25% Times Literary Supplement Discount Codes ( Times Literary Supplement Voucher Codes) 2025 UK

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Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals

'The work of a genuine original ... surreal ... funny ... subversive' Sunday Times What if a deer did porn? Is it legal to marry a stuffed owl exhibit? And what would Walt Whitman's tit-pics really look like? Free-wheeling and surreal yet deadly serious, and including the viral hit 'Rape Joke' ('An oblique mini-masterpiece' - Guardian), this book shows one of our most original poets at her virtuosic best. 'Lockwood has written a book at once angrier, and more fun, more attuned to our times and more bizarre, than most poetry can ever get' Stephen Burt, The New York Times Book Review, Books of the Year 'Lockwood should enter the canon forever . . . her lines left me crying on the subway' Kat Stoeffel, The Cut 'The little hairs on my back rose often while reading Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals . . . That's biological praise, the most fundamental kind, impossible to fake' Dwight Garner, The New York Times

Comfort food

A monthly round-up of listening

“Taste is something that happens in our brains”, Professor Krishnendu Ray, chair of the food studies department at New York University, tells Dan Pashman, the host of The Sporkful podcast. Taste synthesizes different inputs into one singular experience, and Professor Ray has been studying the variety of inputs that affect how we taste our food, including but not limited to: the weight of and shape of cutlery, texture, individual tongue and nasal receptors, your DNA – and the colour of your plate. Emotions influence the perception of flavour: studies have found that after losing a sporting contest food tastes sour compared with the same food eaten following a win. Some companies have learnt from our psychological associations with taste and eating: Nespresso found that sharp sounds from their machines make coffee taste bitter, while soft sounds improve the flavour; multiple chain restaurants speed up their music during the lunch rush to encourage diners to eat faster.

The Sporkful claims that “it’s not for foodies, it’s for eaters”. There are few recipes and many anecdotes as Pashman and his guests, taking anthropological and scientific approaches, “obsess about food to learn more about people”. Episodes might feature LeVar Burton discussing his food memories (and Patrick Stewart’s penchant for apple and onion sandwiches), or Harold McGee (the author of On Food and Cooking: The science and lore of the kitchen, 1984, a revolutionary cookbook that detailed the chemistry of common recipes) on his new book Nose Dive: A field guide to the world’s smells. Pashman is a zealous host and in each short episode he makes an impassioned case for the personal significance of what and how we eat, combining storytelling with memorable facts and insights – such as how plane sounds affect taste receptors, making us inclined to drink tomato juice; or why, when wonton soup has been in the US longer than the hot dog, it is still widely considered to be foreign.

“Food’s about comfort”, states Ed Gamble, one of the hosts of the award-winning Off Menu podcast. We have all become more aware of this in winter months, especially after a year of lots of home cooking (and fewer supermarket meal deals). If The Sporkful makes the case for why food is comforting, then Off Menu basks in this comfort. The comedians Ed Gamble and James Acaster host a celebrity guest in an imaginary “dream” restaurant.