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Podcast | Nico Walker

Nico Walker

‘The military recruits around football – they try to pick up the surplus player population. You couldn't make it on the college team? Well, you know, this is kind of similar. Both are violent.’

Nico Walker on American football.

Interview | Thomas Ruff

Thomas Ruff & Alice Zoo

‘The camera records what’s in front of it, but that reality can be pre-arranged.’

Thomas Ruff speaks to Alice Zoo about light, Bernd and Hilla Becher and the essence of photography.

The Cottage

Isabelle Baafi

‘The scarlet stained my palm – / whether the blood of the berry or of the bird, / I couldn’t tell.’

A poem by Isabelle Baafi.

John Cena

Dane Holt

‘Everything you do you do precisely.’

A poem by Dane Holt.

The Borrowed Hills

Scott Preston

‘The farm was in one of the fourteen green-purple wet deserts, in a dent six miles wide with its shoulders covered in scree and a rainy season that lasts twelve months a year.’

An extract from The Borrowed Hills by Scott Preston.

Fast by the Horns

Moses McKenzie

‘First, a boy was meant to stop following him mama, then him papa, then at around fourteen him become him own man – that’s how Ras Levi say life was suppose to work.’

An extract from Fast by the Horns by Moses McKenzie.

Strange Relations

Ralf Webb

‘For both writers, this is an essential truth in their work. It’s also an essential truth in their lives: they are both queer, and live openly as such.’

Ralf Webb on the friendship between Tennesse Williams and Carson McCullers.

Rural Hours

Harriet Baker

‘Housekeeping, cleaning and tidying were domestic rituals; they had a performative, role-playing quality, but were also ways of feeling at home.’

An extract fromRural Hours by Harriet Baker.

Podcast | Declan Ryan

Declan Ryan

‘Some of these bigger characters, Muhammad Ali or Lennox Lewis, they can become these mythologic, mythological characters, or these godlike figures.’

Declan Ryan on contemporary boxing.

Introduction

Thomas Meaney

‘Everybody knows a game is not worth watching unless the players are trying to win.’

Thomas Meaney introduces the issue.

A Good Day

Caryl Churchill

‘I suddenly had one of those I can’t find words for it one of those moments of joy I suppose it is.’

Fiction by Caryl Churchill.

Real Tennis

Clare Bucknell

‘Real tennis players like to say that theirs is the only proper racket sport because the rest aren’t difficult enough.’

Clare Bucknell on a historical form of tennis.

Events Ashore

An-My Lê

‘Designed to face down conventional enemies, it hasn’t won a war since 1991.’

An-My Lê photographs the United States military, introduced by Granta.

Mucker Play

Nico Walker

‘When you said so loudly that you were the best, that you were worth the top dollar, then not just every game but every play became important.’

Nico Walker on the rise and fall of American football, from Jim Thorpe to Deion Sanders.