The LRB Podcast

The LRB Podcast

Author: The London Review of Books Language: English Episodes: 100
Each week, The LRB Podcast extends the long-form, inquisitive spirit of the London Review of Books into a conversational format. Hosts Thomas Jones and Malin Hay guide discussions that delve into the essays and ideas animating Europe’s leading magazine of culture and ideas, creating a space where complex thoughts on society, art, history, and literature are explored with depth and clarity. The rhythm of the podcast includes a dedicated fortnightly episode, ‘On Politics,’ hosted by James Butler, which sharpens the focus on the political forces and theories shaping our current moment. Listening feels like joining a nuanced, ongoing conversation where arguments are carefully constructed and perspectives are challenged. It’s a natural companion for anyone who believes that understanding the world requires patience, critical thinking, and engaging dialogue. The podcast doesn’t offer quick takes but rather thoughtful excavations of the week’s most compelling cultural and intellectual questions, mirroring the publication’s commitment to serious and elegant prose. This is where written criticism finds its voice, allowing listeners to immerse themselves in the debates that define our time.
Episodes
On Politics: Latin America’s Right-Wing Shift [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:08:32
At the end of the 20th century and across the first decade of the 21st, a swathe of countries across Latin America elected left-wing governments in what became known internationally as the Pink Tide. In more recent years…
Pollution and Other Serial Killers [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 38:14
Between the 1960s and the turn of the century, an astonishingly large number of serial killers grew up or operated in America’s Pacific Northwest. Caroline Fraser’s book Murderland, reviewed in the LRB by James Lasdun, a…
On Politics: Do bond markets and the Bank of England run Britain? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:05:30
Andy Burnham recently said that the government is ‘in hock to the bond markets’, and the political turbulence of the past few years, not least the downfall of Liz Truss following her ‘mini-budget’, would seem to back thi…
Extinction, Fast and Slow [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 38:45
One of the difficulties in thinking about extinction, as Lorraine Daston argued in her recent review of Vanished by Sadiah Qureshi, is ‘the challenge of scale: the mismatch between our decades and centuries and the Earth…
On Politics: The Online Right (and Left) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:15:00
For the best part of a decade, a new type of anti-systemic, nationalist politics has been emerging from different corners of the online world. In Britain, this has united with older forms of cultural conservatism to prop…
Lessons from the Peace Process [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:48
Adam is joined by Robert Malley to discuss the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and the long history of the peace process, in which Malley has been involved on behalf of several US administrations. They also talk abou…
Why should we listen to Amanda Knox? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 44:48
It's nearly eighteen years since Amanda Knox was arrested on suspicion of murdering her housemate Meredith Kercher in Perugia, and more than ten since she was finally exonerated of the crime. She has just written her sec…
On Politics: The Death of the Conservative Party? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:22
In its nearly two hundred years of existence the Conservative Party has survived through a combination of protean adaptability and ruthlessness, not least in its willingness to change leaders. Yet under its present leade…
How to Write Like Elmore Leonard [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:15
Elmore Leonard ‘did more with less than any crime writer I can think of’ J. Robert Lennon wrote in the latest issue of the LRB. Leonard was born in New Orleans in 1925 and by the time he died in 2013 had published over f…
On Politics: Labour's Problems [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:07:07
When Keir Starmer brought Labour back to government last year with a majority of 174, many talked about two or even three terms in power. But over fourteen months the prime minister has run into numerous problems, losing…