Knowing laughter

The comedian and writer Helen Lederer joins us to discuss gender and comedy and the new Comedy Women In Print Prize; Lucy Dallas considers a clutch of novels in which animals might offer a little respite from human company; the TLS’s philosophy editor Tim Cranes guides us through the riches of this week’s philosophy issue, including how the advent of biological immortality might augur “the greatest inequality experienced in all human history” and what happened when Michel Foucault took LSD in Death Valley

 

To Leave with the Reindeer by Olivia Rosenthal, translated by Sophie Lewis

Animalia by Jean-Baptiste del Amo, translated by Frank Wynne

The Animal Gazer by Edgardo Franzosini, translated by Michael F. Moore

“The last mortals: why we are especially unfortunate to die, when our near-descendants could be immortal", by Regini Rini – see this week’s TLS (in print and online)

Foucault in California: A true story, wherein the great French philosopher drops acid in the Valley of Death by Simeon Wade