The LRB Podcast

By The London Review of Books

Society & Culture

What's The LRB Podcast about?

The LRB Podcast brings you weekly conversations from Europe’s leading magazine of culture and ideas. Hosted by Thomas Jones, it also features regular contributions from US Editor Adam Shatz and the ongoing ‘Close Readings’ series, which explores the lives and works of writers through the pieces about them in the LRB archive. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The Hayek Puzzle

01.31.2023

Long before Margaret Thatcher told her cabinet that The Constitution of Liberty was “what we believe”, neoliberal poster boy Friedrich Hayek had been denounced by his mentor as a socialist. Following his review of a new biography, Jonathan Rée speaks ...

The LRB Podcast episodes:

01.31.2023 The Hayek Puzzle Long before Margaret Thatcher told her cabinet that The Constitution of Liberty was “what we believe”, neoliberal poster boy Friedrich Hayek had been denounced by his mentor as a socialist. Following his review of a new biography, Jonathan Rée speaks ...
01.24.2023 Climate, Politics and Procreation: Loretta J. Ross In the first episode of a four-part series exploring the intersection of climate chaos and reproductive justice, Meehan Crist talks to activist and feminist scholar Loretta J. Ross. Ross discusses how she's worked to prevent sexual violence by talking to ...
01.17.2023 The Woman Who Interviewed Hitler In 1939, Dorothy Thompson was on the cover of Time, the ‘First Lady of American journalism’ and a major celebrity. By 1945, she’d been widely dismissed as a crank. Deborah Friedell joins Tom to discuss Thompson’s enormous influence in interwar ...
01.10.2023 What do management consultants do? Laleh Khalili, a former management consultant, talks to Tom about how firms such as McKinsey, Accenture and Bain go about their business, the consequences of their relentless quest for ‘efficiency’, and the role these ‘class war mercenaries’ have played in ...
01.03.2023 How to Choose the Greatest Film of All Time 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 considerations could, or should, go into compiling such a chart. They also discuss ...
12.27.2022 Alan Bennett: Diary for 2022 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 laugh. Listen without ads, and find more from Alan Bennett, ...
12.20.2022 Close Readings Live: The Waste Land Mark Ford and Seamus Perry return for the final episode in their Close Readings series looking at 19th and 20th century poetry. On the centenary of the publication of Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ in book form, Mark and Seamus consider ...
12.13.2022 After the Midterms 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 ...
12.09.2022 Introducing Among the Ancients 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 ...
12.06.2022 The Dahl Factory 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' ...
12.02.2022 Introducing Medieval Beginnings 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 ...
11.29.2022 Who killed Jane Stanford? 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 ...
11.25.2022 Introducing The Long and Short 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 ...
11.22.2022 Consider the Pangolin, and Other Animals 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 ...
11.15.2022 What is Coral? 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 ...
11.08.2022 Fathers and Sons in Palestine 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 ...
11.01.2022 Protests in Iran 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, ...
10.25.2022 Passports and Spies 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 ...
10.18.2022 Will the world end in 2178? 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 ...
10.11.2022 Lula v. Bolsonaro 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 ...
10.04.2022 On Ian McEwan 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 ...
09.27.2022 On Jean-Luc Godard 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 ...
09.20.2022 Jonathan Meades: Closing Time for the Firm 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 Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b ...
09.13.2022 Grief Totalitarianism 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 ...
09.06.2022 Are you a hoarder? 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? ...
08.30.2022 Green Growth and Degrowth 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 ...
08.23.2022 From the Bookshop: Elif Batuman and Merve Emre 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. ...
08.17.2022 Between Mykolaiv and Kherson 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, ...
08.09.2022 Two German Frauds 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 Subscribe ...
08.02.2022 Four Hundred Years of Women's Football 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 ...
07.26.2022 On Desert Island Discs 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 ...
07.19.2022 China's Gold Rush Migrants 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 ...
07.12.2022 After Johnson 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 ...
07.05.2022 On Roe v. Wade 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, ...
06.28.2022 Close Readings: On Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery Seamus Perry and Mark Ford discuss the lives and works of Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery, close friends and leading lights of the New York School, who sought to create an anti-academic, hedonistic poetry, freeing themselves from the puritan American ...
06.21.2022 Palm Oil Dependency 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 ...
06.14.2022 Great Replacement Theory 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 ...
06.07.2022 At the Bataclan Trial 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 ...
05.31.2022 How To Win at Basketball 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 ...
05.24.2022 On Olympia 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 ...
05.17.2022 A Covid Update 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 ...
05.11.2022 Women on the Brink 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 ...
05.03.2022 Julian Barnes: Flaubert at 200 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 Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b Title music by Kieran Brunt / Produced ...
04.26.2022 Romantic History: Waterloo to the British Musem 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 ...
04.19.2022 Mix Tapes and Flash Cubes 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: ...
04.12.2022 Romantic History: The Bayeux Tapestry 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, ...
04.05.2022 What the Welsh got right 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 ...
03.29.2022 Weapons of War 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 ...
03.22.2022 Romantic History: Balmoral 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 ...
03.15.2022 Romantic History: Salisbury Cathedral 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 ...

Older episodes

The LRB Podcast

What's The LRB Podcast about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The LRB Podcast episodes:

The Hayek Puzzle

Climate, Politics and Procreation: Loretta J. Ross

The Woman Who Interviewed Hitler

What do management consultants do?

How to Choose the Greatest Film of All Time

Alan Bennett: Diary for 2022

Close Readings Live: The Waste Land

After the Midterms

Introducing Among the Ancients

The Dahl Factory

Introducing Medieval Beginnings

Who killed Jane Stanford?

Introducing The Long and Short

Consider the Pangolin, and Other Animals

What is Coral?

Fathers and Sons in Palestine

Protests in Iran

Passports and Spies

Will the world end in 2178?

Lula v. Bolsonaro

On Ian McEwan

On Jean-Luc Godard

Jonathan Meades: Closing Time for the Firm

Grief Totalitarianism

Are you a hoarder?

Green Growth and Degrowth

From the Bookshop: Elif Batuman and Merve Emre

Between Mykolaiv and Kherson

Two German Frauds

Four Hundred Years of Women's Football

On Desert Island Discs

China's Gold Rush Migrants

After Johnson

On Roe v. Wade

Close Readings: On Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery

Palm Oil Dependency

Great Replacement Theory

At the Bataclan Trial

How To Win at Basketball

On Olympia

A Covid Update

Women on the Brink

Julian Barnes: Flaubert at 200

Romantic History: Waterloo to the British Musem

Mix Tapes and Flash Cubes

Romantic History: The Bayeux Tapestry

What the Welsh got right

Weapons of War

Romantic History: Balmoral

Romantic History: Salisbury Cathedral