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 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as well as many lesser-known texts, from across the European continent, that have all helped to lay the foundations of English literature. Listen to a sample here from their first episode, on Beowulf.

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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 looks into the extraordinary history of the Stanford family.

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

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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 series will look at twelve writers, from Tennyson and Henry James to Elizabeth Bowen and Alice Oswald, with a new episode appearing each month. This sample is from the first episode, on Tennyson’s ‘Maud’.

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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 Spawls in a discussion touching on Elizabethan celebrity bears, Amelia Earhart’s bones, and the greatest lie we’ve ever told: that the world is ours for the taking.

You can read Katherine’s work in the LRB archives: lrb.me/rundell

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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 two thousand species have so far been described). They look at some of the milestones in our knowledge of this flower-animal, including Darwin’s account of coral atoll formation, and the importance of the oral history of Indigenous peoples around the coast of Australia in understanding the development of the Great Barrier Reef. As coral reefs now face almost total destruction from climate change, they also consider some of the fixes people have come up with to protect them, and whether it’s possible to put a monetary value on such natural phenomena.

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

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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 in 1985, fought numerous cases for Palestinian rights and was one of the first to advocate a two-state solution.

Find pieces by Raja Shehadeh for the LRB on the episode page: https://lrb.me/shehadehpod

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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, the effects of government oppression in the border areas of the country, and how Iran might change after Ayatollah Khamenei.

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

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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 further reading in the LRB on the episode page: https://lrb.me/fitzpatrickpod

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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 why you should be grateful if one hits your car (so long as you aren’t inside it at the time).

Find further reading, or listen ad-free, on the episode page: https://lrb.me/asteroidpod

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More information about the Nine Dots Prize: https://ninedotsprize.org

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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 stake in the contest.

Find further reading, and listen ad-free, on the episode page: https://lrb.me/brazilpod

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