William Davies talks to Tom about his recent LRB Winter Lecture, looking at how reactions – facial expressions, gestures or emojis – have become the main currency of the digital public sphere.
Alison Bashford discusses the history of efforts to control population size, how population is thought about in the Anthropocene, and how suspending critique of the past can give valuable insight into the present.
Bee Wilson speaks to Malin Hay about Paul Newman’s mystique – his passivity, his domesticity and his irresistible blue eyes.
In the second episode of a four-part series on climate chaos and reproductive justice, Meehan Crist speaks to evolutionary biologist and feminist science scholar Banu Subramaniam.
Following his review of a new biography, Jonathan Rée speaks to Tom about Friedrich Hayek’s celebrity and infamy, and the ways close reading reveals surprising nuance in his work.
In the first episode of a four-part series exploring the intersection of climate chaos and reproductive justice, Meehan Crist talks to activist and feminist scholar Loretta J. Ross.
In 1939, Dorothy Thompson was on the cover of Time, the ‘First Lady of American journalism’ and a major celebrity. By 1945, she’d been widely dismissed as a crank.
Deborah Friedell joins Tom to discuss Thompson’s enormous influence in interwar America, and her idiosyncratic mix of prescience and short-sightedness.
Laleh Khalili, a former management consultant, talks to Tom about how firms such as McKinsey, Accenture and Bain go about their business, the consequences of their relentless quest for ‘efficiency’, and the role these ‘class war mercenaries’ have played in supporting various governments all over the world.
Michael Wood talks to Malin Hay about the recent list from Sight and Sound of the ‘greatest films of all time’ (in which he voted), and what considerations could, or should, go into compiling such a chart.
Alan Bennett reads his 2022 diary (with some extra bits), in which he buys his dad a violin, goes to Venice with a goat, and tries to make the queen laugh.
Mark Ford and Seamus Perry turn to 'The Waste Land' for the final episode in their second Close Readings series on 19th and 20th century poetry, recorded live at the London Review Bookshop.
Thomas B. Edsall, a columnist for the New York Times, talks to Adam Shatz about the landscape of US politics following the recent elections.
Roald Dahl's key skill, as Colin Burrow puts it, 'was his ability to repress nastiness while keeping it visible'. Following his review of a new biography, Burrow talks to Tom about Dahl’s limitations, his successes, and his 'marvellous medicine' approach to fiction.
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.
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.