The LRB Podcast

On Politics: The Pope and the President

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0000

When commenting on the power and influence of the Catholic Church, Stalin is supposed to have asked: ‘how many divisions has the pope?’ Donald Trump has yet to question how many F35s Leo XIV has, but he may as well have done in his angry response to the American pope’s criticism of the US and Israel’s attack on Iran. With the US president’s supporters invoking the Catholic theory of ‘just war’ to defend the bombing of Iran, and the claims of Silicon Valley to offer their own paths to salvation, the Church of Rome faces multiple challenges to its role as a moral and diplomatic force.

To consider why the conflict between the pope and the American right has escalated so quickly in the past few weeks, James is joined by Massimo Faggioli, a professor in ecclesiology at the Loyola Institute at Trinity College Dublin, and Jack Hanson, an associate editor at the Yale Review. They also discuss the nature of papal authority and its evolution since the loss of the papal states in 1870, and whether we’re seeing the return of faith to the public sphere or simply the shattering of a consensus about what constitutes religion.

Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics⁠

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The War in Lebanon

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0000

Lebanese and Israeli delegations met in Washington this week for their first direct talks in 33 years. On 15 April, with talks underway, the IDF’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, designated all of southern Lebanon up to the Litani River a ‘Hizbullah kill zone’.

In this episode, Adam Shatz is joined by Joëlle Abi-Rached and Mohamad Bazzi to discuss life on the ground in Lebanon, Israel’s strategic objectives in the region and Hizbullah’s relationship to the the Lebanese state.

This episode was recorded shortly before Trump’s statement announcing the agreement of a ten-day ceasefire.

From the LRB

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Men Looking at Men

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0000

In a recent issue of the LRB, Tom Crewe asked if the Impressionist painter Gustave Caillebotte’s fixation with male figures and the male gaze is evidence not just of a homosocial milieu, but of homosexual desire. Meanwhile, in the same issue of the paper, James Butler reviewed Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-Male Sexual Relations 1400-1750 by the historian Noel Malcolm, who excavates archival evidence of sexual relationships and interactions between men in northern and southern Europe while cautioning against applying modern ideas of queerness to historical figures.

Tom and James join Malin to discuss the interplay between their pieces, and to reflect on the ways that modern interpreters attempt to read the history of homosexuality in sometimes patchy archives, as well as on gay art in the past and the present.

Read more in the LRB:

Tom Crewe: Men Watching Men https://lrb.me/lrbpod04142601

James Butler: Cultures of Homosexuality https://lrb.me/lrbpod04142602

Alice Hunt: Out of Rehab https://lrb.me/lrbpod04142603

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The philosophy of Virginia Woolf’s ‘To the Lighthouse’

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0000

In 1908, Virginia Woolf wrote that she hoped to revolutionise the novel and ‘capture multitudes of things at present fugitive’. ‘To the Lighthouse’ (1927) marks perhaps her fullest realisation of the novel as philosophical enterprise, and not simply because one of its central characters is engaged with the problem of ‘subject and object and the nature of reality’. In the final episode of their series, Jonathan and James consider different ways of reading Woolf’s great novel: as a satirical portrait of her father through Mr Ramsay, as a study of creative expression through Lily Briscoe, or as a mystical, Platonic quest in which form and style respond to philosophical propositions, and the truth of human experience is to be found in movement, conversation and laughter.

Get 50% off a 12-month subscription to Close Readings when you use the code 'woolf' at checkout:

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On Politics: Iran and the Oil Crisis

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0000

Trump’s war on Iran has highlighted recent dramatic changes in the politics of oil. While the United States still guarantees maritime security in the Middle East, it is no longer the primary beneficiary, with most oil and gas exports from the Persian Gulf going to Asia. In Britain, meanwhile, debates over drilling in the North Sea point to the urgent need for electrification, both to achieve greater energy security and to reach net zero by 2050.

In this episode, James is joined by Helen Thompson, a professor of political economy at the University of Cambridge, who argues that the war, though far from inevitable, stems in part from regional and international tensions caused by the shifting of energy flows. They discuss the central role that finance, and insurance in particular, plays in deciding whether tankers can sail, and how energy requirements helped Trump to secure the backing of major US corporations in the 2024 presidential election.

Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics⁠

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Insulin Wars

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 06:00:00 -0000

Diabetes has been recognised as a fatal condition for thousands of years: its symptoms are described in ancient Chinese, Sanskrit and Greek texts. But it wasn’t until the late 19th century that its cause began to be understood, as scientists conducted experiments on dogs. It was a pair of researchers at the University of Toronto in the early 1920s who – through a gruelling series of experiments that would not pass an ethics review today – eventually isolated the hormone that patients with diabetes are lacking.

On this episode, Liam Shaw, who reviewed the latest edition of Michael Bliss’s classic book The Discovery of Insulin in a recent issue of the LRB, joins Thomas Jones to discuss the history of diabetes treatments from insulin to Ozempic, the all-too-human scientists who discovered them and the companies that profit from them.

Read Liam’s piece: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n06/liam-shaw/bring-me-bimagrumab

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On Politics: Why you can’t change someone’s mind

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 06:00:00 -0000

Something has gone wrong in the way we discuss politics. If democratic systems since the Athenian polity have been founded on debate, then what does debate do for us today, aside from making us angrier and filling billionaire-owned social media sites with monetisable content? Sarah Stein Lubrano has argued that the ‘marketplace of ideas’ is a myth and the best ideas often don’t win out. In this episode she joins James Butler to talk about the things that do and don’t change people’s minds and why meaningful change is better achieved through means other than argument, such as social ties and collective action. They also consider what technology has done to shape the political landscape and individual behaviour, and the ways in which it has been exploited most effectively by those on the right.
Sarah Stein Lubrano is the author of Don’t Talk About Politics.

Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics⁠

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Ordinary Abuse

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:00:00 -0000

‘I hadn’t wanted to have sex with the prince,’ Virginia Giuffre said, ‘but I felt I had to.’ Reviewing Giuffre’s memoir, Nobody’s Girl, in the LRB, Andrew O’Hagan writes: ‘All the pomp, tradition, ceremony and “loyalty” in the world can’t wash away the simple facts. Ghislaine Maxwell took this young girl to Jeffrey Epstein, who abused her a number of times, then they flew her around the world to be abused by their powerful friends.’

In the same issue, Susan Pedersen observes that ‘the scandal lays bare the entitlement felt and impunity enjoyed by the powerful and crass,’ while pointing out that ‘a girl doesn’t have to fall into Epstein’s clutches to see sexual abuse up close.’

On this episode of the podcast, Susan and Andrew join Thomas Jones to discuss whether the Epstein scandal has anything new to tell us about sexual abuse.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/ordinaryabuse

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On Politics: Keir Starmer’s Mess

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 06:00:00 -0000

Less than two years after winning a huge majority, even many of Keir Starmer’s own MPs think he’s doomed. But is he? Despite a historic loss to the Green Party in the Gorton and Denton by-election last month, the prime minister has managed to cling on, for now. His critics point to a lack of vision in government, the alienation of Labour members and a failure to accept the need for radical reform. Those less critical argue it’s simply a problem with communicating his achievements, and that Britain is pretty much ungovernable anyway.
James Butler is joined by Sienna Rodgers, deputy editor at the House magazine, and Jeremy Gilbert, professor of cultural and political theory at the University of East London, to consider the reasons for Starmer’s mess, from the selection of his MPs to the ‘iron law of oligarchy’. And if he’s not prime minister at the end of the year, who will be?

Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics⁠

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What next in Iran?

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 06:00:00 -0000

On 9 March, Donald Trump described the war against Iran as ‘very complete, pretty much’. Later that day, his secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, told ABC that the ongoing strikes were ‘just the beginning’.

In this episode, Adam Shatz is joined by Robert Malley and Esfandyar Batmanghelidj to discuss the chaos of Trump’s Iran strategy, whether the United States and Israel are aligned in their objectives for the region, and what Iran’s future might look like if Trump decides to bring the conflict to an end in the near term. They also examine how the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as the new leader of the Islamic Republic could shape the course of the war, and whether Iran will be able to sustain its current military strategy.

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Caravaggio’s Bodies

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 06:00:00 -0000

In the 1590s, Caravaggio was one of ‘the swaggering, violent young men who terrorised Romans’, Erin Maglaque wrote recently in the LRB, and he ‘made his name by painting this violent, chaotic world’.

On this episode, Erin joins Thomas Jones to discuss the ways that Caravaggio represented his models' bodies on canvas – their muscles, skin, hair, clothing and dirty toenails – and what makes his paintings so unnerving that even the people who commissioned them sometimes got rid of them as soon as they could.

Find the article and further reading and listening on the episode page: https://lrb.me/caravaggiopod

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On Politics: The Rearmament Consensus

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 06:00:00 -0000

‘We must build our hard power because that is the currency of the age,’ Keir Starmer declared to the Munich Security Conference earlier this month. It’s a sentiment shared across Europe, where leaders have cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the rise of Chinese power and US instability to justify substantially increased defence spending. But the rearmament consensus has so far not been accompanied by much detail on where the money needs to go or what accountability there will be for the use of this ‘hard power’.

To discuss the origins and implications of Europe's militarisation, James is joined by Sam Jones, European security correspondent at the Financial Times, and Anna Stavrianakis, professor of international relations at the University of Sussex.

Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics⁠

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Early Modern News

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 06:00:00 -0000

‘Information in the early modern world could move no faster than the bodies that carried it,’ John Gallagher wrote recently in the LRB. For a horse and rider, that was just under fifteen kilometres per hour. Yet postal systems, as pioneered by the enterprising Tassis family, were becoming ever more reliable and efficient, at first in northern Italy and then across much of Europe – despite plague, war and the efforts of bandits and spies to intercept the mail.

If the post was highly organised, news spread more organically, whether in the form of manuscript newsletters, printed pamphlets or word of mouth, at the local barbershop, from a ballad singer on a street corner, on the Rialto bridge in Venice or in the nave of St Paul's Cathedral in London.

On this episode of the LRB podcast, John joins Thomas Jones to discuss how information (and disinformation) circulated in early modern Europe, and whether our predecessors were any better than we are at sifting fake news from fact.

Read John Gallagher’s piece: https://lrb.me/earlymodernnewspod

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On Politics: Mandelson and the Private Life of Power

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 06:00:00 -0000

When Peter Mandelson was a minister in Gordon Brown’s government he passed confidential advice to Jeffrey Epstein, who had recently been convicted of procuring a child for prostitution. This is among the many extraordinary details of Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein revealed by the release of more than three million pages of documents by the US Justice Department last month. In this episode, James is joined by investigative journalists Peter Geoghegan and Ethan Shone to discuss what Mandelson’s actions reveal about the vast influence network maintained by Epstein and the ways in which the increasing power of the lobbying and advisory industries are undermining democratic legitimacy.

Peter Geoghegan is the author of 'Democracy for Sale' and Ethan Shone is an investigations reporter for openDemocracy.

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Jessica Mitford’s Handbag

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 06:00:00 -0000

When Jessica Mitford (aka Decca) was eleven, in 1928, she opened a Running Away Account at Drummonds Bank. A few years later she ran away to Spain to help in the fight against Franco, and not long after that moved to the US where she became a naturalised citizen and joined the Communist Party.

The Mitford sisters wrote many books and even more have been written about them, but Carla Kaplan's scholarly new biography of Jessica is a welcome addition to the ‘Mitford industry’, according to Rosemary Hill, because she approaches her subject as an ‘American communist with an unusual background in the English aristocracy’.

In this episode, Rosemary joins Thomas Jones to talk about Decca’s eventful life, her work as a civil rights activist and writer, and her complicated relationships with the other Mitfords. When asked whether the bond with her sisters had ‘stood between her and life’s cruel circumstances’, Decca replied: ‘Sisters were life’s cruel circumstances.’

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/mitfordpod

Listen and subscribe to Rosemary Hill’s Close Readings series:

In Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applesignuplr

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On Politics: A New Age of Protest in Iran

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 16:18:00 -0000

The protests that began in Iran last month have been suppressed with a level of state violence not seen since the 1980s, when the Islamic Republic executed thousands of leftists and other dissidents. In this episode, Adam Shatz talks to Chowra Makaremi and Amir Ahmadi Arian about the evolution of public dissent in Iran since 1979 and why the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement of 2022 opened the way to more overtly revolutionary protest. They also discuss the economic collapse underpinning the most recent uprising and the ways in which the Iranian regime has refined the use of opacity and rumour to consolidate its power.

Chowra Makaremi is an anthropologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris and Amir Ahmadi Arian is a novelist and assistant professor at Binghamton University, New York.

Read Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi on Iran's crises in the latest issue: https://lrb.me/iranscrisespod

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Buckley, MAGA’s Patron Saint

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 10:00:00 -0000

‘Anti-communist dandy, scourge of Ivy League administrators, magazine chieftain, amanuensis to Joe McCarthy, father-confessor of the Nixon White House, Ronald Reagan consigliere: is it any wonder that William F. Buckley is still the patron saint of the American right?’, Thomas Meaney asked in the LRB, reviewing Sam Tanenhaus’s recent biography of the founder of National Review and host of 34 seasons of Firing Line.
On this episode of the podcast, Meaney joins Thomas Jones to discuss Buckley’s life and legacy: his proselytising for segregation at home and imperialism abroad, and how he laid the groundwork for Trump’s path to the White House.

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On Politics: Venezuela and the Trump Doctrine

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 06:00:00 -0000

In early January, the US military seized Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, in a display of force that echoed its numerous past interventions in Latin America. Yet in this case, Trump’s justifications for the action made no mention of democracy, but cited, among other things, migration, narco-terrorism and oil. In this episode, James is joined by historian Greg Grandin to discuss what the intervention reveals about Trump’s intentions in the region and his wider foreign policy, and why, as in the past, such adventures will ultimately expose the limits of US power.

Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics⁠

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Will the AI bubble burst?

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 06:00:00 -0000

‘Is it a bubble?’ John Lanchester asked in a recent LRB of the colossal amounts of money pouring into AI firms. ‘Of course it’s a bubble. The salient questions are how we got here, and what happens next.’

On this episode of the podcast, John joins Thomas Jones to discuss some possible answers to those questions. They talk about the history of companies such as Nvidia and OpenAI, the reasons ‘artificial intelligence’ is a misnomer, the harms that large language models can cause and why you shouldn’t rely on them for advice in the kitchen.

From the LRB

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What Don Quixote Knew

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0000

In The Man Behind the Curtain, a bonus Close Readings series for 2026, Tom McCarthy and Thomas Jones examine great novels in terms of the systems and infrastructures at work in them. For their first episode, they turn to the book that invented the modern novel. Don Quixote, the ingenious man from La Mancha, is thought to be mad by everyone he meets because he believes he’s living in a book. But from a certain point of view that makes the hero of Cervantes’ novel the only character who has any idea what’s really going on. Tom and Tom discuss the machinery – narrative, theoretical, economic, psychological and literal (those windmills) – which underpins Cervantes’ masterpiece.

This is a bonus episode from the Close Readings series. To listen to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

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What Dickens taught Mariah Carey

Wed, 24 Dec 2025 07:36:00 -0000

Did Dickens ruin Christmas? He was certainly a pioneer in exploiting its commercial potential. A Christmas Carol sold 6,000 copies in five days when it was published on 19 December 1843, and Dickens went on to write four more lucrative Christmas books in the 1840s. But in many ways, this ‘ghost story of Christmas’ couldn’t be less Christmassy. The plot displays Dickens’s typical obsession with extracting maximum sentimentality from the pain and death of his characters, and the narrative voice veers unnervingly from preachy to creepy in its voyeuristic obsessions with physical excess. The book also offers a stiff social critique of the 1834 Poor Law and a satire on Malthusian ideas of population control.

In this long extract from ‘Novel Approaches’, part of our Close Readings podcast, Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell join Tom to consider why Dickens’s dark tale has remained a Christmas staple.

This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

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Is ‘Wuthering Heights’ amoral?

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 12:11:00 -0000

Emily Brontë died on 19 December 1848. As Patricia Lockwood said in an episode of Close Readings, there is evidence that Brontë was writing a second novel to follow ‘Wuthering Heights’, but if she was, it has been lost, and it has been suggested, though never proved, that her sister Charlotte might have destroyed it. But what could possibly be in that lost novel, Lockwood wondered, that was worse, more unacceptable, than what we find in ‘Wuthering Heights’?

To mark the anniversary, we’re releasing the full version of this episode from the Close Readings series ‘Novel Approaches’. David Trotter and Patricia Lockwood join Thomas Jones to discuss Brontë’s only surviving novel, one Trotter describes as ‘completely amoral’.

Readings by Alex Colley

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Who owns Judy Garland?

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 06:00:00 -0000

For a century, Judy Garland’s joyous and vulnerable singing voice has captivated audiences at the theatre, over the airwaves and in the cinema. Camille Paglia wrote of her that she ‘became an emblematic personality of her time, into whom the mass audience projected its hopes and disappointments’. Bee Wilson joins Malin Hay to discuss Garland’s years at MGM Studios, where she was mistreated and overworked by her employers but also made some of her best pictures, growing from a contract player into a star. They discuss whether Garland’s work at MGM was worth the pain it caused her, who her greatest collaborators were, and who now owns her story.

Listen to Bee read her pieces in the audiobook Complicated Women, which includes an introductory conversation between Bee and Malin: https://lrb.me/audiobookspod

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On Politics: Inside Britain’s Asylum System

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 06:00:00 -0000

The politics of migration have driven some of the most consequential changes in Britain’s recent history and look set to dominate the next general election. Since the end of Rishi Sunak’s government, the crossings of ‘small boats’ over the English Channel and the use of ‘asylum hotels’ have become a focal point for protest, violence and escalating rhetoric, leading most recently to significant changes in the migration system proposed by the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood. To assess these changes and explain how Britain’s asylum system works, James is joined by Colin Yeo, a barrister and author of Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System, and Nicola Kelly, a former Home Office civil servant and author of Anywhere But Here: How Britain’s Broken Asylum System Fails Us All.

Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics⁠

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The Life and Death of a Photographer in Gaza

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 06:00:00 -0000

Fatma Hassona was a Palestinian photographer from Gaza City who was killed with her family by an Israeli airstrike in April 2025. A year earlier, the Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi began recording video conversations with Hassona about her life and work under Israeli bombardment, which became the film Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk. In this episode, Adam Shatz talks to Farsi about the process of making the film, the connection she formed with Hassona, and the practical and ethical challenges of documenting Israel’s devastation of Gaza and its people.

From the LRB

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Next Year on Close Readings: Realism, Nature, Narrative Poems and a history of London

Sat, 29 Nov 2025 06:00:00 -0000

We’re pleased to announce our four new Close Readings series starting in January next year:

‘Who’s Afraid of Realism?’ with James Wood and guests

‘Nature in Crisis’ with Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith

‘Narrative Poems’ with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford

‘London Revisited’ with Rosemary Hill and guests

Bonus Series: 'The Man Behind the Curtain’ with Tom McCarthy and Thomas Jones

Episodes will appear on Monday every week, with a new episode from each series appearing every four weeks. Episodes from our bonus series, ‘The Man Behind the Curtain’, will come out every couple of months, either as extra episodes or live events: look out for announcements!

If you're not already subscribed to Close Readings, sign up for just £4.99/month or £49.99/year to listen to these series plus all our past series in full:

Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://lrb.me/crintro2026apple⁠

Spotify and other podcast apps: ⁠https://lrb.me/crintro2026sc⁠

Here are the works covered in each series:

‘Who’s Afraid of Realism?’ with James Wood and guests

Flaubert, ‘Madame Bovary’

Dostoevsky, ‘Notes from Underground’

Stories by Anton Chekhov

Tolstoy, ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’

Kafka, ‘Metamorphosis’

Woolf, ‘Mrs Dalloway’

Rhys, ‘Voyage in the Dark’

Bellow, ‘Seize The Day’

Nabokov, ‘Pnin’

Spark, ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’

Sharma, ‘Family Life’

Stories by Lydia Davis

Riley, ‘My Phantoms’

‘Nature in Crisis’ with Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith

Carson, ‘Silent Spring’

Schlanger, ‘The Light Eaters’

Czerski, ‘The Blue Machine’

Lovelock, ‘Gaia’

MacFarlane, ‘Is a River Alive?’

Kimmerer, ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’

Raboteau, ‘Lessons for Survival’

Moore and Roberts, ‘The Rise of Ecofascism’

Riofrancos, ‘Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism’

And more TBD

‘Narrative Poems’ with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford

Marlowe, ‘Hero and Leander’

Shakespeare, ‘Venus and Adonis’ and ‘The Rape of Lucrece’

Milton, Book 9 of ‘Paradise Lost’

Pope, ‘The Rape of the Lock’

Coleridge ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’

Wordsworth, ‘The Ruined Cottage’ and ‘Michael’

Keats, ‘The Eve of St Agnes’

Byron, ‘Childe Roland’

Clough, ‘Amours de Voyage’

Tennyson, ‘Enoch Arden’

H.D., ‘Helen in Egypt’

Set, ‘The Golden Gate’

Carson, ‘Autobiography of Red and ‘Red Doc>’

‘London Revisited’ with Rosemary Hill

Each episode will cover a period of London’s history and begin with a piece of writing. The first episode, on Roman London, will start with an extract from Dio Cassius’s account of the Roman conquest from his Roman History.

‘The Man Behind the Curtain’ with Tom McCarthy and Thomas Jones

Cervantes, ‘Don Quixote’

Shelley, ‘Frankenstein’

Eliot, ‘Middlemarch’

Wells, ‘The Invisible Man’

Joyce, ‘Ulysses’

Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow’

On Politics: The Bust-up at the BBC

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 06:00:00 -0000

The BBC is in crisis, again. A leaked dossier alleging a lack of impartiality in its reporting on Trump, Israel, race and gender has felled its director general and drawn threats of a defamation lawsuit from the White House. Yet many at the corporation point to the dossier’s culture war slant as evidence of a right-wing plot against the BBC. Defensive and stolid, Britain’s main news and media organisation now flinches from any real conflict. Is the BBC capable of surviving in the digital era? Joining James is the former BBC journalist Lewis Goodall, now a prominent face of digital political journalism as part of the News Agents, and Dan Hind, publisher and author of The Return of the Public: Democracy, Power and the Case for Media Reform.

Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics⁠

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Aftershock: The War on Terror – Episode 1: With Us or Against Us

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 06:00:00 -0000

In the days after 9/11, George W. Bush declared a state of emergency and initiated what would become an unprecedented expansion of US power. Public debate narrowed: there were new limits on what was acceptable, and not acceptable, to say. The London Review of Books published a number of pieces that challenged this consensus, forcing its editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers, to defend the paper on national radio.

This is the first episode in a six-part series. To listen to the rest of the series follow Aftershock: The War on Terror in:

Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/wotapple

Spotify: https://lrb.me/wotspotify

Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/wotlinktree

Archive:
Rutgers Law Review, ‘CNN Live’/CNN, ‘Good Morning America’/ABC, ‘Good Day New York’/FOX5 New York/FOX, ‘SmackDown’/USA Network/WWE, ‘Meet the Press’/NBC/NBC News Productions and ‘Broadcasting House’/BBC Radio 4/BBC

Where does our waste go?

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 06:00:00 -0000

Since the 1980s, Brett Christophers wrote recently in the LRB, ‘firms have made vast amounts of money by sending the rich world’s waste to the global South’ – hazardous waste at first, joined more recently by discarded electronics, clothes and plastics. Literal mountains of our rubbish are accumulating on the peripheries of cities such as Accra and Delhi. Waste, like wealth, is unevenly distributed.

On this episode, Brett joins Tom to discuss what happens to our rubbish after we throw it away. They talk about where it goes and why it’s so difficult actually to get rid of it, let alone reduce the amount we discard, when the creation of waste is so much more profitable.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/wastepod

From the LRB

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Introducing ‘Aftershock: The War on Terror’

Sat, 15 Nov 2025 06:00:00 -0000

After 9/11, George W. Bush launched a global War on Terror. What followed was an unprecedented expansion of American power, from Guantánamo Bay to drone strikes, mass surveillance to the weaponisation of the financial system. Asked when it would end, Vice-President Dick Cheney replied: ‘Not in our lifetime.’ Two decades later, we’re still living in its shadow.

Aftershock: The War on Terror is a new six-part podcast from the London Review of Books. Daniel Soar, a senior editor at the paper, revisits the magazine’s coverage and reflects on the ways 9/11 has changed the world we live in.

First episode coming 20 November. Find the series in:

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Spotify: https://lrb.me/eb54a6

Or wherever you get your podcasts.

On Politics: Latin America’s Right-Wing Shift

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 06:00:00 -0000

At the end of the 20th century and across the first decade of the 21st, a swathe of countries across Latin America elected left-wing governments in what became known internationally as the Pink Tide. In more recent years, what many have seen as a second wave of progressive governments have collapsed, giving way to right-wing leaders such as Milei, Bukele and Bolsonaro, with support from international libertarian movements. In this episode, James is joined by Tony Wood, who wrote about this shift in the latest issue of the LRB, and Camila Vergara, a critical legal theorist at the University of Essex, to discuss why the Pink Tide governments failed, where the new brand of right-wing politics comes from, and whether the revolutionary energy found across the continent could lead to further change.

Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics⁠

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Pollution and Other Serial Killers

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 06:00:00 -0000

Between the 1960s and the turn of the century, an astonishingly large number of serial killers grew up or operated in America’s Pacific Northwest. Caroline Fraser’s book Murderland, reviewed in the LRB by James Lasdun, argues that a significant contributing factor may have been the spew of lead fumes and other toxic emissions that billowed unchecked across the region during those decades. On this episode, James joins Tom to discuss the evidence, and what the juxtaposition of industrial lead poisoning and serial murder may tell us about different kinds of violence in modern America, even if a direct causal link remains unproved.

Find the piece and further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/leadpollutionpod

Read more from James Lasdun for the LRB in the archive: https://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/james-lasdun

From the LRB

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On Politics: Do bond markets and the Bank of England run Britain?

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 06:00:00 -0000

Andy Burnham recently said that the government is ‘in hock to the bond markets’, and the political turbulence of the past few years, not least the downfall of Liz Truss following her ‘mini-budget’, would seem to back this up. But the bond markets are only part of the picture: the actions of the Bank of England and the fiscal rules a government sets for itself also play significant roles in the decisions a chancellor can make. In this episode James is joined by former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane and Daniela Gabor, professor of economics at SOAS, to consider why governments are so afraid of ‘bond vigilantes’ and the increasing influence of central banks on policy since the financial crisis of 2008. Should the Bank of England remain independent? And what room for manoeuvre does Rachel Reeves have in her budget next month?

Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics⁠

From the LRB

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Extinction, Fast and Slow

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 05:00:00 -0000

One of the difficulties in thinking about extinction, as Lorraine Daston argued in her recent review of Vanished by Sadiah Qureshi, is ‘the challenge of scale: the mismatch between our decades and centuries and the Earth’s epochs and aeons’.

Lorraine joins Tom to explore the ways that ideas about extinction are warped by our timescales and politics. They discuss how the language of natural selection was used to excuse violence and ecocide, and the continued influence of ‘empirical’ myths on approaches to conservation and human culture today.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/evolutionpod

From the LRB

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On Politics: The Online Right (and Left)

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 05:00:00 -0000

For the best part of a decade, a new type of anti-systemic, nationalist politics has been emerging from different corners of the online world. In Britain, this has united with older forms of cultural conservatism to propel Nigel Farage and Reform UK to within touching distance of power (at least for now). In this episode, James is joined by political theorist Alan Finlayson to understand what’s driving these changes and the ways in which different styles of online rhetoric, on both the left and right, are shaping our political discourse. They also consider whether the distinction between left and the right is still meaningful and why the way we understand equality has become the fundamental political dividing line.

Alan Finlayson is professor of political and social theory at the University of East Anglia.

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Lessons from the Peace Process

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 05:00:00 -0000

Adam is joined by Robert Malley to discuss the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and the long history of the peace process, in which Malley has been involved on behalf of several US administrations. They also talk about his recent book about the conflict, Tomorrow Is Yesterday, co-authored with Hussein Agha, why attempts to broker a lasting peace have failed and what the future might hold for the Palestinian movement.

Find further reading on the LRB website: https://lrb.me/peaceprocesspod

From the LRB

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Why should we listen to Amanda Knox?

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 11:00:00 -0000

It's nearly eighteen years since Amanda Knox was arrested on suspicion of murdering her housemate Meredith Kercher in Perugia, and more than ten since she was finally exonerated of the crime. She has just written her second book, Free, which, as Jessica Olin wrote recently in the LRB, ‘chronicles her attempt to adjust to life after prison’.

On this episode of the LRB podcast, Jessica joins Tom to talk about the murder case, the media frenzy surrounding it – which portrayed Knox as either a sex-crazed psychopath or an angelic innocent abroad – and the efforts Knox has since made to speak for herself and on behalf of others who have been wrongly convicted.

From the LRB

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On Politics: The Death of the Conservative Party?

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 05:00:00 -0000

In its nearly two hundred years of existence the Conservative Party has survived through a combination of protean adaptability and ruthlessness, not least in its willingness to change leaders. Yet under its present leader, Kemi Badenoch, the party often described (by itself, at least) as the natural party of government appears to be facing a unique moment of peril. Polling now places Reform UK as the leading party of the right while Badenoch has presided over a steady stream of high-profile defections to Nigel Farage’s party, including one of her own MPs, and enormous losses in local elections. For this episode James Butler is joined by Anthony Seldon, a prolific historian of recent Tory administrations, and Henry Hill, deputy editor of Conservative Home, to consider what or who is to blame for the party’s dire situation and whether it will still be around to celebrate its bicentennial in 2034.

From the LRB

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How to Write Like Elmore Leonard

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 05:00:00 -0000

Elmore Leonard ‘did more with less than any crime writer I can think of’ J. Robert Lennon wrote in the latest issue of the LRB. Leonard was born in New Orleans in 1925 and by the time he died in 2013 had published over forty novels selling tens of millions of copies, many of which were made into films such as Jackie Brown and Get Shorty. (A few have recently been reissued as Penguin Modern Classics.) He also wrote ten rules for writers that serve as a manifesto for the minimalist, dialogue-heavy style he mastered. In this episode Lennon joins Tom to discuss the usefulness of Leonard’s rules and the ways in which great crime writing will always defy the prescriptions of its genre.

Read J. Robert Lennon on Leonard: https://lrb.me/leonardpod

From the LRB

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On Politics: Labour's Problems

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 05:00:00 -0000

When Keir Starmer brought Labour back to government last year with a majority of 174, many talked about two or even three terms in power. But over fourteen months the prime minister has run into numerous problems, losing both Angela Rayner as deputy PM and Peter Mandelson as US ambassador (to different scandals), and facing formidable opposition from Nigel Farage’s Reform party riding high on the issue of immigration control. In this first episode of a new strand in the LRB Podcast, host James Butler talks to former Labour MP and minister Chris Mullin, columnist Andy Beckett and journalist Morgan Jones about whether Labour can recover from critical mistakes over tax, why they’re failing to communicate their achievements, and who they should really be trying to represent.

This was our first episode. Tell us what you think! https://lrb.me/opfeedback

From the LRB

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Selling the Manosphere

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 11:00:00 -0000

The manosphere, Emily Witt writes in a recent piece for the LRB, is the ‘online network of male supremacist websites, influencers and YouTube channels’ whose popularity has exploded in the last fifteen years. Perceiving themselves as an underclass disenfranchised by feminism, men are increasingly turning to misogynistic content to gain a sense of control over their lives.

Beyond the internet, the rhetoric of the manosphere has reached the highest levels of the US government, as well as sparking a series of violent misogynistic crimes. Emily Witt joins Malin Hay to discuss what makes the manosphere appealing to young men, and what can be done about it.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/manospherepod

From the LRB

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The Debt to David Graeber

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 11:00:00 -0000

When David Graeber died in 2020, at the age of 59, he left not only a substantial body of work on economic and social anthropology, and high-profile books including Debt: The First 5000 Years and Bullshit Jobs, but also a legacy as an influential political activist and leading figure in the Occupy movement, credited with contributing the slogan ‘We are the 99 per cent’. Following the publication of a new collection of Graeber’s essays, Richard Seymour joins Tom to survey his thought, ranging from the theories of power Graeber developed from his early field research in Madagascar to the daring arguments of his posthumous work, Dawn of Everything (co-written with David Wengrow) challenging the orthodox view of how egalitarian and hierarchical societies developed over the past thirty thousand years.

Richard Seymour is a writer and theorist whose books include Disaster Nationalism and The Twittering Machine.

From the LRB

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What’s so great about Formula One?

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 16:30:00 -0000

Joanne O’Leary, an editor at the LRB, has been following Formula One since she was a child. Thomas Jones wrote recently in the LRB about the life and times of Enzo Ferrari. In this episode, they discuss the ways F1 has changed over the years (not least how it’s become safer), what it’s like to drive a ‘regular’ Ferrari, the extreme demands of handling an F1 vehicle, and why the personalities of the people behind the cars —the people who drive them, manufacture them, live for them and, in some cases, die in them — matter so much.

From the LRB

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Close Readings: 'Our Mutual Friend' by Charles Dickens

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 14:45:00 -0000

'Our Mutual Friend' was Dickens’s last completed novel, published in serial form in 1864-65. The story begins with a body being dredged from the ooze and slime of the Thames, then opens out to follow a wide array of characters through the dust heaps, paper mills, public houses and dining rooms of London and its hinterland.

In this extended extract from Novel Approaches, a Close Readings series from the LRB, Tom is joined by Rosemary Hill and Tom Crewe to make sense of a complex work that was not only the last great social novel of the period but also gestured forwards to the crisp, late-century cynicism of Oscar Wilde. They consider the ways in which the book was responding to the darkening mood of mid-Victorian Britain and the fading of the post-Waterloo generation, as well as the remarkable flexibility of its prose, with its shifting modes, tenses and perspectives, that combine to make Our Mutual Friend one of the most rewarding of Dickens’s novels.

To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

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From the LRB

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The Psychology of Tennis

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 15:00:00 -0000

As well as raw talent and incredible athleticism, professional tennis ‘requires extraordinary psychological capacities’, Edmund Gordon wrote recently in the LRB: ‘obsessive focus, epic self-belief’. Edmund – whose son is a rising star on the London under-nine circuit – joins Tom to discuss four recent books about the so-called golden generation of Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Murray, what it took for them to get to the summit of the game, and what happens to players who never manage to break into the top hundred. They also talk about the more recent rivalry between Sinner and Alcaraz, and why Djokovic thinks a slice of bread is like kryptonite.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/tennispod

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From the LRB

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Why you should care about golf

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 17:10:00 -0000

With the world's most famous amateur golfer now in charge of the 'free world', the sport has never been more important in the lives of non-golfers. When Donald Trump was spotted cheating recently on a course in Scotland, it was recognised by enthusiasts and sportswriters as a major violation in a game traditionally based on self-policing and high principles.

David Trotter joins Tom, a non-golfer, to explain why golf is the favoured sport of US presidents, the role that fantasy plays on the fairway, and why Wodehouse believed that ‘to find a man’s character, play golf with him’.

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From the LRB

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Close Readings: ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 11:00:00 -0000

Born from grief, exile, intellectual ferment and the ‘year without a summer’, Frankenstein is a creation myth with its own creation myth. Mary Shelley’s novel is a foundational work of science fiction, horror and trauma narrative, and continues to spark reinvention and reinterpretation.

In their fourth conversation together, Adam Thirlwell and Marina Warner explore Shelley’s treatment of birth, death, monstrosity and the limits of science. They discuss Frankenstein’s philosophical and personal undercurrents, and how the creature and his creator have broken free from the book.

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Rat Universes

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 16:16:00 -0000

The first true lab rat was the Wistar rat, a strain specifically bred for biomedical research. In his “rat universe” experiments, John B. Calhoun placed large numbers of these rats in a controlled environment for more than a year, and found evidence for the same anxieties sparked by their urban cousins: overpopulation and an ensuing ‘behavioural sink’.

Jon Day joins Tom to discuss lab rats, street rats and the ‘rat in the head’. They explore the reasons many found Calhoun’s rat utopias compelling, and why his conclusions do both rats and humans a grave disservice.

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Pinochet and the Nazis

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 15:04:00 -0000

Walther Rauff, a notorious Nazi war criminal, lived openly in Chile after the Second World War, working for the Pinochet regime’s secret police in the 1970s and avoiding extradition to West Germany. When General Pinochet was himself arrested in London in 1998 under an international warrant issued by a Spanish judge, the British government returned him to Chile on medical grounds.

In this episode, Andy Beckett, the author of Pinochet in Piccadilly, joins Tom to talk about these two cases of impunity, the subjects of a recent book by Philippe Sands. They also consider why the democratic government of Salvador Allende that Pinochet overthrew in 1973 has been a touchstone for the international left in the decades since, and whether something similar to Pinochet's coup could have happened in the UK.

Find Andy’s article and further reading on the episode page:

https://lrb.me/pinochetpod

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Israel's War of Opportunity

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 15:34:00 -0000

Iran’s supreme leader recently claimed victory, simply by reason of survival, in the war launched by Israel on 13 June, and joined a week later by the United States. With the twelve-day conflict apparently over, Adam Shatz talks to Narges Bajoghli, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, and Robert Malley, a former lead negotiator for the US in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, about why the war came about and what it means for the region. With Bajoghli, Adam looks at the way the war has been seen by the regime’s supporters and detractors, and the effects on the Iranian population of Israel’s widespread infiltration of the country. With Malley, he considers the events that paved the way for Israel’s attack and why America’s bombing of the nuclear facility at Fordow will probably not spur Iran to accelerate its nuclear programme.

Close Readings: Mikhail Bulgakov and James Hogg

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 05:00:00 -0000

James Hogg’s ghoulish metaphysical crime novel 'The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner' (1824) was presented as a found documented dating from the 17th century, describing in different voices the path to devilry of an antinomian Calvinist, Robert Wringhim. Mikhail Bulgakov’s 'The Master and Margarita', written between 1928 and 1940, also hinges around a pact with Satan (Woland), who arrives in Moscow to create mayhem among its literary community and helps reunite an outcast writer, the Master, with his lover, Margarita.

In this extended extra from ‘Fiction and the Fantastic’, Marina Warner and Adam Thirlwell look at the ways in which these two ferocious works of comic horror tackle the challenge of representing fanaticism, be it Calvinism or Bolshevism, and consider why both writers used the fantastical to test reality.

‘Fiction and the Fantastic’ is part of the LRB's Close Readings podcast.

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The Best-Paid Woman in NYC

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 12:51:00 -0000

As J.P. Morgan's personal librarian, entrusted with building his collection, Belle da Costa Greene could ‘spend more money in an afternoon than any other young woman of 26’, as the New York Times put it in 1912. In the latest LRB, Francesca Wade reviews a new biography of Greene and a recent exhibition dedicated to her at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City, of which Greene was the first director. Francesca joins Tom on the podcast to talk about Greene's life and work. They discuss her long-term, long-distance relationship with the art historian Bernard Berenson and her reasons for concealing her African American heritage.

Find further reading in the LRB: https://lrb.me/wadepod

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Silicon Valley Warriors

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 11:00:00 -0000

Donald Trump recently announced a defence budget of more than one trillion dollars, much of which will be funnelled to private companies – and increasingly to tech firms such as Space X and Palantir. Laleh Khalili joins Thomas Jones to discuss the relationship between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon. She explains the limitations of the Rumsfeld Doctrine, the strengthening grip of private corporations on US defence agencies and why the trickle-down benefits of tech innovation can’t justify military spending.

This conversation was recorded on 12 June 2025.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/pentagonpod

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The Best French Novel of the 20th Century

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 13:26:00 -0000

Marguerite Yourcenar entered the Académie Française in 1981, the first woman to be admitted. Her novel Memoirs of Hadrian, published thirty years earlier, is ‘often considered the best French novel of the 20th century’, as Joanna Biggs wrote in a recent issue of the LRB. In this episode of the podcast, Joanna joins Tom to discuss Yourcenar’s life and work, and what makes Memoirs of Hadrian – a reimagining of the life of the Roman emperor – such a good book.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/yourcenarpod

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Is this fascism?

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 14:47:00 -0000

‘How useful is it,’ Daniel Trilling asked recently in the LRB, ‘to compare the current global resurgence of right-wing nationalism to fascism?’ In this episode of the podcast Daniel joins TJ to explore the question in light of his review of Richard Seymour’s book Disaster Nationalism. They discuss the continuities between earlier forms of far-right politics and its more recent manifestations, as well as what’s new about the current moment, and why fascism may be a useful frame for thinking not only about where right-wing nationalism comes from, but also about what might be done to forestall it.

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Close Readings: Nietzsche's 'Schopenhauer as Educator'

Wed, 28 May 2025 10:01:00 -0000

In this extended extract from their series 'Conversations in Philosophy', part of the LRB's Close Readings podcast, Jonathan Rée and James Wood look at one of Friedrich Nietzsche's early essays, 'Schopenhauer as Educator'. For Nietzsche, Schopenhauer’s genius lay not in his ideas but in his heroic indifference, a thinker whose value to the world is as a liberator rather than a teacher, who shows us what philosophy is really for: to forget what we already know. ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’ was written in 1874, when Nietzsche was 30, and was published in a collection with three other essays – on Wagner, David Strauss and the use of history – that has come to be titled Untimely Meditations. Jonathan and James consider the essays together and their powerful attack on the ethos of the age, railing against the greed and power of the state, fake art, overweening science, the triviality of universities and the deification of success.

James Wood is a contributor to the LRB and staff writer at The New Yorker, whose books include The Broken Estate, How Fiction Works and a novel, Upstate.

Jonathan Rée is a writer, philosopher and regular contributor to the LRB whose books include Witcraft and A Schoolmaster's War.

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Old Pope, New Pope

Wed, 21 May 2025 15:01:00 -0000

‘The Church needs to change; the Church cannot afford to change,’ Colm Tóibín wrote recently in the LRB. In this episode of the podcast, he joins Tom to discuss how the new pope will have to navigate this paradox. He also looks back at the Francis papacy, and the way that Francis behind his smile ran the Vatican with an iron first; at relations between the Vatican and the Trump administration; and at Francis’s motives for bringing the future Pope Leo XIV to Rome in 2023: ‘the reason, in my view, is the same reason that Francis began to smile.’

Read Colm Tóibín on Pope Leo: https://lrb.me/toibinpopepod

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In the Soviet Archives: a conversation with Sheila Fitzpatrick

Wed, 14 May 2025 15:28:00 -0000

When Sheila Fitzpatrick first went to Moscow in the 1960s as a young academic, the prevailing understanding of the Soviet Union in the West was governed by the ‘totalitarian hypothesis’, of a system ruled entirely from the top down. Her examination of the ministry papers of Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first Commissar of Enlightenment after the Revolution, challenged this view, beginning a long career in which she has frequently questioned the conventional understanding of Soviet history and changed the field with works such as Everyday Stalinism. In this episode, Sheila talks to Daniel about her work in the Soviet archives, about some of the obstacles researchers face, and her latest books, Lost Souls and The Death of Stalin.

Read more by Sheila in the LRB: https://lrb.me/fitzpatrickpod

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How They Built the Pyramids

Wed, 07 May 2025 15:47:00 -0000

In 2013, a group of French and Egyptian archaeologists discovered of cache of papyri as old as the Great Pyramid of Giza. Some of the texts were written by people who had worked on the pyramids: a tally of their daily labour ferrying stones, for instance, between quarry and building site, and the payment they received in fabrics and beer. Robert Cioffi reviewed The Red Sea Scrolls: How Ancient Papyri Reveal the Secrets of the Pyramids by Pierre Tallet and Mark Lehner in the latest issue of the paper. On the podcast this week, he joins Tom to discuss how and why the pyramids were built, and by whom, as well as his own, hair-raising experiences helping to raise a fallen column at an Egyptian archaeological site.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/pyramidspod

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Cold War Pen-Pals

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 15:59:00 -0000

The Soviet Women’s Anti-Fascist Committee was set up in 1941 to foster connections with Allied countries and encourage British and US women to ‘invest personally’ in the war effort. Two years later, the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship in New York started its own letter-writing programme. The correspondence between a few hundred pairs of women in the US and the Soviet Union – sharing the details of their everyday lives, discovering what they had in common as well as their differences – carried on until the mid-1950s, even as hostilities between their governments escalated. In this episode, Miriam Dobson joins Tom to talk about her recent review of Dear Unknown Friend by Alexis Peri, which documents this ‘remarkable correspondence’. Drawing on her own research, Dobson also discusses other exchanges between ordinary people on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, and how the letter-writing changed the women's ideas about their own lives.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/penpalspod

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Close Readings: 'Vanity Fair' by William Makepeace Thackeray

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0000

Thackeray's comic masterpiece, 'Vanity Fair', is a Victorian novel looking back to Regency England as an object both of satire and nostalgia. Thackeray’s disdain for the Regency is present throughout the book, not least in the proliferation of hapless characters called George, yet he also draws heavily on his childhood experiences to unfold a complex story of fractured families, bad marriages and the tyranny of debt. In this episode, taken from our Close Readings podcast series 'Novel Approaches', Colin Burrow and Rosemary Hill join Tom to discuss Thackeray’s use of clothes, curry and the rapidly changing topography of London to construct a turbulent society full of peril and opportunity for his heroine, Becky Sharp, and consider why the Battle of Waterloo was such a recurrent preoccupation in literature of the period.

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Conceiving Pregnancy

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 14:15:00 -0000

It's now possible to take a home pregnancy test eight days after ovulation, yet in the 16th century, women sometimes turned to astrologers for confirmation. And in the 1950s and 1960s, one might send a urine sample to an address in Sloane Street where they would inject it into a tropical frog that would lay eggs. In this episode of the LRB Podcast, Erin Maglaque joins Thomas Jones to discuss how the understanding of conception has changed over the centuries since the early modern period, what knowledge has been gained but also what may have been lost.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/conceptionpod

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Trump’s War by Executive Order

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 11:29:00 -0000

Judith Butler and Aziz Rana join Adam Shatz to discuss Donald Trump’s use of executive orders to target birthright citizenship, protest, support of Palestinian rights, academic freedom, constitutionally protected speech and efforts to ensure inclusion on the basis of race, gender and sexual orientation. They consider in particular the content of Executive Order 14168, which ‘restores’ the right of the government to decide what sex people are, as well as the wider programme of rights-stripping implied by Trump’s agenda.

Read Judith's piece here:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n06/judith-butler/this-is-wrong

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On Mavis Gallant

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 15:41:44 -0000

Mavis Gallant is best known for her short stories, 116 of which were first published in the New Yorker. Extraordinarily varied and prolific, she arranged her life around the solitary pleasure of writing while battling extreme self-doubt. Tessa Hadley joins Joanne O’Leary to discuss her recent review of 44 previously uncollected Gallant stories and her own forthcoming selection for Pushkin Press. They explore what makes Gallant a ‘writer’s writer’, where her reporting and fiction intersect, and why her novels fail where her short stories succeed.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/gallantpod

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Close Readings: ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0000

When Wuthering Heights was published in December 1847, many readers didn’t know what to make of it: one reviewer called it ‘a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors’. In this extended extract from episode three of ‘Novel Approaches’, Patricia Lockwood and David Trotter join Thomas Jones to explore Emily Brontë’s ‘completely amoral’ novel. As well as questions of Heathcliff’s mysterious origins and ‘obscene’ wealth, of Cathy’s ghost, bad weather, gnarled trees, even gnarlier characters and savage dogs, they discuss the book’s intricate structure, Brontë’s inventive use of language and the extraordinary hold that her story continues to exert over the imaginations of readers and non-readers alike.

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The Grimms’ Weird Tales

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 16:39:32 -0000

The folk tales collected and rewritten by the Brothers Grimm may ‘seem to come from nowhere and to belong to everyone’, Colin Burrow wrote recently in the LRB, but ‘this is an illusion’. In the latest episode of the LRB podcast, Colin joins Thomas Jones to talk about the distinctive place and time in which Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm lived and worked, as well as the enduring appeal and ‘vital weirdness’ of the tales.

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Weaponising Antisemitism

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 16:16:03 -0000

Two recent books, by Peter Beinart and Rachel Shabi, discuss the response of Jewish communities in the West to the Hamas attacks of 7 October and Israel’s subsequent destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza, and the shifting politics of antisemitism. In this episode Adam Shatz talks to Peter and Rachel about the moral rupture Israel’s actions have caused, particularly along generational lines, among Jews in both the US and UK, and why the question of antisemitism has become separated from the larger politics of anti-racism, allowing the political right to claim this moral territory in defence of Israel.

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Who is Paul Marshall?

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 12:10:07 -0000

A decade ago, the hedge fund manager Paul Marshall was known as a Lib Dem donor and founder of the Ark academy chain. Now, as the owner of UnHerd, GB News and, since last September, the Spectator, he’s a right-wing media tycoon. Peter Geoghegan joins Thomas Jones to discuss Marshall’s transformation. He explains the ‘symbiotic relationship’ between Marshall and Michael Gove, their shared connection to evangelical Christianity, and the changing shape of conservative politics in Britain.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/marshallpod

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Close Readings: 'Crotchet Castle' by Thomas Love Peacock

Wed, 26 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0000

Thomas Love Peacock didn’t want to write novels, at least not in the form they had taken in the first half of the 19th century. In Crotchet Castle he rejects the expectation that novelists should reveal the interiority of their characters, instead favouring the testing of opinions and ideas. His ‘novel of talk’, published in 1831, appears largely like a playscript in which disparate characters assemble for a house party next to the Thames before heading up the river to Wales. Their debates cover, among other things, the Captain Swing riots of 1830, the mass dissemination of knowledge, the emerging philosophy of utilitarianism and the relative merits of medieval and contemporary values.

In this extended extract from 'Novel Approaches', a Close Readings series from the LRB, Clare Bucknell is joined by Freya Johnston and Thomas Keymer to discuss where the book came from and its use of ‘sociable argument’ to offer up-to-date commentary on the economic and political turmoil of its time.

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Deaths in Custody

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 14:25:38 -0000

Since 1995, at least 51 young people have died in Scottish prisons. These include Katie Allan and William Lindsay, who shared strong support networks and, despite very different life experiences, died in similar circumstances. Their deaths were deemed preventable in a long-awaited inquiry that identified a ‘catalogue’ of failures but led to no prosecutions.

Dani Garavelli has been investigating William and Katie’s deaths since 2018. She joins Malin to discuss the high rate of suicide in custody and why Scotland’s supposedly enlightened approach to youth justice is deeply flawed.

Find Dani Garavelli’s piece on the episode page: https://lrb.me/deathsincustodypod

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Have we surrendered to climate breakdown?

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 15:20:00 -0000

In 2015, a vigorous response to climate change seemed possible: even fossil fuel companies talked about transitioning to cleaner energy. But exploration and exploitation of oil and gas reserves have continued unabated, and in 2024, annual temperatures surpassed the 1.5ºC limit set by the Paris Agreement. In a recent piece, Brett Christophers describes the global shift from active policymaking to acceptance and surrender. He joins Tom to discuss the roles of Europe, the US and China in climate change, why solutions like ‘carbon capture’ are futile and where there’s room for cautious optimism.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/climateovershootpod

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On Vigdis Hjorth

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 15:24:54 -0000

The Norwegian novelist Vigdis Hjorth is a master of the collapsing relationship. In her twenty books, five of which have been translated into English, she turns her eye to estranged siblings, tormented lovers, demanding parents and disaffected colleagues with the same combination of philosophical penetration and sympathy. But she hasn’t always received the recognition afforded to her male peers. On this week’s episode, Toril Moi joins Malin to discuss Hjorth’s early reputation as an ‘erotic’ novelist and what that gets wrong about her work.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/hjorthpod

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Close Readings: ‘Mansfield Park’ by Jane Austen

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0000

On one level, Mansfield Park is a fairytale transposed to the 19th century: Fanny Price is the archetypal poor relation who, through her virtuousness, wins a wealthy husband. But Jane Austen’s 1814 novel is also a shrewd study of speculation, ‘improvement’ and the transformative power of money.

In this abridged version of the first episode of Novel Approaches, Colin Burrow joins Clare Bucknell and Thomas Jones to discuss Austen’s acute reading of property and precarity, and why Fanny’s moral cautiousness is a strategic approach to the riskiest speculation of all: marriage.

To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

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Find further reading and viewing on the episode page: https://lrb.me/mansfieldparkpod

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Ronald Reagan’s Make-Believe

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 16:57:00 -0000

Ronald Reagan, as Jackson Lears wrote recently in the LRB, was a ‘telegenic demagogue’ whose ‘emotional appeal was built on white people’s racism’. His presidency left the United States a far more unequal place at home, with a renewed commitment to deadly imperial adventures abroad. Yet he had a gift for making up stories that ‘made America feel good about itself again’. On the latest episode of the LRB podcast, Lears joins Tom to discuss Reagan’s life and self-made legend, from his hardscrabble Midwestern boyhood to the White House by way of Hollywood, and to consider the lasting effects of his presidency.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/reaganpod

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After Assad

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 15:35:50 -0000

In the month since Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was overthrown by a coalition of rebel forces, thousands of political prisoners have been released while many more remain missing, assumed lost to the regime. The most powerful group among the rebels, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has moved to take control of the country while Israel has seized the opportunity to carry out extensive bombing of Syria’s military facilities. In this episode, Adam Shatz is joined by Loubna Mrie and Omar Dahi to discuss these events and consider what the end of fifty years of Ba’athist tyranny means for the Syrian people both at home and in exile.

Loubna Mrie is a Syrian activist and writer living in the United States.

Omar Dahi is a professor of economics at Hampshire College and a research associate at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Abbamania

Wed, 08 Jan 2025 16:00:00 -0000

‘OK, that’s that. It’s over now,’ Björn Ulvaeus thought after Abba broke up in 1982. ‘But,’ as Chal Ravens writes in the latest LRB, ‘Björn’s zeitgeist detector was, as usual, on the blink.’ By the late 1990s, Abba ‘were basically tap water’. In the latest episode of the LRB podcast, Chal joins Thomas Jones to discuss the foursome’s rise to global domination from distinctly Swedish origins, and whether the arc of history bends towards disco.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/abbamaniapod

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A Conversation with Neal Ascherson

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0000

Neal Ascherson has worked as a journalist for more than six decades, reporting from Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, its successor states and elsewhere. He has also written more than a hundred pieces for the London Review of Books, from its seventh issue (in February 1980) to its most recent. In this episode of the LRB podcast, Ascherson talks to Thomas Jones about his recent piece on the journalist Claud Cockburn and about his own life and career, from his time as propaganda secretary for the Uganda National Congress to the moment he witnessed preparations for the kidnapping of Mikhail Gorbachev in Crimea but ‘missed the scoop of a lifetime’.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/aschersonpod

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Close Readings: Marcus Aurelius

Tue, 24 Dec 2024 15:11:24 -0000

This week on the LRB Podcast, a free episode from one of our Close Readings series. For their final conversation Among the Ancients, Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones turn to the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Said by Machiavelli to be the last of the ‘five good emperors’ who ruled Rome for most of the second century CE, Marcus oversaw devastating wars on the frontiers, a deadly plague and economic turmoil. The writings known in English as The Meditations, and in Latin as ‘to himself’, were composed in Greek in the last decade of Marcus’ life. They reveal his preoccupation with illness, growing old, death and posthumous reputation, as he urges himself not to be troubled by such transient things.

Readings by Hazel Holder.

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Saving Masud Khan

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 12:00:16 -0000

Wynne Godley was by turns a professional oboist, a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, an economist at the Treasury and a director of the Royal Opera House. Yet at thirty he found himself ‘living through an artificial self’ and turned to psychoanalysis for help.

Masud Khan was a protégé of D.W. Winnicott and the darling of British psychoanalysis. He was also much else besides. In this unforgettable piece from 2001, Godley describes his baffling and disastrous sessions with Khan.

Read by Duncan Wilkins.

Find the original piece and further reading at the episode page: https://lrb.me/godleypod

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Gaza, Before and After

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 16:22:39 -0000

Ghassan Abu-Sittah and Muhammad Shehada join Adam Shatz to describe what life was like in Gaza in the months and years leading up to the Hamas attack on Israel last October, and to discuss the experiences of Gazans during Israel’s subsequent – and ongoing – devastation of the territory.

On Lisa Marie Presley

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 12:00:30 -0000

As Elvis’s only child, Lisa Marie Presley was burdened from birth with extraordinary, largely unwanted fame. Before her death in 2023, she spent years as tabloid fodder, less for her sporadic music career than for her highly publicised relationships with Michael Jackson, Nicolas Cage and Scientology.

In a recent review of her posthumous memoir, Jessica Olin celebrates Lisa Marie’s resilience and charisma in the face of ruthless publicity. Jessica joins Tom to discuss Lisa Marie’s ambivalent relationship with fame, and how a new generation are encountering the Presley family saga through her daughter, Riley Keough.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/lisamariepod

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Labour's Economic Conundrum

Wed, 27 Nov 2024 13:01:54 -0000

William Davies joins Tom to assess the efforts of the new Labour government in tackling the UK's many economic challenges. They consider whether Rachel Reeves’s first budget, with its substantial tax rises, can do anything more than arrest the decline of the public finances, and what Keir Starmer hopes to achieve with his public overtures to the likes of Google and BlackRock. Will their technocratic style of government be able to survive the pressures of populist politics, or is their long-term thinking simply too long-term to bring election-winning improvements to people’s everyday lives?

Read William Davies's piece: https://lrb.me/davies4622pod

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Endgame in Ukraine

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 10:54:36 -0000

James Meek talks to Tom about his latest report from Ukraine, where he spent time in Kharkiv and Kupiansk in the east of the country. In Kharkiv, he found a population living in fear not only of the Russian glide bombs falling daily on the city, but also of the increasingly ruthless activity of the Ukrainian military recruitment office, desperate to secure fresh troops to resist Russia's advances. James and Tom discuss the current state of the conflict, what a Trump presidency might mean for US policy and whether Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles could make any difference to the progress of the war.

Read James's latest report from Ukraine:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n22/james-meek/nobody-wants-to-hear-this

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The Trump Takeover

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 16:34:28 -0000

Adam Shatz is joined by Jamelle Bouie and Deborah Friedell to pick through the results and implications of Trump’s victory. The US has a booming economy of high wages and nearly full employment, yet economic discontent, particularly around inflation, has been one of the more popular explanations for the election result. As well as considering the importance of inflation, Jamelle and Deborah look at what went wrong with the Harris campaign’s big bet on abortion rights, why Republican-voting women say they feel safer under Trump and why the Democrats’ insistence that democracy was on the ballot failed to resonate with many voters.

Read Adam Tooze on the Democrats' defeat in the LRB:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n22/adam-tooze/the-democrats-defeat

Read Deborah Friedell on J.D. Vance

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n20/deborah-friedell/short-cuts

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The Mendel Inheritance

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 13:43:54 -0000

When Gregor Mendel published the results of his experiments on pea plants in 1866 he initiated a fierce debate about the nature of heredity and genetic determinism that continues today. The battle lines were drawn in England in the late 19th century by William Bateson, who believed in fixed genetic inheritance, and W.F.R. Weldon, who argued that Mendel’s experiments revealed far more variation than Bateson and his supporters acknowledged. In this episode Lorraine Daston joins Tom to chart the development of these arguments, described in a new book by Gregory Radick, through scientific and cultural discourse over the past 150 years, and consider why the history of science has a tendency to track such controversies in antagonistic terms, often to the detriment of the science itself.

Read Lorraine's piece: https://lrb.me/dastonpod

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Early Modern Maths

Wed, 30 Oct 2024 15:49:22 -0000

On budget day, Tom Johnson joins Malin Hay to discuss the revolution in numeracy and use of numbers in Early Modern England, from the black and white squares of the ‘reckoning cloth’ to logarithmic calculating machines, as described in a new book by Jessica Marie Otis. How did the English go from seeing arithmetic as the province of tradespeople and craftsmen to valuing maths as an educational discipline? Tom and Malin consider the importance of the move from Roman to Arabic numerals in this ‘quantitative transformation’ and the uses and abuses of statistics in the period.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/earlymodernmaths

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On Binyavanga Wainaina

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 15:37:02 -0000

In the latest issue of the LRB, Jeremy Harding reviews How to Write about Africa, a posthumous collection of essays and stories by Binyavanga Wainaina, one of postcolonial Africa’s great anglophone satirists. Jeremy joins Tom to talk about Wainaina’s life and work, including the title essay and his ambivalent response to its popularity (‘I went viral,’ he later said, ‘I became spam’); his reporting from South Sudan; the ‘lost chapter’ from his memoir in which he imagines coming out to his parents; and his account of travelling to Senegal to interview the musician Youssou N'Dour, a piece that Harding describes as both ‘beautifully done’ and ‘extremely funny’.

Find further reading and external links on the episode page: https://lrb.me/wainainapod

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A New War in Lebanon

Fri, 18 Oct 2024 15:02:00 -0000

In his third conversation looking at the crisis in the Middle East, Adam talks to Mohamad Bazzi about Israel’s expansion of its war into Lebanon and the recent assassinations of Yahya Sinwar and Hassan Nasrallah. They discuss the factors behind Israel’s unprecedented aggression and why, as in Gaza, it’s able to operate without restraint, not least from the Biden administration.

Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and a professor of journalism at New York University.

Read Adam Shatz on the death of Nasrallah in the latest LRB.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n20/adam-shatz/after-nasrallah

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The End of Hamas?

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 16:43:00 -0000

In the second of three conversations about the crisis in the Middle East, recorded shortly before the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was reported, Yezid Sayigh talks to Adam Shatz about why he sees Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October as an inflection point both for the Palestinian movement and global history. Sayigh believes that the attacks reflected an erosion of Palestinian leadership, as well as a moral and strategic crisis. Only a new vision of Palestinian liberation, rooted in progressive ideals rather than in the ethno-religious project of Hamas, he argues, can lead to genuine Palestinian freedom and sovereignty.

Yezid Sayigh is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

Read Adam Shatz on the death of Nasrallah in the latest LRB:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n20/adam-shatz/after-nasrallah

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Inside Israel

Wed, 16 Oct 2024 15:55:16 -0000

In the first of three episodes on the crisis in the Middle East, Adam Shatz is joined by Mairav Zonszein and Amjad Iraqi to discuss the experiences of Israeli Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel. While the Netanyahu government is opposed by many Israeli Jews, and increasing numbers have left the country, support for Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon remains high because few can imagine an alternative. For Palestinian citizens of Israel, who have long suffered restrictions on their democratic rights, the escalating crisis has intensified that discrimination, while stirring a deep sense of fear regarding their future. Mairav and Amjad talk to Adam about the tensions in Israeli society, not least between the government and military, and why Netanyahu has shown so little interest in the lives of the hostages still held by Hamas.

Mairav Zonszein is a journalist and Senior Israel Analyst with Crisis Group.

Amjad Iraqi is an editor at +972 Magazine and an associate fellow with Chatham House's MENA programme.

Read Adam Shatz on the death of Nasrallah:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n20/adam-shatz/after-nasrallah

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The Death and Life of the Department Store

Wed, 09 Oct 2024 13:26:47 -0000

‘The department store is dying,’ Rosemary Hill wrote recently in the LRB, reviewing an exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris on the origins of the grands magasins. She joins Tom to talk about their 19th and 20th-century heyday as cathedrals of consumerism as well as places where women could spend time away from home, and away from men, safely and respectably. She also recalls the Christmas she worked in the toy department at Selfridges, demonstrating wind-up bath toys.

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After Grenfell

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 15:24:11 -0000

The final report of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry established that the fire on 14 June 2017, which killed 72 people, was the ‘culmination of decades of failure’. Every death was avoidable, and every death was the result of choices made by corporations, individuals and elected officials. James Butler, who writes about the report and its findings in the current issue of the LRB, joins Tom to discuss the causes and consequences of the fire and whether those responsible will be brought to justice.

Read James's piece: https://lrb.me/butlergrenfell

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Euripides Unbound

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 14:50:13 -0000

In November 2022, archaeologists excavating the ancient city of Philadelphia, two hours south of Cairo, discovered a clump of papyri in a shallow grave. On one of them were written nearly a hundred lines from two lost plays by Euripides. Robert Cioffi, who has been working with the same team on a new archaeological mission, joins Tom to discuss the find, the precarious transmission of ancient manuscripts, and the time he tried to make papyrus in his kitchen.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/euripidespod

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Streisand’s Way

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 08:00:00 -0000

Singing, acting, directing, writing: Barbra Streisand always insisted on doing it her way. Malin Hay, who recently reviewed Streisand’s 992-page autobiography, joins Tom to discuss her performances on stage and screen, her prodigious voice and why her best movie may be one where she doesn’t sing at all.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/barbrapod

Malin’s Streisand playlist: https://lrb.me/barbraplaylist

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‘The Cleverest Woman in England’

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 13:34:38 -0000

Jane Ellen Harrison was Britain’s first female career academic, a maverick public intellectual burdened with the label ‘the cleverest woman in England’. Her quips and quirks became legendary, but many of those anecdotes were promulgated by Harrison herself. Mary Beard joins Tom to discuss Harrison’s legacy, the challenges in writing her life and the careful cultivation of her voice.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/jeharrisonpod

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On Edith Piaf

Fri, 06 Sep 2024 11:43:58 -0000

This episode is a chapter from Complicated Women by Bee Wilson, a new LRB audiobook, based on pieces first published in the London Review of Books. Wilson explores the lives of ten figures, from Lola Montez to Vivienne Westwood, who challenged the limitations imposed on women in dramatically different ways. In this free chapter, she describes the ways that Edith Piaf’s life and art embodied the needs of her public, and how she became a symbol of postwar French resilience.

Podcast listeners can get 20% off using the code POD20 at checkout.

Buy the audiobook here and listen in your preferred podcast app: https://lrb.me/audio

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Jean-Paul Sartre: 'Being and Nothingness'

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 10:59:09 -0000

This week, a chapter from a new LRB audiobook, Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre by Jonathan Rée. This collection of ten biographical pieces, read by Rée, describes the lives of some of most influential thinkers of the past four hundred years and the radical and sometimes bizarre ideas that emerged from them. The audiobook also includes an introductory conversation between Rée and Thomas Jones, host of the LRB Podcast. In this free chapter, Rée looks at the life of Jean-Paul Sartre up to the publication of his first major philosophical work, Being and Nothingness, in 1943.

Podcast listeners can get 20% off using the code POD20 at checkout.

Buy the audiobook here and listen in your preferred podcast app: https://lrb.me/audio

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Great Auks!

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 16:05:21 -0000

The great auk was a flightless, populous and reportedly delicious bird, once found widely across the rocky outcrops of the North Atlantic. By the 1860s it was extinct, its decline sharpened by specimen collectors and at least one volcanic eruption. Human-driven extinction was ‘almost unthinkable’ until the auk’s disappearance, Liam Shaw writes. He joins Tom to discuss when, where and why the great auk died out.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/aukspod

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Jane Austen, Simone de Beauvoir and Herodotus

Wed, 21 Aug 2024 12:38:39 -0000

What do Jane Austen, Simone de Beauvoir and Herodotus have in common?

They all appear in three of this year’s Close Readings series, in which a pair of LRB contributors explore an area of literature through a selection of key works. This week, we’re revisiting some of the highlights from subscriber-only episodes: Clare Bucknell and Colin Burrow on Emma, Judith Butler and Adam Shatz on The Second Sex, and Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones on Herodotus’ Histories.

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How to Read Genesis

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 16:25:27 -0000

The Book of Genesis begins with the creation of the universe and ends with the death of Jacob, patriarch of the Israelites. Between these two events, successive generations confront the moral tests set for them by God, and in doing so usher in the Abrahamic religious tradition. In Reading Genesis, Marilynne Robinson argues for the continued relevance of Genesis as a foundational text of Western culture. James Butler joins Malin to discuss Robinson’s account in the light of a long, rich and conflicted history of interpretation.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/genesispod

The First Pandemic?

Wed, 07 Aug 2024 13:03:21 -0000

In the 160s CE, Rome was struck by a devastating disease which, a new book argues, may have been the world’s first pandemic. Galen began his career treating ’the protracted plague’ with viper flesh, opium and urine, but despite his extensive documentation, we still don’t know what a modern diagnosis would be. Josephine Quinn joins Malin to discuss contemporary theories about the Antonine Plague and what ice cores and amulets can tell us about the disease’s impact.

Further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/romanplaguepod

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On Wittgenstein’s ‘Tractatus’

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 14:22:52 -0000

When Wittgenstein published his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in 1921, he claimed to have solved all philosophical problems. One problem that hasn’t been solved though is how best to translate this notoriously difficult work. The expiry of the book’s copyright in 2021 has brought three new English translations in less than a year, each grappling with the difficulties posed by a philosopher who frequently undermined his own use of language to demonstrate the limitations of what can be represented. Adrian Moore joins Malin Hay to discuss what Wittgenstein hoped to achieve with the only work he published in his lifetime and to consider how much we should trust his assertion that everything it contains is nonsensical.

Find further reading and listening on the episode page: https://lrb.me/tractatuspod

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Patrick McGuinness: Back to Bouillon

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 05:00:57 -0000

Patrick McGuinness reads his diary from our 6th June issue about his family’s hometown of Bouillon in Belgium. He reflects on the linguistic and national barriers he crossed to return there each year; on the changes wrought on the town by the end of the industrial era; and on the ways that history and global politics can shape a locality beyond recognition.

Read the diary here: https://lrb.me/mcguinnesspod

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At the Republican National Convention: Day Four

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 00:23:27 -0000

It’s the final day of the Republican National Convention. Andrew O'Hagan and Deborah Friedell dissect Trump’s marathon acceptance speech and ask what a second term could look like.

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At the Republican National Convention: Day Three

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 16:47:45 -0000

At day three of the Republican National Convention, Andrew O'Hagan and Deborah Friedell discuss what a second Trump presidency would mean for American foreign policy. They compare notes on J.D. Vance's memoir Hillbilly Elegy, and reflect on his keynote speech.

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At the Republican National Convention: Day Two

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 17:31:31 -0000

Andrew O'Hagan and Deborah Friedell return to the Republican National Convention. They explore second day's theme, Make America Safe Again, and discuss how this convention compares to the last one Andrew attended, the RNC in 2004.

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At the Republican National Convention: Day One

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 16:44:17 -0000

Andrew O'Hagan and Deborah Friedell report on day one of the Republican National Convention. They react to Trump's choice of vice president and reflect on the key note speech by Sean O'Brien, the first time the head of the Teamsters' Union has ever addressed the RNC.

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Mendez: How I became an audiobook narrator

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 06:00:56 -0000

The worst thing you can say to anyone who works in hospitality, Mendez writes, is ‘Maybe you’ll meet someone!’ But a chance encounter while waiting tables lead to their new niche. In this episode, Mendez reads their recent piece about the art of audiobook narration and how they became the voice of Pelé.

Find the original piece and further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/mendezpod

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Labour's Big Win

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 14:27:40 -0000

John Lanchester, Tom Crewe and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite join James Butler to dissect Keir Starmer's victory and the historic collapse of the Conservative Party. They discuss what the result tells us about the needs and frustrations of the country, the ways in which the new Labour government might achieve some of the things it’s promised and why comparisons with Harold Wilson have been so prevalent.

Read Tom Crewe on fourteen years of the Tories:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n12/tom-crewe/carnival-of-self-harm

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UK Election Special: The Economy

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 05:00:02 -0000

The day before the election, James Butler is joined by William Davies to talk about something everyone seems to agree on: the very poor state of the UK’s public finances. The past fourteen years of Conservative rule began with the technocratic austerity of George Osborne and ended with the return of the ‘grown-ups’, Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak, to inflict more pain. In between came the chaos of Brexit and the Truss-Kwarteng ‘mini-budget’. What will a likely Labour government pick up from this? Are we still stuck in the age of Osborne, or will something resembling the public investment strategy of Bidenomics emerge through initiatives such as the National Wealth Fund and Great British Energy, as Rachel Reeves has promised?

Read Will's latest LRB piece: https://lrb.me/davieselectionpod

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UK Election Special: Foreign Policy

Sat, 29 Jun 2024 08:17:49 -0000

‘The world is growing more dangerous’ warns the Conservative manifesto, which puts security at the heart of its pitch. The Labour manifesto, on the other hand, doesn’t mention the world beyond the UK at all in its five ‘missions’. Are the Tories simply being honest with voters, or trying to distract from their domestic record? In this episode, James Butler is joined by Tom Stevenson and Iona Craig to discuss the challenges facing the next foreign secretary, from Gaza to the pressures of a possible Trump presidency. Labour’s current approach seems to promise ‘Blair without the Iraq War’, but how far will this allow UK foreign policy to depart from its normal attitude of subservience to the United States?

Faked Editions

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 11:36:51 -0000

For forty years, Thomas James Wise made a fortune forging copies of books that had never existed, sometimes even convincing their authors they were the real deal. Despite a damning exposé by amateur detectives in the 1930s, Wise never confessed or faced legal repercussions, and his fakes have become collectors’ pieces in their own right. Gill Partington joins Tom to explain Wise’s success and final undoing, and to discuss the value of forgeries, hoaxes and reproductions as art.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/wisepod

Find out more about the Royal Literary Fund: https://rlf.org.uk

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UK Election Special: The Broken State

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 05:00:44 -0000

For the second episode of our series on the UK election, James Butler is joined by Sam Freedman to talk about the enormous challenges facing the next government. From hospital waiting lists to criminal court backlogs and even potholes, the fabric of the British state seems to be beyond repair. It’s not simply a problem of funding: poor management, a lack of scrutiny and extreme centralisation combined with the almost total destruction of local government have all played a part. James and Sam consider whether there’s anything to be done about this chronic dysfunction, and whether the next official opposition could in fact be the Liberal Democrats.

Sam Freedman is co-author of the substack Comment is Freed. His book Failed State: Why Britain’s Institutions are Broken and How We Fix Them will be released in July 2024.

Read more from James Butler the LRB:

James Butler on the crisis in care: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n05/james-butler/this-concerns-everyone

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UK Election Special: Climate

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 05:00:54 -0000

In the first in a series of episodes on the UK general election, James Butler is joined by Ann Pettifor and Adrienne Buller to discuss climate policy and its apparent absence from the campaign so far. Several years ago the Labour Party was committed to a Green New Deal but has since backed away from that promise, while the Conservatives have decided that abandoning their own climate commitments is a vote-winner. Ann, Adrienne and James consider why political leadership and courage have disappeared on this issue, what environmental policy might look like with a Labour government, and how Chinese bicycles demonstrate the problem of international climate action.

Read James's latest blog post on the election: https://lrb.me/butlersunakpod

And more on climate in the LRB:

Will Davies on why capitalism won't save the planet: https://lrb.me/daviesclimatepod

James Butler on Andreas Malm and ecoterrorism: https://lrb.me/butlerclimatepod2

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What was the Venetian ghetto?

Wed, 12 Jun 2024 13:52:00 -0000

From the ghetto's creation in 1516 until its dissolution at the end of the 18th century, Jews in Venice were confined to a district enclosed by canals, patrolled by guards and locked at night. Yet its residents were essential players in Venetian life, and in practice the ghetto saw far more traffic through its gates than its founders intended. Erin Maglaque joins Tom to discuss what life in the ghetto was like, and why an open-air prison could be considered relatively tolerant by the standards of early modern Europe.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/ghettopod

From the LRB

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Forecasting D-Day

Wed, 05 Jun 2024 11:38:56 -0000

The D-Day planners said that everything would depended the weather. They needed 'a quiet day with not more than moderate winds and seas and not too much cloud for the airmen, to be followed by three more quiet days'. But who would make the forecast? The Meteorological Office? The US Air Force? The Royal Navy? In the event, it was all three. In this diary piece published in 1994, Lawrence Hogben, a New Zealand-born meteorologist and Royal Navy officer, describes the way this forecasting by committee worked, and why they very almost chose the wrong day.

Read by Stephen Dillane

Find the article and further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/ddaypod

Watch the short film based on this piece: https://lrb.me/ddayyt

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On J.G. Ballard

Wed, 29 May 2024 15:48:01 -0000

J.G. Ballard’s life and work contains many incongruities, outraging the Daily Mail and being offered a CBE (which he rejected), and variously appealing to both Spielberg and Cronenberg. In a recent piece, Edmund Gordon unpicks the contradictions and contrarianism in Ballard’s non-fiction writing, and he joins Tom to continue the dissection. They explore Ballard’s strange combination of ‘whisky and soda’ conservatism and the avant-garde, what he was trying to achieve through his fiction, and how ‘Ballardian’ Empire of the Sun really is.

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On Festac ’77

Wed, 22 May 2024 15:57:39 -0000

Marilyn Nance was 23 when she photographed Festac ’77, a global celebration of Black and African art that she described as ‘the Olympics, plus a Biennial, plus Woodstock’. In his review of Nance’s book, Sean Jacobs traces a more fraught history of the festival than her photographs would suggest. Sean joins Tom to discuss what Festac meant for politicians, attendees and the proponents of négritude, third worldism and pan-Africanism.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/festacpod

Find out more about Serious Readers: https://www.seriousreaders.com/lrb

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Rebecca Solnit: In the Shadow of Silicon Valley

Wed, 15 May 2024 14:43:15 -0000

Rebecca Solnit has lived in San Francisco since 1980, but the city she used to know is fast disappearing, ‘fully annexed’, as she puts it, by the tech firms from Silicon Valley. In this episode of the LRB podcast, Solnit reads her piece from the 8 February issue of the paper, both a eulogy for the city that’s been lost and a dissection of the dystopia that’s replacing it, ‘returning us’, as she puts it, ‘to a kind of feudalism’.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/solnitpod

Find out more about Coram Boy at Chichister Festival Theatre here: https://www.cft.org.uk/events/coram-boy

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Women in Philosophy

Wed, 08 May 2024 15:01:45 -0000

The recovery of history’s ‘lost’ women is often associated with the advent of feminism, but, Sophie Smith writes, women’s contributions to Western philosophy have been regularly rediscovered since at least the 14th century. She joins Tom to discuss what we can learn from the women who held their own alongside Plato, Descartes and Hume.

Find Sophie’s piece and further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/sophiesmithpod

Find out more about Pace Gallery’s upcoming exhibitions here: https://www.pacegallery.com/exhibitions/

Find out more about Coram Boy at Chichister Festival Theatre here: https://www.cft.org.uk/events/coram-boy

LRB Audio

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Unspeakable Acts

Wed, 01 May 2024 18:19:50 -0000

James Pratt and John Smith were the last men hanged in England for the crime of sodomy, reported to the authorities by nosy landlords who later petitioned for clemency. Tom Crewe joins Thomas Jones to explain how exceptional – and unexceptional – the case was, the historical forces that led to the death sentence and the surprising ambivalence many Londoners felt about ‘unnatural crimes’ in the 1830s.

Find out more about Bluets at the Royal Court theatre here: https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/bluets/

Find Tom Crewe’s piece and further reading at the episode page: https://lrb.me/prattsmithpod

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Where does culture come from?

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 17:18:59 -0000

The word ‘culture’ now drags the term ‘wars’ in its wake, but this is too narrow an approach to a concept with a much more capacious history. In the closing LRB Winter Lecture for 2024, Terry Eagleton examines various aspects of that history – culture and power, culture and ethics, culture and critique, culture and ideology – in an attempt to broaden the argument and understand where we are now.

Terry Eagleton delivered this lecture as part of the LRB's Winter Lecture series at St James's Church, Clerkenwell, London on 27 March 2024.

Read Terry Eagleton’s lecture in the LRB: https://lrb.me/eagletonwl

Watch the lecture on YouTube: https://lrb.me/eagletonwlyt

Find out more about Bluets here: https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/bluets/

LRB Audio

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Remembering the Future

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 14:56:49 -0000

In her recent LRB Winter Lecture, Hazel V. Carby discussed ways contemporary Indigenous artists are rendering the ordinarily invisible repercussions of ecocide and genocide visible. She joins Adam Shatz to expand on the artists discussed in her lecture, and how they disrupt the ways we’re accustomed to seeing borders, landmasses, and landscapes empty – or emptied – of people.

Find the lecture and further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/carbypod

Watch the lecture on YouTube: lrb.me/carbyyt

Find out more about Bluets at the Royal Court theatre here: https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/bluets/

Listen to the We Society Podcast here: https://acss.org.uk/we-society-podcast/

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Leaving Haiti

Wed, 10 Apr 2024 14:40:44 -0000

Since the 2010 earthquake, ordinary life in Haiti has become increasingly untenable: in January this year, armed gangs controlled around 80 per cent of the capital. Pooja Bhatia joins Tom to discuss Haitian immigration to Chile and the US, the self-defeating nature of US immigration policy and the double binds Haitian refugees find themselves in. Should you pay a bribe if it marks you out as a candidate for kidnapping? Can you be deported to a country without an operating airport? And if asylum laws protect people who are being persecuted, what happens when that covers an entire nation?

Find Pooja's Haiti coverage on the episode page: lrb.me/haitipod

Find out more about Bluets at the Royal Court theatre here: https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/bluets/

Listen to the We Society Podcast here: https://acss.org.uk/we-society-podcast/

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Gurle Talk

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 07:00:11 -0000

Modern English speakers struggle to find sexual terms that aren’t either obscene or scientific, but that wasn’t always the case. In a recent review of Jenni Nuttall’s Mother Tongue, Mary Wellesley connects our linguistic squeamishness to changing ideas about women and sexuality. She joins Tom to discuss the changing language of women’s anatomy, work and lives.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/gurletalk

Listen to Mary Wellesley and Irina Dumitrescu on medieval humour: lrb.me/millerstale

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The Belgrano Diary: Half a Million Sheep Can't Be Wrong

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 14:38:48 -0000

When Argentina invades the Falkland Islands, Margaret Thatcher sends a huge flotilla on an 8000-mile rescue mission – to save a forgotten remnant of the empire, and her premiership. Onboard the nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror, Lieutenant Narendra Sethia starts to keep a diary.

This is an extract from the first episode. To listen to the rest of it, and the full series, find 'The Belgrano Diary' in:

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

or wherever you get your podcasts.

Archive:

‘Good Morning Britain’/ITV/TV-Am, ‘Newsnight’/BBC/BBC News, ‘Falkands War – The Untold Story’/ITV/Yorkshire Television, ‘Leach, Henry Conyers (Oral history)’/Imperial War Museum, ‘President Regan’s Press Briefing in the Oval Office on April 5, 1982’/White House Television Office, ‘Diary’/James M. Rentschler, TV Publica/Radio y Televisión Argentina S.E, The Falklands War: Recordings from the Archive/BBC Worldwide, Parliamentary Recording Unit

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Architecture Repopulated

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 13:04:20 -0000

Rosemary Hill, reviewing Steven Brindle’s Architecture in Britain and Ireland, 1530-1830, celebrates his approach to architecture as a social, collaborative endeavour, where human need (and human greed) stymies starchitectural vision. Rosemary takes Tom on a tour of British and Irish architecture, from the Reformation through industrialisation, featuring big egos, unexpected outcomes and at least one architect she thinks it’s ‘completely fair’ to call a villain.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/brindlepod

Listen to Rosemary on the design of Bath: lrb.me/stonehengepod

And on Salisbury Cathedral: lrb.me/salisburypod

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Introducing: The Belgrano Diary

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 14:35:31 -0000

On 2 May 1982, the British submarine HMS Conqueror sank the Argentinian warship, the General Belgrano, killing 323 men. It was the bloodiest event of the Falklands War – and the most controversial.

The account of the sinking given by Thatcher's government was inaccurate in every crucial detail – and the truth would only emerge from the pages of a private diary, written by an officer onboard the submarine.

The Belgrano Diary is a story of war in the South Atlantic, iron leadership, cover-ups and conspiracies, crusading politicians and competing journalists, and an unlikely whistleblower.

A new six-part series from the Documentary Team at the London Review of Books, hosted by Andrew O’Hagan.

Episode One coming 28 March. Find it wherever you're listening to this podcast.

Archive:

‘Good Morning Britain’/ITV/TV-Am

Parliamentary Recording Unit

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The Shoah After Gaza

Wed, 20 Mar 2024 12:00:00 -0000

Pankaj Mishra joins Adam Shatz to discuss his recent LRB Winter Lecture, in which he explores Israel’s instrumentalisation of the Holocaust. He expands on his readings of Jean Améry and Primo Levi, the crisis as understood by the Global South and Zionism’s appeal for Hindu nationalists.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/aftergazapod

Watch the lecture on YouTube: lrb.me/mishrayt

LRB Audio

Discover the LRB's subscription podcast, Close Readings, and audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiopod

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The Acid House Revolution

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 15:20:01 -0000

Between 1988 and 1994, the UK scrambled to make sense of acid house, with its radical new sounds, new drugs and new ways of partying. In a recent piece for the paper, Chal Ravens considers a reappraisal of the origins and political ramifications of the Second Summer of Love. She joins Tom to unpack the social currents channelled through the free party scene and the long history of countercultural ‘collective festivity’ in England.

Read more, and listen ad free, on the LRB website: lrb.me/acidhousepod

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On Giving Up

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 12:47:03 -0000

When is giving up not failure, but a way of succeeding at something else? In his new book, which began as a piece for the LRB, the psychoanalyst and critic Adam Phillips explores the ways in which knowing our limitations can be an act of heroism. This episode was recorded at the London Review Bookshop, where Phillips was joined by the biographer and critic Hermione Lee in a conversation about giving up and On Giving Up, his approach to writing and the purpose of psychoanalysis.

Find Phillips’s 2022 piece On Giving Up and further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/ongivingup

Find future events at the Bookshop: lrb.me/eventspod

LRB Audio

Discover the LRB's subscription podcast, Close Readings, and audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiopod

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On the Jewish Novel

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 14:54:37 -0000

When Deborah Friedell and Adam Thirlwell met twenty years ago, they started a discussion about Jewish identity they are still puzzling over today. Revisiting Philip Roth’s The Counterlife (1986), an American take on British antisemitism and the escapist allure of aliyah, Adam and Deborah discuss the nuances of Jewish experience and novel-writing across the Atlantic.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/jewishnovelpod

Watch Judith Butler’s 2011 Winter Lecture: ‘Who owns Kafka?’

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Dr Comfort, Mr Sex

Wed, 21 Feb 2024 16:35:46 -0000

Gerontologist, pacifist, novelist, medical doctor and mollusc expert – Alex Comfort was far more than just the author of the staggeringly popular Joy of Sex. In her review of a new biography, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite navigates the convictions and contradictions of this bewilderingly polymathic thinker. She joins Tom to trace Comfort’s life from evangelical child prodigy to the anarchist free love advocate who became emblematic of the sexual liberation movement.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/comfortpod

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The World's First Author

Wed, 14 Feb 2024 13:05:10 -0000

Enheduana was a Sumerian princess who lived around 2300 BCE and composed what is now regarded as the earliest poetry by a known author. Her father, Sargon of Akkad, is said to have created the world’s first empire, stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, and as part of his imperial mission he installed his daughter as the high priestess of the temple of the moon god, Nanna, in the city of Ur. In that capacity, Enheduana composed hymns of remarkable beauty, often governed by a powerful authorial voice.

Anna Della Subin joins Tom to discuss a new translation of Enheduana’s complete poems, read some of them in the original Sumerian, and consider the ways in which they challenge our ideas of authorship and literary history.

Read more, and listen ad free, on the LRB website: https://lrb.me/enheduanapod

LRB Audio

Discover the LRB's subscription podcast, Close Readings, and audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiopod

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Protest, what is it good for?

Wed, 07 Feb 2024 11:50:28 -0000

From the Egyptian Revolution to Extinction Rebellion, the 2010s were marked by a global wave of spontaneous and largely structureless mass protests. Despite overwhelming numbers and popular support, most of these movements failed to achieve their aims, and in many cases led to worse conditions. James Butler joins Tom to make sense of the ‘mass protest decade’, sharing historical examples, theoretical approaches and first-hand experiences that help explain the defeats of the 2010s.

Find further reading and listen ad free on the episode page: lrb.me/protestdecade

Find the Close Readings podcast in Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, or just search 'Close Readings'.

Directly in Apple Podcasts

In other podcast apps

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Political Poems: Andrew Marvell's 'An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland'

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 13:41:42 -0000

In the first episode of their new Close Readings series on political poetry, Seamus Perry and Mark Ford look at ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’ by Andrew Marvell, described by Frank Kermode as ‘braced against folly by the power and intelligence that make it possible to think it the greatest political poem in the language’.

Directly in Apple Podcasts

In other podcast apps

Read the poem here

War in Tigray

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 13:52:38 -0000

Ethiopia is one of the world’s most populous countries, and yet the 2020-22 Tigray War and ongoing suffering in the region has been largely ignored by the world at large. Tom Stevenson joins the podcast to break down the history of the conflict, and explore why Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel laureate, has come to preside over such a brutal civil war. He also considers Abiy’s future intentions, both within and beyond his country’s borders.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/tigraypod

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Medieval LOLs: Chaucer's 'Miller's Tale'

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 14:19:56 -0000

Were the Middle Ages funny? Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley begin their series in quest of the medieval sense of humour with Chaucer’s 'Miller’s Tale', a story that is surely still (almost) as funny as when it was written six hundred years ago. But who is the real butt of the joke? Mary and Irina look in detail at the mechanics of the plot and its needless but pleasurable complexity, and consider the social significance of clothes and pubic hair in the tale.

Find the Close Readings podcast in Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, or just search 'Close Readings'.

Directly in Apple Podcasts

In other podcast apps

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Proust in English

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 11:53:00 -0000

Did the foundational event of Proust’s great novel really happen? Michael Wood talks to Tom about several English translations of In Search of Lost Time, old and new, and what they reveal about different ways of reading the novel. If the dipping of the madeleine in his tea conjures an overwhelming memory of the narrator’s childhood, it is also a challenge to the conscious mind, a product of chance that Proust suggests might easily not have occurred at all.

Find more by Michael on Proust here: lrb.me/woodproustpod

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New TV/Old TV

Wed, 03 Jan 2024 07:03:57 -0000

James Meek joins Tom to talk about a recent book by Peter Biskind on ‘the New TV’, reviewed by James in the latest issue of the paper. They discuss the rise of cable TV in the 1990s, the emergence of the streaming giants, the power of the showrunner and whether the golden age of television drama is really coming to an end.

Read James's piece: https://lrb.me/meektvpod

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Was Jane Austen Gay? And other questions from the LRB archive

Wed, 27 Dec 2023 10:06:32 -0000

Tom Crewe, Patricia Lockwood, Deborah Friedell, John Lanchester, Rosemary Hill and Colm Tóibín talk to Tom about some of their favourite LRB pieces, including Terry Castle’s 1995 essay on Jane Austen's letters, Hilary Mantel’s account of how she became a writer, and Alan Bennett’s uncompromising take on Philip Larkin.

Read the pieces:

Terry Castle on Jane Austen

Wendy Doniger: Calf and Other Loves

Hilary Mantel: Giving up the Ghost

Angela Carter: Noovs' hoovs in the trough

Penelope Fitzgerald on Stevie Smith

Alan Bennett on Philip Larkin

Subscribe to the LRB: https://lrb.me/now

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Byron before Byron

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 12:53:25 -0000

Byron’s early poems – his so-called ’dark tales’ – have been dismissed by critics as the tawdry, slapdash products of an uninteresting mind, and readers ever since have found it difficult not to see them in light of the poet’s dramatic and public later life. In a recent piece for the LRB, Clare Bucknell looked past the famous biography to observe the youthful Byron’s mind at work in poems such as The Giaour (1813), The Corsair (1814) and Lara (1814), where early versions of the Byronic hero were often characterised by passivity, rumination and choicelessness.

Clare discusses the piece with Tom, and talks about her new Close Readings series, On Satire, with Colin Burrow, which features Don Juan alongside works by Jane Austen, Laurence Sterne, John Donne, Muriel Spark and others.

Read Clare's piece on Byron: https://lrb.me/byronpod

Join Clare and Colin Burrow for their series on satire next year, and receive all the books under discussion, access to online seminars and the rest of the Close Readings audio, with Close Readings Plus: https://lrb.me/plusyt

To subscribe to the audio only, and access all our other Close Readings series:

In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/byronsc

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Manutius, the Biblophile's Bibliophile

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 17:02:49 -0000

In Renaissance Venice, Aldus Manutius turned his mid-life crisis into a publishing revolution, printing books that permanently changed the way we read. In a recent review, Erin Maglaque celebrates Aldus as the progenitor of the paperback and a model for late bloomers. She tells Tom about Aldus’s achievements, his monumental ego and his part in the creation of one of the most bizarre books in publishing history.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/manutiuspod

Subscribe to Close Readings Plus here: https://lrb.me/plus

Or just sign up to the Close Readings podcast subscription:

In Apple Podcasts: lrb.me/camusapple

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/camussc

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Camus in the Americas

Wed, 06 Dec 2023 15:40:34 -0000

Feverish, homesick, bored, awed and on rollerskates: Albert Camus’s travel diaries are a fascinating window into an easily mythologised life. Camus visited the New World twice, and a new translation of his journals reveals his struggle to make sense of his experiences. Adam Shatz joins Tom to explain the ways Camus’s ambivalence towards the Americas sheds light on his tumultuous personal life, his conflicted stance on colonialism and where his humanism deviates from his existentialist peers.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/camuspod

If you want to join Adam Shatz, Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards on revolutionary thinkers next year, and receive all the books under discussion, access to online seminars and the rest of the Close Readings audio, you can sign up to Close Readings Plus here: https://lrb.me/plus

Or just sign up to the Close Readings podcast subscription:

In Apple Podcasts: lrb.me/camusapple

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/camussc

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Patricia Lockwood on Meeting the Pope

Wed, 29 Nov 2023 16:38:59 -0000

In June, the pope invited dozens of artists to Rome for the 50th anniversary of the Vatican Museum’s contemporary art collection. Patricia Lockwood, the author of Priestdaddy and a contributing editor at the LRB, was one of them. She tells Tom more about the surreal experience and why irony, in the words of Pope Francis, is ‘a marvellous virtue’.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/popepod

Read John Lanchester’s pick from the archive: lrb.me/lanchesterpick

Subscribe to the LRB here: lrb.me/now

Find out about the Colour Revolution exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum here:

https://www.ashmolean.org/exhibition/colour-revolution-victorian-art-fashion-design

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What was Orwell for?

Wed, 22 Nov 2023 16:27:34 -0000

George Orwell wasn’t afraid to speak against totalitarianism – but what was he for? Colin Burrow joins Tom to unpick the cultural conservatism and crackling violence underpinning Orwell’s writing, to reassess his vision of socialism and to figure out why teenagers love him so much.

LRB Audio

Discover the LRB's subscription podcast, Close Readings, and audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiopod

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/orwellpod

Find out about the Colour Revolution exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum here:

https://www.ashmolean.org/exhibition/colour-revolution-victorian-art-fashion-design

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Next Year on Close Readings: Among the Ancients II

Sat, 18 Nov 2023 09:11:22 -0000

For the final introduction to next year’s full Close Readings programme, Emily Wilson, celebrated classicist and translator of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, returns for a second season of Among the Ancients, to take on another twelve vital works of Greek and Roman literature with the LRB’s Thomas Jones, loosely themed around ‘truth and lies’ – from Aesop’s Fables to Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations.

Authors covered: Hesiod, Aesop, Herodotus, Pindar, Plato, Lucian, Plautus, Terence, Lucan, Tacitus, Juvenal, Apuleius, Marcus Aurelius.

First episode released on 24 January 2024, then on the 24th of each month for the rest of the year.

How to Listen

Close Readings subscription

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Close Readings Plus

In addition to the episodes, receive all the books under discussion; access to webinars with Emily, Tom and special guests including Amia Srinivasan; and shownotes and further reading from the LRB archive.

On sale here from 22 November: lrb.me/plus

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Next Year on Close Readings: Human Conditions

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 10:14:09 -0000

In the second of three introductions to our full Close Readings programme for 2024, Adam Shatz presents his series, Human Conditions, in which he’ll be talking separately to three guests – Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards – about some of the most revolutionary thought of the 20th century.

Judith, Pankaj and Brent will each discuss four texts over four episodes, as they uncover the inner life of the 20th century through works that have sought to find freedom in different ways and remake the world around them. They explore, among other things, the development of arguments against racism and colonialism, the experience of artistic expression in oppressive conditions and how language has been used in politically substantive ways.

Authors covered: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Hannah Arendt, V. S. Naipaul, Ashis Nandy, Doris Lessing, Nadezhda Mandelstam, W. E. B. Du Bois, Aimé Césaire, Amiri Baraka and Audre Lorde.

First episode released on 14 January 2024, then on the fourteenth of each month for the rest of the year.

How to Listen

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In addition to the episodes, receive all the books under discussion; access to webinars with Adam and his guests; and shownotes and further reading from the LRB archive.

On sale here from 22 November: lrb.me/plus

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Next Year on Close Readings: On Satire

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 14:01:58 -0000

In the first of three introductions to our full 2024 Close Readings programme, starting in January, Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell present their series, On Satire. Over twelve episodes, Colin and Clare will attempt to chart a stable course through some of the most unruly, vulgar, incoherent, savage and outright hilarious works in English literature, as they ask what satire is, what it’s for and why we seem to like it so much.

Authors covered: Erasmus, John Donne, Ben Jonson, Earl of Rochester, John Gay, Alexander Pope, Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark.

Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford, and regular contributors to the LRB.

First episode released on 4 January 2024, then on the fourth of each month for the rest of the year.

How to Listen

Close Readings subscription

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In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Close Readings Plus

In addition to the episodes, receive all the books under discussion; access to webinars with Colin, Clare and special guests including Lucy Prebble and Katherine Rundell; and shownotes and further reading from the LRB archive.

On sale here from 22 November: lrb.me/plus

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The Infected Blood Scandal

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 15:00:32 -0000

In the 1970s and '80s, thousands of haemophiliacs in the UK were infected with HIV and hepatitis C through blood products known to be contaminated. In a recent piece, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithewaite outlines the magnitude of the scandal, exacerbated by carelessness, corporate greed and, in one instance, deliberate human experimentation. She joins Malin to discuss the findings and what they mean for survivors. They are joined by Tom Crewe, who reckoned with the Aids crisis in his 2018 article ‘Here was a plague’.

Find Florence and Tom’s articles on the episode page: lrb.me/bloodinquirypod

Read Colm Tóibín's pick from the LRB archive: lrb.me/colmpod

Subscribe to the LRB here: lrb.me/now

Find out about the Colour Revolution exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum here:

https://www.ashmolean.org/exhibition/colour-revolution-victorian-art-fashion-design

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The Giant Crypto Fraud

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 12:36:02 -0000

When Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of fraud last week, the only surprise was how quickly the jury reached their verdict. John Lanchester joins Tom to discuss how the former crypto billionaire ended up facing a life sentence, from his early career in finance and embrace of Effective Altruism to the simple but audacious nature of his crime, and why he found himself in a US court, even though US citizens were banned from using his trading company, FTX.

Read John Lanchester on Sam Bankman-Fried: lrb.me/sbfpod

Read Rosemary Hill's pick from the LRB archive: lrb.me/rosemarypod

Subscribe to the LRB here: lrb.me/now

Find out about the Colour Revolution exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum here:

https://www.ashmolean.org/exhibition/colour-revolution-victorian-art-fashion-design

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What is British humour anyway?

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 12:53:25 -0000

Anglophiles abroad love the British sense of humour – but what does that actually mean? In a recent review for the paper, Jonathan Coe takes a scalpel to the satire boom and its aftermath to find out what, if anything, sets British comedy apart. He joins Malin for a serious chat about comedy and its double-edged role in the UK’s political life.

Further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/coecomedy

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Colour Revolution at the Ashmolean (sponsored)

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 11:27:17 -0000

Nineteenth-century Britain is often imagined as gloomy and dark, epitomised by Dickensian grime and Queen Victoria’s prolonged state of black-clad mourning. But in reality this period saw an explosion of colour, following a number of scientific discoveries.

In this short discussion, Charlotte Ribeyrol, co-curator of Colour Revolution, a major new exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, talks about some of those technical advances and the dazzling objects visitors will find on display at the show, from jewel-like Pre-Raphaelite paintings to bookcases and socks, as well as some of the debates of the time – between Ruskin, Darwin and others – about the meaning of colour in nature and society.

Colour Revolution runs at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford until 18th February 2024. Find out more here:

https://www.ashmolean.org/exhibition/colour-revolution-victorian-art-fashion-design

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Who wrote the dictionary?

Wed, 25 Oct 2023 15:02:03 -0000

Compiling the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was a seventy-year endeavour that called on thousands of volunteers from all walks of life. The Dictionary People, reviewed by Daisy Hay in the LRB, is a recent attempt to track down the various characters who made the OED possible. Daisy joins Tom to discuss how contributors and their enthusiasms shaped the dictionary to this day.

Further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/dictionarypod

Learn more about the Irish Pages Press: irishpages.org/

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War in Gaza

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 13:14:14 -0000

As the siege on Gaza intensifies, many observers are describing the current Hamas-Israel conflict as a complete overhaul of the region’s status quo. Amjad Iraqi, a senior editor at +972 Magazine, and Michael Sfard, a leading human rights lawyer, join Adam Shatz to discuss the roots and ramifications of the current crisis. This conversation was recorded on 17 October.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/waringazapod

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Tom Crewe: Wrestling Days

Wed, 11 Oct 2023 14:53:10 -0000

Crass, violent, misogynistic, dumb, fake – and irresistible. Tom Crewe was one of many unlikely diehards who fell sway to the theatre of pro-wrestling, despite and because of its excesses. Here, he reads his 2021 piece unpacking his youthful obsession with a sport both ‘hideous’ and ‘Homeric’.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/wrestlingdays

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Into the Volcano

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 11:00:24 -0000

Between 1630 and 1944, Mount Vesuvius was continually erupting, and remains one of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes. Yet, as Rosemary Hill explains in a recent piece, the volcano exerted an irresistible pull on poets, tourists and statesmen. She tells Tom how the 19th century’s obsession with Vesuvius spawned scientific disciplines, artistic innovations and nude intracrater picnics.

Further reading and listening on the episode page: lrb.me/intothevolcano

Listen to Rosemary’s recent series on Stonehenge: lrb.me/stonehengepodone

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What is 'woke capital'?

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 11:01:00 -0000

For many on the right, Arif Naqvi epitomises the idea of the 'woke capitalist'. The private equity multimillionaire has promoted sustainable development and donated heavily to the Gates Foundation to invest in healthcare, but now awaits possible extradition to the US on fraud charges. Laleh Khalili joins Tom to discuss Naqvi’s story, and what goes wrong when private equity firms look to profit from public services.

Read Laleh's piece here: https://lrb.me/khalilipod2

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Think of a Number

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 15:44:33 -0000

In a world where communication is only as effective as its ‘truthiness’, numbers are vital to political success. But, as John Lanchester explains on this week’s episode, some of the most influential stats in UK politics are ‘pants’. John joins Tom to discuss why GDP, immigration numbers and English Premier League odds are so frequently misleading, and how we can be better attuned to the misuse of data.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/thinkofanumber

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Adolfo Kaminsky, Beyond Borders

Wed, 13 Sep 2023 11:34:30 -0000

Adolfo Kaminsky, a first-class forger while still a teenager, saved thousands of lives as an agent of the French Resistance. After the war, he turned his counterfeiting skills towards anticolonialist causes while building his reputation as a photographer. In this episode of the LRB podcast, Adam Shatz reads his piece on Kaminsky, whom he met in 2019. 'Forgery wasn‘t just an art he perfected,' Shatz writes, 'but a vocation and an ethics.'

Find more by Adam Shatz at the episode page: lrb.me/beyondborders

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Fact-Checking ‘Ulysses’

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 16:27:20 -0000

Armed with Thom’s Directory, James Joyce strove to recreate 1904 Dublin as accurately as possible, down to the last solicitor and street railing. But, as Colm Tóibín explains in a recent piece, the novel is pockmarked with errors, only some intentional. Colm joins Tom to discuss Joyce’s deliberate and accidental mistakes, Trieste’s essential influence on the novel, and why a queer reading of Ulysses really does hold water.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/factcheckingjoyce

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Amia Srinivasan: What’s it like to be an octopus?

Wed, 30 Aug 2023 11:00:50 -0000

‘Octopuses,’ Amia Srinivasan writes, ‘are the closest we can come, on earth, to knowing what it might be like to encounter intelligent aliens.’ In our third summer reading, Srinivasan explores the paradoxical nature of octopus lives, and the difficulties humans have in understanding them.

Read more by Amia Srinivasan in the LRB: lrb.me/srinivasanpod

Let us know your thoughts: lrb.me/podsurvey

Produced by Zoe Kilbourn; editing by Sarah Sahim

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John Lanchester: The Case of Agatha Christie

Wed, 23 Aug 2023 12:36:52 -0000

Agatha Christie, writes John Lanchester, ‘is the only writer by whom I’ve read more than fifty books. So – why?’ In the second of our summer readings, Lanchester dissects Christie’s compulsive readability, and considers why, despite her brazen lack of style, she was a great experimental formalist.

Read more John Lanchester in the LRB: lrb.me/lanchesterpod

Let us know your thoughts: lrb.me/podsurvey

Produced by Zoe Kilbourn; editing by Sarah Sahim

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Terry Castle: Desperately Seeking Susan

Wed, 16 Aug 2023 13:20:29 -0000

In the first of our summer readings, Terry Castle reads her 2005 piece about her “on-again, off-again, semi-friendship” with Susan Sontag. She remembers Sontag as a “great comic character”: a high-minded hobnobber, a moralist and a gossip, seductive and snobbish and a catalytic force for modern feminism.

Read more Terry Castle in the LRB: lrb.me/castlepod

Let us know your thoughts: lrb.me/podsurvey

Produced by Zoe Kilbourn; editing by Sarah Sahim

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Life in Kyiv

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 12:49:10 -0000

Almost eighteen months since Russia invaded Ukraine, Kyiv residents have resumed something resembling pre-war life. James Meek recently returned to the city, and joins Tom to discuss the new normal: how language is changing and ravers are rebuilding destroyed villages, and what we can expect in the coming months of warfare.

Find further reading, and an example of Repair Together in action, on the episode page: lrb.me/lifeinkyiv

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Chaucer's Ovid

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 16:09:10 -0000

Irina Dumitrescu joins Tom for a Close Readings fusion episode looking at Chaucer’s classical mind, and in particular his use of Ovid’s Heroides in The Legend of Good Women, in which the poet does penance for his poor depictions of women by retelling the stories of Ariadne, Phaedra, Lucrece and others in a more sympathetic light. They discuss Chaucer’s playful attitude to his sources and his mix of humour with serious observations on the presentation of women and their suffering in the classical tradition.

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The Secrets of J. Edgar Hoover

Wed, 26 Jul 2023 14:49:45 -0000

As Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover exercised a dictatorial influence over the department – and, it seems, everyone else. Meticulous and vindictive, he frequently weaponised secrets while carefully guarding his own. Deborah Friedell grapples with his overwhelming and disturbing legacy in her sweeping review of G-Man, the first Hoover biography in thirty years. She joins Tom to discuss some of the most puzzling features of Hoover’s personality and approach to policing. Should he have known about Pearl Harbor? Was he in cahoots with the Mafia? And what was his problem with bald men?

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/hooverpod

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On David Foster Wallace

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 16:10:28 -0000

In her recent piece for the paper, Patricia Lockwood revisits David Foster Wallace’s work in the light of posthumous publications and the shadow of #MeToo. Lockwood joined Joanne O’Leary, an editor at the paper, to discuss Wallace’s troubled status as Saint Dave, where his writing was at its best and whether a novel can benefit from being left unfinished.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/dfwpod

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Inflation Fixation

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 12:41:18 -0000

As inflation continues to outstrip wage growth for all but the top ten per cent of earners, interest rates look set to keep rising at least until February 2024. The political economist William Davies joins Tom to consider the reasons for high inflation and the Bank of England’s response, what government policies could alleviate the crisis and whether next year’s general election will lead to any significant change.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/inflationfixation

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Cancelled

Tue, 04 Jul 2023 11:26:14 -0000

Last month, the UK government appointed their first “free speech tsar”, whose stated mission is to protect free speech and academic freedom in universities. But, as Amia Srinivasan argues in a recent article, there's an inherent conflict in those goals. Amia joins Malin to discuss the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) act, whether students are increasingly leaning left and how activists across the political spectrum weaponise the concept of harm.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/cancelled

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The Lives of Stonehenge: John Michell and Arthur Pendragon

Tue, 27 Jun 2023 15:19:43 -0000

For her final leg across Salisbury Plain, Rosemary Hill is joined by folklorist Jeremy Harte to look at the many groups and stories that have emerged throughout the 20th century to challenge the narratives about Stonehenge presented by archaeologists. From astro-archaeology to the Earth Mysteries Movement, they look out how colonial models of Stonehenge’s history have been overturned and the whole notion of public ownership repeatedly tested, sometimes with violent consequences, since the stone circle was gifted to the nation in 1918, and why it (almost) always comes back to druids.

Buy Rosemary Hill's book Stonehenge: lrb.me/stonehengebook

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The Lives of Stonehenge: Wordsworth and Blake

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 13:14:37 -0000

For the third episode in her short series on Stonehenge, Rosemary Hill is joined by Seamus Perry to experience the stone circle through the mind and eyes of a Romantic, with the likes of Wordsworth, Blake, Turner and Constable. For these poets and artists, Salisbury Plain took on a gloomy and richly psychological presence, lit with intense personal and political drama, and animated with revolutionary thought.

Buy Rosemary Hill's book Stonehenge from the LRB Bookshop here: lrb.me/stonehengebook

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Africa’s Cold War

Tue, 13 Jun 2023 13:41:55 -0000

Kevin Okoth and Jeremy Harding join Tom to discuss two recent books reassessing decolonisation. Textbook histories used to describe African independence as more or less complete by the mid-1960s, but millions of people were fighting white minority rule into the 1970s and 1980s, while Cold War rivalry between the US, the Soviet Union and China played out across the continent, often with catastrophic consequences. As countries continue to vie for Africa’s natural resources, its postcolonial future remains, at best, unresolved.

Find further reading, and listen ad-free, on the LRB website: lrb.me/africascoldwarpod

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The Lives of Stonehenge: John Aubrey and William Stukeley

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 13:40:22 -0000

In the second episode of her short series looking at why Stonehenge has occupied such an important place in the story of Britain, Rosemary Hill talks to Kate Bennett about the two antiquarians, John Aubrey and William Stukeley, who first treated the stone circle as a material object whose secrets could be revealed through careful measurement, observation and comparison, and so pioneered many of the practices of modern archaeology.

Find further reading on the LRB website: lrb.me/stonehengepodtwo

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Why did Erdoğan win?

Tue, 30 May 2023 15:19:25 -0000

Following the Turkish president’s success in the run-off election on Sunday, Izzy Finkel and Tom Stevenson join Tom to discuss whether Erdoğan’s victory was ever in doubt, why the recent devastating earthquakes and economic turmoil seem to have had so little impact on his support, the challenges faced by the opposition, and the growing importance of xenophobia in Turkey’s politics.

Find further reading, and listen ad-free, on the LRB website: lrb.me/erdoganpod

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The Lives of Stonehenge: Inigo Jones and John Wood

Tue, 23 May 2023 12:10:48 -0000

Rosemary Hill begins a new four-part series looking at what people have thought about Stonehenge over the past few hundred years, and why it’s come to matter so much in the story of Britain. In the first episode she talks to architectural historian Vaughan Hart about how Inigo Jones and John Wood were inspired by Stonehenge in their designs for Covent Garden and Bath, and how those in turn had an enormous influence on the way British towns and cities look today, from squares and circuses to oversized acorns and the idea of architecture itself.

Buy Rosemary Hill's book Stonehenge here: lrb.me/stonehengebook

Vaughan Hart is the author of numerous books on the history of architecture, including Inigo Jones: the Architect of Kings; Christopher Wren: In Search of Eastern Antiquity and Nicholas Hawksmoor: Rebuilding Ancient Wonders.

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How radical is Scotland?

Tue, 16 May 2023 13:28:15 -0000

Rory Scothorne joins Tom to discuss the evolution of Scottish politics over the past century or so, and how best to understand a country that’s shifted from a centre right electoral majority in the 1950s to a Labour stronghold in the 1980s, to being governed by the SNP since 2007. Is Scotland’s left-wing tradition a myth? And with the loss of Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader, and the recent scandals hitting the party, what are the prospects for Scottish independence?

Read Rory's piece in the LRB: https://lrb.me/scothornepod

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What Spotify Wants

Tue, 09 May 2023 21:32:03 -0000

Spotify, a company worth $23 billion, has come out on top of the streaming wars, and yet it’s never made a profit. Daniel Cohen joins Malin to discuss the history of the platform and how it's changed the way music is made and listened to, and the strangeness of streaming culture, rife with ethical dilemmas.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/spotifypod

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Modi's Big Con

Tue, 02 May 2023 11:11:55 -0000

Accused of ‘the largest con in corporate history’, Indian magnate Gautam Adani has lost half his net worth and the indulgence of financial journalists. As Adani comes under increasing scrutiny, so do his troubling political connections – not least with India's prime minister, Narendra Modi. Pankaj Mishra joins Tom to discuss Adani and Modi’s intertwined careers, and their shared role in shaping an increasingly ethnonationalist, plutocratic India.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/modipod

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Thomas Hardy's Medieval Mind

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 15:37:58 -0000

Two worlds collide in this Close Readings fusion episode in which Mary Wellesley talks to Mark Ford about the medieval in Thomas Hardy and the wider Victorian imagination. They discuss why Hardy liked to present himself as an Arthurian knight, his satirisation of the chivalric ideal in his novel A Pair of Blue Eyes, and the way his training as an architect influenced his devotion to poetic spontaneity and experimentation.

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Sisters Come Second

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 16:58:46 -0000

In his introduction to our twelfth collection of LRB archive pieces, Sisters Come Second, Colm Tóibín writes that most siblings dream of being only children. Malin Hay explores this idea with Colm and Andrew O’Hagan, both younger sons in big families. Their conversation considers the examples of the brothers Mann, Yeats, James and Windsor, and why, as Czesław Miłosz observed, when there’s a writer in the family, that family is finished.

You can buy Sisters Come Second from the LRB Store for just £5.99: lrb.me/siblings

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/siblingspod

Music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Zoe Kilbourn, Anthony Wilks and Sam Kinchin-Smith

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Mary Renault's Worldbuilding

Tue, 11 Apr 2023 17:18:48 -0000

Miranda Carter joins Tom to talk about the life and historical fiction of Mary Renault, whose popular and ingenious retellings of stories from Ancient Greece have never been out of print. They discuss her eventful life, which took her from Edwardian East London to apartheid South Africa, and her meticulous classical reconstructions.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/maryrenaultpod

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Sorry State

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 00:53:14 -0000

In the run up to the local elections, and following his recent piece on the care crisis, James Butler joins Tom to discuss some of the other problems facing the UK, and what the two major parties are promising to do to alleviate (or exacerbate) them.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/sorrystate

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Pirates of Madagascar

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 16:24:00 -0000

Francis Gooding joins Tom to discuss Pirate Enlightenment, David Graeber’s posthumously published study of 17th- and 18th-century piracy. Golden Age pirates maintained surprisingly egalitarian working practices, Graeber argues, and legendary pirate republics may have been run on similar grounds. Tom and Francis talk about Graeber’s Madagascar-centred research, sift through myth and fact, and ask: was piracy a bullshit job?

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/pirateenlightenment

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BookTok

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 17:25:43 -0000

With the future of TikTok increasingly uncertain in the US and other countries, Malin Hay talks to Tom about the app’s powerful reading-focused corner, BookTok: what it is, how it works, and the tropes which dominate its favourite genre, romance fiction. They also look at some recent emails from listeners.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/booktokpod

Get in touch with the podcasts team: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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How to Plot an Abortion

Tue, 14 Mar 2023 16:40:59 -0000

Expanding on her recent Winter Lecture, Clair Wills talks to Tom about the stories people tell about abortions – stories conditioned by tradition, coerced by the courts, compelled by politics and shared in solidarity. They discuss some of the radical reframings and reimaginings of abortion in art, literature and private life.

Find further reading, including the lecture, on the episode page: lrb.me/clairwillspod

Watch the lecture on YouTube: lrb.me/abortionplot

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Climate, Politics and Procreation: Jade Sasser

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 14:34:01 -0000

In the final episode of this series on climate chaos and reproductive justice, Meehan Crist speaks to the feminist scholar Jade Sasser. Jade discusses how advocates for population control harness the language of social justice, her students’ highly personal responses to climate change, and the ways scholarship on climate anxiety has neglected questions of race.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/jadesasserpod

Read the lecture that inspired this series: lrb.me/meehancristlecture

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The Reaction Economy

Tue, 28 Feb 2023 13:07:35 -0000

William Davies talks to Tom about his recent LRB Winter Lecture, looking at why reactions – facial expressions, gestures or emojis – have become the main currency of the digital public sphere. Ubiquitous surveillance and smartphones have made the spontaneous reaction a thing to be cultivated, collected and stored. How did we come to endow reaction with such significance, and what might an escape from the reaction economy look like?

Watch the lecture here: https://youtu.be/bNCYo_mEzfQ

LRB Audio

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Climate, Politics and Procreation: Alison Bashford

Tue, 21 Feb 2023 17:51:19 -0000

In the third episode of a four-part series exploring the intersection of climate chaos and reproductive justice, Meehan Crist speaks to historian Alison Bashford. Alison discusses the history of efforts to control population size, how population is thought about in the Anthropocene, and how suspending critique of the past can give valuable insight into the present.

Find the full conversation and further reading at the episode page: lrb.me/bashfordpod

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The Weirdness of Paul Newman

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 15:43:34 -0000

The screen legend and salad dressing philanthropist Paul Newman recorded hundreds of personal interviews before destroying the tapes. The surviving transcripts, worked into a recent memoir and documentary series, reveal a more complex Newman than his on-screen laconicism would suggest. Bee Wilson speaks to Malin Hay about Newman’s mystique – his passivity, his domesticity and his irresistible blue eyes.

Find Bee's article and further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/paulnewmanpod

Get in touch with the podcasts team: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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Climate, Politics and Procreation: Banu Subramaniam

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 15:33:39 -0000

In the second episode of a four-part series on climate chaos and reproductive justice, Meehan Crist speaks to Banu Subramaniam, the evolutionary biologist and feminist science scholar. They discuss the global persistence of Malthusian thinking, why the focus of policymakers on population often means focusing on the bodies of poor and marginalised women, and how historical anxiety about ‘invasive’ plant species has mirrored the formation of national borders and attitudes towards human migrants.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/banusubramaniam

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The Hayek Puzzle

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 14:52:32 -0000

Long before Margaret Thatcher told her cabinet that The Constitution of Liberty was “what we believe”, neoliberal poster boy Friedrich Hayek had been denounced by his mentor as a socialist. Following his review of a new biography, Jonathan Rée speaks to Tom about Hayek’s celebrity and infamy, and the ways close reading reveals surprising nuance in his work.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/hayekree

Get in touch with the podcasts team: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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Climate, Politics and Procreation: Loretta J. Ross

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 16:14:17 -0000

In the first episode of a four-part series exploring the intersection of climate chaos and reproductive justice, Meehan Crist talks to activist and feminist scholar Loretta J. Ross. Ross discusses how she's worked to prevent sexual violence by talking to perpetrators, the problems with today’s call out culture, why the Clinton administration’s healthcare plan prompted the development of the reproductive justice movement in the 1990s, and how to challenge arguments that link fertility with environmental crisis.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/lorettaross

Learn more about SisterSong on their website: https://sistersong.net

Get in touch with the podcasts team: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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The Woman Who Interviewed Hitler

Tue, 17 Jan 2023 17:43:52 -0000

In 1939, Dorothy Thompson was on the cover of Time, the ‘First Lady of American journalism’ and a major celebrity. By 1945, she’d been widely dismissed as a crank.

Deborah Friedell joins Tom to discuss Thompson’s enormous influence in interwar America, and her idiosyncratic mix of prescience and short-sightedness.

Find further reading on the podcast page: https://lrb.me/dorothythompson

LRB Audio

Discover audiobooks, Close Readings and more from the LRB: https://lrb.me/audiolrbpod

Get in touch with the podcasts team: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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What do management consultants do?

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 17:08:24 -0000

Laleh Khalili, a former management consultant, talks to Tom about how firms such as McKinsey, Accenture and Bain go about their business, the consequences of their relentless quest for ‘efficiency’, and the role these ‘class war mercenaries’ have played in supporting various governments all over the world.

Find further reading on the podcast page: https://lrb.me/mckinseypod

Get in touch! Email us at podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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How to Choose the Greatest Film of All Time

Tue, 03 Jan 2023 14:08:51 -0000

Michael Wood talks to Malin Hay about the recent list from Sight and Sound of the ‘greatest films of all time’ (in which he voted), and what considerations could, or should, go into compiling such a chart. They also discuss Wood’s most recent review for the LRB, of Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander, and whether there is such a thing as a Christmas movie.

Find more from Michael Wood in the LRB on the episode page: https://lrb.me/greatestfilmpod

Get in touch! Email us at podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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Alan Bennett: Diary for 2022

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 11:22:18 -0000

Alan Bennett reads his 2022 diary (with some extra bits), in which he buys his dad a violin, goes to Venice with a goat, and tries to make the queen laugh.

Listen without ads, and find more from Alan Bennett, on the LRB website: https://lrb.me/2022diarypod

Get in touch! Email us at podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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After the Midterms

Tue, 13 Dec 2022 17:31:42 -0000

Thomas B. Edsall, a columnist for the New York Times, talks to Adam Shatz about the landscape of US politics following the recent elections. They consider some of the historic causes for the apparent polarisation of today’s electorate, and look ahead to the vote in 2024. Will Biden be a credible candidate for re-election? And what would a Trump or DeSantis (or even a Youngkin) candidacy mean for both the Republican and Democratic parties?

Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b

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Introducing Among the Ancients

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 11:12:01 -0000

Listen to a sample from the first episode of our twelve-part Close Readings series, Among the Ancients, with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones, which we'll be re-running from January next year. With a new episode each month, Among the Ancients will consider some of the greatest works of Ancient Greek and Roman literature, from Homer to Horace. In this sample Emily and Tom discuss the Iliad.

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The Dahl Factory

Tue, 06 Dec 2022 16:48:23 -0000

Roald Dahl's key skill, as Colin Burrow puts it, 'was his ability to repress nastiness while keeping it visible'.

Following his review of a new biography, Burrow talks to Tom Jones about Dahl’s limitations, his successes, and his 'marvellous medicine' approach to fiction.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/dahl

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Introducing Medieval Beginnings

Fri, 02 Dec 2022 11:35:50 -0000

Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley return with a new twelve-part Close Readings series, Medieval Beginnings, exploring the strange and wonderful literary landscape of the Middle Ages. Starting in January 2023, the series will consider well-known works such as Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as well as many lesser-known texts, from across the European continent, that have all helped to lay the foundations of English literature. Listen to a sample here from their first episode, on Beowulf.

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Who killed Jane Stanford?

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 16:18:16 -0000

Jane Stanford, the co-founder of Stanford University, was murdered with strychnine in 1905. Her killer was never discovered – until now (perhaps). James Lasdun talks to Malin Hay about a new book by Richard White that investigates the story and looks into the extraordinary history of the Stanford family.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/stanfordpod

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Introducing The Long and Short

Fri, 25 Nov 2022 14:23:09 -0000

Seamus Perry and Mark Ford return with a new twelve-part Close Readings series, The Long and Short, taking a fresh look at 19th and 20th-century literature through the lens of short stories and long poems. Starting in January 2023, the series will look at twelve writers, from Tennyson and Henry James to Elizabeth Bowen and Alice Oswald, with a new episode appearing each month. This sample is from the first episode, on Tennyson’s ‘Maud’.

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Consider the Pangolin, and Other Animals

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 17:24:45 -0000

Katherine Rundell has been writing about endangered animals in the LRB since 2018. Her new book, The Golden Mole, gathers those essays and new pieces into a bestiary of unusual and underappreciated creatures.

Katherine was joined by LRB editor Alice Spawls in a discussion touching on Elizabethan celebrity bears, Amelia Earhart’s bones, and the greatest lie we’ve ever told: that the world is ours for the taking.

You can read Katherine’s work in the LRB archives: lrb.me/rundell

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What is Coral?

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 14:36:49 -0000

Corals have held our fascination for thousands of years, but much of what we know about them has only been discovered recently. Liam Shaw talks to Tom about what corals are and how they form, and their extraordinary variety (over two thousand species have so far been described). They look at some of the milestones in our knowledge of this flower-animal, including Darwin’s account of coral atoll formation, and the importance of the oral history of Indigenous peoples around the coast of Australia in understanding the development of the Great Barrier Reef. As coral reefs now face almost total destruction from climate change, they also consider some of the fixes people have come up with to protect them, and whether it’s possible to put a monetary value on such natural phenomena.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/coralpod

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Fathers and Sons in Palestine

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 15:51:43 -0000

The writer and human rights lawyer Raja Shehadeh talks to Adam Shatz about his recent memoir, We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I, which reflects on Shehadeh’s relationship with his father, Aziz, a lawyer who, before his murder in 1985, fought numerous cases for Palestinian rights and was one of the first to advocate a two-state solution.

Find pieces by Raja Shehadeh for the LRB on the episode page: https://lrb.me/shehadehpod

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Protests in Iran

Tue, 01 Nov 2022 12:19:48 -0000

Azadeh Moaveni talks to Tom about the demonstrations in Iran following the killingof Mahsa Amini in September. They discuss the degree to which the protesters have a shared purpose, the history and significance of the veil in Iranian state policy, the effects of government oppression in the border areas of the country, and how Iran might change after Ayatollah Khamenei.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/iranprotestspod

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Passports and Spies

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 14:05:43 -0000

Sheila Fitzpatrick talks to Tom about the perils of doing archive research in the Soviet Union, how she used Moscow telephone directories to investigate Stalin’s purges, and the multiple passports and identities she’s gone through in her academic career.

Find further reading in the LRB on the episode page: https://lrb.me/fitzpatrickpod

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Will the world end in 2178?

Tue, 18 Oct 2022 15:35:25 -0000

Following Nasa’s Dart mission, which successfully fired a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos last month, Chris Lintott talks to Tom about what asteroids can tell us about the history of our planet, how scared we should be of them, and why you should be grateful if one hits your car (so long as you aren’t inside it at the time).

Find further reading, or listen ad-free, on the episode page: https://lrb.me/asteroidpod

More information about the Nine Dots Prize: https://ninedotsprize.org

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Lula v. Bolsonaro

Tue, 11 Oct 2022 16:02:19 -0000

Forrest Hylton talks to Tom about the presidential elections in Brazil, where former president Lula faces the incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, in the final round of voting. They consider the history of both candidates, their supporters and campaigns, and what’s at stake in the contest.

Find further reading, and listen ad-free, on the episode page: https://lrb.me/brazilpod

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On Ian McEwan

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 16:22:40 -0000

Daniel Soar talks to Tom about Ian McEwan’s latest novel, Lessons – how it fits with his earlier fiction, the relationship between world events and private histories, and McEwan’s addiction to ‘moments of maximum thrill’.

Find further reading, and listen ad-free, on the episode page: https://lrb.me/mcewanpod

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On Jean-Luc Godard

Tue, 27 Sep 2022 16:25:23 -0000

Claire Denis and J. Hoberman join Adam Shatz to talk about the work and legacy of Jean-Luc Godard. They discuss Godard’s early fascination with American cinema, his extraordinary run of films in the 1960s from À bout de souffle to Week-end, and subsequent periods of restless experimentation which continued to confound both audiences and critics until his death this month.

Find further reading on Godard in the LRB on the episode page: https://lrb.me/godardpod

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Jonathan Meades: Closing Time for the Firm

Tue, 20 Sep 2022 16:16:00 -0000

Writer and filmmaker Jonathan Meades introduces and reads his review of Tina Brown's book about the royal family, The Palace Papers, from April this year.

Read the piece here: https://lrb.me/meadespod

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Grief Totalitarianism

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 15:53:43 -0000

As Britain acquires a new king and new prime minister, and ordinary people are arrested for expressing dislike of the royal family, James Butler and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite join Tom to consider whether this might be a perilous time for the monarchy, and how the Truss government will go about selling its old-fashioned Thatcherite vision in an era of increasing demands on the state.

Find James's and Florence's pieces via the episode page: https://lrb.me/griefpod

Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Zoe Kilbourn and Anthony Wilks

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Are you a hoarder?

Tue, 06 Sep 2022 15:47:43 -0000

Jon Day talks to Tom about the history and psychology of the accumulation of objects, from Anglo-Saxon treasure to the Collyer twins of Harlem, by way of Freud, Marie Kondo and Day’s own father. When does clutter become a hoard? Are we all digital hoarders now? And should we worry about it?

Read Jon Day's diary, and see the Clutter Image Rating, here: lrb.me/hoardingpod

Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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Green Growth and Degrowth

Tue, 30 Aug 2022 16:03:12 -0000

In the 20th century, the pursuit of economic growth became central to political decision making. As the environmental consequences of this obsession have become increasingly clear, ideas of ‘green growth’ and ‘degrowth’ have emerged as ways of re-organising economies to try to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. Geoff Mann talks to James Butler about these related but often competing approaches, and whether the political structures exist for them to be implemented.

Find further reading, and listen ad free, on our website: lrb.me/degrowthpod

Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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From the Bookshop: Elif Batuman and Merve Emre

Tue, 23 Aug 2022 11:17:45 -0000

This week, a guest episode from the London Review Bookshop Podcast, featuring Elif Batuman talking to Merve Emre about her latest book, Either/Or. The London Review Bookshop podcast comes out every week and has hundreds of events in its archive. Find it wherever you get your podcast.

Some events from the London Review Bookshop are broadcast online as well as in person, so you can watch live from anywhere in the world. On Wednesday this week, you can watch food writers Rebecca May Johnson and Jonathan Nunn.

Buy tickets here: https://lrb.me/eventspod

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Between Mykolaiv and Kherson

Wed, 17 Aug 2022 17:19:00 -0000

James Meek, recently returned from Mykolaiv, talks to Tom about the area of southern Ukraine that has become a crucial battleground in the war, as Russian forces seek to maintain control of the land they’ve occupied west of the Dnieper, and the Ukrainians try to push them back across the river.

Read James's report from Mykolaiv here: https://lrb.me/mykolaivpod

Watch the short film here: https://lrb.me/mykolaivfilmpod

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Two German Frauds

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 11:32:48 -0000

John Lanchester talks to Tom about the recent scandals involving two DAX-listed companies, Volkswagen and Wirecard, and the ways in which they challenge the stereotypes of German business.

Find further reading, and listen ad free, on our website: lrb.me/fraudpod

Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b

Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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Four Hundred Years of Women's Football

Tue, 02 Aug 2022 16:09:23 -0000

Emma John and Natasha Chahal join Tom to discuss England’s victory in Euro 2022, the long history of women’s football – mentioned in a poem by Philip Sidney in the 16th century, banned by the FA for half of the 20th – and what may happen next.

Find further reading, and listen ad free, on the episode page: https://lrb.me/euro22pod

Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b

Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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On Desert Island Discs

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 14:25:03 -0000

Miranda Carter talks to Tom about the history of the world’s longest-running interview show, Desert Island Discs, from its early scripted days on the BBC Forces Programme in the 1940s, in the hands of its creator, Roy Plomley, to the more probing and revealing styles of Sue Lawley and Kirsty Young. They also consider some of its more memorable guests, including Marlene Dietrich, Tony Blair, Enoch Powell, Hugh Grant and Margaret Thatcher.

Find further reading and a list of LRB castaways here: https://lrb.me/carterpod

Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b

Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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China's Gold Rush Migrants

Tue, 19 Jul 2022 16:00:31 -0000

Andrew Liu talks to Tom about the Chinese workers who followed the gold rush to California, Australia and South Africa, the racial stereotypes about them promoted by local politicians, and their role in the huge economic shifts of the late 19th century, as described in a new book by Mae Ngai, The Chinese Question.

Find further reading, and listen ad free, on the episode page: https://lrb.me/goldrushpod

Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b

Find Andrew's piece in n+1 here.

Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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After Johnson

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 15:50:39 -0000

James Butler joins Tom to consider the fall of Boris Johnson, the candidates hoping to replace him, and what the next few years of British politics might look like.

Find more pieces on Boris Johnson in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/afterjohnsonpod

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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On Roe v. Wade

Tue, 05 Jul 2022 16:08:29 -0000

Laura Beers and Deborah Friedell talk to Tom about the recent decision by the US Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson, which removed the constitutional right to abortion. They consider the history of Roe v. Wade and its legal arguments, how abortion became such a partisan issue, and the possible consequences both of the ruling itself and the willingness of the current court to overturn precedent.

Find further reading, and listen ad free, on the episode page: https://lrb.me/roevwadepod

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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Palm Oil Dependency

Tue, 21 Jun 2022 13:54:05 -0000

Bee Wilson talks to Tom about palm oil, which can be found in everything from pot noodles to shaving foam. In its purest state, squeezed from the fruit and kernels of the oil palm, it has a deep red colour and rich fragrance. By the time it reaches our supermarkets, in ultra-processed foods and cosmetics, it’s been refined, bleached, deodorised and relabelled, appearing in multiple different forms. Bee and Tom look at the reasons for its ubiquity, the consequences for those involved in its production and whether a sustainable palm oil industry is possible.

Find more to read on the episode page: https://lrb.me/palmoilpod

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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Great Replacement Theory

Tue, 14 Jun 2022 12:29:32 -0000

Adam Shatz, the LRB’s US editor, talks to Sindre Bangstad and Reza Zia-Ebrahimi about the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, from its origins in the high tide of French colonial expansionism in the 19th century and propagation through writers such as Jean Raspail and Renaud Camus, to its influence on mass murderers in Norway, New Zealand and the United States.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/grtheorypod

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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At the Bataclan Trial

Tue, 07 Jun 2022 12:41:00 -0000

Madeleine Schwartz talks to Tom about the trial of twenty men accused of involvement in the Paris terrorist attacks of 13 November 2015, which left 130 dead. It’s the largest criminal trial France has ever seen, and its scope has ranged far beyond the guilt or innocence of the accused. With thousands of plaintiffs, and witnesses including the former president François Hollande, are expectations for what the proceedings might achieve realistic? And how have the attacks, and the trial, changed French politics?

Find further readings and listening here: https://lrb.me/bataclanpod

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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How To Win at Basketball

Tue, 31 May 2022 14:52:29 -0000

Ahead of the NBA finals next month, LRB contributor, novelist and former basketball player Benjamin Markovits talks to sports journalists Ben Cohen and Kevin Arnovitz about the role of data in the game. Why did it take teams so long to realise the value of the three-point shot? What's the difference between a 32% shooter and a 37% shooter? And is there anything more exciting in sport than watching Steph Curry’s pre-game warm-up?

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/nbapod

Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b

Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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On Olympia

Tue, 24 May 2022 15:24:42 -0000

James Romm talks to Tom about the site of the Ancient Greek games, the subject of a new book by Judith Berringer, Olympia: A Cultural History. They discuss the various contests in which athletes competed, the punishment for those found cheating, the importance of the games as a political platform, and the colossal statue of Zeus in whose honour they were held.

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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A Covid Update

Tue, 17 May 2022 16:59:33 -0000

Rupert Beale returns to the podcast to talk to Tom about the current state of SARS-CoV-2 in the UK. They discuss what ‘living with Covid’ means, the chances of future waves and lockdowns, the different experiences of long Covid, and whether we’re better placed to tackle another pandemic.

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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Women on the Brink

Wed, 11 May 2022 15:04:39 -0000

Azadeh Moaveni talks to Tom about the situation on the Polish border, where women and children fleeing Ukraine face numerous dangers, including kidnapping, trafficking and forced labour. Moaveni describes the way social media has changed the way traffickers work, the dramatic range of conditions refugees face in Poland, and how this displacement crisis compares to others she’s seen.

Read Azadeh's piece: https://lrb.me/moavenipod

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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Julian Barnes: Flaubert at 200

Tue, 03 May 2022 14:11:16 -0000

Julian Barnes reads his memoir about a lifetime of reading Flaubert.

Read the piece, and listen to the reading without ads, here: https://lrb.me/flaubertpod

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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Romantic History: Waterloo to the British Musem

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 13:46:43 -0000

In the final episode in our series looking at the way history was transformed in the Romantic period, Neil MacGregor joins Rosemary Hill to discuss the circulation of artefacts throughout Europe in the years after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, and the growth of public collections. They consider how the questions that museums grapple with today – concerning ownership, restitution and the role ordinary people should play in the stories they tell – were inherent in their creation in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Buy Rosemary Hill's book, Time's Witness, from the London Review Bookshop here: https://lrb.me/hill

Subscribe to the LRB and get 79% off the cover price plus a free tote bag: https://lrb.me/history

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Mix Tapes and Flash Cubes

Tue, 19 Apr 2022 13:36:35 -0000

Andrew O’Hagan talks to Tom about the power of defunct objects, from the life-enhancing gadgets of his childhood to Seamus Heaney’s fax machine, and the role lost things play in fiction.

Find Andrew O'Hagan's pieces mentioned in this episode here: https://lrb.me/mixtapespod

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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Romantic History: The Bayeux Tapestry

Tue, 12 Apr 2022 13:50:25 -0000

Who put the arrow in Harold’s eye? Why did Dick Whittington have a cat? Where did the pointed arch come from? These are all questions that the curious and energetic antiquarians of the late 18th and early 19th centuries asked, and often managed to answer.

In the third episode of her series looking at the way history was transformed in the Romantic period, Rosemary Hill talks to Roey Sweet about the new breed of multi-disciplinary investigators, who, in the years after the French Revolution, studied everything from woollen threads to tombstones in their efforts to imagine the past.

Buy Rosemary Hill's book, Time's Witness, from the London Review Bookshop here: https://lrb.me/hill

Subscribe to the LRB and get 79% off the cover price plus a free tote bag: https://lrb.me/history

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What the Welsh got right

Tue, 05 Apr 2022 14:56:19 -0000

Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite talks to Tom about how events in the 1960s, including the Aberfan disaster and a shift in strategy by the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru, helped pave the way for devolution in Wales, where the Labour-led administration now has one of the most progressive policy agendas in the world.

Read Florence's piece here: https://lrb.me/walespod

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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Weapons of War

Tue, 29 Mar 2022 16:44:03 -0000

Tom Stevenson talks to Thomas Jones about the situation in Ukraine, the effectiveness of some of the weapons in use, from anti-tank missiles to economic sanctions, and the risk of nuclear escalation.

Find Tom Stevenson's recent pieces for the LRB here: https://lrb.me/stevensonpod

Listen to this podcast ad free on our website: https://lrb.me/weaponsofwar

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Romantic History: Balmoral

Tue, 22 Mar 2022 11:59:47 -0000

In the 1740s the Scots were invading England and the wearing of tartan was banned. By the 1850s, Queen Victoria had built her Gothic fantasy in Aberdeenshire and tartan was everywhere. What happened in between?

In the second episode of her series on Romantic history, Rosemary Hill talks to Colin Kidd about the myths and traditions of Scottish history created in the 19th century, and the central role of Walter Scott in forging his country’s identity.

Buy Rosemary Hill's book, Time's Witness, from the London Review Bookshop here: https://lrb.me/hill

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Romantic History: Salisbury Cathedral

Tue, 15 Mar 2022 12:43:24 -0000

In the first episode of a new four-part series looking at the way history was transformed in the Romantic period, Rosemary Hill is joined by Tom Stammers to consider how an argument over the ‘improvement’ of Salisbury Cathedral in 1789 launched a new attitude to the past and its artefacts. Those sentiments were echoed in revolutionary France, where antiquarians risked the guillotine to preserve the monuments of the Ancien Régime.

Buy Rosemary Hill's book, Time's Witness, from the London Review Bookshop here: https://lrb.me/hill

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Putin's Mistake

Tue, 01 Mar 2022 16:26:24 -0000

James Meek talks to Tom about the events leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, from the fall of Yanukovych to the wars in the Donbas and Nagorno-Karabakh, and considers what may happen next.

Read more by James Meek here: https://lrb.me/jamesmeekpod

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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The Special Forces Fantasy

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 17:11:31 -0000

Laleh Khalili talks to Tom about the mythology of covert military operatives, through romance novels, self-help books and, more recently, the business guru, in the form of retired US army general Stanley McChrystal, who earns millions writing books and advising boards on how to inject warlike thinking into their business plans.

Find pieces mentioned in this episode here: https://lrb.me/khalili

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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A Message and a Poem

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 16:12:57 -0000

This week's discussion, with Laleh Khalili, will be out on Thursday. In the meantime, here's Jorie Graham reading her latest poem for the LRB, 'One the Last Day'.

Find more readings of poems and pieces here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/lrb-readings

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The Climate Colossus

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 17:02:20 -0000

Geoff Mann talks to James Butler about the economic models developed by William Nordhaus and others, widely used by governments around the world as a tool to tackle climate change. They discuss the moral and practical limitations of Nordhaus’s methods, the danger of relying on their predictions, and whether the use of such models is even an appropriate way of confronting environmental crisis.

Read Geoff Mann's piece here: https://lrb.me/mannpod

Read two pieces from the next issue early:

Laleh Khalili on Stanley McChrystal's business guide: https://lrb.me/khalilipod

Paul Theroux on V.S. Naipaul: https://lrb.me/therouxpod

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Morocco's Secret Prisons

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 15:47:36 -0000

Jeremy Harding talks to Tom about the long and repressive reign of King Hassan II of Morocco, as described in a new book by Aziz BineBine, who suffered 18 years of brutal detention in Tazmamart, a secret prison. They discuss Hassan’s accession to the throne in 1961, his efforts to suppress Morocco’s radical anti-colonialist elements, the occupation of Western Sahara, and the survival of his dynasty beyond the Cold War era.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/hardingpod

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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John McGahern’s Letters

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:59:12 -0000

Colm Tóibín talks to Tom about the life and work of the novelist John McGahern through his recently published correspondence, which includes letters to Tóibín. They discuss his family, his banned work, his style, and his unusually honest opinions of other writers.

Read more on McGahern in the LRB: lrb.me/mcgahernpod

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Music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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Anti-Vax Sentiments

Tue, 25 Jan 2022 13:57:55 -0000

Rivka Galchen talks to Tom about two recent books on the history of vaccine opposition and reluctance, from smallpox to covid, including the role of 'Big Supplement' and the effectiveness of mandates.

Find further reading here: https://lrb.me/antivaxpod

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Music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Les Mommsen and Anthony Wilks

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Myself with Others: Claudia Roden

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 10:35:27 -0000

In the third and final guest episode from a new podcast series, Myself with Others, food writer Claudia Roden talks to Adam Shatz about her early life in Cairo and Paris, her obsession with collecting recipes, how politics informs her understanding of food, and the secret Jewish origins of fish and chips.

Subscribe to Myself with Others wherever you're listening to this podcast.

Find out more about the series here: https://www.myselfwithothers.com/

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Myself with Others: James Lasdun

Tue, 11 Jan 2022 06:49:32 -0000

In this second guest episode from a new podcast series, Myself with Others, novelist, memoirist and poet James Lasdun talks to Adam Shatz about his taste for the Middle Ages, the power of Patricia Highsmith, and his memoir about being stalked.

Subscribe to Myself With Others wherever you're listening to this podcast.

Find out more about the series here: https://www.myselfwithothers.com/

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Myself with Others: Margo Jefferson

Tue, 04 Jan 2022 20:05:07 -0000

In the first of three guest episodes from a new podcast, Myself with Others, hosted by Adam Shatz, writer and critic Margo Jefferson talks about her childhood in Chicago, her early experiences in radical theatre at Brandeis University, her relationship to the feminist and Black Power movements, her emergence as a writer, and her battles with melancholia. Produced by Richard Sears.

Subscribe to Myself with Others wherever you're listening to this podcast.

Find out more about the series here: https://www.myselfwithothers.com/

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Alan Bennett: Diary for 2021

Tue, 28 Dec 2021 12:19:34 -0000

Alan Bennett reads his diary for 2021, in which he falls over Philip Roth, changes the course of English history, and considers selling his har on eBay.

Bennett read the first part of this diary earlier this year, for his Diary from the Pandemic Year.

Read it here: https://lrb.me/bennett2021pod

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The Omicron Wave

Tue, 14 Dec 2021 15:43:18 -0000

John Lanchester and Rupert Beale talk to Tom about the spread of the latest variant, where we might stand in the story of Covid, and the failures of the state in coping with the pandemic.

Find their pieces on the episode page: https://lrb.me/omicronpod

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Music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Les Mommsen and Anthony Wilks

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The Guatemalan Coup

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 15:11:24 -0000

Rachel Nolan talks to Tom about the overthrow of President Árbenz in Guatemala in 1954, its importance as a model for CIA-backed regime change across Latin America, and a new novel about it by Mario Vargas Llosa.

Find Rachel Nolan's piece and others here: https://lrb.me/guatemalapod

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Music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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A History of Revolution

Tue, 23 Nov 2021 14:32:55 -0000

Enzo Traverso talks to Adam Shatz about his new book on the history of revolutionary passions, images and ideas, from Haiti’s emancipatory slave rebellion in 1791 to Stalin’s top-down authoritarianism. Are revolutions, as Marx suggested, the ‘locomotives of history’, or, as Walter Benjamin saw it, the emergency brake? And what can modern political movements learn from their revolutionary forebears?

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/revolutionpod

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Music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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The Last Asylums

Tue, 16 Nov 2021 15:53:00 -0000

Clair Wills talks to Tom about Netherne psychiatric hospital, where her mother and grandparents worked, and which became a national centre for art therapy. Wills asks how asylums such as Netherne – ‘total institutions’ as Erving Goffman described them – became normalised, and considers the role of art in revealing people’s experiences of them. They also discuss Wills’s related piece about the scandal of the Irish Mother and Baby Homes, published in the LRB in May.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/willspod

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Music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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Elizabethan True Crime

Tue, 02 Nov 2021 15:15:58 -0000

Tom talks to Charles Nicholl about the craze in the 1590s for plays representing real-life murder on the London stage, from the first known example, Arden of Faversham, to the genre's influence on Hamlet, Macbeth and, perhaps, the death of Christopher Marlowe.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/truecrimepod

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Music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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On John Craxton

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 16:27:14 -0000

Rosemary Hill talks to Tom about the painter John Craxton: why he wasn’t a romantic, why he wasn’t interested in being famous, and his relationship with Lucian Freud, who very much was.

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On Christopher Ricks

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 14:35:30 -0000

Tom talks to Colin Burrow about a new book by Christopher Ricks, regarded by some as the greatest living literary critic. They also look back at his previous studies of, among others, Milton, T.S. Eliot and Bob Dylan, and consider the rewards and limitations of the Ricks critical method, characterised by close verbal analysis.

Find related articles on episode page: https://lrb.me/rickspod

LRB Audio

Discover audiobooks, Close Readings and more from the LRB: https://lrb.me/audiolrbpod

Get in touch with the podcasts team: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Music by Kieran Brunt / Episode produced by Eliane Glaser / Series Producer: Anthony Wilks

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The Peter Thiel Paradox

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 15:01:02 -0000

David Runciman talks to Thomas Jones about Silicon Valley’s best known investor-provocateur, his prescience, his mistakes, and why, despite his ultra-libertarian ideology, he owes so much to the state.

Listen without ads, and find further reading, on our website: https://lrb.me/thielpod

LRB Audio

Discover audiobooks, Close Readings and more from the LRB: https://lrb.me/audiolrbpod

Get in touch with the podcasts team: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Music by Kieran Brunt / Episode produced by Eliane Glaser / Series Producer: Anthony Wilks

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'Swish! Swish! Swish!' by Patrick Leigh Fermor, read by Dominic West

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 15:11:50 -0000

Dominic West reads Patrick Leigh Fermor's piece about the olive harvest on the Mani peninsula, written in the 1950s but first published in 2021 in the LRB.

Read it here: https://lrb.me/leighfermorpod

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Kokumi

Tue, 07 Sep 2021 16:55:09 -0000

Daniel Soar talks to Thomas Jones about the sixth taste, variously translated as ‘mouthfulness’, ‘thickness’ and ‘lingeringness’, apparently discovered by the Japanese company Ajinomoto, and its origins in the twisty and opaque story of MSG in North America.

Read Daniel Soar's piece here: https://lrb.me/kokumipod

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Lydia Davis: One French City

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 14:07:34 -0000

Lydia Davis reads her essay on Arles, recorded for the Trilling Lecture at Columbia University in 2019.

Read the piece here: https://lrb.me/lydiadavisarlespod

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Colm Tóibín: Alone in Venice

Tue, 24 Aug 2021 12:00:16 -0000

Colm Tóibín reads his diary from November 2020, about visiting Venice during the pandemic.

Read the piece here: https://lrb.me/aloneinvenicepod

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Rosemary Hill: Populist Palatial

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 10:13:47 -0000

In the first of four summer readings visiting different places in Europe, Rosemary Hill explores the history of London's West End.

Read the piece here: https://lrb.me/hillwestendpod

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On Elizabeth Bowen

Tue, 10 Aug 2021 17:17:05 -0000

David Trotter talks to Joanne O’Leary about the novels and stories of Elizabeth Bowen, from her weird families and idiosyncrasies of style, to her mastery of atmospherics and prescient use of technology to shape her characters.

Find David's piece and more on Elizabeth Bowen in the LRB: https://lrb.me/bowenpod

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Stephen Frears on Hollywood

Tue, 03 Aug 2021 14:34:19 -0000

Stephen Frears talks to Andrew O’Hagan about making movies in America, to mark the publication of a new collection of LRB essays on Hollywood. He describes being protected by Scorsese, learning from Billy Wilder, and why films often had budgets of $39 million.

Buy the collection here: lrb.me/hollywood

Find more on the episode page: https://lrb.me/frearspod

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On Cheating in Sport

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 14:57:50 -0000

John Lanchester talks to Thomas Jones about ‘visible’ cheating in sport, that is, the kind which is against the rules but within the ethos of the game, from diving in football to bodyline bowling in cricket.

Read John's piece in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/lanchestersportpod

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The Assassination of President Moïse

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 14:46:46 -0000

Pooja Bhatia talks to Thomas Jones about the assassination of President Moïse in Haiti, the recent history of US involvement in the country, and the difference between elections and democracy.

Find Pooja Bhatia's writing on Haiti in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/seizeduppod

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The Problems with Building Wind Farms

Tue, 13 Jul 2021 16:35:01 -0000

James Meek talks to Thomas Jones about the connected fates of two wind tower factories, one in Scotland, the other in Vietnam, and asks why the determination to achieve a green future isn’t matched by a determination to ensure fair wages and good conditions for the workers who will make it possible.

Meek also describes the challenges of reporting on the story remotely during the pandemic. You can find his piece and watch some of the video shot by his researcher, Chi Mai, of the CS Wind factory in Phu My, here: https://lrb.me/windfarmspod

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On Simone Weil

Tue, 06 Jul 2021 14:26:52 -0000

Toril Moi talks to Joanna Biggs about the French philosopher Simone Weil, whose short and uncompromising life became a workshop for her revolutionary ideas about labour, human suffering and the power of paying attention.

Read Toril Moi on Simone Weil in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/weilpod

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Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

Tue, 29 Jun 2021 15:17:39 -0000

Deborah Friedell talks to Thomas Jones about the Rosenbergs, from their early years on the Lower East Side of New York to their executions for conspiracy to commit espionage in 1953, and the significance of their trial in American public life, not least as a platform for Donald Trump’s future lawyer, Roy Cohn.

Read Deborah's piece on the Rosenbergs and more here: https://lrb.me/rosenbergspod

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On the Irish Border

Tue, 22 Jun 2021 15:20:34 -0000

Niamh Gallagher talks to Thomas Jones about the history of the Irish border, from its origins in the 1920s to today, the way it has shaped Irish politics in both the south and north, and why the Troubles can’t be repeated.

Find Niamh Gallagher's piece in the LRB and more here: https://lrb.me/irishborderpod

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Muhammad, Cervantes and the Algarve

Tue, 15 Jun 2021 15:05:16 -0000

Tariq Ali talks to Thomas Jones about a newly reissued biography of the Prophet by Maxime Rodinson, and the historic prevalence of Arabic culture in the West, from Don Quixote to Trafalgar Square.

Find Tariq Ali's review and other related pieces in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/muhammadcervantespod

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Art Spiegelman: Collapsing Time

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 15:32:29 -0000

The legendary cartoonist talks to Thomas Jones about his latest book, Street Cop, a collaboration with Robert Coover, and looks back on previous work including Maus and In the Shadow of No Towers, which was originally published in the LRB.

Find related pieces in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/spiegelmanpod

Buy Street Cop here: https://isolarii.com/

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Alan Bennett: Diary From the Pandemic Year

Tue, 25 May 2021 16:37:23 -0000

Alan Bennett reads selections from his diary from March 2020 to March 2021.

Read more Alan Bennett in the LRB here: lrb.me/alanbennettpod

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Crisis in Israel-Palestine

Fri, 21 May 2021 16:04:11 -0000

Adam Shatz talks to Tareq Baconi and Henriette Chacar about the crisis in Israel-Palestine, the significance of the ceasefire, the context of the war, the politics inside Israel and the Gaza Strip, and the response in Washington.

Read Tareq Baconi on the LRB blog: https://lrb.me/afterceasefirepod

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Ancient Greek Horoscopy

Tue, 18 May 2021 14:27:41 -0000

Claire Hall talks to Thomas Jones about Ancient Greek horoscopy, the Ptolemaic model, the mysteries of the Antikythera mechanism, and why astrology was the first data science.

Find Claire's LRB pieces and more here: https://lrb.me/perfectcirclespod

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The Global Water Crisis

Tue, 11 May 2021 17:01:20 -0000

Rosa Lyster talks to Thomas Jones about the global water crisis, from the severe droughts in her home city of Cape Town, to the sinking of Mexico City and the damming of the Nile, and the need for all countries to prepare for future shortages.

Find Rosa Lyster's pieces (and listen ad free to this podcast) on our website here: https://lrb.me/waterpod

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The Greensill Scandal

Tue, 04 May 2021 17:07:28 -0000

Peter Geoghegan talks to Thomas Jones about the Greensill lobbying scandal, the refurbishment of Boris Johnson’s flat, the unhealthy relationship between successive British governments and the private sector, and what it might all mean for the future of the Union.

Find Peter's pieces others in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/onebigpaydaypod

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Blind Spots

Wed, 28 Apr 2021 14:54:14 -0000

Jesse McCarthy talks to Adam Shatz about his studies of Black diasporic culture, from Juan de Pareja to Audre Lorde, and his critique of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s case for reparations.

Find related pieces in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/blindspotspod

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Abbess, Editor, CEO

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 16:27:25 -0000

Irina Dumitrescu talks to Thomas Jones about female authorship in early medieval England, and how the power and freedom that (some) women had in the eighth century challenges the idea of linear social progress.

Find more by Irina Dumitrescu in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/dumitrescupod

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The Cargo Ship Business

Tue, 13 Apr 2021 16:09:06 -0000

John Lanchester talks to Thomas Jones about his experience of being on a cargo ship blocked from entering the Suez Canal in 1967, his subsequent journey round the Cape of Good Hope, and the modern-day business of containers.

Read John's piece and more in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/longwayroundpod

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Diane Williams on the Short Story

Tue, 06 Apr 2021 16:18:29 -0000

Diane Williams talks to Thomas Jones about her short stories, and reads her latest two published in the LRB.

Find more stories by Diane Williams in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/williamspod

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What is the UbuVerse?

Tue, 30 Mar 2021 16:37:58 -0000

Gill Partington and Thomas Jones explore Kenneth Goldsmith’s online avant-garde archive, UbuWeb, listen to some of the things you can find on it, and consider what might not be found there.

Find Gill's piece and more relevant LRB pieces here: https://lrb.me/ubuwebpod

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Israel’s Apartheid

Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:29:59 -0000

Mouin Rabbani and Nathan Thrall talk to Adam Shatz about Israel’s vaccination programme, the system of apartheid that now effectively exists between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, the legacy of Trump’s policies, and how the Biden administration may or may not exert its influence.

Read Mouin Rabbani in the LRB: https://lrb.me/rabbanipod

Read Nathan Thrall in the LRB: https://lrb.me/thrallpod

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Jorie Graham: ‘To 2040’

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 15:39:01 -0000

In this extra episode, Jorie Graham reads her poem ‘To 2040’, published in the latest issue of the LRB.

You can listen to Jorie Graham reading twelve more of her poems from the LRB on our website here: https://lrb.me/graham

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On Patricia Highsmith

Tue, 09 Mar 2021 17:11:33 -0000

Terry Castle talks to Thomas Jones about Patricia Highsmith.

Find Castle's piece on Highsmith, and pieces by Highsmith, in the LRB here: lrb.me/highsmithpod

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Optimistic Caution

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 17:13:59 -0000

Catherine Moore, a consultant clinical virologist at Public Health Wales, and Rupert Beale, a clinician scientist group leader at the Francis Crick Institute, talk to Thomas Jones about the vaccine rollout for Sars-CoV-2, the new variant originally found in Brazil, and whether the virus might ever be eliminated.

Find Rupert Beale's latest piece and others here: lrb.me/bealemoorepod

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Analogous Patisseries

Tue, 23 Feb 2021 17:24:03 -0000

Mary-Kay Wilmers, who retired as editor of the LRB last month, talks to Andrew O’Hagan about her career, first at Faber and Faber, then the Listener, then for 42 years at the London Review of Books. She talks about working with T.S. Eliot, the importance of being teased, and how a joke by Alan Bennett changed her life.

The episode also contains extracts from Wilmers’s 1988 diary for the LRB, ‘Putting in the Commas’, and O’Hagan’s piece about Wilmers in the latest issue of the paper. Read and listen to them in full here:

Mary-Kay Wilmers: Putting in the Commas

Andrew O'Hagan: Miss Skippit

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This Is Not a War

Tue, 16 Feb 2021 17:18:55 -0000

Raphaëlle Branche talks to Adam Shatz about her new book, Papa, qu’as-tu fait en Algérie? (Daddy, What Did You Do in Algeria?). In it, Branche investigates the experiences of French conscripts in the Algerian war, what they saw and did, and, more important, how they did and didn’t talk about it afterwards.

Shatz reviews Branche's book in the latest issue of the LRB. Find it and other related pieces here: https://lrb.me/branchepodcast

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The View from Salvador

Tue, 09 Feb 2021 17:46:28 -0000

Forrest Hylton talks to Thomas Jones about what’s happening in Brazil: the oxygen shortage in Manaus, Bolsonaro’s disastrous response to the pandemic, why Trump’s departure won’t hurt him, and the prospects for the left in next year’s general election.

Find pieces by Forrest Hylton and others on Brazil in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/viewfromsalvadorpod

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Abortion in 16th Century Italy

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 17:46:10 -0000

Erin Maglaque talks to Thomas Jones about abortion in 16th-century Italy, the stories of women who experienced it, how it was investigated, and why attitudes to pregnancy 400 years ago were in some ways preferable to those now.

Find more LRB pieces by Erin Maglaque here: lrb.me/erinmaglaquepod

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Andrew O’Hagan: ‘Shy bairns get nae sweets’

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:33:51 -0000

Andrew O‘Hagan reads his review of Sea State by Tabitha Lasley, a portrait of the oil rig industry, those who work in it, and a journalist‘s intensely close relationship with her subject.

Read the review here: https://lrb.me/seastatepod

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On Ursula Le Guin

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 17:03:40 -0000

Colin Burrow talks to Thomas Jones about the work of Ursula Le Guin. They discuss the way she brought anthropology into speculative fiction, her explorations of power and moral responsibility in the Earthsea books, and what it was like for Burrow growing up with another writer of fantasy and speculative fiction: his mother, Diana Wynne Jones.

Find Burrow's piece on Le Guin and more here: https://lrb.me/ursulaleguinpod

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The Colour Line in the Americas

Tue, 12 Jan 2021 19:24:29 -0000

Hazel Carby talks to Adam Shatz about the increasing nationalisation of racial histories, and the way African-American studies in the United States have been influenced by ideas of American exceptionalism. She argues instead for a broader, global view of race and African culture.

Carby explores these ideas in her review of Isabel Wilkerson's Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents: https://lrb.me/hazelcarbypod

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Beethoven Mythologies

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 16:51:06 -0000

James Wood talks to Thomas Jones about Beethoven, drawing on his review of three recent books on the composer. They discuss some of the apparently immovable Beethoven mythologies – the keyboard pedagogy, the heroic glower, the many appropriations of the 9th Symphony – and the blend of Viennese tradition and radical invention which characterises his music, particularly the piano sonatas, from the ethereal melodic sweetness of The Tempest to the terrifying, thumping trills of the Hammerklavier.

Read James Wood's piece here: https://lrb.me/beethovenpod

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Pieces and recordings featured in this episode:

5th Symphony: Berlin Philharmonic / Furtwängler (1954)

3rd Symphony: Berlin Philharmonic / Furtwängler (1952)

Piano Sonata No. 29 (‘Hammerklavier’): Barenboim (1984)

Piano Sonata No. 29 (‘Hammerklavier’): Solomon (1952)

Piano Sonata No. 17 (‘The Tempest’): Gould (1960)

9th Symphony: Beyreuth Festival Orchestra / Furtwängler (1951)

Piano Sonata No. 7: Horowitz (1959)

Piano Sonata No. 26 (‘Les Adieux’): Kempff (1951)

Piano Sonata No. 31: Hess (1953)

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John Lanchester: Twenty Types of Human

Tue, 29 Dec 2020 13:32:29 -0000

John Lanchester reads his review of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes.

Read the piece here: lrb.me/neanderthalspod

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‘Tassel Rue’ and Other Stories

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 13:52:07 -0000

Diane Williams reads nine of her (very) short stories published in the LRB, the most recent, ‘Tassel Rue’, from our Christmas issue.

Find these stories and more, as well as a conversation between Williams and Lara Pawson from the London Review Bookshop, on our website: https://lrb.me/dianewilliamspod

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Diego! Diego!

Tue, 15 Dec 2020 12:23:41 -0000

Thomas Jones reads his homage to Maradona, with help from some 1980s commentators.

Read the piece here: https://lrb.me/maradonapod

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New Vaccines

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 16:25:50 -0000

Rupert Beale talks to Thomas Jones about the new Sars-CoV-2 vaccines, how the mRNA technology works, why social distancing still matters, and why he’s worried about Christmas. (The conversation was recorded before the publication of the AstraZeneca/Oxford trial data.)

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On Denise Riley

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 18:06:28 -0000

Ange Mlinko talks to Joanne O’Leary about the work of Denise Riley, following the publication last year of Riley’s Selected Poems: 1976-2016 and her essay Time Lived, without Its Flow. They look in particular at Riley’s celebrated poem ‘A Part Song’, a long elegy for her adult son, Jacob, who died from undiagnosed cardiomyopathy in 2008. ‘A Part Song’ was published first in the LRB in 2012 and won the Forward Prize for best poem in that year, and this discussion features extracts of Riley reading from the poem.

Click here for more by Ange Mlinko and Denise Riley

This episode of the LRB Podcast is supported by The Week magazine. To try your first 6 issues of The Week for free, visit theweek.co.uk/offer and enter offer code LONDON

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Haiti’s Revolution

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 17:15:50 -0000

Pooja Bhatia talks to Thomas Jones about the Haitian revolution of 1791, the world-historical debut of the movement for Black liberation. They discuss the early insurrections, the leadership of Toussaint Louverture and his complicated legacy, the post-revolutionary land reforms and their traces in modern Haiti’s mango industry, and how Bhatia managed to get an interview with former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide after his return from exile.

Find more by Pooja Bhatia on Haiti in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/haitirevolutionpod

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From Fulton to Miami-Dade

Tue, 10 Nov 2020 17:43:01 -0000

Randall Kennedy and Mike Davis talk to Adam Shatz about the results of the US elections. They consider the achievement of Stacey Abrams in Georgia, why the pandemic didn’t make much difference, how Democrats failed to understand changing Latino demographics, the role of progressives in Biden’s victory, and the intransigent, exurban core of the Republican base.

Find more on the US elections in the LRB on the episode page for this podcast: https://lrb.me/kennedydavispod

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On Nabokov

Tue, 03 Nov 2020 15:59:21 -0000

Patricia Lockwood talks to Joanne O’Leary about being possessed by Vladimir Nabokov, reading Lolita as a teenage girl, the diagnostic value of Bend Sinister, and her anxiety about writing after having Covid-19.

Read Patricia Lockwood on Nabokov and more in the LRB: https://lrb.me/lockwoodnabokovpod

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Catholics and Lumpen-billionaires

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 17:05:24 -0000

Adam Shatz talks to Mike Davis about some of the underlying and long-term political shifts at play in next week’s US elections. They discuss both traditional and emerging swing voters, the obstacles to majority rule, the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett as the latest move in an ongoing civil war within the Catholic Church in the United States, the critical failure of the left to challenge the philosophy of the Reagan revolution, the death cult at the core of today’s Republican base, the importance of Bernie Sanders’s presidential run and the Black Lives Matter movement, and why, fifteen years ago, Davis predicted an age of pandemics.

Find LRB pieces related to this episode here: https://lrb.me/mikedavispod

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A History of Country Music

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 11:42:11 -0000

Alex Abramovich talks to Thomas Jones about the history of country from Jimmie Rodgers to Lil Nas X, by way of Dolly Parton (and Eddie Van Halen), and the problems with the labels that get applied to American vernacular music.

Find Alex Abramovich's piece on Ken Burns' series here: https://lrb.me/countrymusicpod

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Really Hot Hands

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 16:19:17 -0000

To mark the publication of the latest LRB Collection of essays, about sport, David Runciman, on loan from Talking Politics, talks to Ben Markovits about Michael Jordan, home advantage, how basketball has tackled racial inequality, the difference between writing about sport in fiction and non-fiction, and why it turns out that players really are sometimes hot and sometimes not.

Pre-order the LRB's collection of sports writing here: https://lrb.me/sport

Find the pieces mentioned in this episode here: https://lrb.me/sportpod

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Aeschylus’ Ghosts

Tue, 06 Oct 2020 16:06:30 -0000

Emily Wilson talks to Thomas Jones about three new translations of the Oresteia. They discuss what the texts of the tragedies may tell us about the state of democracy in fifth-century Athens, the difficulties of Aeschylus’ language, why Hamilton may be the best modern analogue to Ancient Greek drama, and how Wilson came to do her own translation of the Odyssey.

Find Emily Wilson's piece on Aeschylus and more here: https://lrb.me/emilywilsonpod

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No Wave Feminism

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 16:24:16 -0000

Jenny Turner talks to Joanna Biggs about the history of the Women’s Liberation Movement, the loneliness of feminist work, and the seemingly unavoidable question: How do you think your life compares to your mother’s?

Find Jenny Turner’s piece and other related pieces on the episode page for this podcast: https://lrb.me/jennyturnerpod

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400 Million Guns

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 17:05:51 -0000

Deborah Friedell talks to Thomas Jones about the origins, and origin myths, of the National Rifle Association, how it spends its money, and why it's wary of winning.

Read Deborah Friedell on the NRA here: https://lrb.me/friedellnrapod

And you can find her other pieces for the LRB here: https://lrb.me/friedellpod

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Katherine Rundell: Consider the Greenland Shark

Tue, 08 Sep 2020 12:10:53 -0000

Katherine Rundell reads her study of the Greenland shark, which can live for 500 years.

You can find all the pieces in Katherine Rundell's series of animal studies on her author page on the LRB website: https://lrb.me/rundellpod

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Covidology

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 16:24:36 -0000

Rupert Beale talks to Thomas Jones about Covid-19 vaccine candidates, and reasons not to rush them; how worried we should be about reported cases of re-infection; possible reasons for the apparent drop in the infection fatality rate; and the prospects for reopening schools.

Read more by Rupert Beale in the LRB: https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/lrb-conversations/covidology

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Patricia Lockwood: Insane after coronavirus?

Tue, 25 Aug 2020 14:35:48 -0000

Patricia Lockwood reads her diary about catching and recovering from Covid-19.

Read more by Patricia Lockwood in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/lockwoodpod

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The Absurdities of Race

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 16:11:20 -0000

Adam Shatz talks to Paul Gilroy about his intellectual background and the recent anti-racist protests in the UK and US. They discuss Gilroy’s experience growing up in North London in the 1950s and 1960s, the influence of African-American culture on his understanding of racial ordering, the role of Turner’s painting The Slave Ship in the history of the ‘Black Atlantic’, the shifting use of terms such as ‘racism’ and ‘anti-blackness’, and how the imminent threats of climate change might affect racial identity.

Find material related to this podcast on our website: https://lrb.me/paulgilroypod

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Early and Late Kermode

Tue, 11 Aug 2020 16:42:45 -0000

Stefan Collini talks to Thomas Jones about the life and work of Frank Kermode, and Mary-Kay Wilmers remembers him as a contributor to the LRB.

Find LRB pieces related to this episode here: lrb.me/frankkermodepod

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Buy the LRB’s selection of Frank Kermode’s essays from the LRB Store: lrb.me/kermodeselectionpod

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Press the Red Button

Tue, 28 Jul 2020 16:50:00 -0000

Following his piece in the latest issue of the LRB, William Davies talks to Thomas Jones about the new political polarisation, and what it owes to the online culture of instant feedback. What does politics look like, Davies asks, once the provocation of reaction, positive or negative, precedes the slow work of excavation, research, reporting and administration?

They discuss the anticipation of this modern politics in the ideas of the Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt, the seductive appeal of referendums as relief from the quagmire of parliamentary liberalism, and the way that demanding people take sides in the ‘culture wars’ inhibits meaningful discussion where it’s most needed.

Read William Davies' piece here: https://lrb.me/daviesredbuttonpod

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States of Shock

Tue, 21 Jul 2020 16:03:15 -0000

Pankaj Mishra talks to Adam Shatz about his latest piece for the LRB, which looks at the ways the US and UK have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests, and what those botched responses reveal about the broader failures of Anglo-America.

Their discussion also touches on the recent ‘open debate’ letter to Harper’s, the lingering prevalence of Cold War thinking among Western intellectuals, and the extent to which a Biden administration may or may not bring change.

Read Pankaj Mishra's piece here: https://lrb.me/pnakajmishrapod

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Katherine Rundell: Consider the Lemur

Tue, 14 Jul 2020 11:00:00 -0000

Katherine Rundell reads her study of the lemur.

You can find all the pieces in Katherine Rundell's series of animal studies on her author page on the LRB website: https://lrb.me/rundellpod

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Everyone misplaces my keys

Tue, 07 Jul 2020 15:00:00 -0000

Amia Srinivasan talks to Thomas Jones about the long search for a third person singular, gender-neutral pronoun, and the resurgence of the pronoun debate in recent years.

Read more by Amia Srinivasan in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/amiasrinivasanpod

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How do you change things?

Tue, 30 Jun 2020 15:57:38 -0000

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor talks to Adam Shatz about the intellectual and historical background to the Black Lives Matter movement, and why she’s optimistic that the current protests might bring change.

Find further reading and a full transcript of this episode on the LRB website: https://lrb.me/howdoyouchangethings

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Katherine Rundell: Consider the Swift

Tue, 23 Jun 2020 17:01:51 -0000

Katherine Rundell reads her study of the common swift, which flies about two million kilometres in its lifetime.

You can find all Katherine Rundell's pieces on animals for the LRB here: https://lrb.me/rundellpod

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Gaby Wood: How to Draw an Albatross

Tue, 16 Jun 2020 14:28:02 -0000

Gaby Wood reads her diary from the latest issue of the LRB, in which she tries to draw an albatross using a camera lucida.

Read the diary and much more in a latest issue: https://lrb.me/latestlrb

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‘No, I’m not getting married!’

Tue, 09 Jun 2020 15:38:19 -0000

Susan Pedersen talks to Joanna Biggs about Shelagh Delaney and her landmark 1958 play, A Taste of Honey.

Read Susan Pedersen on Shelagh Delaney in the LRB: https://lrb.me/delaneypod

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The first two clips in this episode are from the 1961 film, the third clip is from The White Bus (1967) directed by Lindsay Anderson, and the fourth clip is from a 1959 interview with Delaney for ITN.

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On Georges Simenon

Tue, 02 Jun 2020 16:02:38 -0000

John Lanchester talks to Thomas Jones about Georges Simenon, whose output was so prodigious that even he didn’t know how many books he wrote.

Find links to related articles and a full transcript on the podcast episode page: https://lrb.me/maigretreturnspod

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Reopening the NHS

Tue, 26 May 2020 16:48:30 -0000

Sonia Gandhi and Rupert Beale, scientists at the Francis Crick Institute, talk to Thomas Jones about the ways Covid-19 can affect the nervous system, the steps required to reopen the NHS after lockdown, the state of testing, and reasons for optimism about a vaccine.

Read Rupert Beale’s latest piece on the coronavirus here: How to Block Spike

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Semi-Recumbent in Bournemouth

Tue, 19 May 2020 13:12:05 -0000

Andrew O’Hagan talks to Thomas Jones about the friendship between Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James, and the time they spent together in Bournemouth.

Find a full transcript of this episode and links to related articles here: http://lrb.me/ohaganrlspod

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The Theory Truce

Tue, 12 May 2020 14:46:14 -0000

Michael Wood talks to Adam Shatz about critical theory, its origins, developments and various diversions, and where it stands today. The conversation marks the publication of the eighth volume in the LRB Collections series, The Meaninglessness of Meaning: Writing about the theory wars from the ‘London Review of Books’ by contributors including Pierre Bourdieau, Judith Butler, Richard Rorty, Lorna Sage, John Sturrock and Michael Wood.

You can buy the book on the LRB Store here: lrb.me/theory

Find a full transcript and list of related articles for this episode here: https://lrb.me/theorytrucepod

Use the code ‘collect8’ at checkout to buy all eight LRB collections for just £40.

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This Bad Business

Tue, 05 May 2020 15:58:38 -0000

Colm Tóibín talks to Thomas Jones about the breakdown of Elizabeth Hardwick’s marriage to Robert Lowell, and its literary consequences.

Find the pieces mentioned in this episode here: lrb.me/toibinhardwickpod

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The Idea of the Island

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 11:46:55 -0000

Mary Wellesley talks to Joanna Biggs about islands, blessed and not so blessed, from Homer to the Fyre Festival.

Read more by Mary Wellesley in the LRB:

On Blessed Isles

On anchorites

On Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

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Beauvoir and Me

Tue, 21 Apr 2020 17:57:55 -0000

Joanna Biggs talks to Thomas Jones about the life of Simone de Beauvoir.

Further reading on Beauvoir in the LRB:

Joanna Biggs: https://lrb.me/biggsdebeauvoirpod

Michael Rogin: https://lrb.me/rogindebeauvoirpod

Toril Moi: https://lrb.me/torilmoipod

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On the Ward

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 15:37:03 -0000

Lana Spawls talks to Thomas Jones about working on a paediatric ward during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the ways hospitals have changed in response to the virus.

Read Lana's latest piece in the LRB: Lana Spawls: How to set up an ICU

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In the Lab

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 16:15:17 -0000

Rupert Beale talks again to Thomas Jones about his work at the Francis Crick Institute, where he’s helping to set up a testing lab for Covid-19. He talks about the challenges of creating a scalable process, explains why a successful antibody test could be hard to achieve, and finds some reasons to be hopeful.

You can find a full transcript of this episode HERE.

Four Hundred Years of Quarantine

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 16:51:36 -0000

Erin Maglaque talks to Thomas Jones about the lockdown imposed by the city of Florence in January 1631 in response to a plague outbreak, the similarities with our current situation, and the differences.

Maglaque wrote about the plague in Florence in a recent issue of the LRB, reviewing Florence Under Siege: Surviving Plague in an Early Modern City by John Henderson.

Read her piece here: https://lrb.me/maglaquepod

Read Tom's piece on Italy and the coronavirus pandemic: https://lrb.me/jonesitalypod

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Wash Your Hands, Again

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 17:22:19 -0000

Following his piece for the LRB about Covid-19, Rupert Beale talks to Thomas Jones about what the novel coronavirus is, how well countries are dealing with it, and what hopes there are for stopping the contagion.

Read Rupert's piece here: https://lrb.me/bealecoronaviruspod

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Richard Lloyd Parry: Akihito and the Sorrows of Japan

Wed, 11 Mar 2020 14:09:30 -0000

Akihito, who abdicated in April, was a paradoxical figure: a hereditary monarch, the son of the wartime emperor, Hirohito, strictly barred from political utterance, who even so stood out against the historical revisionism of the nationalist right. Richard Lloyd Parry considers the former emperor’s part in the intellectual and political debate over Japan’s wartime record, and its history of apology – or non-apology – for its conduct in East Asia.

Find more from Richard Lloyd Parry in the LRB here: lrb.me/richardlloydparrypod

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Meehan Crist: Is it OK to have children?

Wed, 26 Feb 2020 13:30:51 -0000

Given what we know about the future of the planet, is having children a matter of consumer choice, of political conviction, or something an authority will eventually decide for us? Meehan Crist explores the debate about the ethics of childbearing in the age of climate crisis. She addresses the relationship between BP and the British Museum, the implications of culture-washing, and the logic of cultural divestment initiatives.

Read more from Meehan Crist in the LRB here: l rb.me/meehancristarticlespod

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Colin Burrow: Fiction and the Age of Lies

Wed, 12 Feb 2020 14:04:31 -0000

The line between making a fiction and telling a lie has been blurry at least since Homer, and liars – from Odysseus and Iago to Austen’s Wickham and beyond – have often played central parts within fictions. This lecture will aim to tell some (though not all) of the truth about the relationship between lies and fiction from Homer to Ian McEwan, and will ask if fiction has responded adequately to the maggoty abundance of lies in public life at the present time.

Read more by Colin Burrow in the LRB: lrb.me/colinburrowpod

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Alan Bennett’s Diary for 2019

Mon, 23 Dec 2019 17:43:37 -0000

Alan Bennett reads his Diary for 2019, with a few little extra bits.

Read more by Alan Bennett in the LRB: lrb.me/bennettpod

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The LRB at 40: Jeremy Harding, Adam Shatz and Nikita Lalwani

Thu, 07 Nov 2019 17:55:20 -0000

In the last of a series of events marking the LRB's 40th anniversary, Jeremy Harding and Adam Shatz talk to Nikita Lalwani about their work for the paper, with a focus on North Africa and the Middle East.

Due to some problems with the audio recording, this is a slightly abridged version of the event.

Read more Jeremy Harding in the LRB: lrb.me/jhardingpod

Read more Adam Shatz in the LRB: lrb.me/shatzpod

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The LRB at 40: Nell Dunn, Tessa Hadley and Joanna Biggs on women in fiction

Tue, 05 Nov 2019 13:44:43 -0000

As part of a series of events marking the LRB's 40th anniversary, Nell Dunn and Tessa Hadley talk to Joanna Biggs, one of the LRB's editors, about fictional representations of women’s everyday lives.

The LRB at 40: Rosemary Hill and Iain Sinclair on London

Thu, 31 Oct 2019 15:12:25 -0000

As part of our series of events marking the 40th anniversary of the LRB, longtime contributors Rosemary Hill and Iain Sinclair talked to the LRB’s digital editor, Sam Kinchin-Smith, about London, through the lens of pieces they've written for the paper.

Read more by Rosemary Hill in the LRB: lrb.me/hillpod

Read more by Iain Sincliar in the LRB: lrb.me/sinclairpod

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The LRB at 40: Katrina Forrester and William Davies on the crisis of liberalism

Fri, 25 Oct 2019 16:44:21 -0000

As part of our series of events marking the LRB's 40th anniversary, Katrina Forrester and William Davies discuss political crisis, and in particular the crisis of liberalism, through the lens of pieces they've written for the paper.

Read more by Katrina Forrester in the LRB: https://lrb.me/forresterpod

Read more by William Davies in the LRB: https://lrb.me/daviespod

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The LRB at 40: Mary-Kay Wilmers, Alan Bennett, Andrew O'Hagan, John Lanchester and Sheng Yun

Fri, 11 Oct 2019 14:02:05 -0000

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the London Review of Books, and mark the publication of The London Review of Books: An Incomplete History, the LRB’s editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers, along with Alan Bennett, Andrew O’Hagan, John Lanchester and Sheng Yun, talk to LRB publisher Nicholas Spice about the history and character of the paper.

The London Review of Books: An Incomplete History is available to buy on the LRB store:https://lrb.me/storepod

Read more Alan Bennett in the LRB here: https;//lrb.me/bennettpod

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Bee Wilson: Mmmm, chicken nuggets

Mon, 23 Sep 2019 08:20:29 -0000

Bee Wilson on eating out in late Victorian London.

Read more by Bee Wilson in the LRB: https://lrb.me/beewilsonpod

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James Wood: These Etonians

Thu, 29 Aug 2019 11:32:11 -0000

James Wood recalls his time at the college, with David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and others.

Read more by James Wood in the LRB: https://lrb.me/jameswoodpod

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Andrew O'Hagan: The Lagerfeld Fandango

Fri, 02 Aug 2019 12:31:26 -0000

Andrew O'Hagan goes to the fashion designer's memorial at the Grand Palais in Paris.

Read more by Andrew O'Hagan in the LRB: https://lrb.me/ohaganpod

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Mary Wellesley: 'This place is pryson'

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 14:17:56 -0000

Mary Wellesley looks inside the cell of a medieval anchorite, and considers why so many women shut themselves away to devote themselves to prayer and contemplation, and what their lives were like.

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Colm Tóibín: ‘It’s curable,’ he said

Wed, 17 Apr 2019 23:00:00 -0000

‘Instead of shaking all over, I read the newspapers. I listened to the radio. I had my lunch.’ Colm Tóibín reads his account of being treated for cancer.

Read more by Colm Tóibín in the LRB archive: lrb.me/colmtoibinpod

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Alan Bennett: Diary for 2018

Thu, 03 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0000

Alan Bennett puts on a new play and finds himself on someone’s arm, in his 2018 diary.

Read more by Alan Bennett in the LRB: https://lrb.me/bennettpod

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Rosemary Hill: The Dress in Your Head

Tue, 27 Mar 2018 23:00:00 -0000

Rosemary Hill explores frock consciousness in life and literature in her LRB Winter Lecture, delivered at the British Museum.

Read more by Rosemary Hill in the LRB: https://lrb.me/hillpod

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Linda Colley: The Problem with Winning

Wed, 14 Mar 2018 00:00:00 -0000

Linda Colley argues that the prospect of Brexit makes history more important than ever in her LRB Winter Lecture, delivered at the British Museum.

Read more by Linda Colley in the LRB: https://lrb.me/colleypod

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Anne Enright: The Genesis of Blame

Wed, 28 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0000

Anne Enright delivers her Winter Lecture on the corruptions of the Adam and Eve story in her LRB Winter Lecture, delivered at the British Museum.

Read more by Anne Enright in the LRB: https://lrb.me/enrightpod

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John Lanchester: 'Coffin Liquor', a story

Tue, 06 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0000

Toby Jones reads John Lanchester’s ghost story.

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Alan Bennett: Diary for 2017

Thu, 04 Jan 2018 00:00:00 -0000

Alan Bennett finds his métier at last in 2017.

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The Defectors: Richard Lloyd Parry talks to Krys Lee

Thu, 21 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0000

In the latest instalment of the LRB podcast, recorded in Seoul, Richard Lloyd Parry talks to the Korean-American novelist Krys Lee about Christianity, plastic surgery and mutual incomprehension in the Korean borderlands.

Read more by Richard Lloyd Parry in the LRB; https://lrb.me/lloydparrypod

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Jane Campbell: ‘Cat-Brushing’, a story

Wed, 06 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0000

Jane Campbell reads a story about dispossession in paradise.

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Lucy Prebble: Harvey Weinstein

Thu, 02 Nov 2017 00:00:00 -0000

Lucy Prebble describes meeting Harvey Weinstein.

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Absolute Revolt: Adam Shatz talks to Olivier Roy, part 2

Mon, 16 Oct 2017 23:00:00 -0000

In the second part of their conversation, Olivier Roy and Adam Shatz discuss the deculturation of Islam, and why it has led to the radicalisation of so many second-generation immigrants and converts.

Read more by Adam Shatz in the LRB: lrb.me/shatzpod

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Living Orients: Adam Shatz talks to Olivier Roy, part 1

Tue, 10 Oct 2017 23:00:00 -0000

In the first of two podcasts, Olivier Roy tells Adam Shatz about his experiences with the Gauche prolétarienne in the 1960s and his early travels in Afghanistan.

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Don’t learn shorthand: Rosemary Hill talks to Carmen Callil

Tue, 26 Sep 2017 23:00:00 -0000

Carmen Callil, writer, editor and founder of Virago, tells Rosemary Hill how she made her way in 1960s London.

Read more by Rosemary Hill in the LRB: lrb.me/hillpod

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Ferdinand Mount: Staffing the Raj

Wed, 06 Sep 2017 23:00:00 -0000

Ferdinand Mount on how India was governed strictly for the benefit of Britain.

Read more by Ferdinand Mount in the LRB: lrb.me/mountpod

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Trump is the Boot Man: Adam Shatz talks to Wallace Shawn

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 23:00:00 -0000

Writer and actor Wallace Shawn talks to Adam Shatz about ‘the thin line between entertainment and cruelty’ in the age of Trump.

Read more by Adam Shatz in the LRB: https://lrb.me/shatzpod

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Post-Press Politics: Tom Crewe talks to William Davies

Tue, 01 Aug 2017 23:00:00 -0000

William Davies talks to Tom Crewe about politics in the new media age.

Read more by William Davies in the LRB: https://lrb.me/daviespod

Read more by Tom Crewe in the LRB: https://lrb.me/crewepod

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Panthers in Algiers: Jeremy Harding talks to Elaine Mokhtefi

Tue, 18 Jul 2017 23:00:00 -0000

Elaine Mokhtefi tells Jeremy Harding about her time working in Algeria in the 1960s when she met Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver.

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Rosemary Hill: Ida John

Wed, 28 Jun 2017 23:00:00 -0000

‘Bohemia was never a safe country for women. If they didn’t all die of consumption in a garret, many of them might as well have done’ – Rosemary Hill on the letters of Ida John.

Read more by Rosemary Hill in the LRB: lrb.me/hillpod

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Andrew O'Hagan: Dacre’s Paper

Wed, 21 Jun 2017 23:00:00 -0000

‘It’s like the drunken lout at a party who can’t get anyone to like him.’ Andrew O’Hagan reads the Daily Mail.

Read more by Andrew O'Hagan in the LRB: lrb.me/ohaganpod

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The Corbyn Project: Tom Crewe talks to Lorna Finlayson

Mon, 05 Jun 2017 23:00:00 -0000

Tom Crewe talks to Lorna Finlayson about Jeremy Corbyn and Labour’s prospects in the general election and beyond.

Read more by Tom Crewe in the LRB: lrb.me/crewepod

Read more by Lorna Finlayson in the LRB: https://lrb.me/finlaysonpod

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Karma Nabulsi: Snitching on Students

Wed, 17 May 2017 23:00:00 -0000

‘Once you start seeing everyday behaviour as having the potential to draw people into terrorism, you’re inside the problem’ – Karma Nabulsi on the British government’s Prevent programme.

Read more by Karma Nabulsi in the LRB: https://lrb.me/nabulsipod

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Close Readings: On Philip Larkin

Wed, 10 May 2017 23:00:00 -0000

Seamus Perry and Mark Ford discuss the work of Philip Larkin, drawing on articles from our archive by contributors including Alan Bennett, Barbara Everett and John Bayley.

You can find a reading list of pieces mentioned in this episode here: https://lrb.me/philiplarkinpod

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Julian Barnes: People Will Hate Us Again

Thu, 27 Apr 2017 23:00:00 -0000

Julian Barnes on Georges Simenon and Brexit.

Read more by Julian Barnes in the LRB: https://lrb.me/barnespod

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The Syrian War: Adam Shatz talks to Joshua Landis

Thu, 20 Apr 2017 23:00:00 -0000

Adam Shatz talks to Joshua Landis about the war in Syria.

Read more by Adam Shatz in the LRB: https://lrb.me/shatzpod

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Talking Politics: John Lanchester talks to David Runciman

Wed, 12 Apr 2017 23:00:00 -0000

David Runciman talks to John Lanchester about banks, Europe and technology in this latest collaboration with Talking Politics.

Read John Lanchester in the LRB: https://lrb.me/lanchesterpod

Read David Runciman in the LRB: https://lrb.me/runcimanpod

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Iain Sinclair: The Last London

Wed, 29 Mar 2017 23:00:00 -0000

Iain Sinclair delivers his lecture on ‘The Last London’ at the British Museum, as part of the LRB’s Winter Lecture series.

Read more by Iain Sinclair in the LRB: https://lrb.me/sinclairpod

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Mary Beard: From Medusa to Merkel

Thu, 16 Mar 2017 00:00:00 -0000

Mary Beard delivers her lecture ‘Women in Power’ at the British Museum.

Read Mary Beard in the LRB: https://lrb.me/beardpod

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Talking Politics: Mary Beard talks to David Runciman

Tue, 28 Feb 2017 00:00:00 -0000

In the first of our ongoing and occasional collaboration with the Talking Politics podcast, David Runciman talks to Mary Beard about women in power.

Read Mary Beard in the LRB: https://lrb.me/beardpod

Read David Runciman in the LRB: https://lrb.me/runcimanpod

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Emily Witt: Burning Man

Thu, 12 Jan 2017 00:00:00 -0000

Emily Witt goes to the Burning Man gathering in Nevada, from our 17 July 2014 issue.

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Alan Bennett: Diary for 2016

Thu, 05 Jan 2017 00:00:00 -0000

Alan Bennett reads his diary for 2016.

Read more by Alan Bennett in the LRB: https://lrb.me/bennettpod

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In Conversation: On John Berger

Wed, 04 Jan 2017 00:00:00 -0000

To mark John Berger’s 90th birthday, the London Review Bookshop and Verso Books organised a discussion of his work with Mike Dibb, Yasmin Gunaratnam and Tom Overton, hosted by Gareth Evans.

Read John Berger in the LRB: https://lrb.me/bergerpod

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Frederick Seidel: In Late December

Thu, 15 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0000

Frederick Seidel reads his poem ‘In Late December’.

Read Frederck Seidel in the LRB: https://lrb.me/seidelpod

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Hal Foster: Robert Rauschenberg

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0000

Hal Foster reviews the Robert Rauschenberg exhibition at Tate Modern.

Read Hal Foster in the LRB: https://lrb.me/fosterpod

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Susan Pedersen: ‘Race Studies’

Wed, 19 Oct 2016 23:00:00 -0000

Susan Pedersen on the birth of ‘International Relations’.

Read Susan Pedersen in the LRB: https://lrb.me/pedersenpod

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In Conversation: Long-Form Essays in the Digital Age

Thu, 11 Aug 2016 23:00:00 -0000

Mary-Kay Wilmers, Andrew O’Hagan and Ben Eastham talk to Sarah Howe about ‘Long-Form Essays in the Digital Age’.

Read Mary-Kay Wilmers in the LRB: https://lrb.me/wilmerspod

Read Andrew O'Hagan in the LRB: https://lrb.me/ohaganpod

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John Lanchester: Brexit Blues

Wed, 27 Jul 2016 23:00:00 -0000

John Lanchester on the implications of the UK’s EU referendum.

Read John Lanchester in the LRB: https://lrb.me/lanchesterpod

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Gavin Francis: In the Morgue

Wed, 13 Jul 2016 23:00:00 -0000

Gavin Francis observes the autopsy of a man pulled from a river.

Read Gavin Francis in the LRB: https://lrb.me/francispod

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Frederick Seidel: Trump for President!

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 23:00:00 -0000

Frederick Seidel reads his poem ‘Trump for President!’.

Read Frederick Seidel in the LRB: https://lrb.me/seidelpod

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Andrew O'Hagan: The Satoshi Affair

Wed, 29 Jun 2016 23:00:00 -0000

Andrew O'Hagan watches Craig Wright show Gavin Andresen, one of the most respected bitcoin core developers, that he holds the Satoshi key.

Read Andrew O'Hagan in the LRB: https://lrb.me/ohaganpod

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Peter Pomerantsev: European Schools

Wed, 15 Jun 2016 23:00:00 -0000

Peter Pomerantsev remembers his time in the 'English section' at the European School in Munich.

Read Peter Pomerantsev in the LRB: https://lrb.me/pomerantsevpod

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Naomi Klein: Let Them Drown

Wed, 01 Jun 2016 23:00:00 -0000

Naomi Klein examines how Edward Said’s ideas of racial hierarchy, including Orientalism, have long been the silent partners to climate change.

Read Naomi Klein in the LRB: https://lrb.me/kleinpod

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Colm Tóibín: After I am hanged my portrait will be interesting

Wed, 30 Mar 2016 23:00:00 -0000

Colm Tóibín on the story of Easter 1916.

Read Colm Tóibín in the LRB: https://lrb.me/toibinpod

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Charles Hope: Giorgione

Wed, 30 Mar 2016 23:00:00 -0000

Charles Hope on Giorgione, 'a sort of Venetian counterpart to Leonardo'.

Read Charles Hope in the LRB: https://lrb.me/hopepod

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Julian Bell: Delacroix

Thu, 17 Mar 2016 00:00:00 -0000

Julian Bell discusses Delacroix and his heirs.

Read Julian Bell in the LRB: https://lrb.me/bellpod

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Frances Stonor Saunders: Where on Earth are you?

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 00:00:00 -0000

Frances Stonor Saunders examines the crossing of borders, in her LRB Winter Lecture delivered at the British Museum.

Read Frances Stonor Saunders in the LRB: https://lrb.me/stonorsaundersod

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James Meek: Robin Hood in a Time of Austerity

Thu, 18 Feb 2016 00:00:00 -0000

James Meek asks how, in a time of austerity economics, we define the robber and the robbed, in his LRB Winter Lecture delivered at the British Museum.

Read James Meek in the LRB: https://lrb.me/meekpod

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Alan Bennett: What I Did in 2015

Thu, 07 Jan 2016 00:00:00 -0000

Alan Bennett works the line, in his LRB Diary for 2015.

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David Runciman: Thatcher in Her Bubble

Thu, 03 Dec 2015 00:00:00 -0000

David Runciman on Margaret Thatcher.

Read David Runciman in the LRB: https://lrb.me/runcimanpod

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Chaohua Wang: Beijing locks up its lawyers

Thu, 05 Nov 2015 00:00:00 -0000

Chaohua Wang on justice in China.

Read Chaohua Wang in the LRB: https://lrb.me/chaohuawangpod

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Andrew O'Hagan: At Tottenham Court Road

Wed, 23 Sep 2015 23:00:00 -0000

Andrew O'Hagan crosses the road.

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Robert Hanks: On Putting Things Off

Wed, 09 Sep 2015 23:00:00 -0000

Robert Hanks on the pleasures and pains of putting things off.

Read Robert Hanks in the LRB: https://lrb.me/hankspod

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Julian Barnes: Selfie with ‘Sunflowers’

Wed, 29 Jul 2015 23:00:00 -0000

Julian Barnes on Van Gogh.

Read Julian Barnes in the LRB: https://lrb.me/barnespod

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The Killing of Osama bin Laden: Seymour Hersh talks to Christian Lorentzen

Wed, 20 May 2015 23:00:00 -0000

Seymour Hersh talks to Christian Lorentzen about his pieces for the LRB, collected in a new book, The Killing of Osama bin Laden.

Read Seymour Hersh in the LRB: https://lrb.me/hershpod

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Ghaith Abdul-Ahad: In Sanaa

Wed, 20 May 2015 23:00:00 -0000

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad on the rise of the Houthis in Yemen.

Read Gaith Abdul-Ahad: https://lrb.me/abdulahadyt

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Hilary Mantel: ‘The School of English’, a story

Wed, 06 May 2015 23:00:00 -0000

Hilary Mantel reads her short story, ‘The School of English’.

Read Hilary Mantel in the LRB: https://lrb.me/mantelyt

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Tariq Ali: The New World Disorder

Wed, 08 Apr 2015 23:00:00 -0000

In his 2015 Winter Lecture, Tariq Ali argues that we are living in the twilight period of democracy.

Read more Tariq Ali in the LRB: https://lrb.me/tariqalipod

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Marina Warner: Learning My Lesson

Thu, 19 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0000

In her 2015 Winter Lecture, Marina Warner shows how higher education in the UK has been betrayed.

Read more Marina Warner in the LRB: https://lrb.me/warnerpod

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Adam Phillips: Against Self-Criticism

Thu, 05 Mar 2015 00:00:00 -0000

In his 2015 Winter Lecture, Adam Phillips reflects on the ways we hate ourselves.

Read more by Adam Phillips in the LRB: https://lrb.me/phillipspod

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Peter Pomerantsev: Iammmmyookkraaanian

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0000

Peter Pomerantsev on images and myths of Maidan.

Read more by Peter Pomerantsev in the LRB: https://lrb.me/pomerantsevpod

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Death in Belgravia

Thu, 05 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0000

Rosemary Hill on the life and disappearance of Lord Lucan.

Read more Rosemary Hill in the LRB: https://lrb.me/hillpod

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Owen Bennett-Jones: Go-Betweens in Northern Ireland

Thu, 22 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0000

Owen Bennett-Jones on the messengers that paved the way for the Northern Ireland peace process.

Read more by Owen Bennett-Jones in the LRB: https://lrb.me/bennettjonespod

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Alan Bennett: What I did in 2014

Thu, 08 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0000

Alan Bennett on what he did in 2014.

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James Meek: Shamed in Afghanistan

Thu, 18 Dec 2014 00:00:00 -0000

James Meek on the British army’s eight years in Afghanistan.

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T.J. Clark: Face to Face with Rembrandt

Thu, 04 Dec 2014 00:00:00 -0000

T.J. Clark comes face to face with Rembrandt.

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Alan Bennett: On Private Education

Wed, 18 Jun 2014 23:00:00 -0000

Alan Bennett read this sermon on private educations before the University, King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, 1 June 2014.

Read more Alan Bennett in the LRB: lrb.me/bennettpod

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Mary Beard: The Public Voice of Women

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 00:00:00 -0000

Mary Beard reflects on the way women are heard – and have been heard – in public, from Homer’s Odyssey through Margaret Thatcher to internet trolls.

Read more Mary Beard in the LRB: lrb.me/beardpod

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Andrew O'Hagan: Julian Assange

Thu, 06 Mar 2014 00:00:00 -0000

Andrew O’Hagan spent six months with Julian Assange helping him write his autobiography, though in the event Assange didn’t want the book published. O’Hagan speaks about those six months for the first time.

Read more Andrew O'Hagan in the LRB: lrb.me/ohaganpod

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James Wood: On Not Going Home

Thu, 20 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0000

James Wood explores the estrangement of voluntary emigration: the puzzling sense of losing the country you leave and failing to find another. Homelessness, in a word.

Read more James Wood in the LRB: lrb.me/jameswoodpod

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Alan Bennett: What I did in 2013

Thu, 09 Jan 2014 00:00:00 -0000

Alan Bennett reluctantly pays some overdue bills.

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Penelope Fitzgerald

Thu, 19 Dec 2013 00:00:00 -0000

Jenny Turner on Penelope Fitzgerald

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A Death in Jenin

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 00:00:00 -0000

Adam Shatz on the life and death of Juliano Mer-Khamis.

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Mailer’s Last Punch

Thu, 07 Nov 2013 00:00:00 -0000

Andrew O’Hagan remembers Norman Mailer.

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Australia’s Boat-People

Wed, 25 Sep 2013 23:00:00 -0000

In August, as Australian politicians hung tough on asylum seekers, the Melbourne Writers Festival asked Jeremy Harding how far governments can patrol migration. With grateful acknowledgments to the Alan Missen Foundation and Liberty Victoria.

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In Conversation: Jacqueline Rose on Sylvia Plath, feminism, Proust, psychoanalysis, Zionism and more

Sat, 31 Aug 2013 23:00:00 -0000

Recognised for her writing on subjects including Sylvia Plath, feminism, Proust, psychoanalysis, Zionism, the Middle East conflict and Jewish identity, Rose discusses her work with Justin Clemens, co-editor (wtih Ben Naparstek) of the Jacqueline Rose Reader.

Read Jacqueline Rose in the LRB: https://lrb.me/jrosepod

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Jacqueline Rose: Rosa Luxemburg and Marilyn Monroe

Fri, 30 Aug 2013 23:00:00 -0000

Jacqueline Rose draws parallels between revolutionary 19th-century socialist Rosa Luxemburg and Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe. She explains how each of these remarkable women straddled the divide between their political and inner lives. Chaired by Hilary Harper.

Recorded at the Melbourne Writers Festival, 2013.

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Colm Tóibín: In Conversation

Fri, 30 Aug 2013 23:00:00 -0000

Author, essayist and poet Colm Tóibín is one of Ireland’s greatest living writers. He discusses his life and work, including his recent book The Testament of Mary, in which he re-imagines the life of Christ through the eyes of the holiest of saints. With Michael McGirr.

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At the Movies

Wed, 07 Aug 2013 23:00:00 -0000

Michael Wood reconsiders ‘Cleopatra’ – its expense, its quarrelling stars, its length, its success – on the release of a restored print for the film’s fiftieth anniversary.

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‘Bedsit Disco Queen’

Wed, 17 Jul 2013 23:00:00 -0000

Lavinia Greenlaw tells the story of singer Tracey Thorn’s rise from bedroom rehearsals and an ad in the NME to indie label Cherry Red (who also signed Greenlaw’s band), the top ten and a platinum record.

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Emily Davison, Modern Martyr

Wed, 03 Jul 2013 23:00:00 -0000

Marina Warner explores Emily Davison’s legacy as the suffragettes’ first martyr in a talk given at the inaugural Wilding Festival at St George’s Bloomsbury, where Davison’s memorial service was held.

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Andrew O'Hagan: The Paris Hilton Heist

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 23:00:00 -0000

Andrew O’Hagan tells the story of Alexis Neiers and the rest of the ‘Bling Ring’ who stole from Paris Hilton in order to be more like Paris Hilton.

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Is Wagner bad for us?

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 23:00:00 -0000

On the centenary of Wagner’s birth, Nicholas Spice asks in his Winter Lecture at the British Museum how his music works on us and what this tells us about music in general.

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David Runciman: American Democracy

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0000

David Runciman discusses the impossibility and persistence of the US political system in the LRB Winter Lecture delivered at the British Museum in 2013.

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Noam Chomsky: 65 Years in the Middle East

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0000

In his 2013 Edward W. Said lecture Noam Chomsky reflects on 65 years of violence in the Middle East.

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Adam Phillips: On Tantrums

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0000

Adam Phillips considers the sadomasochism of childhood and the pleasures and pains of tantrums.

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Hilary Mantel: Royal Bodies

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0000

Hilary Mantel considers the royal body from Anne Boleyn’s ‘bosom not much raised’ to Kate Middleton’s equally modest endowment. Introduced by Neil MacGregor, and delivered at the British Museum in 2013.

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Shakespeare: Our Contemporary? With Colin Burrow, Michael Dobson, James Shapiro, Emma Smith and Marina Warner

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0000

Colin Burrow, Michael Dobson, James Shapiro, Emma Smith and Marina Warner discuss the ways we continue to make (and occasionally unmake) Shakespeare in our own image. Introduced by Neil MacGregor and recorded at the British Museum.

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Alan Bennett: Diary for 2012

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0000

Alan Bennett rides in Mr Murdoch’s car and gets a review from T.S. Eliot, in these extracts from his 2012 diary.

Read the full diary in the LRB: https://lrb.me/bennett2012pod

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Andrew O'Hagan: ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 23:00:00 -0000

Andrew O’Hagan reads 'Fifty Shades of Grey' and considers the art of terrible writing about sex.

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Ahdaf Souief: Mina’s Banner and the Egyptian Revolution

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 23:00:00 -0000

In the 2012 Edward Said Lecture, Ahdaf Soueif tells the story of ‘Mina’s Banner’ and the Egyptian revolution.

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Ralph Fiennes reads ‘The University Poem’ by Nabokov

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 23:00:00 -0000

Ralph Fiennes reads ‘The University Poem’, which Nabokov wrote in 1926, four years after he left Trinity College, Cambridge.

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John Lanchester: Marx at 193

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 23:00:00 -0000

John Lanchester delivers his lecture writes about Karl Marx at 193.

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Neal Ascherson: The History and Future of Europe

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0000

Neal Ascherson discusses the competing forces of integration and nationalism throughout the history of modern Europe, and the ways in which they’ve shaped individual and collective identities, and considers the implications of the end of Cold Way on the continent’s social democratic frameworks.

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Alan Bennett: From his 2011 diary

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0000

Alan Bennett considers the banana skin and is mistaken for ‘another Alan’ in his Diary for 2011.

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The Wonderfulness of Us

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 23:00:00 -0000

Andrew O’Hagan chaired this discussion between Linda Colley, R.W. Johnson and Tom Devine about national histories and the ways they should, and should not, be taught.

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Jacqueline Rose: Freud, Jung and Sylvia Plath

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 23:00:00 -0000

Jacqueline Rose speaks about her first readings of Freud and Jung and her encounters with feminism, Sylvia Plath and Israel/Palestine, in this interview with Paul Myerscough recorded in 2011.

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Judith Butler: Who Owns Kafka?

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0000

Judith Butler asks ‘Who Owns Kafka?’ in one of the LRB’s 2011 Winter Lectures.

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T.J. Clark: Picasso’s Guernica Revisited

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0000

T.J. Clark shows how the painting of Guernica in May and June 1937 changed the way Picasso imagined space, in this 2011 LRB Winter Lecture at the British Museum,

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