Between 1988 and 1994, the UK scrambled to make sense of acid house, with its radical new sounds, new drugs and new ways of partying. In a recent piece for the paper, Chal Ravens considers a reappraisal of the origins and political ramifications of the Second Summer of Love. She joins Tom to unpack the social currents channelled through the free party scene and the long history of countercultural ‘collective festivity’ in England.

Read more, and listen ad free, on the LRB website: lrb.me/acidhousepod

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When is giving up not failure, but a way of succeeding at something else? In his new book, which began as a piece for the LRB, the psychoanalyst and critic Adam Phillips explores the ways in which knowing our limitations can be an act of heroism. This episode was recorded at the London Review Bookshop, where Phillips was joined by the biographer and critic Hermione Lee in a conversation about giving up and On Giving Up, his approach to writing and the purpose of psychoanalysis.

Find Phillips’s 2022 piece On Giving Up and further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/ongivingup

Find future events at the Bookshop: lrb.me/eventspod

LRB Audio

Discover the LRB's subscription podcast, Close Readings, and audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiopod

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Deborah Friedell and Adam Thirlwell met twenty years ago, they started a discussion about Jewish identity they are still puzzling over today. Revisiting Philip Roth’s The Counterlife (1986), an American take on British antisemitism and the escapist allure of aliyah, Adam and Deborah discuss the nuances of Jewish experience and novel-writing across the Atlantic.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/jewishnovelpod

Watch Judith Butler’s 2011 Winter Lecture: ‘Who owns Kafka?’

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gerontologist, pacifist, novelist, medical doctor and mollusc expert – Alex Comfort was far more than just the author of the staggeringly popular Joy of Sex. In her review of a new biography, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite navigates the convictions and contradictions of this bewilderingly polymathic thinker. She joins Tom to trace Comfort’s life from evangelical child prodigy to the anarchist free love advocate who became emblematic of the sexual liberation movement.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/comfortpod

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Enheduana was a Sumerian princess who lived around 2300 BCE and composed what is now regarded as the earliest poetry by a known author. Her father, Sargon of Akkad, is said to have created the world’s first empire, stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, and as part of his imperial mission he installed his daughter as the high priestess of the temple of the moon god, Nanna, in the city of Ur. In that capacity, Enheduana composed hymns of remarkable beauty, often governed by a powerful authorial voice.

Anna Della Subin joins Tom to discuss a new translation of Enheduana’s complete poems, read some of them in the original Sumerian, and consider the ways in which they challenge our ideas of authorship and literary history.

Read more, and listen ad free, on the LRB website: https://lrb.me/enheduanapod

LRB Audio

Discover the LRB's subscription podcast, Close Readings, and audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiopod

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Egyptian Revolution to Extinction Rebellion, the 2010s were marked by a global wave of spontaneous and largely structureless mass protests. Despite overwhelming numbers and popular support, most of these movements failed to achieve their aims, and in many cases led to worse conditions. James Butler joins Tom to make sense of the ‘mass protest decade’, sharing historical examples, theoretical approaches and first-hand experiences that help explain the defeats of the 2010s.

Find further reading and listen ad free on the episode page: lrb.me/protestdecade

Find the Close Readings podcast in Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, or just search 'Close Readings'.

Sign up to the Close Readings subscription to listen to all our series in full:

Directly in Apple Podcasts

In other podcast apps

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the first episode of their new Close Readings series on political poetry, Seamus Perry and Mark Ford look at ‘An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’ by Andrew Marvell, described by Frank Kermode as ‘braced against folly by the power and intelligence that make it possible to think it the greatest political poem in the language’.

Sign up to the Close Readings subscription to listen ad free and to all our series in full:

Directly in Apple Podcasts

In other podcast apps

Read the poem here

Further reading in the LRB:

Blair Worden: Double Tongued

Frank Kermode: Hard Labour

David Norbrook: Political Verse

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ethiopia is one of the world’s most populous countries, and yet the 2020-22 Tigray War and ongoing suffering in the region has been largely ignored by the world at large. Tom Stevenson joins the podcast to break down the history of the conflict, and explore why Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel laureate, has come to preside over such a brutal civil war. He also considers Abiy’s future intentions, both within and beyond his country’s borders.

Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/tigraypod

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Were the Middle Ages funny? Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley begin their series in quest of the medieval sense of humour with Chaucer’s 'Miller’s Tale', a story that is surely still (almost) as funny as when it was written six hundred years ago. But who is the real butt of the joke? Mary and Irina look in detail at the mechanics of the plot and its needless but pleasurable complexity, and consider the social significance of clothes and pubic hair in the tale.

Find the Close Readings podcast in Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, or just search 'Close Readings'.

Sign up to the Close Readings subscription to listen to all our series in full:

Directly in Apple Podcasts

In other podcast apps

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Did the foundational event of Proust’s great novel really happen? Michael Wood talks to Tom about several English translations of In Search of Lost Time, old and new, and what they reveal about different ways of reading the novel. If the dipping of the madeleine in his tea conjures an overwhelming memory of the narrator’s childhood, it is also a challenge to the conscious mind, a product of chance that Proust suggests might easily not have occurred at all.

Find more by Michael on Proust here: lrb.me/woodproustpod

Sign up to Close Readings Plus: lrb.me/plus

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.