London Review Podcasts

John Lanchester talks to Thomas Jones about his experience of being on a cargo ship blocked from entering the Suez Canal in 1967, his subsequent journey round the Cape of Good Hope, and the modern-day business of containers.Read John's piece and more in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/longwayroundpodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Diane Williams talks to Thomas Jones about her short stories, and reads her latest two published in the LRB.Fine more stories by Diane Williams in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/williamspodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Gill Partington and Thomas Jones explore Kenneth Goldsmith’s online avant-garde archive, UbuWeb, listen to some of the things you can find on it, and consider what might not be found there.Find Gill's piece and more relevant LRB pieces here: https://lrb.me/ubuwebpodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mouin Rabbani and Nathan Thrall talk to Adam Shatz about Israel’s vaccination programme, the system of apartheid that now effectively exists between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, the legacy of Trump’s policies, and how the Biden administration may or may not exert its influence.Read Mouin Rabbani in the LRB: https://lrb.me/rabbanipodRead Nathan Thrall in the LRB: https://lrb.me/thrallpodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this extra episode, Jorie Graham reads her poem ‘To 2040’, published in the latest issue of the LRB.You can listen to Jorie Graham reading twelve more of her poems from the LRB on our website here: https://lrb.me/grahamSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Terry Castle talks to Thomas Jones about Patricia Highsmith.Find Castle's piece on Highsmith, and pieces by Highsmith, in the LRB here: lrb.me/highsmithpodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Catherine Moore, a consultant clinical virologist at Public Health Wales, and Rupert Beale, a clinician scientist group leader at the Francis Crick Institute, talk to Thomas Jones about the vaccine rollout for Sars-CoV-2, the new variant originally found in Brazil, and whether the virus might ever be eliminated.Find Rupert Beale's latest piece and others here: lrb.me/bealemoorepodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mary-Kay Wilmers, who retired as editor of the LRB last month, talks to Andrew O’Hagan about her career, first at Faber and Faber, then the Listener, then for 42 years at the London Review of Books. She talks about working with T.S. Eliot, the importance of being teased, and how a joke by Alan Bennett changed her life.The episode also contains extracts from Wilmers’s 1988 diary for the LRB, ‘Putting in the Commas’, and O’Hagan’s piece about Wilmers in the latest issue of the paper. Read and listen to them in full here:Mary-Kay Wilmers: Putting in the CommasAndrew O'Hagan: Miss SkippitSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Raphaëlle Branche talks to Adam Shatz about her new book, Papa, qu’as-tu fait en Algérie? (Daddy, What Did You Do in Algeria?). In it, Branche investigates the experiences of French conscripts in the Algerian war, what they saw and did, and, more important, how they did and didn’t talk about it afterwards.Shatz reviews Branche's book in the latest issue of the LRB. Find it and other related pieces here: https://lrb.me/branchepodcastSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Forrest Hylton talks to Thomas Jones about what’s happening in Brazil: the oxygen shortage in Manaus, Bolsonaro’s disastrous response to the pandemic, why Trump’s departure won’t hurt him, and the prospects for the left in next year’s general election.Find pieces by Forrest Hylton and others on Brazil in the LRB here: https://lrb.me/viewfromsalvadorpodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Erin Maglaque talks to Thomas Jones about abortion in 16th-century Italy, the stories of women who experienced it, how it was investigated, and why attitudes to pregnancy 400 years ago were in some ways preferable to those now.Find more LRB pieces by Erin Maglaque here: lrb.me/erinmaglaquepodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Andrew O‘Hagan reads his review of Sea State by Tabitha Lasley, a portrait of the oil rig industry, those who work in it, and a journalist‘s intensely close relationship with her subject.Read the review here: https://lrb.me/seastatepodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Colin Burrow talks to Thomas Jones about the work of Ursula Le Guin. They discuss the way she brought anthropology into speculative fiction, her explorations of power and moral responsibility in the Earthsea books, and what it was like for Burrow growing up with another writer of fantasy and speculative fiction: his mother, Diana Wynne Jones.Find Burrow's piece on Le Guin and more here: https://lrb.me/ursulaleguinpodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hazel Carby talks to Adam Shatz about the increasing nationalisation of racial histories, and the way African-American studies in the United States have been influenced by ideas of American exceptionalism. She argues instead for a broader, global view of race and African culture.Carby explores these ideas in her review of Isabel Wilkerson's Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents: https://lrb.me/hazelcarbypodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

James Wood talks to Thomas Jones about Beethoven, drawing on his review of three recent books on the composer. They discuss some of the apparently immovable Beethoven mythologies – the keyboard pedagogy, the heroic glower, the many appropriations of the 9th Symphony – and the blend of Viennese tradition and radical invention which characterises his music, particularly the piano sonatas, from the ethereal melodic sweetness of The Tempest to the terrifying, thumping trills of the Hammerklavier.Read James Wood's piece here: https://lrb.me/beethovenpodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20bPieces and recordings featured in this episode:5th Symphony: Berlin Philharmonic / Furtwängler (1954)3rd Symphony: Berlin Philharmonic / Furtwängler (1952)Piano Sonata No. 29 (‘Hammerklavier’): Barenboim (1984)Piano Sonata No. 29 (‘Hammerklavier’): Solomon (1952)Piano Sonata No. 17 (‘The Tempest’): Gould (1960)9th Symphony: Beyreuth Festival Orchestra / Furt

John Lanchester reads his review of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes.Read the piece here: lrb.me/neanderthalspodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Diane Williams reads nine of her (very) short stories published in the LRB, the most recent, ‘Tassel Rue’, from our Christmas issue.Find these stories and more, as well as a conversation between Williams and Lara Pawson from the London Review Bookshop, on our website: https://lrb.me/dianewilliamspodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Thomas Jones reads his homage to Maradona, with help from some 1980s commentators.Read the piece here: https://lrb.me/maradonapodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Rupert Beale talks to Thomas Jones about the new Sars-CoV-2 vaccines, how the mRNA technology works, why social distancing still matters, and why he’s worried about Christmas. (The conversation was recorded before the publication of the AstraZeneca/Oxford trial data.)Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ange Mlinko talks to Joanne O’Leary about the work of Denise Riley, following the publication last year of Riley’s Selected Poems: 1976-2016 and her essay Time Lived, without Its Flow. They look in particular at Riley’s celebrated poem ‘A Part Song’, a long elegy for her adult son, Jacob, who died from undiagnosed cardiomyopathy in 2008. ‘A Part Song’ was published first in the LRB in 2012 and won the Forward Prize for best poem in that year, and this discussion features extracts of Riley reading from the poem.Click here for more by Ange Mlinko and Denise RileyThis episode of the LRB Podcast is supported by The Week magazine. To try your first 6 issues of The Week for free, visit theweek.co.uk/offer and enter offer code LONDONSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.