The LRB Podcast

Would the Founding Fathers recognise the modern United States as the republic they declared in 1776? The nation formed from Britain’s North American colonies has become the most powerful and prosperous in the world, but the muted celebrations on 4 July reflected a divided country in which, for many of its citizens, the principles of the Declaration of Independence are hard to square with what’s happened to its democratic institutions.

James is joined by Gary Gerstle, a professor of history at Cambridge, to reflect on some of the major changes in the political evolution of the United States, including the expansion of federal power in the 20th century, the perpetual state of war since 1941 and the voluntary ceding of influence by Congress to the executive under Trump. They also look at the past and future of the US ‘special relationship’ with the UK and what could come next for American democracy following this year’s midterms and the 2028 presidential election.

Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics⁠From 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
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the sixth episode of their series, Sarah and Sandeep look at poems that explore the complexities of money and its metaphorical power: Frederick Seidel’s ‘In Late December’ starts with an image of degradation in the symbolic heart of global capitalism but ends with an ambiguous vision of the undead in an apparent appeal to common humanity; in Ella Fears’s Goodlord, an email from an estate agent triggers a stream-of-consciousness tour through a series of barely-habitable rental properties and a reflection on a financial system that traps people in dehumanising accommodation; and Danez Smith’s ‘C.R.E.A.M.’ provides a satirical exploration of the relationship between race, poverty and systemic exploitation, describing a compressed history of the evolution of oppression from slavery to sharecropping to the modern exploitations of capitalism.

Read Frederick Seidel's 'In Late December' in the LRB:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n24/frederick-seidel/in-late-december

Get 25% off a 12-month subscription to Close Readings with the code ’POETRY25’ at checkout here: ⁠https://lrb.me/crpoetry
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Trump-Russia dossier, leaked to the press in 2017, contained multiple allegations of collusion between the US president and Putin, including reports of meetings between Kremlin officials and members of Trump’s campaign team, and the existence of kompromat in the form of the infamous ‘pee tape’. Shortly after the dossier was leaked, Christopher Steele, the head of a private business intelligence firm called Orbis, was named as its author. Steele claimed that his company had access to sources which allowed them to ‘illuminate Vladimir Putin’s autocratic and closed regime’. In a review of Steele’s memoir in the LRB, Vadim Nikitin called the dossier ‘shoddy’ and ‘full of uncorroborated and implausible’ material. None of its claims have been proven.

In this episode, Vadim joins Thomas Jones to discuss the legacy of the dossier, Steele’s career before and after its release and how the internal workings of the business intelligence industry are influencing politics in both the US and the UK.

Archive:

‘The Rachel Maddow Show’/MSNBC

‘Russian oligarch met with Cohen at Trump tower’/CNN

‘This House Prefers Style Over Substance’/Cambridge Union

‘Special Report: Mueller report release’/CBS News

‘Your World’/Fox News

‘Times Radio Breakfast’/Times News

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
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The most popular modern food poem is probably William Carlos Williams’s ‘This Is Just to Say’, in which the speaker confesses to eating the plums his wife was saving for breakfast. Food has often been a means for poetry to represent intimate relationships, but, as Sarah and Sandeep explore in this episode, it has also provided ways of thinking about alienation, societal change, survival and displacement. In Tony Harrison’s 'V.', supermarkets and food providers become central motifs in a discussion of Britain’s changing landscapes; Bhanu Kapil’s How to Wash a Heart uses the memory of a grandfather planting yogurt under a tree as a means of understanding the aftermath of Partition; and in Yousif M. Qasmiyeh’s ‘Communion’, set in the Beddawi refugee camp in Lebanon, lentils become part of a living archive through which experiences are transmitted across generations.

Read Tony Harrison's 'V.' in the LRB:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v07/n01/tony-harrison/v

Get 25% off a 12-month subscription to Close Readings with the code ’POETRY25’ at checkout here: https://lrb.me/crpoetry
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andy Burnham will soon become the UK’s seventh prime minister since 2010 and will face many of the same problems that defeated his predecessors, not least the UK’s stubbornly weak economy. To dissect the collapse of the Starmer project and the prospects for a Burnham administration, James is joined by Patrick Maguire, chief political commentator for the Times, and William Davies, a political economist at Goldsmiths.

Patrick Maguire is the author of 'Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer',.

William Davies is a regular contributor to the LRB and the author of 'This is Not Normal: The collapse of liberal Britain' among other books.

Read William Davies on Burnham: https://lrb.me/opburnham01

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
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices