The LRB Podcast

How to Choose the Greatest Film of All Time

03 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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 con...

Alan Bennett: Diary for 2022

27 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 l...

After the Midterms

13 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 co...

Introducing Among the Ancients

09 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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'l...

The Dahl Factory

06 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 biog...

Introducing Medieval Beginnings

02 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley return with a new twelve-part Close Readings series, Medieval Beginnings, exploring the strange and wonderful l...

Who killed Jane Stanford?

29 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Jane Stanford, the co-founder of Stanford University, was murdered with strychnine in 1905. Her killer was never discovered – until now (perhaps). J...

Introducing The Long and Short

25 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 li...

Consider the Pangolin, and Other Animals

22 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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...

What is Coral?

15 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Fathers and Sons in Palestine

08 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 refl...

Protests in Iran

01 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Azadeh Moaveni talks to Tom about the demonstrations in Iran following the killingof Mahsa Amini in September. They discuss the degree to which the pr...

Passports and Spies

25 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Sheila Fitzpatrick talks to Tom about the perils of doing archive research in the Soviet Union, how she used Moscow telephone directories to investiga...

Will the world end in 2178?

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Following Nasa’s Dart mission, which successfully fired a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos last month, Chris Lintott talks to Tom about what a...

Lula v. Bolsonaro

11 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Forrest Hylton talks to Tom about the presidential elections in Brazil, where former president Lula faces the incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, in the final ...

On Ian McEwan

04 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Daniel Soar talks to Tom about Ian McEwan’s latest novel, Lessons – how it fits with his earlier fiction, the relationship between world events ...

On Jean-Luc Godard

27 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 Amer...

Jonathan Meades: Closing Time for the Firm

20 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 y...

Grief Totalitarianism

13 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 F...

Are you a hoarder?

06 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Green Growth and Degrowth

30 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the 20th century, the pursuit of economic growth became central to political decision making. As the environmental consequences of this obsession h...

From the Bookshop: Elif Batuman and Merve Emre

23 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Between Mykolaiv and Kherson

17 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 Rus...

Two German Frauds

09 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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

Four Hundred Years of Women's Football

02 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 P...

On Desert Island Discs

26 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 t...

China's Gold Rush Migrants

19 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Andrew Liu talks to Tom about the Chinese workers who followed the gold rush to California, Australia and South Africa, the racial stereotypes about t...

After Johnson

12 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 mi...

On Roe v. Wade

05 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 r...

Palm Oil Dependency

21 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 frui...

Great Replacement Theory

14 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 t...

At the Bataclan Trial

07 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 13...

How To Win at Basketball

31 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Ahead of the NBA finals next month, LRB contributor, novelist and former basketball player Benjamin Markovits talks to sports journalists Ben Cohen an...

On Olympia

24 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 di...

A Covid Update

17 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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, t...

Women on the Brink

11 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Azadeh Moaveni talks to Tom about the situation on the Polish border, where women and children fleeing Ukraine face numerous dangers, including kidnap...

Julian Barnes: Flaubert at 200

03 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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/flaub...

Romantic History: Waterloo to the British Musem

26 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 th...

Mix Tapes and Flash Cubes

19 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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, a...

Romantic History: The Bayeux Tapestry

12 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 curio...

What the Welsh got right

05 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite talks to Tom about how events in the 1960s, including the Aberfan disaster and a shift in strategy by the Welsh nationa...

Weapons of War

29 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 econom...

Romantic History: Balmoral

22 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 Aberde...

Romantic History: Salisbury Cathedral

15 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 Stamm...

Putin's Mistake

01 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 Nagor...

The Special Forces Fantasy

24 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Laleh Khalili talks to Tom about the mythology of covert military operatives, through romance novels, self-help books and, more recently, the business...

A Message and a Poem

22 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 th...

The Climate Colossus

15 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Morocco's Secret Prisons

08 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 suffere...

John McGahern’s Letters

01 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Colm Tóibín talks to Tom about the life and work of the novelist John McGahern through his recently published correspondence, which includes letters...

Anti-Vax Sentiments

25 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 '...

Myself with Others: Claudia Roden

18 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Myself with Others: James Lasdun

11 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 ta...

Myself with Others: Margo Jefferson

04 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

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 c...

Alan Bennett: Diary for 2021

28 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 eBa...

The Omicron Wave

14 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 t...

The Guatemalan Coup

30 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

A History of Revolution

23 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Enzo Traverso talks to Adam Shatz about his new book on the history of revolutionary passions, images and ideas, from Haiti’s emancipatory slave reb...

The Last Asylums

16 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Clair Wills talks to Tom about Netherne psychiatric hospital, where her mother and grandparents worked, and which became a national centre for art the...

Elizabethan True Crime

02 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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, A...

On John Craxton

19 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 relationshi...

On Christopher Ricks

05 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 p...

The Peter Thiel Paradox

21 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

David Runciman talks to Thomas Jones about Silicon Valley’s best known investor-provocateur, his prescience, his mistakes, and why, despite his ultr...

'Swish! Swish! Swish!' by Patrick Leigh Fermor, read by Dominic West

14 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Kokumi

07 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Daniel Soar talks to Thomas Jones about the sixth taste, variously translated as ‘mouthfulness’, ‘thickness’ and ‘lingeringness’, apparen...

Lydia Davis: One French City

31 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Lydia Davis reads her essay on Arles, recorded for the Trilling Lecture at Columbia University in 2019. Read the piece here: https://lrb.me/lydiadavis...

Colm Tóibín: Alone in Venice

24 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Colm Tóibín reads his diary from November 2020, about visiting Venice during the pandemic. Read the piece here: https://lrb.me/aloneinvenicepod Subs...

Rosemary Hill: Populist Palatial

18 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

On Elizabeth Bowen

10 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 m...

Stephen Frears on Hollywood

03 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 de...

On Cheating in Sport

27 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

The Assassination of President Moïse

20 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

The Problems with Building Wind Farms

13 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 determ...

On Simone Weil

06 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Toril Moi talks to Joanna Biggs about the French philosopher Simone Weil, whose short and uncompromising life became a workshop for her revolutionary...

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

29 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 conspir...

On the Irish Border

22 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 polit...

Muhammad, Cervantes and the Algarve

15 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Art Spiegelman: Collapsing Time

08 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The legendary cartoonist talks to Thomas Jones about his latest book, Street Cop, a collaboration with Robert Coover, and looks back on previous work...

Alan Bennett: Diary From the Pandemic Year

25 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Alan Bennett reads selections from his diary from March 2020 to March 2021. Read more Alan Bennett in the LRB here: lrb.me/alanbennettpod Sign up to o...

Crisis in Israel-Palestine

21 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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,...

Ancient Greek Horoscopy

18 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Claire Hall talks to Thomas Jones about Ancient Greek horoscopy, the Ptolemaic model, the mysteries of the Antikythera mechanism, and why astrology wa...

The Global Water Crisis

11 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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...

The Greensill Scandal

04 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Peter Geoghegan talks to Thomas Jones about the Greensill lobbying scandal, the refurbishment of Boris Johnson’s flat, the unhealthy relationship be...

Blind Spots

28 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 Coa...

Abbess, Editor, CEO

20 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 e...

The Cargo Ship Business

13 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 jour...

Diane Williams on the Short Story

06 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 th...

What is the UbuVerse?

30 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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, ...

Israel’s Apartheid

23 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Mouin Rabbani and Nathan Thrall talk to Adam Shatz about Israel’s vaccination programme, the system of apartheid that now effectively exists between...

Jorie Graham: ‘To 2040’

18 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 twe...

On Patricia Highsmith

09 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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/highsm...

Optimistic Caution

02 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Catherine Moore, a consultant clinical virologist at Public Health Wales, and Rupert Beale, a clinician scientist group leader at the Francis Crick In...

Analogous Patisseries

23 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 Listen...

This Is Not a War

16 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

The View from Salvador

09 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Forrest Hylton talks to Thomas Jones about what’s happening in Brazil: the oxygen shortage in Manaus, Bolsonaro’s disastrous response to the pande...

Abortion in 16th Century Italy

02 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 at...

Andrew O’Hagan: ‘Shy bairns get nae sweets’

26 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 inten...

On Ursula Le Guin

19 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Colin Burrow talks to Thomas Jones about the work of Ursula Le Guin. They discuss the way she brought anthropology into speculative fiction, her explo...

The Colour Line in the Americas

12 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Hazel Carby talks to Adam Shatz about the increasing nationalisation of racial histories, and the way African-American studies in the United States ha...

Beethoven Mythologies

05 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

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 imm...