Podcast
The LRB Podcast
Hosted by The London Review of Books · EN
The LRB Podcast brings you weekly conversations from Europe’s leading magazine of culture and ideas, hosted by Thomas Jones and Malin Hay, and featuring our fortnightly 'On Politics' podcast hosted by James Butler.
From the LRB
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Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
52episodes
Episodes
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When will AI replace us?
3d ago00:42:57Tap to summarizeIs AI taking us into a world where computer programmers, and perhaps the rest of us too, are obsolete? And if so, how quickly is it taking us there? Paul Taylor has been looking at code since the time when computer games didn't even have screens, and in this episode he talks to Tom about the enormous changes generative AI has brought to programming and the world of work in the past couple of years, from the threat of Claude’s secretive Mythos to one-person companies, and consider what jobs might be like in the future, if they exist at all. Read Paul Taylor on Claude: https://lrb.me/taylorclaude From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: https://lrb.me/crlrbpod LRB Audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: https://lrb.me/storelrbpod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
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On Politics: A New Era for UK Politics
5d ago01:04:06Tap to summarizeIn the wake of last week’s devolved and local elections, Keir Starmer is once again fighting for his political future. Labour has almost completely vanished in Wales, came a distant second in Scotland (tied with Reform UK), and lost nearly 1500 councillors in England. But while Plaid Cymru and the SNP were victorious in Wales and Scotland, in many ways the results in England were a disappointment for everybody, with no party making the breakthroughs they hoped for and the Conservatives pushed to the fringes. James is joined by Richard King, Rory Scothorne and Andy Beckett to makes sense of this new political map and consider what the collapse of old party loyalties and the rise of nationalist politics means across all three countries. Read more on politics in the LRB: https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: https://lrb.me/crlrbpod LRB Audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: https://lrb.me/storelrbpod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
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On Politics: The Fall of Orbán, the Rise of Magyar
1w ago01:05:17Tap to summarizeFor more than a decade, Viktor Orbán has stood alongside Trump and Modi as a global figurehead for authoritarian nationalism, and an inspiration to popular strongmen everywhere with his model for the ‘illiberal’ democratic state. But on April 12 his sixteen-year tenure as Hungary’s prime minister came to an end with a surprisingly gracious concession speech to his opponent, Péter Magyar, who won the country’s general election by a landslide. But if Orbán has fallen, will Orbánism collapse with him? James is joined by journalist Dan Nolan and poet and translator George Szirtes to discuss why Orbán was finally voted out and the challenges Magyar faces in meeting his main election promises of tackling corruption and improving the economy. Read Jan-Werner Müller on the Hungarian elections: https://lrb.me/ophungary01 Watch 'Magda's Boy: How George Szirtes invented his mother': https://lrb.me/ophungary02 From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: https://lrb.me/crlrbpod LRB Audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: https://lrb.me/storelrbpod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
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James Lasdun's road trip to America's courts
3w ago00:50:12Tap to summarize‘Courtroom encounters present you with only a fragment of a person’s story, from which you may or may not be inclined to infer the rest,’ James Lasdun wrote recently in the LRB. Last October, he set out on a road trip across America, with the aim of attending as many different kinds of criminal and civil trials as possible in one month. His journey took him from immigration hearings in Chicago to jury trials in Deadwood to felony proceedings in Louisiana. On this episode of the LRB podcast, James joins Thomas Jones to discuss the ‘swerving tales’ he witnessed on his trip, and whether the ‘brazenly bad-faith goings-on at the Justice Department’ are showing up in local courts. From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: https://lrb.me/crlrbpod LRB Audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: https://lrb.me/storelrbpod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
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On Politics: The Pope and the President
3w ago01:01:57Tap to summarizeWhen commenting on the power and influence of the Catholic Church, Stalin is supposed to have asked: ‘how many divisions has the pope?’ Donald Trump has yet to question how many F35s Leo XIV has, but he may as well have done in his angry response to the American pope’s criticism of the US and Israel’s attack on Iran. With the US president’s supporters invoking the Catholic theory of ‘just war’ to defend the bombing of Iran, and the claims of Silicon Valley to offer their own paths to salvation, the Church of Rome faces multiple challenges to its role as a moral and diplomatic force. To consider why the conflict between the pope and the American right has escalated so quickly in the past few weeks, James is joined by Massimo Faggioli, a professor in ecclesiology at the Loyola Institute at Trinity College Dublin, and Jack Hanson, an associate editor at the Yale Review. They also discuss the nature of papal authority and its evolution since the loss of the papal states in 1870, and whether we’re seeing the return of faith to the public sphere or simply the shattering of a consensus about what constitutes religion. Read more on politics in the LRB: https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: https://lrb.me/crlrbpod LRB Audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: https://lrb.me/storelrbpod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
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The War in Lebanon
Apr 1700:48:11Tap to summarizeLebanese and Israeli delegations met in Washington this week for their first direct talks in 33 years. On 15 April, with talks underway, the IDF’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, designated all of southern Lebanon up to the Litani River a ‘Hizbullah kill zone’. In this episode, Adam Shatz is joined by Joëlle Abi-Rached and Mohamad Bazzi to discuss life on the ground in Lebanon, Israel’s strategic objectives in the region and Hizbullah’s relationship to the the Lebanese state. This episode was recorded shortly before Trump’s statement announcing the agreement of a ten-day ceasefire. From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: https://lrb.me/crlrbpod LRB Audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: https://lrb.me/storelrbpod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
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Men Looking at Men
Apr 1501:06:48Tap to summarizeIn a recent issue of the LRB, Tom Crewe asked if the Impressionist painter Gustave Caillebotte’s fixation with male figures and the male gaze is evidence not just of a homosocial milieu, but of homosexual desire. Meanwhile, in the same issue of the paper, James Butler reviewed Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-Male Sexual Relations 1400-1750 by the historian Noel Malcolm, who excavates archival evidence of sexual relationships and interactions between men in northern and southern Europe while cautioning against applying modern ideas of queerness to historical figures. Tom and James join Malin to discuss the interplay between their pieces, and to reflect on the ways that modern interpreters attempt to read the history of homosexuality in sometimes patchy archives, as well as on gay art in the past and the present. Read more in the LRB: Tom Crewe: Men Watching Men https://lrb.me/lrbpod04142601 James Butler: Cultures of Homosexuality https://lrb.me/lrbpod04142602 Alice Hunt: Out of Rehab https://lrb.me/lrbpod04142603 Also from the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: https://lrb.me/crlrbpod LRB Audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: https://lrb.me/storelrbpod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
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The philosophy of Virginia Woolf’s ‘To the Lighthouse’
Apr 800:45:58Tap to summarizeIn 1908, Virginia Woolf wrote that she hoped to revolutionise the novel and ‘capture multitudes of things at present fugitive’. ‘To the Lighthouse’ (1927) marks perhaps her fullest realisation of the novel as philosophical enterprise, and not simply because one of its central characters is engaged with the problem of ‘subject and object and the nature of reality’. In the final episode of their series, Jonathan and James consider different ways of reading Woolf’s great novel: as a satirical portrait of her father through Mr Ramsay, as a study of creative expression through Lily Briscoe, or as a mystical, Platonic quest in which form and style respond to philosophical propositions, and the truth of human experience is to be found in movement, conversation and laughter. Get 50% off a 12-month subscription to Close Readings when you use the code 'woolf' at checkout: https://lrb.me/woolfcrpod (Note: this offer is only available on the link above, through our partner Supporting Cast, and not if you subscribe directly in Apple Podcasts, but you can still listen in Apple Podcasts if you subscribe in Supporting Cast.)
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On Politics: Iran and the Oil Crisis
Apr 301:10:23Tap to summarizeTrump’s war on Iran has highlighted recent dramatic changes in the politics of oil. While the United States still guarantees maritime security in the Middle East, it is no longer the primary beneficiary, with most oil and gas exports from the Persian Gulf going to Asia. In Britain, meanwhile, debates over drilling in the North Sea point to the urgent need for electrification, both to achieve greater energy security and to reach net zero by 2050. In this episode, James is joined by Helen Thompson, a professor of political economy at the University of Cambridge, who argues that the war, though far from inevitable, stems in part from regional and international tensions caused by the shifting of energy flows. They discuss the central role that finance, and insurance in particular, plays in deciding whether tankers can sail, and how energy requirements helped Trump to secure the backing of major US corporations in the 2024 presidential election. Read more on politics in the LRB: https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: https://lrb.me/crlrbpod LRB Audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: https://lrb.me/storelrbpod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
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Insulin Wars
Apr 100:56:21Tap to summarizeDiabetes has been recognised as a fatal condition for thousands of years: its symptoms are described in ancient Chinese, Sanskrit and Greek texts. But it wasn’t until the late 19th century that its cause began to be understood, as scientists conducted experiments on dogs. It was a pair of researchers at the University of Toronto in the early 1920s who – through a gruelling series of experiments that would not pass an ethics review today – eventually isolated the hormone that patients with diabetes are lacking. On this episode, Liam Shaw, who reviewed the latest edition of Michael Bliss’s classic book The Discovery of Insulin in a recent issue of the LRB, joins Thomas Jones to discuss the history of diabetes treatments from insulin to Ozempic, the all-too-human scientists who discovered them and the companies that profit from them. Read Liam’s piece: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n06/liam-shaw/bring-me-bimagrumab From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: https://lrb.me/crlrbpod LRB Audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: https://lrb.me/storelrbpod Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
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