The LRB Podcast (The London Review of Books)

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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

Sign up to our Close Readings subscription: https://lrb.me/closereadingspod

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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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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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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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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 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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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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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.

Read more in the LRB:

Rupert Beale: Wash Your Hands

Lana Spawls: How to set up an ICU

Thomas Jones: Quaresima

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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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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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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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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.

Read Mary Wellesley in the LRB: lrb.me/wellesleypod

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Colm Tóibín reads his diary from November 2020, about visiting Venice during the pandemic.

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

Subscribe to the LRB and save 79% on the cover price: https://lrb.me/travel

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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

Subscribe to the LRB and get 79% off the cover price plus a free tote bag: https://lrb.me/history

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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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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

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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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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

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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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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

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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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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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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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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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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

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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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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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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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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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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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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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

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Find Andrew's piece in n+1 here.

Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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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

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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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

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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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

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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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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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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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

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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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

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Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks

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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

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

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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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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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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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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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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

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

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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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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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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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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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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

Sign up to our Close Readings podcast subscription: https://lrb.me/closereadingspod

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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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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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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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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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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.

Sign up to all our Close Readings series here: https://lrb.me/closereadingspod

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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?

Sign up to our Close Readings podcast subscription: https://lrb.me/closereadingspod

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