In the second of three conversations about the crisis in the Middle East, recorded shortly before the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was reported, Yezid Sayigh talks to Adam Shatz about why he sees Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October as an inflection point both for the Palestinian movement and global history.
In the first of three episodes on the crisis in the Middle East, Adam Shatz is joined by Mairav Zonszein and Amjad Iraqi to discuss the experiences of Israeli Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Rosemary Hill joins Tom to talk about their 19th and 20th-century heyday as cathedrals of consumerism but as places, too, where women could spend time away from home, and away from men, safely and respectably.
James Butler joins Tom to discuss the findings of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, including the causes and consequences of the fire and whether those responsible will be brought to justice.
In November 2022, archaeologists excavating the ancient city of Philadelphia, two hours south of Cairo, discovered a clump of papyri in a shallow grave. On one of them were written nearly a hundred lines from two lost plays by Euripides. Robert Cioffi, who has been working with the same team on a new archaeological mission, joins Tom to discuss the find, the precarious transmission of ancient manuscripts and the time he tried to make papyrus in his kitchen.
Singing, acting, directing, writing: Barbra Streisand always insisted on doing it her way. Malin Hay, who recently reviewed Streisand’s 992-page autobiography, joins Tom to discuss her performances on stage and screen, her prodigious voice and why her best movie may be one where she doesn’t sing at all.
Jane Ellen Harrison was Britain’s first female career academic, a maverick public intellectual labelled ‘the cleverest woman in England’. Her quips and quirks have become legendary, but many of those anecdotes were promulgated by Harrison herself. Mary Beard joins Tom to discuss Harrison’s legacy, the challenges in writing her life and the careful cultivation of her voice.
In this free chapter from Complicated Women, Bee Wilson describes the ways that Edith Piaf’s life and art embodied the needs of her public, and how she became a symbol of postwar French resilience.
In this free chapter from his LRB audiobook, Jonathan Rée looks at the life of Jean-Paul Sartre up to the publication of his first major philosophical work, Being and Nothingness, in 1943.
The great auk was a flightless, populous and reportedly delicious bird, once found widely across the rocky outcrops of the North Atlantic. By the 1860s it was extinct, its decline sharpened by specimen collectors and at least one volcanic eruption. Human-driven extinction was ‘almost unthinkable’ until the auk’s disappearance, Liam Shaw writes. He joins Tom to discuss when, where and why the great auk died out.
What do Jane Austen, Simone de Beauvoir and Herodotus have in common? They all appear in three of this year’s Close Readings series, in which a pair of LRB contributors explore an area of literature through a selection of key works. This week, we’re revisiting some of the highlights from subscriber-only episodes: Clare Bucknell and Colin Burrow on Emma, Judith Butler and Adam Shatz on The Second Sex, and Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones on Herodotus’ Histories.
The Book of Genesis begins with the creation of the universe and ends with the death of Jacob, patriarch of the Israelites. Between these two events, successive generations confront the moral tests set for them by God, and in doing so usher in the Abrahamic religious tradition. In Reading Genesis, Marilynne Robinson argues for the continued relevance of Genesis as a foundational text of Western culture. James Butler joins Malin to discuss Robinson’s account in the light of a long, rich and conflicted history of interpretation.
In the 160s CE, Rome was struck by a devastating disease which, a new book argues, may have been the world’s first pandemic. Josephine Quinn joins Malin to discuss contemporary theories about the Antonine Plague and what ice cores and amulets can tell us about the disease’s impact.
When Wittgenstein published his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in 1921 he claimed to have solved all philosophical problems. Adrian Moore joins Malin Hay to discuss what Wittgenstein hoped to achieve with the only work he published in his lifetime and consider how much we should trust his assertion that everything it contains is nonsensical.
Patrick McGuinness reads his diary from our 6 June issue about his family’s hometown of Bouillon in Belgium. He reflects on the linguistic and national barriers he crossed to return there each year; on the changes wrought on the town by the end of the industrial era; and on the ways that history and global politics can shape a locality beyond recognition.