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The LRB Podcast

The LRB Podcast

By: The London Review of Books
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 The LRB Podcast brings you weekly conversations from Europe’s leading magazine of culture and ideas, hosted by Thomas Jones and Malin Hay, and featuring our fortnightly 'On Politics' podcast hosted by James Butler. 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© LRB (London) Ltd 1980 - 2021 Social Sciences
Episodes
  • What Dickens taught Mariah Carey

    What Dickens taught Mariah Carey
    Dec 24 2025
    Did Dickens ruin Christmas? He was certainly a pioneer in exploiting its commercial potential. A Christmas Carol sold 6,000 copies in five days when it was published on 19 December 1843, and Dickens went on to write four more lucrative Christmas books in the 1840s. But in many ways, this ‘ghost story of Christmas’ couldn’t be less Christmassy. The plot displays Dickens’s typical obsession with extracting maximum sentimentality from the pain and death of his characters, and the narrative voice veers unnervingly from preachy to creepy in its voyeuristic obsessions with physical excess. The book also offers a stiff social critique of the 1834 Poor Law and a satire on Malthusian ideas of population control. In this long extract from ‘Novel Approaches’, part of our Close Readings podcast, Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell join Tom to consider why Dickens’s dark tale has remained a Christmas staple. This is an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠ AUDIO GIFTS Close Readings and audiobooks: https://lrb.me/audiogifts
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    34 mins
  • Is ‘Wuthering Heights’ amoral?

    Is ‘Wuthering Heights’ amoral?
    Dec 19 2025
    Emily Brontë died on the 19 December 1848. As Patricia Lockwood said in an episode of Close Readings, there is evidence that Brontë was writing a second novel to follow ‘Wuthering Heights’, but if she was, it has been lost, and it has been suggested, though never proved, that her sister Charlotte might have destroyed it. But what could possibly be in that lost novel, Lockwood wondered, that was worse, more unacceptable, than what we find in ‘Wuthering Heights’? To mark the anniversary, we’re releasing the full version of this episode from the Close Readings series ‘Novel Approaches’. David Trotter and Patricia Lockwood join Thomas Jones to discuss Brontë’s only surviving novel, one Trotter describes as ‘completely amoral’. Readings by Alex Colley Give a gift subscription to Close Readings for Christmas: https://lrb.me/audiogifts 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
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    1 hr and 39 mins
  • Who owns Judy Garland?

    Who owns Judy Garland?
    Dec 17 2025
    For a century, Judy Garland’s joyous and vulnerable singing voice has captivated audiences at the theatre, over the airwaves and in the cinema. Camille Paglia wrote of her that she ‘became an emblematic personality of her time, into whom the mass audience projected its hopes and disappointments’. Bee Wilson joins Malin Hay to discuss Garland’s years at MGM Studios, where she was mistreated and overworked by her employers but also made some of her best pictures, growing from a contract player into a star. They discuss whether Garland’s work at MGM was worth the pain it caused her, who her greatest collaborators were, and who now owns her story. Listen to Bee read her pieces in the audiobook Complicated Women, which includes an introductory conversation between Bee and Malin: https://lrb.me/audiobookspod 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
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    49 mins
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