – we’ve had a couple more since then.) But as he writes in his new book, “Most routes to Number 10 are blocked.” But some of the nearly men and wom…

1
Joel Meadows – Tripwire 30th Anniversary 16:38

1+ y ago16:38

16:38

Joel Meadows Heavy Metal Entertainment £35.99 Tripwire is thirty, and we were intrigued when this beautiful anniversary book arrived at The Books Podcast. What is Tripwire, you ask? It’s a… well, it’s a magazine. Hm… funny name for a magazine. What sort of magazine? A slightly geeky magazine. Geeky? OK, it’s a magazine for anybody who shares the in…

1
David Hepworth – Abbey Road: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Famous Recording Studio 29:57

2y ago29:57

29:57

David Hepworth – Bantam Press – £25 The world has many holy places – Mecca, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the Wetherspoons on King St in Hammersmith – but for some of us these are all trumped by Number 3 Abbey Rd in St John’s Wood. EMI’s Abbey Road recording studios. Even today musicians and bands – good bands – are …

1
Louise Willder – Blurb Your Enthusiasm – an A-Z of Literary Persuasion 27:36

2y ago27:36

27:36

Louise Willder – OneWorld – £14.99 Quick review of Louise’s checklist of adjectives not to be used in a blurb: breathtaking, spellbinding, dazzling, powerful, beautiful. So I can’t say it’s any of those. Readable? Well, as she points out, it’s a book. Darkly comic. That just means unpleasant, doesn’t it? I also can’t accuse it of ‘mordant wit’. Alt…

1
Nick Wallis – The Great Post Office Scandal: The fight to expose a multimillion pound IT disaster which put innocent people in jail 39:19

2y ago39:19

39:19

Nick Wallis – Bath Publishing – £25 It is the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history. Hundreds of innocent people prosecuted, ruined, often imprisoned – their lives destroyed. And hundreds more dismissed from their jobs and their livelihoods, obliged to pay thousands and even tens of thousands of pounds “back” that they never stole…

1
Rachel Gross – Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage 27:31

2+ y ago27:31

27:31

Rachel Gross – W W Norton – £19.99 There comes a time in every woman’s life when her body bumps up against the limits of human knowledge. In that moment, she sees herself as medicine has seen her: a mystery. An enigma. A black box that, for some reason, no-one has managed to get inside.” This was the experience of Rachel Gross, who found that the s…

1
Howard Jacobson – Mother’s Boy: A Writer’s Beginnings 35:21

2+ y ago35:21

35:21

Howard Jacobson – Jonathan Cape – £18.99 It is striking that one of our finest novelists didn’t publish his first novel until he was nearly forty, and characteristically, he was ticking off literature’s late starters as he passed them by. Reading Howard Jacobson, you would say that he was born to be a writer, and he would have concurred. Mother’s B…

1
Simon Mason – A Killing In November 20:44

2+ y ago20:44

20:44

Simon Mason – Riverrun – £14.99 A beautiful girl is strangled in the Provost’s lodge in an Oxford College while the college is shmoozing a billionaire Emirati. It is a situation which calls for delicate handling, so it is perhaps a shame that new DI Wilkins is sent by mistake to take charge of the investigation. A town and gown setting. An odd coup…

1
Dr Thomas Halliday – Otherlands: A World in the Making 23:11

2+ y ago23:11

23:11

Dr Thomas Halliday – Allen Lane – £20 Otherlands is a kind of travel book, traveling in time and across the globe, pushing back through the last half-billion years, showing you ever stranger beasts and more and more unfamiliar landscapes. Each chapter takes us to a location in the world that exemplifies a nexus of evolutionary change. Odd details c…

1
Robert J Lloyd – The Bloodless Boy 26:18

2+ y ago26:18

26:18

Robert J Lloyd – Melville House Press – £18.99 In 1678 London was rebuilding after the Great Fire of London, just twelve years earlier. Among the great men undertaking this enterprise was Robert Hooke, who is a central character in Rob Lloyd’s The Bloodless Boy. A scientist and energetically modern visionary: “Some parts of Nature are too large to …

1
Prof Francesca Stavrakopoulou – God An Anatomy 30:34

3y ago30:34

30:34

Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou – Picador – £25 “Once upon a time, in the book of Genesis, humans were made in the visual image and likeness of God. It was a social, as well as a corporeal correspondence, celebrating both the fleshly wonders of the human body and the personable presence of the deity.” So says Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou. …

1
Nicholas Wapshott – Samuelson Friedman: The Battle Over the Free Market 23:27

3y ago23:27

23:27

Nicholas Wapshott – W. w. Norton – £22.95 Not many academic economists are household names. But when I was young, Milton Friedman was. The high-priest of Monetarism and intellectual descendant of Friedrich Hayek, his theories were much admired by right-wing politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Meanwhile Paul Samuelson made his m…

1
Robb Johnson – The People’s Republic of Neverland: The Child Versus The State 22:52

3y ago22:52

22:52

Robb Johnson – PM Books – £17.99By Green-Shoot

1
Alwyn Turner – All In It Together: England in the Early 21st Century 29:09

3y ago29:09

29:09

Alwyn Turner – Profile Books – £20By Green-Shoot

1
Stan Lee – How Marvel Changed The World! 27:33

3+ y ago27:33

27:33

Adrian MacKinder – Pen & Sword White Owl £19.99 $29.99 Face Front, True Believers! This is the story of the man who gave the world the Marvel Universe, who bestrode the comic-book industry like a colossus, and who said “Face Front, True Believers!” a lot.In later life Stan Lee became nearly as famous as his creations, appearing in cameo in a score …

1
Paul Theroux from the archives – Chicago Loop 15:56

3+ y ago15:56

15:56

Paul Theroux – Hamish Hamilton – £20.95 Long before he was the father of Louis Theroux, Paul Theroux was a distinguished and prolific travel writer and novelist. Born in 1941 (and we are delighted to note he is still with us), it is well-known that he joined the Peace Corps in 1963 and was declared persona non grata in Malawi by the dictator Hastin…

1
How Not to Get Distracted by Motivation 19:21

3+ y ago19:21

19:21

Motivation is good, right? It's important for our clients and patients to be motivated to attain their goals, correct? Well, yes and no. Motivation is like money, or oxygen - not having enough is a big deal, but having more than you need can distract you from more meaningful pursuits. In this conversation with Glenn Livingston, PhD, of Never Binge …

1
Christin Bummer 54:13

3+ y ago54:13

54:13

Christin Bummer used to lavish care on dogs via her Canine Kingdom business. Now she coaches humans to give similar consideration to themselves. She went plant-based in 2011, just before Forks Over Knives was released. In fact, she turned vegan overnight, which made me wonder how she relates to clients who don't keep their promises to themselves as…

1
36. Saying No to Urgency 19:08

4y ago19:08

19:08

Sometimes our clients come to us with urgent situations - often upsetting - that they want to spend the session on. It's easy to get sucked into these requests, but it's almost always a mistake. In this episode, Howard explains why urgent issues are usually a dead end, and how to counter the request in a respectful and genuinely valuable way The qu…

1
35. Pivoting our clients from relief to satisfaction 17:11

4y ago17:11

17:11

Our clients come to us for relief from bad things: symptoms, compulsions, behaviors, sensations, emotions, and so on. One of our main jobs as coaches is to help them shift to a positive orientation - seeking some satisfaction from life, rather than fleeing or preventing negatives. In this episode, Howard talks about the difference between a relief-…

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34. When goals stop being motivating: What then? Lynette Neal and Howard Jacobson 34:33

4y ago34:33

34:33

When we set external and future goals ("lose 20 pounds in 3 months"), they can function as a GPS for our daily actions and decisions. But what happens when we either reach those goals ("I guess I'm done - let's celebrate with some junk food") or decide they aren't that motivating compared to the urge to binge in the moment? Lynette Neal is a WellSt…

1
33: Kate Galli on Working with People Pleasers, Doubters, and Foodies 33:01

4y ago33:01

33:01

Kate Galli is a health coach and trainer in Sydney, Australia, as well as a health and animal rights activist. Howard spoke with her about the three biggest obstacles to going plant-based that she encounters in her clients, and how she deals with them. Obstacle #1: they don't want to stand out and are hesitant to inconvenience others. While ethical…

1
Philip Norman – Wild Thing: The short, spellbinding life of Jimi Hendrix 25:56

4y ago25:56

25:56

Philip Norman – Weidenfeld and Nicolson – £20 It is generally accepted that Jimi Hendrix is the most important guitarist in the history of rock music. In just four years he revolutionised everybody’s idea of what an electric guitar was capable of, set new standards for showmanship, and left a dazzling catalogue of recordings. Poster boy for the 27 …

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32: When Should Our Clients Do More or Less? 25:32:00

4y ago25:32:00

25:32:00

Is it better for our clients to stop doing things (eating Oreos, for example), or to start doing things (eating salad or going for walks)? When should we encourage inhibition of bad habits, or addition of good ones? Can we combine the two strategies? And how to we operationalize these ideas in coaching sessions? And - most importantly - what can Ho…

1
31. Dealing with Feelings 23:29:00

4y ago23:29:00

23:29:00

In today’s episode of the Health Coaches Podcast, Howard talks with Dr Glenn Livingston of Never Binge Again. When we get our health behaviors under control, even when strong emotions tempt us to "misbehave," we have a great opportunity to face those feelings head-on. And we can often discover liberation, ease, and pleasure in our ability to withst…

1
Larry Watson – The Lives Of Edie Pritchard 22:59

4y ago22:59

22:59

Larry Watson – Algonquin Books £21.99 $27.95 The Lives of Edie Pritchard is Larry Watson’s eleventh novel, and he is at the height of his powers. It is a big novel set in Larry’s back yard of the states where the Midwest becomes the West. We follow the heroine Edie through three points in her life from a young married woman through to her early old…

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30: Using Non-negotiables 16:49:00

4y ago16:49:00

16:49:00

You can use the concept of "non-negotiable" habits and standards with two different types of clients. The most powerful case is with "slippery" clients who haven't yet learned to keep their word to themselves. In this solo episode, Howard discusses how to invite clients to make certain things non-negotiable, as well as how to deal with their "edge …

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29: Calling BS for our clients and ourselves 27:52:00

4y ago27:52:00

27:52:00

Today we talk about lying. Outright lies, white lies, lies of omission, misrepresentations, and not keeping our word to ourselves and others. What's the connection between lying and not achieving our health goals? How is it even possible to "lie to yourself"? How can we as coaches support our clients in facing and naming reality with clarity and co…

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28: The Role of Measurement and Proof in Coaching with Robby Barbaro 30:44:00

4y ago30:44:00

30:44:00

Robby Barbaro co-runs Mastering Diabetes, a group program that guides type 1 and type 2 diabetes to overhaul their diets, get fit, and either reverse or halt disease progression. We spoke about the double-edged sword of frequent measurement of blood glucose, and how coaching can benefit from the clarity and motivation that comes from seeing objecti…

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27: Coaching Session on Overeating and Debrief 46:45:00

4y ago46:45:00

46:45:00

Co-host Kevin Davis comes clean about his extra five quarantine pounds, and his eating habits that have allowed those pounds to accumulate. Co-host Howard puts on his coaching hat for a demo of a full-length process. Then we debrief the session, highlighting some things that worked, some strategies that might have flown under your radar, and some o…

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26: Coaching Demo: Overcoming Overeating 33:52:00

4y ago33:52:00

33:52:00

Howard coaches Valeria on her habit of overeating on healthy foods. ============================================= This episode, like every HCP podcast, is sponsored by http://WellStartCoach.com. If you're a health coach wanting a more reliable process for helping clients change; if you're a lifestyle medicine practitioner needing to generate more "…

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25: When your client isn't struggling - what now? 22:46:00

4y ago22:46:00

22:46:00

Sometimes a client will show up to a coaching session with no problems. Everything's going great. They're succeeding effortlessly. They've got nothing to brainstorm or debrief. Yikes! What do I do now? We're so trained to focus on problems, we can get thrown for a loop when our clients actually succeed. In this episode, we talk about the fact that …

1
24: Empowering Clients by Challenging Their Perception of Reality with Andrew Taylor 26:23:00

4y ago26:23:00

26:23:00

Andrew Taylor has a unique coaching "origin story." An obese, diabetic food addict, he decided to quit eating the way an alcoholic gives up booze and a cocaine addict abstains from blow. Since eliminating food entirely wasn't possible, he decided to consume nothing but potatoes for an entire year. His YouTube-chronicled journey of weight loss, rega…

1
23: Making the Most of Our Clients' Guilt 29:26:00

4y ago29:26:00

29:26:00

In today’s episode, Howard and Kevin talk about what to do when clients fail to move forward due to feelings of guilt. Experiencing guilt is uncomfortable, and our clients' efforts NOT to feel it often trigger their worst impulses, as well as leading to inaction (or less than ideal action). Conversely, once we guide our clients to practice tolerati…

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22: Avoiding the Deprivation Trap with Sharon McRae 40:41:00

4y ago40:41:00

40:41:00

Sharon McRae joins Howard to talk about the chief obstacles she sees in clients who begin the journey toward a whole food, plant-based diet. We talk about the "deprivation trap," in which people obsess about all the foods they "can't have" anymore. About family pressure and easy access to "forbidden" foods in the home. About overcoming cultures and…

1
21: When Clients Don't Follow Through 30:01:00

4y ago30:01:00

30:01:00

In today’s episode, Howard and Kevin chew on how to get clients going when they aren’t taking action. We discuss FAST assessments, barriers to action, why Howard doesn’t believe in grades, and more. If your clients have ever committed to doing something and then failed to follow through, this conversation is for you! ===============================…

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20: Helping Clients Confront and Transcend Their Edge Moments with Margaret Moore aka Coach Meg 50:08:00

4y ago50:08:00

50:08:00

Margaret "Coach Meg" Moore is one of the Founding Parents of Health Coaching. With a bio a mile long and several important books to her name, Moore has driven the professionalization of health coaching in two related domains: constructing a theoretical base for the practice, and evaluating results to establish best practices. We talked about the de…

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Howard Jacobson Podcasts

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