Podcasts about les miserables

On today's show, Paul McCartney wins in court, the Stones get censored, & a jazz great passes away.For more music history, subscribe to my Spotify Channel or subscribe to the audio version of my music history podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts fromALL MUSIC HISTORY TODAY PODCAST NETWORK LINKS - https://allmylinks.com/musichistorytodayChapters: 00:00 Intro 00:32 What happened on this date in music history05:25 Music award ceremonies that were held on this date in music history06:13 Albums released on this date in music history 07:27 Singles released on this date in music history 08:06 Future Podcasts Advertisement08:48 Birthdays of music artists on this date in music history 10:20 Passings of music artists on this date in music history 12:23 What's on tomorrow's episode

In honor of KUSD's production of "Les Miserables," we replay a conversation from 2014 in which stage director Doug Instenes and several cast members talk about the Racine Theater Guild's production of "Les Miserables." (The KUSD production of Les Miz runs for two weekends through March 15th.).

Ahead of her new book What's So Great About the Great Books? coming out in April, Naomi Kanakia and I talked about literature from Herodotus to Tony Tulathimutte. We touched on Chaucer, Anglo-Saxon poetry, Scott Alexander, Shakespeare, William James, Helen deWitt, Marx and Engels, Walter Scott, Les Miserables, Jhootha Sach, the Mahabharata, and more. Naomi also talked about some of her working habits and the history and future of the Great Books movement. Naomi, of course, writes Woman of Letters here on Substack.TranscriptHenry Oliver: Today, I am talking with Naomi Kanakia. Naomi is a novelist, a literary critic, and most importantly she writes a Substack called Woman of Letters, and she has a new book coming out, What's So Great About the Great Books? Naomi, welcome.Naomi Kanakia: Thanks for having me on.Oliver: How is the internet changing the way that literature gets discussed and criticized, and what is that going to mean for the future of the Great Books?Kanakia: How is the internet changing it? I can really speak to only how it has changed it for me. I started off as a writer of young adult novels and science fiction, and there's these very active online fan cultures for those two things.I was reading the Great Books all through that time. I started in 2010 through today. In the 2010s, it really felt like there was not a lot of online discussion of classic literature. Maybe that was just me and I wasn't finding it, but it didn't necessarily feel like there was that community.I think because there are so many strong, public-facing institutions that discuss classic literature, like the NYRB, London Review of Books, a lot of journals, and universities, too. But now on Substack, there are a number of blogs—yours, mine, a number of other ones—that are devoted to classic literature. All of those have these commenters, a community of commenters. I also follow bloggers who have relatively small followings who are reading Tolstoy, reading Middlemarch, reading even much more esoteric things.I know that for me, becoming involved in this online culture has given me much more of an awareness that there are many people who are reading the classics on their own. I think that was always true, but now it does feel like it's more of a community.Oliver: We are recording this the day after the Washington Post book section has been removed. You don't see some sort of relationship between the way these literary institutions are changing online and the way the Great Books are going to be conceived of in the future? Because the Great Books came out of a an old-fashioned, saving-the-institutions kind of radical approach to university education. We're now moving into a world where all those old things seem to be going.Kanakia: Yes. I agree. The Great Books began in the University of Chicago and Columbia University. If you look into the history of the movement, it really was about university education and the idea that you would have a common core and all undergraduates would read these books. The idea that the Great Books were for the ordinary person was really an afterthought, at least for Mortimer Adler and those original Great Books guys. Now, the Great Books in the university have had a resurgence that we can discuss, but I do think there's a lot more life and vitality in the kind of public-facing humanities than there has been.I talked to Irina Dumitrescu, who writes for TLS (The Times Literary Supplement), LRB (The London Review of Books), a lot of these places, and she also said the same thing—that a lot of these journals are going into podcasts, and they're noticing a huge interest in the humanities and in the classics even at the same time as big institutions are really scaling back on those things. Humanities majors are dropping, classics majors are getting cut, book coverage at major periodicals is going down. It does seem like there are signals that are conflicting. I don't really know totally what to make of it. I do think there is some relation between those two things.Ted Gioia on Substack is always talking about how culture is stagnant, basically, and one of the symptoms of that is that “back list” really outsells “front list” for books. Even in 2010, 50 percent of the books that were sold were front-list titles, books that had been released in the last 18 months. Now it's something like only 35 percent of books or something like that are front-list titles. These could be completely wrong, but there's been a trend.I think the decrease in interest in front-list books is really what drives the loss of these book-review pages because they mostly review front-list books. So, I think that does imply that there's a lot of interest in old books. That's what our stagnant culture means.Oliver: Why do you think your own blog is popular with the rationalists?Kanakia: I don't know for certain. There was a story I wrote that was a joke. There are all these pop nonfiction books that aim to prove something that seems counterintuitive, so I wrote a parody of one of those where I aim to prove that reading is bad for you. This book has many scientific studies that show the more you read, the worse it is because it makes you very rigid.Scott Alexander, who is the archrationalist, really liked that, and he added me to his blog roll. Because of that, I got a thousand rationalist subscribers. I have found that rationalists at least somewhat interested in the classics. I think they are definitely interested in enduring sources of value. I've observed a fair amount of interest.Oliver: How much of a lay reader are you really? Because you read scholarship and critics and you can just quote John Gilroy in the middle of a piece or something.Kanakia: Yeah. That is a good question. I have definitely gotten more interested in secondary literature. In my book, I really talk about being a lay reader and personally having a nonacademic approach to literature. I do think that, over 15 years of being a lay reader, I have developed a lot of knowledge.I've also learned the kind of secondary literature that is really important. I think having historical context adds a lot and is invaluable. Right now I'm rereading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. When I first read it in 2010, I hardly knew anything about French history. I was even talking online with someone about how most people who read Les Miserables think it's set in the French Revolution. That's basically because Americans don't really know anything about French history.Everything makes just a lot more sense the more you know about the time because it was written for people in it. For people in 1860s France, who knew everything about their own recent history, that really adds a lot to it. I still don't tend to go that much into interpretive literature, literature that tries to do readings of the stories or tell me the meaning of the stories. I feel like I haven't really gotten that much out of that.Oliver: How long have you been learning Anglo-Saxon?Kanakia: I went through a big Anglo-Saxon phase. That was in 2010. It started because I started reading The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. There is a great app online called General Prologue created by one of your countrymen, Terry Richardson [NB it is Terry Jones], who loved Middle English. In this app, he recites the Middle English of the General Prologue. I started listening to this app, and I thought, I just really love the rhythms and the sounds of Middle English. And it's quite easy to learn. So then, I got really into that.And then I thought, but what about Anglo-Saxon? I'm very bad at languages. I studied Latin for seven years in middle school and high school. I never really got very far, but I thought, Anglo-Saxon has to be the easiest foreign language you can learn, right? So, I got into it.I cannot sight read Anglo-Saxon, but I really got into Anglo-Saxon poetry. I really liked the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Most people probably would not like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle because it's very repetitive, but that makes it great if you're a language learner because every entry is in this very repetitive structure. I just felt such a connection. I get in trouble when I say this kind of stuff, because I'm never quiet sure if it's 100 percent true. But it's certainly one of the oldest vernacular literatures in Europe. It's just so much older than most of the other medieval literature I've read. And it just was such a window into a different part of history I never knew about.Oliver: And you particularly like “The Dream of the Rood”?Kanakia: Yeah, “The Dream of the Rood” is my favorite Anglo-Saxon poem. “The Dream of the Rood” is a poem that is told from the point of view of Christ's cross. A man is having a dream. In this dream he encounters Christ's cross, and Christ's cross starts reciting to him basically the story of the crucifixion. At the end, the cross is buried. I don't know, it was just so haunting and powerful. Yeah, it was one of my favorites.Oliver: Why do you think Byron is a better poet than Alexander Pope?Kanakia: This is an argument I cannot get into. I think this is coming up because T. S. Eliot felt that Alexander Pope was a great poet because he really exemplified the spirit of the age. I don't know. I've tried to read Pope. It just doesn't do it for me. Whereas with Byron, I read Don Juan and found it entertaining. I enjoyed it. Then, his lyric poetry is just more entertaining to read. With Alexander Pope, I'm learning a lot about what kind of poetry people wrote in the 18th century, but the joy is not there.Oliver: Okay. Can we do a quick fire round where I say the name of a book and you just say what you think of it, whatever you think of it?Kanakia: Sure.Oliver: Okay. The Odyssey.Kanakia: The Odyssey. Oh, I love The Odyssey. It has a very strange structure, where it starts with Telemachus and then there's this flashback in the middle of it. It is much more readable than The Iliad; I'll say that.Oliver: Herodotus.Kanakia: Herodotus is wild. Going into Herodotus, I really thought it was about the Persian war, which it is, but it's mostly a general overview of everything that Herodotus knew, about anything. It's been a long time since I read it. I really appreciate the voice of Herodotus, how human it is, and the accumulation of facts. It was great.Oliver: I love the first half actually. The bit about the Persian war I'm less interested in, but the first half I think is fantastic. I particularly love the Egypt book.Kanakia: Oh yeah, the Egypt book is really good.Oliver: All those like giant beetles that are made of fire or whatever; I can't remember the details, but it's completely…Kanakia: The Greeks are also so fascinated by Egypt. They go down there like what is going on out there? Then, most of what we know about Egypt comes from this Hellenistic period, when the Greeks went to Egypt. Our Egyptian kings list comes from the Hellenistic period where some scholar decided to sort out what everybody was up to and put it all into order. That's why we have such an orderly story about Egypt. That's the story that the Greeks tried to tell themselves.Oliver: Marcus Aurelius.Kanakia: Marcus Aurelius. When I first read The Meditations, which I loved, obviously, I thought, “being the Roman emperor cannot be this hard.” It really was a black pill moment because I thought, “if the emperor of Rome is so unhappy, maybe human power really doesn't do it.”Knowing more about Marcus Aurelius, he did have quite a difficult life. He was at war for most of his—just stuck in the region in Germany for ages. He had various troubles, but yeah, it really was very stoic. It was, oh, I just have to do my duty. Very “heavy is the head that wears the crown” kind of stuff. I thought, “okay, I guess being Roman emperor is not so great.”Oliver: Omar Khayyam.Kanakia: Omar Khayyam. Okay, I've only read The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward Fitzgerald, which I loved, but I cannot formulate a strong opinion right now.Oliver: As You Like It.Kanakia: No opinions.Oliver: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.Kanakia: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. I do have an opinion about this, which is that they should make a redacted version of Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. I normally am not a big believer in abridgements because I feel like whatever is there is there. But, Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, first of all, has a long portion before Boswell even meets Johnson. That portion drags; it's not that great. Then it has all these like letters that Johnson wrote, which also are not that great. What's really good is when Boswell just reports everything Johnson ever said, which is about half the book. You get a sense of Johnson's conversation and his personality, and that is very gripping. I've definitely thought that with a different presentation, this could still be popular. People would still read this.Oliver: The Communist Manifesto.Kanakia: The Communist Manifesto. It's very stirring. I love The Communist Manifesto. It has very haunting, powerful lines. I won't try to quote from it because I'll misquote them.Oliver: But it is remarkably well written.Kanakia: Oh yeah, it is a great work of literature.Oliver: Yeah.Kanakia: I read Capital [Das Kapital], which is not a great work of literature, and I would venture to say that it is not necessarily worth reading. It really feels like Marx's reputation is built on other political writings like The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and works like that, which really seem to have a lot more meat on the bone than Capital.Oliver: Pragmatism by William James.Kanakia: Pragmatism. I mean, I've mentioned that in my book. I love William James in general. I think William James was writing in this 19th-century environment where it seemed like some form of skepticism was the only rational solution. You couldn't have any source of value, and he really tried to cut through that with Pragmatism and was like, let's just believe the things that are good to believe. It is definitely at least useful to think, although someone else can always argue with you about what is useful to believe. But, as a personal guide for belief, I think it is still useful.Oliver: Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw.Kanakia: No strong opinions. It was a long time ago that I read Major Barbara.Oliver: Tell me what you like about James Fenimore Cooper.Kanakia: James Fenimore Cooper. Oh, this is great. I have basically a list of Great Books that I want to read, but four or five years ago, I thought, “what's in all the other books that I know the names of but that are not reputed, are not the kind of books you still read?”That was when I read Walter Scott, who I really love. And I just started reading all kinds of books that were kind of well known but have kind of fallen into literary disfavor. In almost every case, I felt like I got a lot out of these books. So, nowadays when I approach any realm of literature, I always look for those books.In 19th-century American literature, the biggest no-longer-read book is The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, which was America's first bestseller. He was the first American novelist that had a high reputation in Europe. The Last of the Mohicans is kind of a historical romance, à la Walter Scott, but much more tightly written and much more tightly plotted.Cooper has written five novels, the Leatherstocking Tales, that are all centered around this very virtuous, rough-hewn frontiersman, Natty Bumppo. He has his best friend, Chingachgook, who is the last of the Mohicans. He's the last of his tribe. And the two of these guys are basically very sad and stoic. Chingachgook is distanced from his tribe. Chingachgook has a tribe of Native Americans that he hates—I want to say it's the Huron. He's always like, “they're the bad ones,” and he's always fighting them. Then, Natty Bumppo doesn't really love settled civilization. He's not precisely at war with it, but he does not like the settlers. They're kind of stuck in the middle. They have various adventures, and I just thought it was so haunting and powerful.I've been reading a lot of other 19th-century American literature, and virtually none of it treats Native Americans with this kind of respect. There's a lot of diversity in the Native American characters; there's really an attempt to show how their society works and the various ways that leadership and chiefship works among them. There's this very haunting moment in The Last of the Mohicans, where this aged chief, Tamenund, comes out and starts speaking. This is a chief who, in American mythology, was famous for being a friend to the white people. But, James Fenimore Cooper writing in the 1820s has Tamenund come out at 80 years old and say, “we have to fight; we have to fight the white people. That's our only option.” It was just such a powerful moment and such a powerful book.I was really, really enthused. I read all of these Leatherstocking Tales. It was also a very strange experience to read these books that are generally supposed to be very turgid and boring, and then I read them and was like, “I understand. I'm so transported.” I understand exactly why readers in the 1820s loved this.Oliver: Which Walter Scott books do you like?Kanakia: I love all the Walter Scott books I've read, but the one I liked best was Kenilworth. Have you ever read Kenilworth?Oliver: I don't know that one.Kanakia: Yeah, it's about Elizabeth I, who had a romantic relationship with one of her courtiers.Oliver: The Earl of Essex?Kanakia: Yeah. She really thought they were going to get married, but then it turned out he was secretly married. Basically, I guess the implication is that he killed his wife in order to marry Queen Elizabeth I. It's a novel all about him and that situation, and it just felt very tightly plotted. I really enjoyed it.Oliver: What did you think of Rejection?Kanakia: Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte? Initially when I read this book, I enjoyed it, but I was like, “life cannot possibly be this sad.” It's five or six stories about these people who just have nothing going on. Their lives are so miserable, they can't find anyone to sleep with, and they're just doomed to be alone forever. I was like, “life can't be this bad.” But now thinking back over it, it is one of the most memorable books I've read in the last year. It really sticks with you. I feel like my opinion of this book has gone up a lot in retrospect.Oliver: How antisemitic is the House of Mirth?Kanakia: That is a hotly debated question, which I mentioned in my book. I think there has been a good case made that Edith Wharton, the author of House of Mirth, who was from an old New York family, was herself fairly antisemitic and did not personally like Jewish people. What she portrays in this book is that this old New York society also was highly suspicious of Jewish people and was organized to keep Jewish people out.In this book there is a rich Jewish man, Simon Rosedale, and there's a poor woman, Lily Bart. Lily Bart's main thing is whether she's going to marry the poor guy, Lawrence Selden, or the rich guy, Percy Gryce. She can't choose. She doesn't want to be poor, but she also is always bored by the rich guys. Meanwhile, through the whole book, there's Simon Rosedale, who's always like, “you should marry me.” He's the rich Jewish guy. He's like, “you should marry me. I will give you lots of money. You can do whatever you want.”Everybody else kind of just sees her as a woman and as a wife; he really sees her as an ally in his social climbing. That's his main motivation. The book is relatively clear that he has a kind of respect for her that nobody else does. Then, over the course of the book, she also gains a lot more respect for him. Basically, late in the book, she decides to marry him, but she has fallen a lot in the world. He's like, “that particular deal is not available anymore,” but he does offer her another deal that—although she finds it not to her taste—is still pretty good.He basically is like, “I'll give you some money, you'll figure out how to rehabilitate your reputation, and later down the line, we can figure something out.” So, I think with a great author like Edith Wharton, there's power in these portrayals. I felt it hard to come away from it feeling like the book is like a really antisemitic book.Oliver: Now, you note that the Great Books movement started out as something quite socially aspirational. Do you think it's still like that?Kanakia: I do think so. Yeah. For me, that's 100 percent what it was because I majored in econ. I always felt kind of inadequate as a writer against people who had majored in English. Then I started off as a science fiction writer, young adult writer, and I was like, “I'm going to read all these Great Books and then I'll have read the books that everybody else has read.” In my mind, that's also what it was—that there was some upper crust or literary society that was reading all these Great Books.That's really what did it. I do think there's still an element of aspiration to it because it's a club that you can join, that anyone can join. It's very straightforward to be a Great Books reader, and so I think there's still something there. I think because the Great Books movement has such a democratic quality to it, it actually doesn't get you to the top socially, which has always been the true, always been the case. But, that's okay. As long as you end up higher than where you started, that's fine.Oliver: What makes a book great?Kanakia: I talk about it this in the book, and I go through many different authors' conceptions of what makes a book great or what constitutes a classic. I don't know that anyone has come up with a really satisfying answer. The Horatian formulation from Horace—that a book is great or an author is great if it has lasted for a hundred years—is the one that seems to be the most accurate. Like, any book that's still being read a hundred years after it was written has a greatness.I do think that T. S. Eliott's formulation—that a civilization at its height produces certain literature and that literature partakes of the greatness of the civilization and summarizes the greatness of the civilization—does seem to have some kind of truth to it.But it's hard, right? Because the greatest French novel is In Search of Lost Time, but I don't know that anyone would say that the France in the 1920s was at its height. It's not a prescriptive thing, but it does seem like the way we read many of these Great Books, like Moby Dick, it feels like you're like communing with the entire society that produced it. So, maybe there's something there.Oliver: Now, you've used a list from Clifton Fadiman.Kanakia: Yes.Oliver: Rather than from Mortimer Adler or Harold Bloom or several others. Why this list?Kanakia: Well, the best reason is that it's actually the list I've just been using for the last 15 years. I went to a science fiction convention in 2009, Readercon, and at this science fiction convention was Michael Dirda, who was a Washington Post book critic. He had recently come out with his book, Classics for Pleasure, which I also bought and liked. But he said that the list he had always used was this Clifton Fadiman book. And so when I decided to start reading the Great Books, I went and got that book. I have perused many other lists over time, but that was always the list that seemed best to me.It seemed to have like the best mix. There's considerable variation amongst these lists, but there's also a lot of overlap. So any of these lists is going to have Dickens on it, and Tolstoy, and stuff like that. So really, you're just thinking about, “aside from Dickens and Tolstoy and George Eliot and Walt Whitman and all these people, who are the other 50 authors that you're going be reading?”The Mortimer Adler list is very heavy on philosophy. It has Plotinus on it. It has all these scientific works. I don't know, it didn't speak to me as much. Whereas, this Clifton Fadiman and John Major list has all these Eastern works on it. It has The Tale of Genji, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Story of the Stone, and that just spoke to me a little bit more.Oliver: What modern books will be on a future Great Books list, whether it's from someone alive or someone since the war.Kanakia: Have you ever heard of Robert Caro?Oliver: Sure.Kanakia: Yeah. I think his Lyndon Johnson books are great books. They have changed the field of biography. They're so complete, they seem to summarize an entire era, epoch. They're highly rated, but I feel like they're underrated as literature.What else? I was actually a little bit surprised in this Clifton Fadiman-John Major book, which came out in 1999, that there are not more African Americans in their list. Like, Invisible Man definitely seemed like a huge missed work. You know, it's hard. You would definitely want a book that has undergone enough critical evaluation that people are pretty certain that it is great. A lot of things that are more recent have not undergone that evaluation yet, but Invisible Man has, as have some works by Martin Luther King.Oliver: What about The Autobiography of Malcolm X?Kanakia: I would have to reread. I feel like it hasn't been evaluated much as a literary document.Oliver: Helen DeWitt?Kanakia: It's hard to say. It's so idiosyncratic, The Last Samurai, but it is certainly one of the best novels of the last 25 years.Oliver: Yeah.Kanakia: It is hard to say, because there's nothing else quite like it. But I would love if The Last Samurai was on a list like this; that would be amazing.Oliver: If someone wants to try the Great Books, but they think that those sort of classic 19th-century novels are too difficult—because they're long and the sentences are weird or whatever—what else should they do? Where else should they start?Kanakia: Well, it depends on what they're into, or it depends on their personality type. I think like there are people who like very, very difficult literature. There are people who are very into James Joyce and Proust. I think for some people the cost-benefit is better. If they're going to be pouring over some book for a long time, they would prefer if it was overtly difficult.If they're not like that, then I would say, there are many Great Books that are more accessible. Hemingway is a good one and Grapes of Wrath is wonderful. The 19th-century American books tend to be written in a very different register than the English books. If you read Moby Dick, it feels like it's written in a completely different language than Charles Dickens, even though they're writing essentially at the same time.Oliver: Is there too much Freud on the list that you've used?Kanakia: Maybe. I know that Interpretation of Dreams is on that list, which I've tried to read and have decided life is too short. I didn't really buy it, but I have read a fair amount of Freud. My impression of Freud was always that I would read Freud and somehow it would just seem completely fanciful or far out, like wouldn't ring true. But then when I started reading Freud, it was more the opposite. I was like, oh yeah, this seems very, very true.Like this battle between like the id and the ego and the super ego, and this feeling that like the psyche is at war with itself. Human beings really desire to be singular and exceptional, but then you're constantly under assault by the reality principle, which is that you're insignificant. That all seemed completely true. But then he tries to cure this somehow, which does not seem a curable problem. And he also situates the problem in some early sexual development, which also did not necessarily ring true. But no, I wouldn't say there's too much. Freud is a lot of fun. People should read Freud.Oliver: Which of the Great Books have you really not liked?Kanakia: I do get asked this quite a bit. I would say the Great Book that I really felt like—at least in translation—was not that rewarding in an unabridged version was Don Quixote. Because at least half the length of Don Quixote is these like interpolated novellas that are really long and tedious. I felt Don Quixote was a big slog. But maybe someday I'll go back and reread it and love it. Who knows?Oliver: Now you wrote that the question of biography is totally divorced from the question of what art is and how it operates. What do you think of George Orwell's supposition that if Shakespeare came back tomorrow, and we found out he used to rape children that we should—we would not say, you know, it's fine to carry on to doing that because he might write another King Lear.Kanakia: Well, if we discovered that Shakespeare was raping children, he should go to prison for that. No. It's totally divorced in both senses. You don't get any credit in the court of law because you are the writer of King Lear. If I murdered someone and then I was hauled in front of a judge and they were like, oh, Naomi's a genius, I wouldn't get off for murder. Nor should I get off for murder.So in terms of like whether we would punish Shakespeare for his crime of raping children, I don't think King Lear should count at all, but it's never used that way. It's never should someone go to prison or not for their crimes, because they're a genius. It's always used the other way, which is should we read King Lear knowing that the author raped children, but I also feel like that is immaterial. If you read King Lear, you're not enabling someone to rape children.Oliver: There's an almost endless amount of discussion these days about the Great Books and education and the value of the humanities, and what's the future of it all. What is your short opinion on that?Kanakia: My short opinion is that the Great Books at least are going to be fine. The Great Books will continue to be read, and they would even survive the university. All these books predate the university and they will survive the university. I feel like the university has stewarded literature in its own way for a while now and has made certain choices in that stewardship. I think if that stewardship was given up to more voluntary associations that had less financial support, then I think the choices would probably be very different. But I still think the greatest works would survive.Oliver: Now this is a quote from the book: “I am glad that reactionaries love the Great Books. They've invited a Trojan horse into their own camp.” Tell us what you mean by that.Kanakia: Let's say you believed in Christian theocracy, that you thought America should be organized on explicitly Christian principles. And because you believe in Christian theocracy, you organize a school that teaches the Great Books. Many of these schools that are Christian schools that have Great Books programs will also teach Nietzsche. They definitely put some kind of spin on Nietzsche. But they will teach anti-Christ, and that is a counterpoint to Christian morality and Christian theology. There are many things that you'll read in the Great Books that are corrosive to various kinds of certainties.If someone who I think is bad starts educating themselves in the Great Books, I don't think that the Great Books are going to make them worse from my perspective. So it's good.Oliver: How did reading the Mahabharata change you?Kanakia: Oh yeah, so the Mahabharata is a Hindu epic from, let's say, the first century AD. I'm Indian and most Indians are familiar with the basic outline of the Mahabharata story because it's told in various retellings, and there's a TV serial that my parents would rent from the Indian store growing up and we would watch it tape by tape. So I'm very familiar with it. Like there's never been a time I have not known this story.But I was also familiar with the idea that there is a written version in Sanskrit that's extremely long. It is 10 times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. This Mahabharata story is not that long. I've read a version of it that's about 800 pages long. So how could something that's 10 times this long be the same? A new unabridged translation came out 10 years ago. So I started reading it, and it basically contains the entire Sanskrit Vedic worldview in it.I had never been exposed to this very coherently laid-out version of what I would call Hindu cosmology and ethics. Hindus don't really get taught those things in a very organized way. The book is basically about dharma, the principle of rightness and how this principle of rightness orders the universe and how it basically results in everybody getting their just deserts in various ways. As I was reading the book, I was like, this seems very true that there is some cosmic rebalancing here, and that everything does turn out more or less the way it should, which is not something that I can defend on a rational level.But just reading the book, it just made me feel like, yes, that is true. There is justice, the universe is organized by justice. It took me about a year to read the whole thing. I started waking up at 5:00 a.m. and reading for an hour each morning, and it just was a really magical, profound experience that brought me a lot closer to my grandmother's religious beliefs.Oliver: Is it ever possible to persuade someone with arguments that they should read literature, or is it just something that they have to have an inclination toward and then follow someone's example? Because I feel like we have so many columns and op-eds and “books are good because of X reason, and it's very important because of Y reason.” And like, who cares? No one cares. If you are persuaded, you take all that very seriously and you argue about what exactly are the precise reasons we should say. And if you're not persuaded, you don't even know this is happening.And what really persuades you is like, oh, Naomi sounds pretty compelling about the Mahabharata. That sounds cool. I'll try that. It's much more of a temperamental, feelingsy kind of thing. Is it possible to argue people into thinking about this differently? Or should we just be doing what we do and setting an example and hoping that people will follow.Kanakia: As to whether it's possible or not, I do not know. But I do think these columns are too ambitious. A thousand-word column and the imagined audience for this column is somebody who doesn't read books at all, who doesn't care about literature at all. And then in a thousand-word column, you're going to persuade them to care about literature. This is no good. It's so unnecessary.Whereas there's a much broader range of people who love to read books, but have never picked up Moby Dick or have never picked up Middlemarch, or who like maybe loved Middlemarch, but never thought maybe I should then go on and read Jane Austen and George Eliot.I think trying to shift people from “I don't read books at all; reading books is not something I do,” to being a Great Books card-carrying lover of literature is a lot. I really aim for a much lower result than that, which is to whatever extent people are interested in literature, they should pursue that interest. And as the rationalists would say, there's a lot of alpha in that; there's a lot to be gained from converting people who are somewhat interested into people who are very interested.Oliver: If there was a more widespread practice of humanism in education and the general culture, would that make America into a more liberal country in any way?Kanakia: What do you mean by humanism?Oliver: You know, the old-fashioned liberal arts approach, the revival of the literary journal culture, the sort of depolitical approach to literature, the way things used to be, as it were.Kanakia: It couldn't hurt. It couldn't hurt is my answer to that question.Oliver: Okay.Kanakia: What you're describing is basically the way I was educated. I went to Catholic school in DC at St. Anselm's Abbey School, in Northeast, DC, grade school. Highly recommend sending your little boys there. No complaints about the school. They talked about humanism all the time and all these civic virtues. I thought it was great. I don't know what people in other schools learn, but I really feel like it was a superior way of teaching.Now, you know, it was Catholic school, so a lot of people who graduated from my school are conservatives and don't really have the beliefs that I have, but that's okay.Oliver: Tell us about your reading habits.Kanakia: I read mostly ebooks. I really love ebooks because you can make the type bigger. I just read all the time. They vary. I don't wake up at 5:00 a.m. to read anymore. Sometimes if I feel like I'm not reading enough—because I write this blog, and the blog doesn't get written unless I'm reading. That's the engine, and so sometimes I set aside a day each week to read. But generally, the reading mostly takes care of itself.What I tend to get is very into a particular thing, and then I'll start reading more and more in that area. Recently, I was reading a lot of New Yorker stories. So I started reading more and more of these storywriters that have been published in the New Yorker and old anthologies of New Yorker stories. And then eventually I am done. I'm tired. It's time to move on.Oliver: But do you read several books at once? Do you make notes? Do you abandon books? How many hours a day do you read?Kanakia: Hours a day: Because my e-reader keeps these stats, I'd say 15 or 20 hours a week of reading. Nowadays because I write for the blog, I often think as I'm reading how I would frame a post about this. So I look for quotes, like what quote I would look at. I take different kinds of notes. I'll make more notes if I'm more confused by what is going on. Especially with nonfiction books, I'll try sometimes to make notes just to iron out what exactly I think is happening or what I think the argument is. But no, not much of a note taker.Oliver: What will you read next?Kanakia: What will I read next? Well, I've been thinking about getting back into Indian literature. Right now I'm reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. But there's an Indian novel called Jhootha Sach, which is a partition novel that is originally in Hindi. And it's also a thousand pages long, and is frequently compared to Les Miserables and War and Peace. So I'm thinking about tackling that finally.Oliver: Naomi Kanakia, thank you very much.Kanakia: Thanks for having me. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

Who doesn't love the story of Les Miserables? Well Elmarie Mawe spoke to Frrench film director Eric Besnard about his acclaimed portrayal of Jean Valjean - the closing film of this year's Cork French Film Festival. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rusty saw a new Elvis movie and is a big fan. He also caught Les Miserables at the Orpheum and gives his review and in honor of the life of Robert Duvall, Rusty tells the story when he got to meet the legendary actor.

Rusty saw a new Elvis movie and is a big fan. He also caught Les Miserables at the Orpheum and gives his review and in honor of the life of Robert Duvall, Rusty tells the story when he got to meet the legendary actor.

Les Miserables is making its return to the Orpheum Theater and demand is greater than ever. Dale Stark from Hennepin Theater Trust talks about the production and what makes it so special.

Les Miserables is making its return to the Orpheum Theater and demand is greater than ever. Dale Stark from Hennepin Theater Trust talks about the production and what makes it so special.

Gunsmoke "Kitty's Outlaw" 2/12/1956Fred Allen "Les Miserables with Orson Welles" 2/10/1946Radio City Playhouse "Elementals" 2/14/1949Philip Marlowe "The Lonesome Reunion" 2/12/1949CBS Radio Workshop "The Space Merchants, Part 1" 2/17/1957Inner Sanctum "The Man Who Couldn't Die" 2/12/1946

Greg talks with Hayden Tee, who plays Javert in Les Miserables at the Prairie Home Alliance Theater at the Peoria Civic Center!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Tommy is joined by actress Melissa O’Neil who plays Sergeant Lucy Chen in ABC’s THE ROOKIE. Melissa has been a fan-favorite character over the course of eight seasons of this smash hit series. You may also know and love Melissa from playing the lead role in the Syfy Channel series, DARK MATTER. At 16, Melissa was the youngest and first female winner of Canadian Idol and went on to become a platinum selling recording artist. She also has performed on Broadway in both Les Miserables and Jesus Christ Superstar. Today, Melissa opens up about that cliffhanger in the season seven finale, what she thinks might happen for Lucy and Tim in the future, what it’s been like creating a beloved on-screen relationship with co-star Eric Winter, what she has most learned about herself since starting on THE ROOKIE, if there was ever a time in her career when she was uncomfortable with a scene, how she learned to communicate her concerns, the parts of playing Lucy that are both easy and harder for her, some of her favorite moments for Lucy, her reaction to Lucy being promoted to Sergeant, if she ever tries to give the writers ideas about her character, what she would want Lucy’s endgame to be, if she has the itch to do Broadway again, some of her dream roles, what her perfect day off is, how she maintains a positive outlook, something powerful she has never said before, and so much more. Subscribe, rate, and leave a written review if you enjoy this conversation! Tune in every week for new episodes of I’ve Never Said This Before Executive Producers: iHeart Media and Elvis Duran Podcast Network Follow us on socials! Instagram: @neversaidthisbefore YouTube: @neversaidthisbefore See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're back in the theatre again for Jack's birthday week with his hero of Old Time Radio and with our Monday Matinee for the Mutual Present's addition from the Mutual Broadcasting System's classic shows. This week we continue Orson Welles, incredible seven part performance for Mutual of "Les Miserables"! And now, Part Three "The Trial". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're back in the theatre again for Jack's birthday week with his hero of Old Time Radio and with our Monday Matinee for the Mutual Present's addition from the Mutual Broadcasting System's classic shows. This week we continue Orson Welles, incredible seven part performance for Mutual of "Les Miserables"! And now, Part Three "The Trial". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cheryl Drury, a lifelong reader, is on a misssion to read a long list of classic books which she found on Ted Gioia's Substack page. She now has her own Substack page that features her podcast "Crack the Book" about classic books. We talk about The Great Gatsby, The Red Badge of Courage, Romeo and Juliet and other works of Shakespeare, The Odyssey, David Foster Wallace, James Joyce's Ulysses, Swann's Way, Les Miserables, Louise May Alcott's Little Women, Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice, reading on a Kindle vs hardcopies, things we learn about life and human nature from reading classic books, Great Expectations and Charles Dickens, Gentleman in Moscow, Dead Souls, Fathers and Sons, The Brothers Karamazov, The Death of Ivan Ilyitch, characters, taking notes while reading, Dante, what makes a book a classic, Bleak House, Blood Meridian, The Road and Cormac McCarthy, Canticles for Liebowitz, Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, reading aloud, poetry, Pablo Neruda, writing every day, why we love to read, Breakfast at Tiffany's, In Cold Blood, Brave New World, Blood Child, This is How you Lose the Time War, Isaac Asimov, classic science fiction, Don Quixote, The Golden Ass, and more.  Links are on the podcast shownotes page Support the show through Patreon

Greg and Dan talk with Rik Edgar, General Manager of the Peoria Civic Center, about the recently announced Ameren Broadway Series shows. They discuss the upcoming productions, what makes them unique, and the production aspects that bring these performances to life. Rik also talks about the Peoria market and highlights that the popular hit Les Miserables will be performing next week, giving fans a chance to experience this iconic show locally.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Happy Wednesday! Timmy saw Les Miserable last night, Browns hire Todd Monken as head coach, we go over the Buckeyes schedule for 2026, we have some Leather Jacket Time with Nicole Shearin, chat about bathroom etiquette, Ryan Day gets an OL in the portal, chat about restaurants & new pizza places & we go Name Dropping with Jeff Rimer.

This terrible winter storm may have a positive lesson to teach us about how god sees our sin. A popular Broadway play and movie might have something to teach us as well. Has your church been cancelled today because of the storm? Join me for today's Daily Word & Prayer and let's be encouraged!Scripture Used in Today's MessageIsaiah 1:18-20To find Tom on Instagram, Facebook, TiKTok, and elsewhere, go to linktr.ee/tomthepreacher

Bookwaves/Artwaves is produced and hosted by Richard Wolinsky. Links to assorted local theater & book venues   John Varley (1947-2025): Hugo & Nebula Award Winning Science Fiction Author John Varley (1947-2025), Hugo and Nebula Award winning science fiction novelist, who died on December 10, 2025 at the age of 78, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded in the KPFA studios July 17, 1992 while on tour for the novel “Steel Beach.” John Varley hit the ground running with his first short story, “Picnic on Nearside,” published in 1974 in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He was already considered the logical heir to Robert Heinlein by the time his novel, The Ophiuchi Hotline was published in 1977 and his short story collection, The Persistence of Vision a year later. He followed those books with a trilogy that included Titan, Wizard and Demon, then went to Hollywood for seven years. This Probabilities interview was recorded on July 17, 1992 when he returned to the field with his novel, Steel Dreams, first of two novels set in the Eight Worlds universe of his earlier work; the sequel, The Golden Globe, was published in 1998.. By the time of this interview, John Varley's history with Hollywood would be over. You can find a PBS version of Overdrawn at the Memory Bank on Pluto TV, and two episodes from the TV show Paradox on You Tube. The film Millennium is not streaming. After The Golden Globe, John Varley wrote seven novels, most in a new series titled Thunder and Lightning. He returned to the Eight Worlds for his final novel, Irontown Blues, published in 2018. There would also be The John Varley Reader in 2004 and another collection in 2013. This interview has not aired in over thirty years.   Alan Furst: Best-selling Spy Novelist, 2002 Alan Furst, historical spy novelist, in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded in the KPFA studios during the book tour for “Blood of Victory, September 26, 2002. This interview has not aired in over two decades. In this interview, he discusses his early career, resistance during World War II, and creating the unique atmosphere and characters in his books.His latest novel, Under Occupation, was published in 2019. Alan Furst's career took off with his novel Kingdom of Shadows in 2000, the sixth book in his series of stand-alone novels about heros and villains in Europe in the years leading up to, and including World War II.  Suffused with atmosphere, his books feel as if you're living with the characters in those haunted times. Of course, there is added resonance as we live through what might be similar times today. This is the second of five Bookwaves interviews with Alan Furst.   James Lapine discusses his collaborations with Stephen Sondheim.     Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links Note: Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors' positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and mask requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. Some venues operate Tuesday – Sunday; others for shorter periods each week. All times Pacific Time. Closing dates are sometimes extended. Book Stores Bay Area Book Festival  See website for highlights from the 110th Annual Bay Area Book Festival, May 31 – June 1, 2025. Book Passage.  Monthly Calendar. Mix of on-line and in-store events. Books Inc.  Mix of on-line and in-store events. The Booksmith.  Monthly Event Calendar. BookShop West Portal. Monthly Event Calendar. Center for Literary Arts, San Jose. See website for Book Club guests in upcoming months. Green Apple Books. Events calendar. Kepler's Books  On-line Refresh the Page program listings. Live Theater Companies Actors Ensemble of Berkeley.  See website for readings and events. Actor's Reading Collective (ARC).  See website for upcoming productions. African American Art & Culture Complex. See website for calendar. American Conservatory Theatre  Paranormal Activity, Feb. 19 – March 15, Toni Rembe. Awesome Theatre Company. See website for information. Berkeley Playhouse. Once, February 20 – March 22.  Berkeley Rep. How Shakespeare Saved My Life written and performed by Jacob Ming-Trent .January 23 – March 1, Peets Theatre. All My Sons by Arthur Miller, Feb. 20 – March 29, Roda Theatre. Berkeley Shakespeare Company See website for upcoming productions. Brava Theatre Center: See calendar for events listings. BroadwaySF: The Notebook, February 10 – March 1, Orpheum. See website for complete listings for the Orpheum, Golden Gate and Curran Theaters. note: BroadwaySF is now ATG Tickets. Broadway San Jose:  The Book of Mormon, March 6-8. Beetlejuice, March 31 – April 5. Les Miserables, April 29 – May 3. Back to the Future, June 2 – 7. The Sound of Music, July 21-26, Center REP: Lost in Yonkers by Neil Simon, March 29 – April 19. Central Stage. See website for upcoming productions, 5221 Central Avenue, Richmond Central Works After Happy by Patricia Milton, Feb. 28 – March 29. Cinnabar Theatre. My Fair Lady, January 23 – February 8, 2026. The Christians by Lucas Hnath, April 10-26, The Secret Garden, June 12 – 28. Club Fugazi. Dear San Francisco, ongoing. Closed Monday and Tuesday. Contra Costa Civic Theatre A Chorus Line, June 6 – 21, 2026. See website for other events and concerts. Golden Thread  See website for upcoming events and productions. Hillbarn Theatre: What the Constitution Means to Me by Heidi Schreck, January 22 – February 8. Songs for a New World, music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown, March 5 -22. Lorraine Hansberry Theatre. Sistah Friend by by Phaedra Tillery-Boughton, directed by Margo Hall. February 7, 2 pm, Museum of the African Diaspora. Los Altos Stage Company. Yoga Play by Dipika Guha. January 22 – February 15.. Lower Bottom Playaz  See website for upcoming productions. Magic Theatre. Macbeth, a new version by Migdalia Cruz. March 18 – April 5. Marin Shakespeare Company: Let The Wind Sweep Through: A Conference of Birds, Feb. 6-15. See website for schedule. Marin Theatre: The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov Jan . 29 – Feb. 22, 2026. Masquers Playhouse, Point Richmond. Improbable Fiction by Alan Aykbourn, Feb. 6 – March 1. Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts Closed. SF Chronicle gift article. New Conservatory Theatre Center (NCTC)  Pride Cabaret, Feb. 5-7. Gods and Monsters based on the novel by Christopher Bram, written and adapted by Tom Mullen, March 6 – April 5. New Performance Traditions.  See website for upcoming schedule Oakland Theater Project. The Mountaintop by Katori Hall, Thurs-Sun, Feb. 5 – 15. Odd Salon: Upcoming events in San Francisco & New York, and streaming. Palace of Fine Arts Theater.  See website for event listings. Pear Theater. My Fair Lady, Feb 20 – March 8. See website for staged readings and other events. Playful People Productions. The One-Act Play That Goes Wrong, March 6 – 22. Presidio Theatre. See website for complete schedule of events and performances. The Children's Theatre Association of San Francisco (CTA) presents Once Upon a Mattress, January 24 – February 28. Ray of Light: Mean Girls. May 2026. Ross Valley Players: See website for New Works Sunday night readings and other events. San Francisco Playhouse. M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang. February 6 – March 14.. SFBATCO.  See website for upcoming streaming and in- theater shows. San Jose Stage Company: See website for events and upcoming season Shotgun Players.  Sunday in the Park with George, extended to February 15, 2026. South Bay Musical Theatre:  Little Women, The Broadway Musical, January 24 – February 14, 2026. SPARC: See website for upcoming events. Stagebridge: See website for events and productions. Storytime every 4th Saturday. The Breath Project. Streaming archive. The Marsh: Calendar listings for Berkeley, San Francisco and Marshstream. Theatre Lunatico  See website for upcoming productions.. Theatre Rhino  Left Field, written and directed by John Fisher, February 19 – March 15. Streaming: Essential Services Project, conceived and performed by John Fisher, all weekly performances now available on demand. TheatreWorks Silicon Valley Hershey Felder: The Piano and Me, January 17 – February 8, Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. Primary Trust by Eboni Booth, March 4 – 29, Lucie Stern Theatre, Palo Alto. Word for Word.  See website for upcoming productions. Misc. Listings: BAMPFA: On View calendar for Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Berkeley Symphony: See website for listings. Chamber Music San Francisco: Calendar, 2025 Season. Dance Mission Theatre. On stage events calendar. Fort Mason Center. Events calendar. Oregon Shakespeare Festival: Calendar listings and upcoming shows. San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus. See schedule for upcoming SFGMC performances. San Francisco Opera. Calendar listings. San Francisco Symphony. Calendar listings. Filmed Live Musicals: Searchable database of all filmed live musicals, podcast, blog. If you'd like to add your bookstore or theater venue to this list, please write Richard@kpfa.org   . The post Bookwaves/Artwaves – January 8, 2026: John Varley – Alan Furst appeared first on KPFA.

Joseph & Pete review the movie that people are calling Yorgos Lanthimos' most accessible movie yet, Bugonia. Joining V For Vendetta, Les Miserables, and G.I. Jane, Bugonia takes the shears to the long locks of lead actress, Emma Stone, as she continues to push the boundaries of challenging on-screen performances. Streaming right now on HBO Max, you can watch Bugonia at home and decide if you agree with the guys, or not. Write in and let is know!Visit the YouTube channel Saturdays @ 12:30 PM Pacific to get in on the live stream, or just watch this episode rather than just listen!Channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI1lVsk1xjMSBgZK82uAzgQThis Episode:https://youtu.be/yggwuezHV2ohttp://www.MCFCpodcast.comhttps://www.twitch.tv/MCFCpodcasthttp://www.facebook.com/MCFCpodcasthttp://www.twitter.com/podcastMCFChttp://www.tiktok.com/middleclassfilmclasshttp://www.instagram.com/middleclassfilmclass   Email: MCFCpodcast@gmail.comMerch store - https://middle-class-film-class.creator-spring.com/    Join the Patreon:www.patreon.con/middleclassfilmclass Patrons:JavierJoel ShinnemanLinda McCalisterHeather Sachs https://twitter.com/DorkOfAllDorksChris GeigerDylanMitch Burns Robert Stewart JasonAndrew Martin Dallas Terry Jack Fitzpatrick Mackenzie MinerAngry Otter (Michael)Joseph Navarro     Pete Abeyta  and Tyler Noe

Melba Moore, a Tony Award winning, 3x Grammy nominee, has starred in the Broadway musicals "Hair", "Purlie!", "Timbuktu!" and "Les Miserables". Her countless hits include "You Stepped Into My Life," "Read My Lips," "Fallin'" and "This Is It." She's been a global success for over fifty years and now has a new book, which shares her strategies for longevity.Coming to Amazon Books in November, 2025, Melba's memoirs, "This Is It - Marvelous.And Getting Better," takes the reader on the highs and lows of her career. The entertainment veteran shares how she had to pivot time and again, especially in an industry that didn't always know what to do with the massive voice within her petite being.From Harlem to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the book, Melba moves from wining the esteemed Tony Award for "Purlie!" to continually transitioning to discover what's next in her career. In the roller coaster ride in life, she's done it all and never backed down from a challenge.For the reader seeking motivation during moments of giving up, Melba's "This Is It - Marvelous..And Getting Better" is the right book for the right time. The story of an icon overcoming the odds and getting better, day by day.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-unplugged-totally-uncut--994165/support.

Welcome to our yearly Recap Book Chat Awards for the year 2025.Most whimsical: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – Its dreamy, childlike philosophical tale of a young prince traveling planets, full of wonder, imagination, and gentle absurdity, captures pure whimsy more than any other on the list. BFG and Much Ado About Nothing also fit this category.Grittiest: Les Misérables by Victor Hugo – Depicting extreme poverty, injustice, prison brutality, prostitution, child suffering, and revolutionary violence in raw detail, it unflinchingly explores human misery and societal cruelty. Most unique format: The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion (Vol. 1 or 2) – Written entirely as witty, personal diary entries from a quirky Victorian-era heroine, this journal style stands out distinctly among traditional narratives, plays, and prose.Best opening line: The Green Ember by S.D. Smith “Heather had invented the game, but Picket made it magic.” Most unpredictable: The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner – Filled with shocking twists involving deception, bigamy, and survival amid the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, its plot revelations keep readers guessing.Most intense: Where the Lost Wander by Amy Harmon-Family killed in front of her, captured by Indians, yet in love with an Indian man. Most impactful in society: Les Misérables by Victor Hugo – A monumental critique of social injustice that influenced reforms, human rights discourse, and popular culture worldwide through adaptations highlighting redemption and inequality.Most creative: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien – Inventing an entire mythology, languages, maps, and world (Middle-earth) showcases unparalleled imaginative world-building.Best leading lady: Emmalyne Knox from The Quarryman's Bride by Tracie Peterson – Intelligent, resilient, compassionate, dealing with trauma from loss of sisters, home and betrothed. Best leading man: Aragorn from The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien. Brave warrior, wise strategist, skilled healer, humble leader, stoic strength and empathy. Aragorn demonstrates a balanced masculinity free of pettiness, unjust anger or despair. He epitomizes patience and loyalty beyond today's imagination! Best ending: Ferris by Kate Dicamillo, what a beautiful story of reconciliation and  community, Here Be Dragons by Melanie Shankle ends with her teaching her daughter to navigate the dragons (aka mean girls) in life.Changed our lives: Seeing the Unseen by Joe Beam, preparing yourself for Spiritual Warfare along with the bishop in Les Miserables whose kindness changed Jean Valjean's life! Stands the test of time: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien – Decades later, it remains a cultural cornerstone, influencing fantasy and enduring as a beloved classic.Best overall book: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien – Masterful storytelling, rich themes of friendship, heroism, and good vs. evil, combined with enduring influence and depth, make it a standout masterpiece. Happy New Year dear readers!!!

This Christmas Eve ... Dominic is joined by the inimitable Meredith Braun, who played Scrooge's love interest Belle - opposite Michael Caine (and Fozziwig!) - in Brian Henson's The Muppet Christmas Carol ...Meredith shares her memories of filming the role, whilst simultaneously playing Eponine in the iconic West End production of Les Miserables ...A special thank you to Tim Hutton at Stage Door Records for allowing the use of the recording of When Love is Gone  from Meredith's 2017 album of the same name ...When Love is Gone is available to purchase here at Stage Door Records or Amazon. It can also be streamed on Apple and SpotifyHAPPY CHRISTMAS !!! Support the showIf you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrardThank you so much!Host: Dominic GerrardSeries Artwork: Léna GibertOriginal Music: Dominic GerrardThank you for listening!

Guest: Tracy WellsPlaywright ofWhistle Stop, Totally Murder!, Angels of Bataan, One Stoplight Town, A Night Under The Stars, Finding Corey Taylor, Happily Ever Before, The Man in the Brown Suit, Great Expectations, The Little Mermaid, Anne of Green Gables, Les Miserables, Pride and Prejudice, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rotten Apples, Eclipse, A Trip To The Moon, Eerie Academy, Night of the Macabre, Swan Lake, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, The Phantom of the Opera, The Tale of the Nutcracker, Emma, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, Spaghetti Western...Or Mission Im-Pasta-ble, and many more.Official Website: https://www.tracywellsplaywright.com/Tracy Wells Bio: Tracy Wells' love of theater started at an early age when her parents took her to see big name shows in local community theaters.  She loved the characters, the scenery, the costumes, and most importantly, the beautiful stories that came to life before her eyes.  As a teenager, Tracy joined her high school drama department and got her own taste of small stage stardom—as well as her first glimpse into the challenges that schools and community theaters face, such as limited budgets, little to no stage or storage space, and the lack of scripts for large cast sizes. Upon entering adulthood, Tracy settled into life as a wife and mother, but the theater came calling again when her husband accepted a job as a junior high drama teacher.  Once again, those challenges presented themselves—little to no budget, a small stage with only a few working lights, and difficulty finding scripts with enough roles for his ever-increasing class numbers.  That is when playwriting entered Tracy's life.  With the start of school quickly approaching, Tracy decided to pen her first one-act play, an adaptation of O. Henry's “The Gift of the Magi”.  The play was well received by the students, and Tracy decided to seek publication for the script as well as continuing to write more one-act plays and eventually full-length plays as well. Tracy now has more than two hundred published plays and skits with a number of publishers and her plays have been produced all across the country as well as internationally.  When she writes a play, Tracy continues to keep in mind those challenges she recognized all those years ago on the high school stage—limited budget, small stages, and the desire to let each character shine.  Tracy continues to write plays for the youth and Christian market and resides with her husband and two children in Metro Detroit.The Scene TeamJustin Borak - Host Zach Dulli - Executive Producer KJ Lampar - Producer Leah Barker - Producer & Talent CoordinatorJim Colleran - EditorAdditional music and sound effects licensed through Envato ElementsLinksBe sure to follow The Scene Podcast on Instagram and YouTubeSubscribe to The Scene NewsletterSpecial ThanksJennifer IsaacsonLauren KardosJeffery KeilholtzShow ContributorsLeah BarkerJustin BorakJim ColleranZach DulliKJ LamparTracy Wells The Scene TeamJustin Borak - Host Zach Dulli - Executive Producer KJ Lampar - Producer Leah Barker - Producer & Talent CoordinatorJim Colleran - Editor Additional music and sound effects licensed through Envato Elements LINKSBe sure to follow The Scene Podcast on Instagram and YouTubeSubscribe to The Scene Newsletter

Best of 2025 1: Big Screen, Big Crucibles: Les MiserablesYou've heard us talk a lot over the years at Beyond the Crucible about the power of forgiveness — and that's one of the core themes of our discussion this week of LES MISERABLES, the fourth film in our summer series BIG SCREEN, BIG CRUCIBLES.Everyone in the movie experiences a crucible, but those who receive and then extend mercy and forgiveness to others are the ones who find lives of significance. Those too rigid to see the best in others, or in themselves — like the prison guard and policeman Javert --  wind up — as one of the American translations of the film's title puts it — The Miserable Ones.To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at info@beyondthecrucible.com

On this special episode of the podcast, the hosts react to the announcement of Les Miserables as the 2-26 FHS Musical. Zoe Kenney joins us in the Eight-Ball.

Melba Moore, a Tony Award winning, 4x Grammy nominee, has starred in the Broadway musicals "Hair", "Purlie!", "Timbuktu!" and "Les Miserables". Her countless hits include "You Stepped Into My Life," "Read My Lips," "Fallin'" and "This Is It." She's been a global success for over fifty years and now has a new book, which shares her strategies for longevity.  Melba shot to super-stardom in the early 1970s with her debut album ("I Got Love"), that garnered her a 1971 Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, the following year, she also scored with a variety television show that co-starred Clifton Davis. In 2003, Moore was featured in the film, The Fighting Temptations, which starred Cuba Gooding Jr. and Beyoncé.  A four-time Grammy nominee and one-time Tony Award winner, prior to being a singer/actress, Melba Moore also made guest appearances on nearly all of the following shows: The David Frost Show, Soul Train, The Mike Douglas Show, Dinah!, The Dick Cavett Show, 13 appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Captain Kangaroo, The Tim Conway Show, and Solid Gold, This Is It – Marvelous…And Getting Better takes the reader on the highs and lows of Melba's career. The entertainment veteran shares how she had to pivot time and again, especially in an industry that didn't always know what to do with the massive voice within her petite being. From Harlem to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the book, Melba moves from wining the esteemed Tony Award for "Purlie!" to continually transitioning to discover what's next in her career. In the roller coaster ride in life, she's done it all and never backed down from a challenge.   Want to watch: YouTube Meisterkhan Pod (Please subscribe)

On this week's episode of our show, Captain Ingle and I set a course for the 24th century and the farthest reaches of the Federation at station Deep Space 9. In this Les Miserables inspired entry, Captain Sisko goes on the hunt for his former security officer Michael Eddington, who defected from the Federation and joined the rebel group the Maquis. Join us as we go boldly!

This episode we are joined my actor, singer and songwriter Jaedynn Latter! Jaedynn is currently playing Éponine on the US tour of Les Misérables which is also her national tour debut! Some of her credits include Waitress, Into the Woods, Ordinary Days, Great Comet and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Jaedynn is also a singer/songwriter and you can listen to her album Point of You on all streaming music platforms!We speak with Jaedynn about her experience working on Les Misérables, touring the country and much more!

On this episode of Currently Reading, Kaytee and Meredith are discussing: Bookish Moments: book advent and making wood bookends Current Reads: all the great, interesting, and/or terrible stuff we've been reading lately Deep Dive: how Meredith and Kaytee have both changed for good due to the podcast and each other The Fountain: we visit our perfect fountain to make wishes about our reading lives Show notes are time-stamped below for your convenience. Read the transcript of the episode (this link only works on the main site). .  .  .  1:12 - Ad For Ourselves 1:41 - Currently Reading Patreon 8:13 - Our Bookish Moments of the Week 8:27 - 25 Days by Per Jacobson 14:10 - Our Current Reads 14:33 - North Sun by Ethan Rutherford (Meredith) 16:14 - The Terror by Dan Simmons 21:29 - Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McCallister (Kaytee) 26:39 - And the World Spins Anyway by Georgie Jones (Meredith) 26:47 - georgie_jonez on instagram 32:56 - Awake by Jen Hatmaker (Kaytee) 33:23 - 7 by Jen Hatmaker 37:49 - Lady Tremaine by Rebecca Hochhauser (Meredith) 39:39 - Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati 42:23 - Fabled Bookshop 42:37 - A Wish in the Dark by Christina Soontornvat (Kaytee) 42:52 - Les Miserables by Victor Hugo 45:58 - CR Season 4: Episode 45 46:46 - How We've Been Changed For Good  59:09 - Meet Us At The Fountain 59:38 - I wish that you would follow @mondaynextpodcast on instagram for a limited series for business minded individuals! 59:40 - @mondaynextpodcast on Instagram 1:01:17 - I wish for us to finish the year strong in our reading lives. (Kaytee) 1:02:39 - The Never King by Nikki St. Crow   Support Us: Become a Bookish Friend | Grab Some Merch Shop Bookshop dot org | Shop Amazon Bookish Friends Receive: The Indie Press List with a curated list of five books hand sold by the indie of the month. December's IPL is a recap of the year with Kaytee and Meredith. Love and Chili Peppers with Kaytee and Rebekah - romance lovers get their due with this special episode focused entirely on the best selling genre fiction in the business.  All Things Murderful with Meredith and Elizabeth - special content for the scary-lovers, brought to you with the behind-the-scenes insights of an independent bookseller From the Editor's Desk with Kaytee and Bunmi Ishola - a quarterly peek behind the curtain at the publishing industry The Bookish Friends Facebook Group - where you can build community with bookish friends from around the globe as well as our hosts Connect With Us: The Show: Instagram | Website | Email | Threads The Hosts and Regulars: Meredith | Kaytee | Mary | Roxanna Production and Editing: Megan Phouthavong Evans Affiliate Disclosure: All affiliate links go to Bookshop unless otherwise noted. Shopping here helps keep the lights on and benefits indie bookstores. Thanks for your support!

The member of the 1997 World Series-winning Florida Marlins who most resembles a Les Miserables character. Card #506 on Beckett - https://marketplace.beckett.com/item/900/1988-topps-506-john-cangelosi_31263472John interviewed for MILB - https://www.milb.com/news/herd-chronicles-john-cangelosi-career-included-plenty-of-hits-stolen-b-309537676John talks about 1997 World Series - https://www.mlb.com/news/john-cangelosi-reflects-on-1997-world-series-winRick Cerone's YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAKT__QBx7KzxL_b589fhTg Adam Darowski talks about the 4000 Hit Club https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lwFzvM8240 Most Rookie stolen bases since 1920 - https://www.sports-reference.com/stathead/tiny/blrn8 Cangelosi Pitches - https://www.mlb.com/video/cangelosi-pitches-scoreless-9th-c539434683

In this extended interview, Lea Michele, currently starring in the Broadway musical "Chess," talks with Tracy Smith about debuting on Broadway at age 8 in "Les Miserables"; how "The Phantom of the Opera" ignited her love of musical theater, and how a medical emergency led to her first audition; how she didn't let a car crash get in the way of auditioning for "Glee"; joining the revival of "Funny Girl"; and being back on stage at the Imperial Theatre, where she first performed in "Les Miz." To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Melba Moore, a Tony Award winning, 3x Grammy nominee, has starred in the Broadway musicals "Hair", "Purlie!", "Timbuktu!" and "Les Miserables". Her countless hits include "You Stepped Into My Life," "Read My Lips," "Fallin'" and "This Is It." She's been a global success for over fifty years and now has a new book, which shares her strategies for longevity.Coming to Amazon Books in November, 2025, Melba's memoirs, "This Is It - Marvelous.And Getting Better," takes the reader on the highs and lows of her career. The entertainment veteran shares how she had to pivot time and again, especially in an industry that didn't always know what to do with the massive voice within her petite being.From Harlem to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in the book, Melba moves from wining the esteemed Tony Award for "Purlie!" to continually transitioning to discover what's next in her career. In the roller coaster ride in life, she's done it all and never backed down from a challenge.For the reader seeking motivation during moments of giving up, Melba's "This Is It - Marvelous..And Getting Better" is the right book for the right time. The story of an icon overcoming the odds and getting better, day by day.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-like-it-s-live--4113802/support.

Les Miserables is coming to town and Preston who plays Javert joins Jeff to chat about it.

The Heidi Glaus Show - 11.18.25 - Book Club; Les Miserables; ABC Guests; and much more by

Today, things begin to grow in the rice pudding. Mr. Rushworth has the hots for landscaping, Molly gets bitchcrackers for Miss Crawford, and the tides turn on our affections for Edmund when he lends out Fanny's mare. Topics discussed include hear me out cakes, apricots, Mary Crawford's poor breeding, what values we take from our families, Jane Austen's beautiful descriptions of love and how we're getting it in a different way in this book, regifting, Fanny as a chronically ill and/or anxious girlie, and pug the basset hound.Patron Study Questions this week come from Ghenet, Avi, Spring, Diana L., Angelika, Katie, Linnea, Marija, and Melissa. Topics discussed include POV shifting, landscaping and architecture, chronic illness in Austen, Edmund's manipulation of Fanny, Fanny's relationship to the servants, the number of monologues in this book, Edmund being more like his family than we thought, and all things Mary Crawford.Becca's Study Questions: Topics discussed include Edmund and Fanny's conversation about Mary and the romance brewing between Edmund and Mary.Funniest Quote: “The tree thrives well beyond a doubt, madam. The soil is good, and I never pass it without regretting that the fruit should be so little worth the trouble of gathering.”Questions moving forward: If not her cousin, then whomst?Who wins the chapters? The horse

In an episode that nearly got deleted due to creative paranoia, the gang freestyle a low budget horror movie and explain why Javert is the real hero of Les Miserables.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/authors-dragons-comedy-dnd-podcast--5624719/support.Featuring Drew Hayes, John g Hartness, Rick Gualtieri, Robert Bevan, Joseph Brassey, Steve Wetherell, EM Kaplan, MK Gibson and more! Check out more adventures and fun dumb stuff at www.authorsanddragons.com

Happy Halloween! We're releasing our episode with Halloweentown star Kimberly J. Brown as an extra treat! The Disney legend joined The Art of Kindness to discuss: - growing up in the spotlight - working with the iconic (and kind) Debbie Reynolds - behind-the-scenes treats from the Halloweentown franchise + more! While Kimberly J. Brown is perhaps most known for the Halloweentown franchise, she is an award-winning powerhouse who's rocked every medium. By age 9 she had appeared on Broadway in shows like: “Les Miserables” and the Tony-winning revival of “Showboat.” She went then on to rock TV, earning an Emmy nomination for “Marah Lewis,” on TV's longest running daytime drama, “Guiding Light,” which she played from 1993-1998 and in 2006. Other TV credits include “Law & Order: SVU,” “Touched By An Angel,” “Two of a Kind,” and more. More recently, she has been seen lighting up the Hallmark Channel. Some other film highlights include playing John Travolta and Uma Thurman's assistant in Be Cool and starring opposite Steve Martin and Queen Latifah in Bringing Down the House. Follow Kimberly J. Brown: ⁠@officialkjb⁠ Follow us: ⁠@robpeterpaul⁠, ⁠@artofkindnesspod⁠ Halloween Music: FreeUseMusic on youtube ⁠Support the show⁠ (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theaok) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tonight's triple feature charts the modern musical's evolution from stage grandeur to cinematic intimacy. Les Misérables (2012), long trapped in development, found redemption under Tom Hooper's live-sung realism, winning three Oscars and redefining the genre's emotional rawness. The Phantom of the Opera (2004), Andrew Lloyd Webber's own adaptation directed by Joel Schumacher, preserved the opulent theatricality of its 1986 hit, trading subtlety for spectacle and box office success. Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd (2007) stripped Sondheim's operatic dread to its bones—industrial London rendered in blood and ash, with Johnny Depp's haunted performance earning two Oscars. Together they form a triptych of obsession and redemption—three wounded men seeking salvation through music, their worlds collapsing between faith, art, and violence. From the barricades to the opera house to Fleet Street, these films trace the death of theatrical innocence and the last roar of the sung confession.Disclaimer: The following may contain offensive language, adult humor, and/or content that some viewers may find offensive – The views and opinions expressed by any one speaker does not explicitly or necessarily reflect or represent those of Mark Radulich or W2M Network.Mark Radulich and his wacky podcast on all the things:https://linktr.ee/markkind76alsohttps://www.teepublic.com/user/radulich-in-broadcasting-networkFB Messenger: Mark Radulich LCSWTiktok: @markradulichtwitter: @MarkRadulichInstagram: markkind76RIBN Album Playlist: https://suno.com/playlist/91d704c9-d1ea-45a0-9ffe-5069497bad59 

Artists, Jennifer Coates, David Humphrey and Catherine Haggarty and are back for Part 3 of our series on Drawing. This time we switched things up and each artist brought both an artwork from art history and a related work of their own to discuss. Get ready to hear some vivid "ekphrasis" on our drawing picks (new vocab word unlocked-thanks, David!).Jennifer brought “The Castle with the Angel” 1863 by Victor Hugo and her own mixed media on yupo drawing “Heads in the Brambles” 2025David brought Odilon Redon's "Self Portrait" 1880 and his own painted drawing "Before the Couch” 2023Catherine brought Catherine Murphy's “Rose's Coloring Book” 2011 and her own wax crayon work "Bus Drawing" 2024Amy brought Paul Klee's "Ugly Angel" 1939 and her own graphite drawing "Reversal (Ingres)" 2024Other artworks mentioned: The Sketchbooks of John Constable, Eugene Delacroix and JMW Turner, Catherine Murphy "In the Grass" 2011, Kerry James Marshall "Untitled" 2009, Paul Klee "Untitled (Last Still Life)" 1940, "Still Ugly Angel" 1940, "Vigilant Angel" 1939, "Bell Angel" 1939, "Doubting Angel" 1939, "Angel in a Crisis II" 1939 , "Mis- Angel " 1939, "Angelus Novus" 1920, "Angel of Care on a Steep Road" 1931 Books mentioned: "Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo, "The Angels of Paul Klee" by Boris Friedewald, "Exploring Masterpieces : a Fact-Filled Coloring Book" 1990Artists mentioned: Victor Hugo, Odilon Redon, Catherine Murphy, Paul Klee, John Constable, Eugene Delacroix, JMW Turner, Kerry James Marshall, Josephine Halvorson, Jasper Johns (his Mind/Mirror retrospective at Whitney Museum), Judy Glantzman, Franz Marc, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Jane Fine, James Esber, Erica Svec, Zachary WollardMore about the speakers:Jennifer Coates: ⁠⁠⁠web⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠IG⁠⁠⁠David Humprhrey: ⁠⁠web⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠IG⁠⁠Catherine Haggarty: ⁠⁠web⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠IG⁠Amy Talluto: web and IGUpcoming exhibitions:Jennifer and David have work at 1Gap Gallery in "2>1" Curated by Michael Holden thru Jan 5, 2026 (Brooklyn)Amy has work in:"Eyes in the Sky" (solo) at theNextWaveGallery at SHOWROOM at Guerra Paint & Pigments curated by Nicole Castaldo thru Oct 31, 2025 (Maspeth-Queens)"Often I am Permitted to Return to a Meadow" at Active Space curated by Patrick Bower and Robert Zurer of Immaterial Projects Nov 7 - Nov 22, 2025 (Bushwick-Brooklyn)"A Gnawing Thought " at Utopia Gallery curated by Mandolyn Wilson Rosen Dec 6 -Jan 24, 2026 (Kingston, NY)"Relic" at Platform Project Space curated by Alyssa Fanning, Michael Lee and Patrick Neal Jan 30-Feb 5, 2026 (Dumbo-Brooklyn)Congrats to Catherine and Andrew Prayzner on their beautiful baby girl, Juliette Margaret!Thank you for listening!All music by Soundstripe----------------------------Pep Talks on IG: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@peptalksforartists⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Pep Talks Website: ⁠⁠https://www.peptalksforartists.com/⁠⁠Amy, your beloved host, on IG: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@talluts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Amy's website: ⁠⁠https://www.amytalluto.com/⁠⁠Pep Talks on Art Spiel as written essays: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://tinyurl.com/7k82vd8s⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BuyMeACoffee⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Donations always appreciated!

In the 268th episode of The Main Street Electrical Podcast, Jenn & Dave are joined by super Upon a Star super planner Jessica Levine, aka "Pocket Jess", in her first appearance since way back in July 2023 on Ep 165.  On today's episode, the trio chat about Jenn's upcoming Destiny journey, Jess' upcoming trips, and Dave's quick review of Pixar's "ELIO".  Plus, we chat a little about Jess and her family, her move to Jacksonville, and how she still frequents the parks. In the news, some quick hits on Disney raising prices... new pricing out for Christmas 2026... a new timeline for Muppets in Rock'n Roller Coaster... a revised Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique menu - and wondering why there is still only one BBB location open... Disney leaning to cashless kiosks... and Frozen Ever After losing the projection faces.  Finally, in a revisit of a topic done in October 2021 on Episode 75, a ranking of World Showcase pavilions.  Mexico, Norway, China, Germany, Italy, American Adventure, Japan, Morocco, France, United Kingdom, and Canada - each get a quick discussion about what we love (and what we don't love as much) and we rank them on our list, 1 thru 11.  Plus, another mini-rant from Jenn about Anne Hathaway's thrilling, Oscar winning performance in "Les Miserables".  

Welcome to a Brain Wrinkling Wednesday with Fr. Tom Koys.  Today Father attempts to weave humor into theology after seeing the Broken Mary movie, the Kevin Matthews story.  He shares jokes and stories to draw attention to how we can view situations/issues in society today.  He goes on to use theology and philosophy and the musical Les Miserables to show a perspective on the immigration and deportation issues of today.  He closes the podcast with a breakdown on his approach to the immigration and deportation our country is currently facing. St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish

US President Donald Trump says "we are very close to a deal" to end the war in Gaza, after officials reported progress after a third day of indirect talks between Israel and Hamas in Egypt. The Times of Israel earlier reported a deal to release Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners could be imminent.Also on the programme: as the number of people who died while homeless reached the highest on record last year, we hear from one mother on the loss of her son.And 40 years on from its debut, the cast of Les Miserables unite for an anniversary that makes it the longest-running West End musical.

Today, Shadow Chancellor Sir Mel Stride has promised that the Conservatives would slash £47 billion from public spending as the party continues to battle dire poll ratings, with some surveys putting them in fourth place. Speaking at the Tory Party Conference in Manchester, he outlined a “radical plan to rebuild our economy”. The Standard's Chief Political Correspondent Rachael Burford is here with the latest. And in part two, The Standard's Celebrity Correspondent Tina Campbell joins us to discuss the 40th anniversary of Les Miserables - the world's longest running musical - which is on stage at London's Sondheim theatre. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we're chatting all things Les Mis! Come hear our thoughts on the latest tour to stop at the Orpheum! Plus listen for a promo code for our next show this weekend!

We're back in the theatre again with our Monday Matinee for the Mutual Present's addition from the Mutual Broadcasting System's classic shows. This week we continue Orson Welles, incredible seven part performance for Mutual of "Les Miserables"! And now, Part Two! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From Broadway rush tickets to Emmy after-parties, this week's conversation is all about celebrating the arts in every form. Nancy shares her behind-the-scenes Emmy recap (Tim's big win and her hot-pink Jessica Simpson shoes that stole the show). She spills a secret for scoring incredible, affordable Broadway seats. The sisters dig into why supporting the arts matters, even in tough times, and how everything from small theaters to local bands need our love. Plus—What's for Dinner? Kathy brings us Angel Hair Fanucci, an Italian family recipe you'll want to try.Recipes, links, and more from this week's episode are always up at threelilfishes.com/shownotes.

Behind the towering legacy of Victor Hugo lies a lesser-known, haunting tale—that of his youngest daughter, Adèle. Born into privilege and brilliance, Adèle possessed a vivid mind, a gift for writing, and an independent spirit. Yet her life took a tragic turn, marked by obsessive love, defiance of societal norms, and an unrelenting battle with mental illness. In this episode, we explore Adèle Hugo's remarkable yet heartbreaking journey—from her childhood in the literary salons of Paris, to her daring pursuit of a British officer across oceans, to her final years in silence and seclusion. Her story is one of passion, rebellion, and the price of living in the shadow of greatness. Follow us on IG: @homance_chronicles Connect with us: linktr.ee/homance Send us a Hoe of History request: homancepodcast@gmail.com

Friday, June 13th, 2025Today, California Senator Alex Padilla was tacked and handcuffed after identifying himself to ask Kristi Noem during a press conference; there was a hearing Thursday in Judge Breyer's courtroom about the injunction motion filed by Governor Newsom; National Guard and Marines are deeply troubled by their deployment to California; a federal judge rules that the government can't hold Mahmoud Khalil; the Head of FEMA's storm response center is leaving the agency amid a leadership exodus; JD Vance had a secret meeting in Montana with the Fox News Murdochs this week; the Trump administration is backing off its plans to detain people at Guantanamo Bay; lawyers for Abrego Garcia have filed their motion for sanctions against the government; the Supreme Court is reviewing a lawsuit over an FBI raid of the wrong house in Atlanta; what to know ahead of the No Kings rally tomorrow; Trump was met with boos and drag queens during Les Miserable at the Kennedy Center; and Allison delivers your Good News.Thank You, CBDistilleryUse promo code DAILYBEANS at CBDistillery.com for 25% off your purchase.  Specific product availability depends on individual state regulations.Thank You, Fay NutritionYou can qualify to see a registered dietitian for as little as $0 by visiting FayNutrition.com/dailybeans.**Sat June 14 10am – 12pm PDT AG is hosting NO KINGS Waterfront Park, San Diego - Donation link -  **June 14th Nationwide Demonstrations - NoKings.orgMSW Media, Blue Wave California Victory Fund | ActBlueMarines Unleashed In LA! Trump's Authoritarian Crackdown Intensifies with Allison GillCheck out Dana's social media campaign highlighting LGBTQ+ heroes every day during Pride Month -  Dana Goldberg (@dgcomedy.bsky.social)Guest: Sarah ParkerVoicesOfFlorida.org@voicesofflorida - Instagram , Voices Of Florida - facebook, Voices of @voffund.bsky.social - Bluesky, @voicesofflorida - TikTok50501 MovementGuest: John FugelsangTell Me Everything — John FugelsangThe John Fugelsang PodcastJohn Fugelsang | SubstackJohn Fugelsang (@johnfugelsang.bsky.social) — BlueskySeparation of Church and Hate by John Fugelsang - Pre-orderStoriesVance made a brief trip to Montana to speak to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, AP sources say | ABC NewsSen. Padilla Pushed to Ground, Handcuffed for Demanding DHS Not Lie | Mother JonesTroops and marines deeply troubled by LA deployment: ‘Morale is not great' | Los Angeles Ice protests | The GuardianTexas governor deploys National Guard ahead of planned 'No Kings' protests | AP NewsICE Raids: What Are Your Rights? | Teen VogueGovernment can't hold Columbia activist Mahmoud Khalil, federal judge rules | NBC NewsTrump administration appears to be pausing plans to ramp up Guantanamo transfers |POLITICOTrump admits his anti-immigration agenda is hurting farmers and hotels: ‘Taking very good workers away' | The IndependentHead of FEMA's storm response center leaving agency amid leadership exodus | CBS NewsSupreme Court revives lawsuit over FBI raid of wrong house in Atlanta | The Washington PostGood Trouble: Contact Us - 1st Marines DivisionProton Mail: free email account with privacy and encryptionFind Upcoming Demonstrations And ActionsSat June 14 10am – 12pm PDT AG is hosting NO KINGS Waterfront Park, San DiegoDonation link - secure.actblue.com/donate/fuelthemovement250th Anniversary of the U.S. Army Grand Military Parade and Celebration50501 MovementJune 14th Nationwide Demonstrations - NoKings.orgIndivisible.orgFederal workers - feel free to email me at fedoath@pm.me and let me know what you're going to do, or just vent. I'm always here to listen. From The Good NewsNoKings.orgNo Kings Action GuidelinesAction St. LouisVolunteer Opportunities, Events, and Petitions Near Me · The People's Response on MobilizeAdministrative Defense of Transgender & Gender-Diverse Military MembersReminder - you can see the pod pics if you become a Patron. The good news pics are at the bottom of the show notes of each Patreon episode! That's just one of the perks of subscribing! patreon.com/muellershewrote Federal workers - feel free to email me at fedoath@pm.me and let me know what you're going to do, or just vent. I'm always here to listen.Share your Good News or Good TroubleMSW Good News and Good Trouble Check out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/Subscribe for free to MuellerSheWrote on Substackhttps://muellershewrote.substack.comFollow AG and Dana on Social MediaDr. Allison Gill Substack|Muellershewrote, BlueSky|@muellershewrote , Threads|@muellershewrote, TikTok|@muellershewrote, IG|muellershewrote, Twitter|@MuellerSheWrote,Dana GoldbergTwitter|@DGComedy, IG|dgcomedy, facebook|dgcomedy, IG|dgcomedy, danagoldberg.com, BlueSky|@dgcomedyHave some good news; a confession; or a correction to share?Good News & Confessions - The Daily Beanshttps://www.dailybeanspod.com/confessional/ Listener Survey:http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=BffJOlI7qQcF&ver=shortFollow the Podcast on Apple:The Daily Beans on Apple PodcastsWant to support the show and get it ad-free and early?Supercasthttps://dailybeans.supercast.com/Patreon https://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr subscribe on Apple Podcasts with our affiliate linkThe Daily Beans on Apple Podcasts

Jessica is here to shame Dan for his lack of knowledge about Les Miserables and make an official ruling on chilled soups. All the while, Mike goes after Jeremy for one of his several bad Heat takes and admits he would do cocaine if it were in edible form. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The DNC has just gutted their own leadership while they’re metaphorically and literally in retreat. From last nights Congressional baseball game to a performance of Les Miserables at the Kennedy Center and even in congressional hearings and media - it’s not a good time to be in the party called Democrat. -For more info visit the official website: https://chrisstigall.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisstigallshow/Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisStigallFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/chris.stigall/Listen on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/StigallPodListen on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/StigallShow -Help protect your wealth with real, physical gold and silver. Texas Bullion Exchange helps everyday Americans diversify with tailored portfolios, IRA rollovers, and expert support every step of the way.