U.K. Edges Closer to the Cliff of a No-Deal Brexit

Summary

Podcast Summary: The New Yorker Radio Hour – "U.K. Edges Closer to the Cliff of a No-Deal Brexit" (March 26, 2019)

Host: David Remnick
Produced by: WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

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Episode Overview

This episode is anchored by a deep dive into the political and personal intrigue surrounding Aaron Banks—an enigmatic figure at the heart of the U.K.’s Brexit campaign. Host David Remnick speaks with reporter Ed Caesar about Banks’s outsized influence, shadowy finances, and the Russian connection, drawing parallels to concerns that animated the American 2016 election. The episode also includes a vibrant segment on the innovative vocal ensemble Room Full of Teeth and a neighborhood journey with poet Patricia Spears Jones.

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Main Segment: Brexit on the Brink — The Shadowy Role of Aaron Banks

Guest: Ed Caesar, New Yorker contributor
Host: David Remnick

Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. Aaron Banks — The Quiet Lobbyist (00:09–01:29)

• Banks, described as "perhaps the single biggest political donor in UK history," funneled about $13 million to anti-EU efforts, raising questions about the true source and scale of his wealth.

• Commonly overshadowed by public figures like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, he is a pivotal but less-known influencer in Brexit's outcome.

  "Aaron Banks is perhaps the single biggest political donor in UK history and he helped to fund both Nigel Farage but also a rambunctious outlier organization called Leave EU." — Ed Caesar [01:29]

2. The Mystery of Banks’s Money (01:29–03:11)

• Substantial doubt exists about how wealthy Banks actually is; he claims £250 million, but financial journalists estimate just 10% of that.

• His business empire is tangled across offshore locations like the Isle of Man, Bermuda, and Gibraltar, sparking suspicion about money laundering or third-party influence.

• The UK National Crime Agency is investigating inconsistencies in Banks's financial disclosures.

  "The story of his donations had changed dramatically over time... so much of it is in offshore locations which are secrecy jurisdictions." — Ed Caesar [02:28]

3. Connections to Cambridge Analytica and Russia (03:11–05:11)

• Banks had some dealings with Cambridge Analytica, but more critical are his Russian connections (including his Russian wife with an "intriguing past").

• His wife’s history and connections, including with British MP Mike Hancock—previously suspected of links to Russian espionage—raise persistent questions about Russian involvement.

• Caesar details a pattern of engagement with figures associated with Russian intelligence or influence operations.

  "Still large questions remain over why these two young women had an affair with a member of Parliament who at one time chaired the all party group on Russia. That has raised a few eyebrows." — Ed Caesar [04:01]

4. Russia’s Geopolitical Interests in Brexit (05:11–06:24)

• Russia aims to weaken the EU and sow chaos among its geopolitical adversaries.

• The Kremlin’s interests align with disruptive outcomes like Brexit, and Russia has been energetically supporting populist and far-right factions in Europe.

  "There seems to be no doubt in the minds of people who watch Russia closely that they were certainly interested in the destabilizing nightmare of Brexit as we're now witnessing it." — Ed Caesar [06:24]

5. The Six-Hour “Boozy Lunch” & Business Offers (06:24–08:07)

• Banks’s unusual six-hour lunch with the Russian ambassador in London is discussed, including a subsequent meeting where he was offered lucrative investment opportunities in Russian gold and diamonds.

• Intelligence professionals consider these overtures highly irregular, potentially signaling ulterior motives.

  "They finish up drinking vodka supposedly made for Joseph Stalin... a few days later there's another meeting at which the ambassador is introducing Banks to a Russian businessman who's offering him a part in a multi billion gold deal in Russia." — Ed Caesar [06:41]
  "Almost impossible to believe that there was not some kind of ulterior motive in this courting of Banks." — Ed Caesar [07:42]

6. Banks’s Defense (08:07–08:53)

• Banks dismisses allegations of wrongdoing, stating, “You shouldn't be judged on business deals that you don't do.”

• Nonetheless, his actions remain under scrutiny for their opacity and proximity to powerful Russian interests.

  "He says it's nonsense... he gave me a very long and detailed interview... on its face, a lot of this stuff does look suspicious and it seems worthy of further investigation." — Ed Caesar [08:24]

7. Calls for a 'Mueller-Style' Investigation (08:53–10:12)

• Despite public calls (notably from Labour Party’s Tom Watson) for an American-style special inquiry into possible Russian influence, the political appetite is lacking amid the larger Brexit crisis.

• Ed Caesar suggests such an inquiry is unlikely until after Brexit resolves—if at all.

  "The most senior figure... who called for it again after my piece was published on Monday, is Tom Watson, who's the deputy leader of the Labour Party. He says this piece makes a cast iron case for a Mueller style inquiry." — Ed Caesar [09:31]

8. Brexit’s Imminent Future (10:12–11:22)

• With just days to a no-deal Brexit, the consensus is grim; even Brexit supporters didn’t anticipate the severity of potential shortages and disruptions.

• Aaron Banks openly favors a no-deal exit as the “clearest rupture,” but Caesar condemns that as “vandalism.”

  "Aaron Banks says no deal was his preferred option because no deal means we leave... But to me it feels like vandalism." — Ed Caesar [11:22]

9. Britain’s Political Fallout (11:22–12:04)

• The Brexit crisis has fractured both the Labour and Conservative parties, potentially leading to a much more fragmented, coalition-based future.

  "Both sides, Conservative and Labour, the two biggest parties, have been ripped in two by this... I feel like history will judge this period of our politics extremely badly." — Ed Caesar [11:30]

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Notable Quotes

• Ed Caesar on Banks’s influence:
  “Aaron Banks is perhaps the single biggest political donor in UK history...” [01:29]
• On Russian interests:
  “He is interested in chaos, in people that he perceives to be somewhat his geopolitical enemies.” [05:21]
• On political aftermath:
  “We could see a much more fragmented political landscape in which coalitions become much more normal.” [11:30]

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Other Segments

Room Full of Teeth: Reinventing the Human Voice (12:57–24:10)

Reporter: Burkhard Bilger

Overview

• A profile of Room Full of Teeth, a vocal octet expanding the limits of classical vocal music by integrating diverse global techniques (like throat singing, yodeling, belting).
• Features an inside look at rehearsals at Mass MoCA, including composer Eve Beglarian experimenting with group sound based on Elvis Presley's "Blue Moon."

Highlights

• The group’s founder, Brad Wells, on broadening the notion of beauty in choral music:

  "It's really just a kind of pushing the bounds, pushing the walls of what's beautiful... and see what emerges." — Brad Wells [19:02]

• Discussion of the ensemble’s collaborative and experimental ethos, with composers and singers co-creating new vocal techniques and pieces.

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A Neighborhood Stroll with Poet Patricia Spears Jones (24:10–29:01)

Guest: Patricia Spears Jones

Overview

• Jones visits a favorite local shop, Calabar Imports, in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, reflecting on community, creativity, and the sustenance provided by neighborhood spaces.
• Jones shares a poet’s perspective on finding beauty and meaning in everyday spaces.

Quote

"We need those kinds of places that sort of look like the ideas about how we like the world, that we like color and texture and... things that are pretty or odd or in some cases, utterly beautiful." — Patricia Spears Jones [27:23]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Aaron Banks and Brexit: 00:09–12:04
• Room Full of Teeth: 12:57–24:10
• Patricia Spears Jones: 24:10–29:01

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Conclusion

This episode offers both a gripping exposé on the hidden hands shaping Brexit, and effervescent stories from the worlds of experimental music and urban poetry. Through conversations that oscillate between high-stakes politics and intimate artistry, The New Yorker Radio Hour delivers layered narratives for listeners eager to understand the forces—visible and invisible—shaping culture and politics on both sides of the Atlantic.

Transcript

[Announcer]

From one World Trade center in Manhattan. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of the New Yorker and WNYC studios.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. From the moment that British citizens voted in a referendum to leave the European Union, confusion and disorganization has absolutely consumed the UK and three years later, nothing much has changed. Confusion and disorganization may yet carry Britain over the cliff, so to speak, to a no deal Brexit with devastating economic consequences. But if we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, we're learning a little bit more about what brought Great Britain to the edge of the cliff in the first place. Much like our 2016 election, the pro Brexit vote employed divisive social media campaigns, mysterious sources of financing, Cambridge Analytica and meetings with Russians. At the center of it is a man named Aaron Banks, an insurance magnate. Reporter Ed Caesar has been digging into Banks outsized role in the referendum. And Ed joins me now from Manchester. Ed, I think when many Americans think about Brexit, when they can focus on it at all, they think of figures like Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage or. But they don't think about the person that you've written about at such great length in the New Yorker, a person named Aaron Banks. Who is that?

[Ed Caesar]

Aaron Banks is perhaps the single biggest political donor in UK history and he helped to fund both Nigel Farage but also a rambunctious outlier organization called Leave EU. And Aaron Banks gave about $13 million in all to anti EU causes. And there have been a few questions about where his money comes from because there are big disputes about how rich he actually is. He says £250 million. Financial journalists who have seen publicly available information for him think it's about 10% of that figure.

[David Remnick]

So the implication is that he's a conduit somehow for the money for a third party.

[Ed Caesar]

That has been an implication. And that's what the National Crime Agency of the United Kingdom, which is our version of the FBI, is now looking into in an investigation.

[David Remnick]

What's the evidence that he might have done something wrong?

[Ed Caesar]

Well, he has given various accounts of his donations and his portfolio of business interests. And the Electoral Commission who referred him to the National Crime Agency said the story of his donations had changed dramatically over time. There is also the question of this very opaque sprawling business empire that he has where so much of it is in offshore locations which are secrecy jurisdictions. The Isle of Man, Bermuda, Gibraltar. And the very fact of having businesses there leads to Many more questions about why you would headquarter those places.

[David Remnick]

Among the many reasons that your story about Aaron Banks and Brexit has a resonance with the American situation and the situation with the investigation into the Trump administration is. Well, we could summarize it by saying, A Cambridge Analytica and B Russia. To what degree does Cambridge Analytica, is it mixed up with Aaron Banks and leave eu?

[Ed Caesar]

Well, Cambridge Analytica and leave EU had a relationship of some kind, and Banks has not been entirely straightforward about that. However, I don't think that's the biggest part of the story here. But to me, the much bigger angle in this is the Russia angle, because Banks has a Russian wife because she has a somewhat intriguing past.

[David Remnick]

What is her past? Why is it intriguing?

[Ed Caesar]

Well, her past is she was deported from Dubai before she married her first husband, who was a much older man in Portsmouth. That lasted a matter of months and attracted the attention of Special Branch officers of the police who are interested in national security. And she married Aaron Banks a couple of years after that. She has a very interesting history in that her ex husband told me that she had had an affair with a member of Parliament called Mike Hancock, who also had an affair sometime later with another young Russian woman called Ekaterina Suchuloveta, who MI5 thought had been spying for the Russian foreign intelligence services. And eventually a panel cleared her of espionage on the balance of probabilities. But still large questions remain over why these two young women had an affair with a member of Parliament who at one time chaired the all party group on Russia. That has raised a few eyebrows.

[David Remnick]

Now let's dig into what Russia's motivation would be to get involved in Brexit at all. Why would Vladimir Putin care about Brexit one way or the other?

[Ed Caesar]

Well, he says he doesn't care about it, but all the evidence points the other direction. So he is interested in weakening the European bloc. Brexit is a big part of that weakening. He is interested in chaos, in people that he perceives to be somewhat his geopolitical enemies. And in 2016, certainly Britain was at odds with Russia over things like the invasion of Crimea and sanctions. There is also this question of Russia feels that the west has been meddling in Russian affairs at least for 10 years and actively pursuing destabilizing measures against Russia. And they have pushed back in this asymmetric way by supporting far right and populist groups within Europe. Now the question is, what did they do about it? There seems to be no doubt in the minds of people who watch Russia closely that they were certainly interested in the destabilizing nightmare of Brexit as we're now witnessing it.

[David Remnick]

Now you write about an incredibly long boozy lunch held between the Russian ambassador in London and Aaron Banks. Now how common is it for a Russian ambassador to have a six hour boozy lunch with a businessman of Aaron Banks scale?

[Ed Caesar]

Well, I wouldn't speak to his preferences for dining partners, but it seems to be unusual at the very least that this figure, who was until shortly before the referendum quite a minor figure in British public life, is suddenly treated to this great and lavish lunch. And not only that, they have this lunch where they finish up drinking vodka supposedly made for Joseph Stalin. But that's a few days later there's another meeting at which the ambassador is introducing Banks to a Russian businessman who's offering him a part in a multi billion gold deal in Russia. And that this chain of events leads to various other business deals being dangled in front of Aron Banks. All of that seems quite unusual. And having spoken to people who worked in the CIA with a special interest in Russia, they say that it would be, it's almost impossible to believe that there was not some kind of ulterior motive in this courting of Banks.

[David Remnick]

Well, is there any hard evidence, documentary evidence, that Banks was offered any business opportunities with Russian companies as a quid pro quo?

[Ed Caesar]

Well, we don't know about the quid pro quo, but he was offered business opportunities with the Russian state diamond producer Al Rosa. He was offered to be an investor in this consolidation of six Russian gold.

[David Remnick]

Companies, which Banks does not deny.

[Ed Caesar]

He does not deny.

[David Remnick]

So you yourself had a long meeting with Banks and his PR guy and you've gotten on the phone with him subsequently for any number of conversations. How does Banks answer accusations that he promoted Brexit on behalf of Russia or used Russian money to promote Brexit?

[Ed Caesar]

He says it's nonsense. He actually uses slightly stronger language than that. He says that you shouldn't be judged on business deals that you don't do. And he gave me a very long and detailed interview and we went back and forth on all the details of this. The fact is that on its face, a lot of this stuff does look suspicious and it seems worthy of further investigation. He refutes that anything nefarious was going on.

[David Remnick]

Now, any number of people in your piece say that we, meaning the British government, should have a Mueller type investigation directed against Brexit and specifically Aaron Banks. Has that taken hold at all? Or is that just something that three or four commentators say for the Purposes of sounding off.

[Ed Caesar]

Well, I don't think it's gonna happen anytime soon because. Why not? Well, as you may have noticed, we're having a constitutional crisis. And, you know, we're still, you know, we're eight days away from crashing out of the European Union with no deal and.

[David Remnick]

Yeah, but wait a minute. The United States is having CR crises all over the place, but we're having investigations at the same time?

[Ed Caesar]

That's true. The way it was explained to me, even by people who, members of Parliament who really want this, is just there's no appetite. Certainly with Theresa May, there's no appetite. Jeremy Corbyn has no appetite. The most senior figure to have called for this investigation, who called for it again after my piece was published on Monday, is Tom Watson, who's the deputy leader of the Labour Party, who is. He says this piece makes a cast iron case for a Mueller style inquiry. Now, whether we're going to get it in six months, possibly when all of this is over, who knows?

[David Remnick]

Now we're talking on a Thursday afternoon in Britain. What's the current status of Brexit? What's the possibility of no deal? And, and is there any possibility of a kind of do over in which there's another referendum, or has that just been ruled out?

[Ed Caesar]

I don't. Well, Theresa May has ruled it out, which isn't to say that it's not going to happen. I think it's an outside chance. Macron was just talking to a. President Macron of France, sorry, was just talking to a reporter on the way to an EU summit saying, as it stands, no deal in eight days is the clear favorite. So I feel quite pessimistic. No deal would be a really poor outcome for the uk, even for people that were really into the Brexit project. I'm not sure many of them wanted food shortages and shortages of medicine and chaos at the borders. That wasn't the thing that was sold to the British people. Aaron Banks says no deal was his preferred option because no deal means we leave. It's the clearest rupture that you could have. But to me it feels like vandalism.

[David Remnick]

And finally, when this drama ends, if it ever ends, who inherits the earth politically in Britain?

[Ed Caesar]

Oh, that is a very good question. Because both sides, Conservative and Labour, the two biggest parties, have been ripped in two by this, I think we could see a much more fragmented political landscape in which coalitions become much more normal. Because the Brexit disaster nightmare has ripped the Conservative Party and the Labour Party in two. I feel like history will judge this period of our politics extremely badly.

[David Remnick]

Ed Caesar, thanks so much.

[Ed Caesar]

So kind. Thanks so much.

[David Remnick]

Enjoy. I guess I can't say enjoy, but survive.

[Ed Caesar]

Thank you so much.

[David Remnick]

Be well. You can find Ed Caesar's piece on Aaron Banks and his role in [e-mail] Burkhard Bilger is a staff writer and a man of wide technology, science, nature, sports, food, Southern culture, German history, and much more. Burke also happens to be a good musician. He's been singing in choirs since he was young and he keeps a guitar in his office where he's always noodling on it. He taught his kids to play old time music and launched the Bilger Family Band, and as his kids grew up, they in turn expanded his musical horizons.

[Burkhard Bilger]

So my son is a bassist, upright bassist and jazz bassist, and was the first one who told me about Room Full of Teeth. And so, I don't know, a few years ago he played me Partita, the Caroline Shaw piece, and I just thought it was astonishing. I've been listening to choral music my whole life and I'd never heard anything like this before.

[David Remnick]

Every year, the members of Room Full of Teeth gather for a few weeks and they rehearse new pieces and bring in composers who are going to write their repertoire for the following year. The residency is at Mass MoCA, a museum in an old industrial town in Massachusetts. And last time Burke Bilger tagged along.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Room Full of Teeth is a vocal octet, so four men, four women who sing contemporary classical music. They sing only newly composed pieces. So we're sitting in a loft space on the second floor of one of the mill buildings in Mass MoCA. It's a huge room with enormous high ceilings, I don't know, 12, 13ft high. And there's some onlookers, but also kind of a semicircle of composers with a singer in the middle. And this is a process that always happens at Mass MOCA with Room Full of Teeth, where they'll spend a day just having each singer introduce themselves to the composers and giving them a sense of exactly what their abilities are, what they like to do, what they don't like to do, where their voice can go, where it can't go, what their range is.

[Eslie Gomez]

Yeah, yeah. So like it would be really easy to have little bits of breaks like that if it weren't, because that would be belted. And then I like, huh, that's just, it's just how hi.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Eslie Gomez is the highest soprano in the group. He was the youngest member of the group when she joined.

[Eslie Gomez]

It was my first year out of undergrad when I heard about the premise and took a train from New Haven to New York and did a Skype audition with Brad. And I did a Bulgarian folk song, a jazz song, a Schumann art song, and a handle like Ray Chariot and was like, so relieved that I wasn't auditioning for grad school. I was like, I don't have to fit in this weird box. Doesn't make sense yet. And then heard about this and was like, that sounds like me. That sounds better.

[Eve Baglarian]

That's better.

[Eslie Gomez]

In grad school, maybe you could give us an example of you singing the styles you were talking about learning from the beginning.

[Burkhard Bilger]

All the members of the group are trained classical singers, but they incorporate techniques, vocal techniques from all over the world. Over the course of the day, as the singers come in, one by one, they'll showcase all kinds of different techniques. Some people are expert tube and throat singers. Some people can do the deep car grot yodeling or belting. So you get a whole range of. Of just astonishing capabilities of the human voice. I've been singing my whole life and I'm used to what vocal music sounds like, and suddenly it's like hearing a saxophone sound like a violin and sound like a kettle drum and sounding like a bassoon. It's like, how did. I didn't know the voice could do that.

[David Remnick]

It's fun.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Western classical singing has for centuries been divided into essentially two techniques. There's choral singing, which is meant to blend, and what we call straight tone without vibrato. And then there's bel canto, which is what we hear in opera, which is a very powerful, athletic vocal technique which is designed to kind of vault over the sound of an orchestra and fill an entire concert hall. What's excluded from those two techniques is everything else in the world that people have done with the human voice. All these wonderful throat singing techniques and yodeling and belting and ways in which the voice can be rough or gritty or kind of mess with all what we think of as kind of pure classical technique.

[Brad Wells]

The way composers have used choirs over the last hundred years, I started to feel like there was a certain sense of straight jackedness.

[Burkhard Bilger]

Now, Brad Wells is the founder and artistic director of Room Full of Teeth. He founded this group in 2008 in order to bring in these new techniques. And part of that was inviting singers from all over the world to instruct them in these techniques.

[Brad Wells]

We can reach out and bring somebody from Central Asia and Hear them sing and ask them questions and have them teach us for a while about a completely different way of using their voice. You know, where the larynx sits, how much constriction, how much air. All those things are really just basic physiological things, and they manifest in all these different ways around the world. And I thought if composers could get their hands on this and see what's possible, and singers could play with it and stretch the color range of their own voices, then what we understand as choral music might become much more variegated.

[Burkhard Bilger]

So it's really not about we're going to become tube and throat singers or Pansori singers or Kento Tonori singers.

[Brad Wells]

Not at all.

[David Remnick]

No.

[Brad Wells]

It's really just a kind of pushing the bounds, pushing the walls of what's beautiful. In a way, it's like finding what people consider as beautiful and letting composers play with that and see what emerges.

[Burkhard Bilger]

One of the composers at Mass MOCA this week is Eve Beydelarian, a really adventurous New York composer. She's setting a piece by Walt Whitman to music, but in the meantime, she's trying to see what new kinds of sounds she could make with the group. So what's your plan for this afternoon? What are you gonna do with the group to get ready for this?

[Eve Baglarian]

Driving down, I happen to hear Elvis Presley's cover of Blue Moon, and it's so held back. I mean, he's very close mic'd, and from what I can tell, there's different processing on the two double tracks. One of them has a really striking slapback echo.

[Ed Caesar]

You saw me standing alone.

[Brad Wells]

Without a dream in my heart.

[Eve Baglarian]

So I'm thinking we can try setting up our own cover of Elvis's cover and try having different people paired to do different aspects of the tune. I mean, it may be totally dumb. I don't know. We'll see. So I thought what we could do is set up the accompaniment for now. Right. Let's start with.

[Burkhard Bilger]

It's late in the afternoon in the loft, and Beglaren is working with the group. She's playing around with the sounds they can make, trying to see. See what tools might end up working in the piece she's composing.

[Eve Baglarian]

Okay. And I put up the lyrics, maybe the two of you, to start. To start. Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone Without a dream in my house. Right. So that you can use all the breath you need to do the whispery, consonanty thing.

[Eslie Gomez]

Can I hear?

[Eve Baglarian]

Just.

[Eslie Gomez]

Just by yourself what you're doing. It's really weird.

[Eve Baglarian]

Can we try this with everybody for let's just try that. Okay. So from the top.

[Eslie Gomez]

You just want.

[Eve Baglarian]

Therefore.

[Eslie Gomez]

You heard me say, careful.

[Eve Baglarian]

Someone.

[Eslie Gomez]

I really care for. I don't do the breathy thing. That is so not my jam. I'm sorry.

[Eve Baglarian]

I'm with you. And entirely. Entirely. I'm so with you. Okay, let's hold off on that. Let's you two trade the whispery, consonanty thing, and let's just see what. What happens there.

[Eslie Gomez]

Should we just track each other?

[Burkhard Bilger]

Baglarian and the Room Full of Teeth singers are kind of feeling their way together through these new sounds, these new techniques. You might say that what comes out of it are compositions that only a roomful of teeth can sing because it's designed so specifically for their voices and their techniques. But the truth is that composers have always been pushing the bounds of the human voice. Mozart, when he wrote the Queen of the Night aria, did it for a specific soprano who could go very high and had a very mobile voice. And little by little, other sopranos learn to do the same thing. Brad Wells hopes that the same thing will happen with A Room Full of Teeth compositions in the future. If the songs are good enough and the techniques are appealing enough, then more and more classical singers will learn how to throat sing. We'll learn how to yodel and belt and do Korean Pansori. And Room Full of Teeth songs will start to sound like yesterday's classical music.

[David Remnick]

Burkhart Bilger, a staff writer at the New Yorker. We heard from members of Room Full of Teeth as well as composer Eve Baglarian. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for being with us today. We've got one more story this hour. We're gonna go shopping or maybe just browsing with Patricia Spears Jones. Jones is the winner of the 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize, and recently she published one of her poems in the magazine. She's a native of Arkansas, living for many years in New York. And a little while back when it was still quite cold out, we asked Patricia Spears Jones to show us one of her favorite places in the city. And so she took us just around the corner from home.

[Eslie Gomez]

Hello.

[Eve Baglarian]

How are you?

[Eslie Gomez]

Okay.

[Patricia Spears Jones]

I'm not thawing.

[Eslie Gomez]

All right, come on. This side is.

[Patricia Spears Jones]

Oh, that's all right. The name of this shop is Calabar Imports. I like neighborhood spaces, and this is a neighborhood space. When I think of Bedford Stuyvesant, I think of the place where Eubie Blake and Lena Horne were raised.

[Eve Baglarian]

Keeps raining.

[Patricia Spears Jones]

So I've been coming to the shop since 2004, I guess. Yeah. At every Calabar import store, there's always a yellow door and this very small, very bright shop where there are many paintings, jewelry, there's very colorful garments. One of the things I know about the store and all the stores is that the owner, Atum, is also an architect, and so they're all sort of interestingly designed. There is a partition that sort of opens up the space so you can see the front of the space and then the back of the space. But you can also, from the back of the space, you can look out to the window, which looks out to the street. It's like the usefulness of portals. The bracelets I'm wearing, which are all from Africa and they're all beaded and they're all pretty, are from Calabar. I think I bought all of the bracelets that I like because they're not here. There are Frida Kahlo mirrors, and this looks like a Haitian mirror, but I'm not. Oh, it's from Peru.

[David Remnick]

Oh.

[Patricia Spears Jones]

So she has these Peruvian mirrors. They're really beautiful. I am a poet because I started writing when I was 12 years old. I'm a poet because I love words and sound. I'm a poet because it is a very complicated and difficult art form. I like to go to places where I know that I may find something of interest that I, If I have enough coin, I can purchase. But also that there are moments of community that people come in and they sit and chat and talk about things where people know that if I come here on a Wednesday, three weeks from now, it'll be here. We need those kinds of places that sort of look like the ideas about how we like the world, that we like color and texture and. And things that are pretty or odd or in some cases, utterly beautiful and that can be found literally around the corner from where you live.

[Eve Baglarian]

All right, darlings.

[Eslie Gomez]

Okay, thank you.

[Patricia Spears Jones]

I'm gonna go across the street and get a cup of coffee and read some more. June Jordan.

[David Remnick]

That's Patricia Spears Jones in Brooklyn, and you can hear her read her poem seraphimyorker.com I'm David Remnick, and that's it for this week. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us next time for a visit with a musician who appears behind the scenes on a vast number of contemporary records, including hits by Kendrick Lamar. He's a producer and singer and bassist, and he goes by the name Thundercat. Till then, have a great week.

[Patricia Spears Jones]

The.

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