Best Anthony Wilks Podcasts (2024)

1
Medieval LOLs: Solomon and Marcolf 49:33

3m ago49:33

49:33

The foul-mouthed, mean-spirited peasant Marcolf was one of the most well-known literary characters in late medieval Europe. He appears in many poetic works from the 9th century onwards, but it’s in this dialogue with Solomon, printed in Antwerp in 1492, that we find him at his irreverent and scatological best as they engage in a battle of proverbia…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Hamilton 54:42

31m ago54:42

54:42

Our series concludes with a musical: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s wildly popular and increasingly controversial Hamilton (2015). What does it get right and what does it get wrong about America’s founding fathers? How fair is it to judge a Broadway musical by the standards of academic history? And why does a product of the Obama era still resonate so powerf…

1
The Great Political Fictions: American Wife 54:18

16m ago54:18

54:18

The penultimate episode in our fictions series is about Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife (2008), which re-imagines the life of First Lady Laura Bush. One of the great novels about the intimacy of power and the accidents of politics, it sticks to the historical record while radically retelling it. What does the standard version leave out about the …

1
The Great Political Fictions: The Line of Beauty 53:46

2d ago53:46

53:46

Our political fictions series returns with Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty (2004), which is set between Thatcher’s two dominant general election victories of 1983 and 1987. A novel about the intersection between gay life and Tory life, high politics and low conduct, beauty and betrayal, it explores the price of power and the risks of liberat…

1
Human Conditions: ‘The Golden Notebook’ by Doris Lessing 12:44

3d ago12:44

12:44

Pankaj Mishra joins Adam Shatz to discuss The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing’s formally brilliant and startlingly frank 1962 novel. In her portrait of ‘free women’ – unmarried, creatively ambitious, politically engaged – Lessing wrestles with the breakdown of Stalinism, settler colonialism and traditional gender roles. Pankaj and Adam explore the l…

1
Episode 14 - Jabari Collins 47:24

6d ago47:24

47:24

Send us a Text Message. This episode's guest, Jabari Collins, Board President of Shabach Enterprise, parent company of The Fade To Black Play Festival. Jabari discusses his "everyman" duties with FTB and other organizations, his career as an theatre educator, theatre's role in education, and his role in the 2025 Fade To Black Arts Festival. Join us…

1
UK General Elections: 2024 55:21

10d ago55:21

55:21

To wrap up our series David and Robert attempt some instant history on the election result that’s just happened: in some ways predictable, in others utterly remarkable. What does such a big win for Labour on such a relatively small vote mean? What’s happening in Scotland? Where next for the Tories? And is the UK now an outlier in a world of increas…

1
On Satire: 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman' by Laurence Sterne 14:53

9d ago14:53

14:53

'Tristram Shandy' was such a hit in its day that you could buy tea trays, watch cases and cushions decorated with its most famous characters and scenes. If much of the satire covered in this series so far has featured succinct and damning portrayals of recognisable city types, Sterne’s comic masterpiece seems to offer the opposite: a sprawling and …

1
UK General Elections: 2019 53:40

9d ago53:40

53:40

For election day, David and Robert discuss the previous general election in December 2019, which saw Boris Johnson win a decisive victory under the slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’. How did he (or Dominic Cummings) do it? Was Corbyn to blame for Labour’s defeat? And how the hell did the Tories get from that resounding victory to their current disarray in j…

1
UK General Elections: 1997 56:00

10d ago56:00

56:00

In this extra episode for election week David talks to historian Robert Saunders about the last great Labour landslide of 1997, when Tony Blair won the biggest majority in his party’s history (till now?). Why did the Tories get no credit for a strong economy? How did New Labour change political campaigning? Was this the election that did for the pr…

1
UK General Elections: 1979 59:32

13d ago59:32

59:32

Today’s pivotal UK election is the one that brought Margaret Thatcher to Downing Street in 1979. David talks to historian Robert Saunders about how she did it and how it could have turned out very differently. What might have happened if the election had been called the previous year? Did Thatcherism already exist in 1979 or had it still to be inve…

1
Political Poems: 'Strange Meeting' by Wilfred Owen 36:11

15d ago36:11

36:11

Wilfred Owen wrote ‘Strange Meeting’ in the early months of 1918, shortly after being treated for shell shock at Craiglockhart hospital in Edinburgh, where he had met the stridently anti-war Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon's poetry of caustic realism quickly found its way into Owen’s work, where it merged with the high romantic sublime of his other grea…

1
UK General Elections: 1945 55:51

23d ago55:51

55:51

In today’s episode on pivotal UK elections David talks to historian Robert Saunders about the first great Labour landslide of 1945 and how it changed Britain. Why did Churchill not get his expected reward for winning the war? How genuinely radical and popular was the Labour programme? What made the mild-mannered Attlee such an effective leader? And…

1
Among the Ancients II: Lucian 14:03

20d ago14:03

14:03

The broad theme of this series, truth and lies, was a favourite subject of Lucian of Samosata, the last of our Greek-language authors. A cosmopolitan and highly cultured Syrian subject of the Roman Empire in the second century CE, Lucian wrote in the classical Greek of fifth-century Athens. His razor-sharp satire was a model for Erasmus, Voltaire a…

1
Episode 13 - Edwin Lee Gibson 31:46

21d ago31:46

31:46

Send us a Text Message. A brand new episode of The Fade has dropped! This episode's guest, the always busy, award winning actor, Edwin Lee Gibson! Edwin takes a break from Hulu's award winning show ,The Bear, to drop by The Fade to discuss his journey from Houston to Hollywood and all routes in between while dropping gems along the way. Join us for…

1
UK General Elections: 1906 53:45

27d ago53:45

53:45

The first episode in our new series with historian Robert Saunders on pivotal general elections is about the Tory disaster and Liberal triumph of 1906. David and Robert explore the reasons behind the worst result in modern Conservative party history – until now? How did the Liberals achieve their landslide? What made ‘Big Loaf, Little Loaf’ a winni…

1
The Great Political Fictions: The Handmaid’s Tale 53:24

24d ago53:24

53:24

For the final episode in the current series, David discusses Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), her unforgettable dystopian vision of a future American patriarchy. Where is Gilead? When is Gilead? How did it happen? How can it be stopped? From puritanism and slavery to Iran and Romania, from demography and racism to Playboy and Scrabble,…

1
Medieval LOLs: The Second Shepherds' Pageant 35:19

26d ago35:19

35:19

In their quest for the medieval sense of humour Mary and Irina come to The Second Shepherds’ Pageant, a 15th-century reimagining of the nativity as domestic comedy that’s less about the birth of Jesus and more about sheep rustling, taxes, the weather and the frustrations of daily life. The pageant was part of a mystery cycle, a collection of plays …

1
The Great Political Fictions: Midnight’s Children 54:05

1M ago54:05

54:05

In the penultimate episode of the current part of our Fictions series, David explores Salman Rushdie’s 1981 masterpiece Midnight’s Children, the great novel about the life and death of Indian democracy. How can one boy stand in for the whole of India? How can a nation as diverse as India ever have a single politics? And how is a jar of pickle the a…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Atlas Shrugged 58:45

1M ago58:45

58:45

In this episode David discusses Ayn Rand’s insanely long and insanely influential Atlas Shrugged (1957), the bible of free-market entrepreneurialism and source book to this day for vicious anti-socialist polemics. Why is this novel so adored by Silicon Valley tech titans? How can something so bad have so much lasting power? And what did Rand have a…

1
Human Conditions: ‘The Intimate Enemy’ by Ashis Nandy 13:21

1M ago13:21

13:21

Ashis Nandy’s The Intimate Enemy is a study of the psychological toll of colonialism on both the coloniser and colonised, showing how Western conceptions of masculinity and adulthood served as tools of conquest. Using figures as disparate as Gandhi, Oscar Wilde and Aurobindo Ghosh, Nandy suggests ways in which alternative models of age and gender c…

1
Episode 12 - Dr. Jolie Rocke and Dr. Kiana Day Williams 32:24

1M ago32:24

32:24

Send us a Text Message. A brand new episode of The Fade is here! This episode's guests Dr. Jolie Rocke and Dr. Kiana Day Williams. These sistas with voices discuss their musical journeys, the importance of music and voice, and their involvement in the 2025 Fade To Black Arts Festival. Join us for this captivating and funny conversation with two int…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Mother Courage and Her Children 53:55

1M ago53:55

53:55

Bertolt Brecht’s classic anti-war play was written in 1939 at the start of one terrible European war but set in the time of another: the Thirty Years’ War of the 17th century. How did Brecht think a three-hundred-year gap could help us to understand our own capacity for violence and cruelty? Why did he make Mother Courage such an unlovable characte…

1
The Great Political Fictions: The Time Machine 55:55

1M ago55:55

55:55

H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) isn’t just a book about time travel. It’s also full of late-19th century fear and paranoia about what evolution and progress might do to human beings in the long run. Why will the class struggle turn into savagery and human sacrifice? Who will end up on top? And how will the world ultimately end? Next time: Bert…

1
On Satire: 'The Dunciad' by Alexander Pope 12:38

1M ago12:38

12:38

Nobody hated better than Alexander Pope. Despite his reputation as the quintessentially refined versifier of the early 18th century, he was also a class A, ultra-pure, surreal, visionary mega-hater, and The Dunciad is his monument to the hate he felt for almost all the other writers of his time. Written over fifteen years of burning fury, Pope’s mo…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 51:28

2M ago51:28

51:28

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) is a story that it’s easy to know without really knowing it at all. This week’s episode explores all the ways that Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale confounds our expectations about good and evil. What does Dr Jekyll really want? What are all the men in the book trying to hide? And what has any of this got to do with Q-Anon…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Phineas Redux 53:53

2M ago53:53

53:53

This week's great political novel is Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Redux (1874), his lightly and luridly fictionalised account of parliamentary polarisation in the age of Gladstone and Disraeli. A tale of political and personal melodrama, it explores what happens when political parties steal each other’s clothes and politicians find themselves hung ou…

1
Political Poems: 'The Masque of Anarchy' by Percy Bysshe Shelley 35:31

2M ago35:31

35:31

Shelley’s angry, violent poem was written in direct response to the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in 1819, in which a demonstration in favour of parliamentary reform was attacked by local yeomanry, leaving 18 people dead and hundreds injured. The ‘masque’ it describes begins with a procession of abstract figures – Murder, Fraud, Hypocrisy – embod…

1
Episode 11 - Thomas Meloncon 27:30

2M ago27:30

27:30

Send us a Text Message. A brand new episode of The Fade has dropped! This episode's guest, legendary playwright, Thomas Meloncon! Mr. Meloncon discusses his start in theater, his journey as a playwright, the theater business and his involvement with the Fade To Black Festival. Join us for this intriguing conversation with this world-renowned playwr…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Middlemarch (part 2) 50:32

2M ago50:32

50:32

This second episode about George Eliot’s masterpiece explores questions of politics and religion, reputation and deception, truth and public opinion. What is the relationship between personal power and faith in a higher power? Is it ever possible to escape from the gossip of your friends once it turns against you? Who can rescue the ambitious when …

1
Among the Ancients II: Plato 11:31

2M ago11:31

11:31

Plato’s Symposium, his philosophical dialogue on love, or eros, was probably written around 380 BCE, but it’s set in 416, during the uneasy truce between Athens and Sparta in the middle of the Peloponnesian War. A symposium was a drinking party, though Socrates and his friends, having had a heavy evening the night before, decide to go easy on the w…

1
The Great Political Fictions: Middlemarch (part 1) 52:03

2M ago52:03

52:03

Our series on the great political novels and plays resumes with George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872), which has so much going on that it needs two episodes to unpack it. In this episode David discusses the significance of the book being set in 1829-32 and the reasons why Nietzsche was so wrong to characterise it as a moralistic tale. Plus he explains …

1
The History of Bad Ideas: Mesmerism 53:22

2M ago53:22

53:22

For our last episode in this series David is joined by Helen Lewis to discuss Mesmerism – aka animal magnetism – an eighteenth-century method of hypnosis for which great medical benefits were claimed. Was its originator, Franz Mesmer, a charlatan or a healer? Was his movement science or religion or something in between? And what can it tell us abou…

1
Medieval LOLs: Dame Syrith 34:50

2M ago34:50

34:50

As Mary and Irina discussed in the previous episode of Medieval LOLs, fabliaux had an enormous influence on Chaucer, but outside of his work, only one survives in Middle English. Dame Syrith, a story of lust, deception and a mustard-eating dog, is medieval humour at its silliest and most troubling. Mary and Irina explore the surprising representati…

1
The History of Bad Ideas: The Death of the Author 48:38

2M ago48:38

48:38

For our penultimate episode in this series David talks to Kathleen Stock about Roland Barthes’s idea of the Death of the Author (1967). Once very fashionable, the notion that readers not writers are the arbiters of what a text means has had a long and sometimes painful afterlife. As well as exploring its curious appeal and its persistent blindspots…

1
Episode 10 - Lea Jones 33:29

2M ago33:29

33:29

Send us a Text Message. This episode of The Fade we are joined by director and producer, Lea Jones. Lea is a frequent contributor to The Fade to Black Festival as a director. Lea discusses her career, faith in entertainment and her involvement in the Fade To Black Arts Festival in June 2025. Join us for this enlightening conversation with this inno…

1
The History of Bad Ideas: Anti-Suffragettes 54:11

2M ago54:11

54:11

In this episode of our series on the lingering hold of bad ideas David talks to the writer and broadcaster Helen Lewis about the arguments made at the turn of the last century against giving the vote to women. Why were so many women against female enfranchisement? What did attitudes to women in politics reveal about the failings of men? And where c…

1
Human Conditions: ‘A House for Mr Biswas’ by V.S. Naipaul 10:58

2M ago10:58

10:58

In A House for Mr Biswas, his 1961 comic masterpiece, V.S. Naipaul pays tribute to his father and the vanishing world of his Trinidadian youth. Pankaj Mishra joins Adam Shatz in their first of four episodes to discuss the novel, a pathbreaking work of postcolonial literature and a particularly powerful influence on Pankaj himself. They explore Naip…

1
The History of Bad Ideas: Taxonomy 46:50

2M ago46:50

46:50

For the latest episode in our series about the hold of bad ideas, we welcome back the geneticist Adam Rutherford to talk about Linnaean taxonomy, a seemingly innocuous scheme of classification that has had deeply pernicious consequences. From scientific racism to social stratification to search engine optimisation, taxonomy gets everywhere. Can we …

1
The History of Bad Ideas: Antisemitism 49:49

3M ago49:49

49:49

Today’s bad idea is one with a very long history: David talks to the historian Christopher Clark about antisemitism and the reasons for its endless recurrence. What has made discrimination against the Jews different from other kinds of violent prejudice over the course of European history? How did the ‘Jewish Question’ become the battleground of Ge…

1
On Satire: John Gay's 'The Beggar's Opera' 12:59

2M ago12:59

12:59

In The Beggar’s Opera we enter a society turned upside down, where private vices are seen as public virtues, and the best way to survive is to assume the worst of everyone. The only force that can subvert this state of affairs is romantic love – an affection, we discover, that satire finds hard to cope with. John Gay’s 1727 smash hit ‘opera’, which…

1
The History of Bad Ideas: Facebook Friends 50:04

3M ago50:04

50:04

In today’s episode about seemingly good ideas gone badly wrong David talks to the philosopher and journalist Kathleen Stock about Facebook Friends, something that was meant to make us happier and better connected but really didn’t. How did online friendship become so performative? Does its failings say more about Facebook and its business models or…

1
Episode 9 - Errol Anthony Wilks 40:00

3M ago40:00

40:00

Send us a Text Message. A brand new episode of The Fade has dropped! This episode's guest, Errol Anthony Wilks. This actor, writer, director and producer joins us to discuss his journey in the arts, his knowledge of the business and his involvement in the Fade To Black Arts Festival in June 2025. Join us for this riveting dicsussion with this actin…

1
Political Poems: 'The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning 36:15

3M ago36:15

36:15

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s deeply disturbing 1847 poem about a woman escaping slavery and killing her child was written to shock its intended white female readership to the abolitionist cause. Browning was the direct descendant of slave owners in Jamaica and a fervent anti-slavery campaigner, and her dramatic monologue presents a searing attack o…

1
The History of Bad Ideas: The Gold Standard 44:42

3M ago44:42

44:42

In the second episode in our series on bad ideas David talks to the political economist Helen Thompson about the gold standard, which was meant to anchor the world economy until it all fell apart a hundred years ago. Why does gold so often appear like a stable basis for money in an unstable world – and why not silver? What made the gold standard a …

1
The History of Bad Ideas: Eugenics 55:24

3M ago55:24

55:24

For the first episode in our new series about the hold of bad ideas David talks to the geneticist and science broadcaster Adam Rutherford about eugenics: from its origins in the 19th century through its heyday in the 20th century to its continuing legacy today. Is eugenics bad science, bad morality, bad politics – or all three? What are the fears t…

1
Among the Ancients II: Pindar and Bacchylides 11:19

3M ago11:19

11:19

In the fifth episode of Among the Ancients II we turn to Greek lyric, focusing on Pindar’s victory odes, considered a benchmark for the sublime since antiquity, and the vivid, narrative-driven dithyrambs of Bacchylides. Through close reading, Emily and Tom tease out allusions, lexical flourishes and formal experimentation, and explain the highly co…

1
The History of Freedom w/Lea Ypi: Liberation Movements 56:04

3M ago56:04

56:04

In our final episode David and Lea discuss liberation movements, from post-colonial liberation to women’s liberation, gay liberation and animal liberation. What, if anything, do these movements have in common? Is liberation about equality or is it about difference? And who needs liberating next – children? You can hear our bonus episodes for this s…

1
Medieval LOLs: Fabliaux 34:45

3M ago34:45

34:45

Fabliaux were short, witty tales originating in northern France between the 12th and 14th centuries, often featuring crafty characters in rustic settings and overwhelmingly concerned with money and sex. In this episode Irina and Mary look at two of these comic verses, both containing surprisingly explicit sexual language, and consider the ways in w…

1
The History of Freedom w/Lea Ypi: Existentialism and Psychoanalysis 51:23

3M ago51:23

51:23

In the penultimate episode in this series David and Lea discuss two twentieth-century philosophies of freedom and the human psyche. What can existentialism teach us about the nature of free choice under conditions of despair? Is there any escape from bad faith? And what can individuals – or even entire societies – learn about their freedom from bei…

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Anthony Wilks Podcasts

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