The LRB Podcast

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/thr...

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 Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

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 Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Subscribe to th...

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, ‘Putt...

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 piece...

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

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

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 Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad c...

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://l...

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/ha...

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 e...

John Lanchester reads his review of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes. Read the piece here: lrb.me/neanderthalspod Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

Thomas Jones reads his homage to Maradona, with help from some 1980s commentators. Read the piece here: https://lrb.me/maradonapod Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.) Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad c...

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...

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-...

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...

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

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 phil...

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

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...

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 Aeschyl...

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