The Chatterbox

In this episode, our books round-up: The Judges of Ireland, 1866-1921, by Daire Hogan; Masquerade: A History of Extravagance and Intrigue, by Meghan Kobza; and Tojo: The Rise and Fall of Japan's Most Controversial World War II General, by Peter Mauch.

Narrated by Andy Garcia. At the turn of the century until the 1930s in the cigar factories of Tampa and Ybor City, a well dressed man in a panama hat with a loud and beautiful voice sat atop a platform and read to the cigar workers as they rolled. These readers, known as Lectores de Tabaqueres, read Cervantes, Zola, Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Jules Verne…. It was the voices and words of these lectores, before radio and mechanization, who informed, organized, and incited the cigar workers, who labored by hand until the 1930s, when both the rollers and readers were replaced by mechanization. A lost tradition of story and smoke.

From the Lost & Found Sound series on NPR. Produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) and Jay Allison. The Kitchen Sisters Present is part of Radiotopia from PRX.

What does it mean to preserve culture in an age of disappearing websites, platform-controlled media, and fragile digital memories? In the final episode of our special six-part series on Vanishing Culture, Future Knowledge hosts Dave Hansen and Chris Freeland sit down with musician and series host Vida Vojić and producer Alice Bridgwood to reflect on the conversations, ideas, and lessons that emerged throughout the series.

Read Vanishing Culture for free at the Internet Archive or purchase in print: https://archive.org/details/vanishing-culture-2026

Today’s bad idea spans literature, film, pop culture and plenty else besides: David talks to literary critic and memoirist Catherine Taylor about what’s wrong with romantic heroes, from Byron and Heathcliff to James Dean and Jack Kerouac to Bridget Jones’s Mr Darcy and Andy Burnham. How did Romanticism give rise to the template for the brooding outsider who gets the girl? Which was the only Bronte sister to see through the myth? Why do romantic heroines get such a raw deal by comparison? And why does this idea lead to so much bad male behaviour?

Out tomorrow on PPF+: a bonus episode to accompany this series in which David talks to political historian David Klemperer about the idea of social credit, which promised to save the world in the 1920s and 1930s and ended up doing nothing of the sort. A fascinating story of cranks, conspiracy theorists and crypto-fascists with curious echoes in Silicon Valley today. To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up to PPF+ now https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus merch, events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com

Next Time in The History of Bad Ideas: Decadence

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Regular LRB contributor Daniel Trilling has been researching and writing about the far right in Britain and beyond for more than a decade. His latest book If We Tolerate This (Picador), published ahead of the momentous English local, Senedd and Scottish Parliament elections on May 7, is a short and powerful polemic examining how far right ideas have come to dominate the political agenda, and outlining a strategy for how we might combat them. Pankaj Mishra writes ‘Combining forensic enquiry with moral passion, Daniel Trilling has emerged as one of our most intrepid and resourceful reporters.’ He was in conversation about his work with William Davies, Professor of Political Economy at Goldsmiths, University of London, and author of This Is Not Normal and Nervous States.

You can buy a copy of If We Tolerate This from the London Review Bookshop.

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• E125: Chile – In this episode, we head to Chile, where a central figure of the 2019 uprising against the country’s dictatorship-era legacy, was a street dog called Negro Matapacos. Available without ads on Patreon.
• E125.1: Greece – In this bonus episode, we look at a street dog named Loukanikos, and protests against police violence in 2009, and against austerity in 2011. Available exclusively for our supporters on Patreon.

• Check out the Riot dog merch in our online shop.
• Check out sources, more information, and eventually a transcript on the webpage for this episode: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e125-riot-dogs/ 

• Thanks to our Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands.
• Episode graphic: Negro Matapacos mural, courtesy Sfs90/Wikimedia Commons
• Our theme tune is Loukanikos, by Ricardo Araya, as The Sunfall. Get it here on Bandcamp.
• Written by Audrey Kemp and Tyler Hill.
• Produced by Tyler Hill.

Guest host and former LCHP Postdoctoral Associate Ben Zdencanovic welcomes Cambridge historian Gary Gerstle to discuss whether Trump and MAGAism represent the end of the neoliberal order. Gary traces American political systems starting with the transition from the New Deal order, which emphasized government regulation of capitalism in the public interest, to the neoliberal order that prioritized deregulation, free markets, and globalization under Ronald Reagan and later gained bipartisan support during the Clinton administration. Gary argues that the 2008 financial crisis undermined the neoliberal consensus, creating the conditions for the rise of populist movements across the political spectrum and the emergence of Donald Trump’s political project. He examines whether the United States is entering a new political order centered on MAGA and emphasizes the risks of democratic backsliding and authoritarianism. Gary highlights sources of democratic resilience, including civic activism and the possibility of a new progressive political coalition. 

Gary Gerstle is Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Cambridge. Gerstle received his MA and PhD from Harvard University. He is currently the Kluge Chair of American Law and Governance at the Library of Congress. Last year he was Joy Foundation Fellow at the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. His works include over ten books, including his most recent book The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era(Oxford, 2022) and his current project Politics in Our Time: Authoritarian Peril and Democratic Hope in the Twenty-First Century(to be published 2027/2028 by Penguin Press)

Ben Zdencanovic is an Assistant Professor of U.S. History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. His research as a historian looks at the United States in the world, domestic and international politics, and social and economic policy. Ben was the inaugural Postdoctoral Associate at the LCHP. Ben is currently working on two book projects. The first is titled Island of Enterprise: The United States in a World of Welfare, 1940 – 1955 (forthcoming from Princeton University Press). His second book is tentatively entitled The Cold War on Poverty: Race, Labor, and Manpower in the U.S. Warfare/Welfare State.