Lilah Raptopoulos

Host of the Life and Art podcast, from FT Weekend
Culture writer at the Financial Times

 

Find Life and Art wherever you listen

Episodes

 

A conversation with novelist Elif Shafak. She and Lilah discuss national identity, the generational pain of conflict, and writing in countries that don't have freedom of speech.

 

Lilah is joined by Natalia Antelava, editor-in-chief of the popular news website called Coda Story, which focuses on global digital crises, and has been closely covering Putin’s disinformation machine in Ukraine and beyond. We step back and examine the narratives Russia has used since 2014 to confuse, distort, and spread lies.

 

Lilah speaks to James Beard Award-winning chef Pati Jinich about how diplomacy is sometimes better achieved through the language of food. Then, anthropologist and FT columnist Gillian Tett looks at social phenomena through the lens of anthropology – from crypto to how tastemakers decide what is 'cool'.

 

Maaza Mengiste is author of the epic historical novel The Shadow King. Her book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, is about the Italian invasion of Ethiopia at the start of WWII. It asks questions about how history is remembered, recorded and retold.

 

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In the podcast this week ROSE GLASS! Director / writer of Love Lies Bleeding as Saint Maud! We walk through the process of how LLB got made and I ask Rose how she filmed the part where @thekatyo vomits up Kristen Stewart and she says they lathered Kr
I love this episode so much: @heathcoteedwin has been the FT’s architecture and design critic for 25 years, and he always gives me a new way to see my city. This will change how you look at manhole covers. And streetlights. And phone boxes! Str
It’s the week where this happens. Listen to @rebeccamcrose @nikiblasina
A few months ago, I decided to make a traditional Armenian dish called Ghapama, a pumpkin stuffed with rice. I used some old Armenian recipes for inspiration, mostly from church cookbooks. I cored a pumpkin, smothered it with honey, filled it with nu
A case for being creative in your 30s, 50s, 80s, 90s. This week on the show, the great @nadiawbeard.
Hi from inside the 3 body problem. Thank you @emmavjacobs and AI editor Madhumita Murghia for making sense of a show where people deflate and reinflate. We all recorded in person and it was a dream
A true pleasure to read, think about, wrestle with @viet_t_nguyen’s work over time, then fly to LA to talk through it all with him over a two hour Lunch, and then wrestle it all again into 2500 words. It made me feel very awake! Viet is not afr
The desert!!! Oaxaca, we loved you Most half frames from @jlmcmhn. Moon landscape from Hierve el Agua and Mitla. Mezcal from @mezcalmacurichos.
Oaxaca baby! Full of spirit and spirits and teens kissing on the street 🍋 @patijinich called it the land of magical realism, and I agree

Writing

How far does a chef have to go to be truly good?

Magazine cover story: “Eleven Madison Park’s plant-based shift shows that however a chef defines good, one thing’s clear post-pandemic: it’s no longer just about winning awards”

Chez Panisse’s Alice Waters: ‘I feel an urgency’ to change how we eat

Magazine profile: The founder of the farm-to-table movement has not stopped fighting for a better relationship with our food

Malcolm Gladwell: ‘My writing had better have changed. Or I’m a failure’

Magazine profile: The journalist who turns big ideas into bestsellers talks about crime, challenging convention and changing his mind

 
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My tug of war with algorithms

Column: “The algorithms and I are in a tug of war. I am addicted to a network of companies that are financially incentivised to simplify me. I despise them but they give me things I love. They hook me, reinforce my detected patterns, take what I already like and give me more of the same.”

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Magazine cover story: Stress is costing businesses and claiming lives, so why do employees feel unsafe asking for help? This was an eight month long investigation fueled by readers.

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Finding my Armenia, a century after the genocide

Personal essay: I am half Armenian. My grandfather and great grandparents survived the Armenian Genocide. Like many in the diaspora, my family had never made the trip to Armenia. In September, we went. It was moving, delightful, complex. So I wrote about it.

More writing clips →

Live interview with poet Natasha Trethewey

September 2020

Lilah talks with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey at the FT Weekend Live Festival.