The politics of migration have driven some of the most consequential changes in Britain’s recent history and look set to dominate the next general election. Since the end of Rishi Sunak’s government, the crossings of ‘small boats’ over the English Channel and the use of ‘asylum hotels’ have become a focal point for protest, violence and escalating rhetoric, leading most recently to significant changes in the migration system proposed by the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood. To assess these changes and explain how Britain’s asylum system works, James is joined by Colin Yeo, a barrister and author of Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System, and Nicola Kelly, a former Home Office civil servant and author of Anywhere But Here: How Britain’s Broken Asylum System Fails Us All. Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics⁠ From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Fatma Hassona was a Palestinian photographer from Gaza City who was killed with her family by an Israeli airstrike in April 2025. A year earlier, the Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi began recording video conversations with Hassona about her life and work under Israeli bombardment, which became the film Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk. In this episode, Adam Shatz talks to Farsi about the process of making the film, the connection she formed with Hassona, and the practical and ethical challenges of documenting Israel’s devastation of Gaza and its people. From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

We’re pleased to announce our four new Close Readings series starting in January next year: ‘Who’s Afraid of Realism?’ with James Wood and guests ‘Nature in Crisis’ with Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith ‘Narrative Poems’ with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford ‘London Revisited’ with Rosemary Hill and guests Bonus Series: 'The Man Behind the Curtain’ with Tom McCarthy and Thomas Jones Episodes will appear on Monday every week, with a new episode from each series appearing every four weeks. Episodes from our bonus series, ‘The Man Behind the Curtain’, will come out every couple of months, either as extra episodes or live events: look out for announcements! If you're not already subscribed to Close Readings, sign up for just £4.99/month or £49.99/year to listen to these series plus all our past series in full: Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://lrb.me/crintro2026apple⁠ Spotify and other podcast apps:  ⁠https://lrb.me/crintro2026sc⁠ Here are the works covered in each series: ‘Who’s Afraid of Realism?’ with James Wood and guests Flaubert, ‘Madame Bovary’ Dostoevsky, ‘Notes from Underground’ Stories by Anton Chekhov Tolstoy, ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ Kafka, ‘Metamorphosis’ Woolf, ‘Mrs Dalloway’ Rhys, ‘Voyage in the Dark’ Bellow, ‘Seize The Day’ Nabokov, ‘Pnin’ Spark, ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ Sharma, ‘Family Life’ Stories by Lydia Davis Riley, ‘My Phantoms’ ‘Nature in Crisis’ with Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith Carson, ‘Silent Spring’ Schlanger, ‘The Light Eaters’ Czerski, ‘The Blue Machine’ Lovelock, ‘Gaia’ MacFarlane, ‘Is a River Alive?’ Kimmerer, ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ Raboteau, ‘Lessons for Survival’ Moore and Roberts, ‘The Rise of Ecofascism’ Riofrancos, ‘Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism’ And more TBD ‘Narrative Poems’ with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford Marlowe, ‘Hero and Leander’ Shakespeare, ‘Venus and Adonis’ and ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ Milton, Book 9 of ‘Paradise Lost’ Pope, ‘The Rape of the Lock’ Coleridge ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ Wordsworth, ‘The Ruined Cottage’ and ‘Michael’ Keats, ‘The Eve of St Ag

The BBC is in crisis, again. A leaked dossier alleging a lack of impartiality in its reporting on Trump, Israel, race and gender has felled its director general and drawn threats of a defamation lawsuit from the White House. Yet many at the corporation point to the dossier’s culture war slant as evidence of a right-wing plot against the BBC. Defensive and stolid, Britain’s main news and media organisation now flinches from any real conflict. Is the BBC capable of surviving in the digital era? Joining James is the former BBC journalist Lewis Goodall, now a prominent face of digital political journalism as part of the News Agents, and Dan Hind, publisher and author of The Return of the Public: Democracy, Power and the Case for Media Reform. Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics⁠ More from the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

In the days after 9/11, George W. Bush declared a state of emergency and initiated what would become an unprecedented expansion of US power. Public debate narrowed: there were new limits on what was acceptable, and not acceptable, to say. The London Review of Books published a number of pieces that challenged this consensus, forcing its editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers, to defend the paper on national radio. This is the first episode in a six-part series. To listen to the rest of the series follow Aftershock: The War on Terror in: Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/wotapple Spotify: https://lrb.me/wotspotify Other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/wotlinktree Archive:Rutgers Law Review, ‘CNN Live’/CNN, ‘Good Morning America’/ABC, ‘Good Day New York’/FOX5 New York/FOX, ‘SmackDown’/USA Network/WWE, ‘Meet the Press’/NBC/NBC News Productions and ‘Broadcasting House’/BBC Radio 4/BBC

Since the 1980s, Brett Christophers wrote recently in the LRB, ‘firms have made vast amounts of money by sending the rich world’s waste to the global South’ – hazardous waste at first, joined more recently by discarded electronics, clothes and plastics. Literal mountains of our rubbish are accumulating on the peripheries of cities such as Accra and Delhi. Waste, like wealth, is unevenly distributed. On this episode, Brett joins Tom to discuss what happens to our rubbish after we throw it away. They talk about where it goes and why it’s so difficult actually to get rid of it, let alone reduce the amount we discard, when the creation of waste is so much more profitable. Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/wastepod From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB and get a free tote! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod⁠ Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

After 9/11, George W. Bush launched a global War on Terror. What followed was an unprecedented expansion of American power, from Guantánamo Bay to drone strikes, mass surveillance to the weaponisation of the financial system. Asked when it would end, Vice-President Dick Cheney replied: ‘Not in our lifetime.’ Two decades later, we’re still living in its shadow. Aftershock: The War on Terror is a new six-part podcast from the London Review of Books. Daniel Soar, a senior editor at the paper, revisits the magazine’s coverage and reflects on the ways 9/11 has changed the world we live in. First episode coming 20 November. Find the series in: Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/f16f79 Spotify: https://lrb.me/eb54a6 Or wherever you get your podcasts.

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, what many have seen as a second wave of progressive governments have collapsed, giving way to right-wing leaders such as Milei, Bukele and Bolsonaro, with support from international libertarian movements. In this episode, James is joined by Tony Wood, who wrote about this shift in the latest issue of the LRB, and Camila Vergara, a critical legal theorist at the University of Essex, to discuss why the Pink Tide governments failed, where the new brand of right-wing politics comes from, and whether the revolutionary energy found across the continent could lead to further change. Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics⁠ From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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, argues that a significant contributing factor may have been the spew of lead fumes and other toxic emissions that billowed unchecked across the region during those decades. On this episode, James joins Tom to discuss the evidence, and what the juxtaposition of industrial lead poisoning and serial murder may tell us about different kinds of violence in modern America, even if a direct causal link remains unproved. Find the piece and further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/leadpollutionpod Read more from James Lasdun for the LRB in the archive: https://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/james-lasdun From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB and get a free tote! ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Andy Haldane and Daniela Gabor assess the influence of bond markets and central banks

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’s epochs and aeons’. Lorraine joins Tom to explore the ways that ideas about extinction are warped by our timescales and politics. They discuss how the language of natural selection was used to excuse violence and ecocide, and the continued influence of ‘empirical’ myths on approaches to conservation and human culture today. Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/evolutionpod From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod⁠ Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

James talks to Alan Finlayson about online political rhetoric

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 about his recent book about the conflict, Tomorrow Is Yesterday, co-authored with Hussein Agha, why attempts to broker a lasting peace have failed and what the future might hold for the Palestinian movement. Find further reading on the LRB website: https://lrb.me/peaceprocesspod From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

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 second book, Free, which, as Jessica Olin wrote recently in the LRB, ‘chronicles her attempt to adjust to life after prison’. On this episode of the LRB podcast, Jessica joins Tom to talk about the murder case, the media frenzy surrounding it – which portrayed Knox as either a sex-crazed psychopath or an angelic innocent abroad – and the efforts Knox has since made to speak for herself and on behalf of others who have been wrongly convicted. From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Anthony Seldon and Henry Hill discuss why the Conservative Party is in such a dire situation

J. Robert Lennon discusses Elmore Leonard's style

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 both Angela Rayner as deputy PM and Peter Mandelson as US ambassador (to different scandals), and facing formidable opposition from Nigel Farage’s Reform party riding high on the issue of immigration control. In this first episode of a new strand in the LRB Podcast, host James Butler talks to former Labour MP and minister Chris Mullin, columnist Andy Beckett and journalist Morgan Jones about whether Labour can recover from critical mistakes over tax, why they’re failing to communicate their achievements, and who they should really be trying to represent. This was our first episode. Tell us what you think! https://lrb.me/opfeedback From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

The manosphere, Emily Witt writes in a recent piece for the LRB, is the ‘online network of male supremacist websites, influencers and YouTube channels’ whose popularity has exploded in the last fifteen years. Perceiving themselves as an underclass disenfranchised by feminism, men are increasingly turning to misogynistic content to gain a sense of control over their lives. Beyond the internet, the rhetoric of the manosphere has reached the highest levels of the US government, as well as sparking a series of violent misogynistic crimes. Emily Witt joins Malin Hay to discuss what makes the manosphere appealing to young men, and what can be done about it. Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/manospherepod From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk

Richard Seymour joins Tom to survey the work of the late anthropologist and activist David Graeber.

Joanne O’Leary, an editor at the LRB, has been following Formula One since she was a child. Thomas Jones wrote recently in the LRB about the life and times of Enzo Ferrari. In this episode, they discuss the ways F1 has changed over the years (not least how it’s become safer), what it’s like to drive a ‘regular’ Ferrari, the extreme demands of handling an F1 vehicle, and why the personalities of the people behind the cars —the people who drive them, manufacture them, live for them and, in some cases, die in them — matter so much. From the LRB Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subslrbpod Close Readings podcast: ⁠https://lrb.me/crlrbpod⁠ LRB Audiobooks: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobookslrbpod⁠ Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠ Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk