The LRB Podcast

The protests that began in Iran last month have been suppressed with a level of state violence not seen since the 1980s, when the Islamic Republic executed thousands of leftists and other dissidents. In this episode, Adam Shatz talks to Chowra Makaremi and Amir Ahmadi Arian about the evolution of public dissent in Iran since 1979 and why the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement of 2022 opened the way to more overtly revolutionary protest. They also discuss the economic collapse underpinning the most recent uprising and the ways in which the Iranian regime has refined the use of opacity and rumour to consolidate its power.

Chowra Makaremi is an anthropologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris and Amir Ahmadi Arian is a novelist and assistant professor at Binghamton University, New York.

Read Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi on Iran's crises in the latest issue: https://lrb.me/iranscrisespod

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‘Anti-communist​ dandy, scourge of Ivy League administrators, magazine chieftain, amanuensis to Joe McCarthy, father-confessor of the Nixon White House, Ronald Reagan consigliere: is it any wonder that William F. Buckley is still the patron saint of the American right?’, Thomas Meaney asked in the LRB, reviewing Sam Tanenhaus’s recent biography of the founder of National Review and host of 34 seasons of Firing Line.On this episode of the podcast, Meaney joins Thomas Jones to discuss Buckley’s life and legacy: his proselytising for segregation at home and imperialism abroad, and how he laid the groundwork for Trump’s path to the White House.

From the LRB

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In early January, the US military seized Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, in a display of force that echoed its numerous past interventions in Latin America. Yet in this case, Trump’s justifications for the action made no mention of democracy, but cited, among other things, migration, narco-terrorism and oil. In this episode, James is joined by historian Greg Grandin to discuss what the intervention reveals about Trump’s intentions in the region and his wider foreign policy, and why, as in the past, such adventures will ultimately expose the limits of US power.

Read more on politics in the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/lrbpolitics⁠

From the LRB

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‘Is it a bubble?’ John Lanchester asked in a recent LRB of the colossal amounts of money pouring into AI firms. ‘Of course it’s a bubble. The salient questions are how we got here, and what happens next.’

On this episode of the podcast, John joins Thomas Jones to discuss some possible answers to those questions. They talk about the history of companies such as Nvidia and OpenAI, the reasons ‘artificial intelligence’ is a misnomer, the harms that large language models can cause and why you shouldn’t rely on them for advice in the kitchen.

From the LRB

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In The Man Behind the Curtain, a bonus Close Readings series for 2026, Tom McCarthy and Thomas Jones examine great novels in terms of the systems and infrastructures at work in them. For their first episode, they turn to the book that invented the modern novel. Don Quixote, the ingenious man from La Mancha, is thought to be mad by everyone he meets because he believes he’s living in a book. But from a certain point of view that makes the hero of Cervantes’ novel the only character who has any idea what’s really going on. Tom and Tom discuss the machinery – narrative, theoretical, economic, psychological and literal (those windmills) – which underpins Cervantes’ masterpiece.

This is a bonus episode from the Close Readings series. To listen 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

Further reading in the LRB:

Karl Miller on ‘Don Quixote’:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v08/n03/karl-miller/andante-capriccioso⁠

Michael Wood: Crazy Don

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v17/n15/michael-wood/crazy-don⁠

Gabriel Josipovici on Cervantes’ life:

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v01/n05/gabriel-josipovici/the-hard-life-and-poor-best-of-cervantes⁠

Robin Chapman: Cervantics

⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v08/n16/robin-chapman/cervantics⁠