The LRB Podcast

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 Subscribe to the LRB and save 79% off the cover price: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced...

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 th...

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 Subscribe to the LRB and sav...

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 Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue:...

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 ro...

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 th...

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 Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks Hosted on Aca...

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 Sub...

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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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...

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 dynast...

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

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 Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b Music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Les Mommsen and Anthony Wilks Host...

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 abou...

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/ Subscribe...

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 Mys...

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 Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b Hosted on Acast. See acast.c...

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 Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b Music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Les Mommsen and Anthony Wilks Hoste...

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 Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b Music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anth...

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...

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 scan...

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

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Audi...

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 wit...