John Lanchester and Rupert Beale talk to Tom about the spread of the latest variant, where we might stand in the story of Covid, and the failures of the state in coping with the pandemic.Find their pieces on the episode page: https://lrb.me/omicronpodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20bMusic by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Les Mommsen and Anthony Wilks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rachel Nolan talks to Tom about the overthrow of President Árbenz in Guatemala in 1954, its importance as a model for CIA-backed regime change across Latin America, and a new novel about it by Mario Vargas Llosa.Find Rachel Nolan's piece and others here: https://lrb.me/guatemalapodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20bMusic by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Enzo Traverso talks to Adam Shatz about his new book on the history of revolutionary passions, images and ideas, from Haiti’s emancipatory slave rebellion in 1791 to Stalin’s top-down authoritarianism. Are revolutions, as Marx suggested, the ‘locomotives of history’, or, as Walter Benjamin saw it, the emergency brake? And what can modern political movements learn from their revolutionary forebears?Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/revolutionpodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20bMusic by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Clair Wills talks to Tom about Netherne psychiatric hospital, where her mother and grandparents worked, and which became a national centre for art therapy. Wills asks how asylums such as Netherne – ‘total institutions’ as Erving Goffman described them – became normalised, and considers the role of art in revealing people’s experiences of them. They also discuss Wills’s related piece about the scandal of the Irish Mother and Baby Homes, published in the LRB in May.Find further reading on the episode page: lrb.me/willspodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20bMusic by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tom talks to Charles Nicholl about the craze in the 1590s for plays representing real-life murder on the London stage, from the first known example, Arden of Faversham, to the genre's influence on Hamlet, Macbeth and, perhaps, the death of Christopher Marlowe.Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/truecrimepodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20bMusic by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rosemary Hill talks to Tom about the painter John Craxton: why he wasn’t a romantic, why he wasn’t interested in being famous, and his relationship with Lucian Freud, who very much was. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tom talks to Colin Burrow about a new book by Christopher Ricks, regarded by some as the greatest living literary critic. They also look back at his previous studies of, among others, Milton, T.S. Eliot and Bob Dylan, and consider the rewards and limitations of the Ricks critical method, characterised by close verbal analysis.Find related articles on episode page: https://lrb.me/rickspodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20bMusic by Kieran Brunt / Episode produced by Eliane Glaser / Series Producer: Anthony Wilks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Runciman talks to Thomas Jones about Silicon Valley’s best known investor-provocateur, his prescience, his mistakes, and why, despite his ultra-libertarian ideology, he owes so much to the state.Listen without ads, and find further reading, on our website: https://lrb.me/thielpodFind details of our forthcoming podcast series, Close Readings: Encounters with Medieval Women, here: lrb.me/medievalSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20bMusic by Kieran Brunt / Episode produced by Eliane Glaser / Series Producer: Anthony Wilks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dominic West reads Patrick Leigh Fermor's piece about the olive harvest on the Mani peninsula, written in the 1950s but first published in 2021 in the LRB.Read it here: https://lrb.me/leighfermorpodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://lrb.me/travel Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Daniel Soar talks to Thomas Jones about the sixth taste, variously translated as ‘mouthfulness’, ‘thickness’ and ‘lingeringness’, apparently discovered by the Japanese company Ajinomoto, and its origins in the twisty and opaque story of MSG in North America.Read Daniel Soar's piece here: https://lrb.me/kokumipodSubscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: https://mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.