Close Readings

In Blue Machine (2024), Helen Czerski refigures the ocean as an enormous planetary engine, converting light and heat into motion. Her book invites us to see the ocean not as an ‘absence’ but an intricate series of operations that makes life as we know it possible. Blue Machine is an encyclopaedic tour through physics, biology and history of the sea, expansive and propulsive in a way that Peter Godfrey-Smith likens to Moby-Dick.

Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith are both writers deeply engaged with the sea and what happens when climate change disrupts the workings of the ‘blue machine’. In this episode, they reflect on the ways Czerski’s book has changed their thinking about the ocean, and whether new perspectives can ever be enough to change public policy.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ture

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠⁠ture

Get the book: https://lrb.me/czerskicr

More from the LRB:

Richard Hamblyn on deep-sea exploration:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n21/richard-hamblyn/hurrah-for-the-dredge

Katherine Rundell on the greenland shark:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n09/katherine-rundell/consider-the-greenland-shark

Liam Shaw on coral:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n22/liam-shaw/in-the-photic-zone

Amia Srinivasan reviews Peter’s book on octopus minds:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n17/amia-srinivasan/the-sucker-the-sucker

Film: Forecasting D-Day

https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/videos/lrb-films-interviews/forecasting-d-day

Next episode: ‘The Burning Earth’ by Sunil Amrith

https://lrb.me/amrithcr

Dostoevsky’s 1864 novella doesn’t contain the descriptive detail, impersonal narration or many other features of 19th-century realism established by Flaubert. The book’s two-part structure, which starts with a 40-year-old’s furious rant against rationalism and moves on to present three humiliating episodes from his earlier life, offers no kind of conclusion. Instead, it is the unbearable moments of psychological truth that make ‘Notes from Underground’ a revolutionary development in the history of realism.

In this episode, James Wood is joined by the novelist and critic Adam Thirlwell to consider Dostoevsky’s mastery of the inner life and the experiences that shaped his hostility to rational egoism, from being subjected to a mock execution and four years in a Siberian prison camp to his reading of Hegel and a visit to London’s Crystal Palace.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrwaor

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Read more in the LRB on Dostoevsky:

John Bayley: https://lrb.me/realismep301

Daniel Soar: https://lrb.me/realismep302

Michael Wood: https://lrb.me/realismep303

After Roman London was hit by a catastrophic fire in about 125 AD, perhaps the result of another local revolt, it entered a new period of sophistication which saw the emergence of elaborate townhouses for its mercantile and administrative elite, richly embellished with mosaics and wall paintings. But the city had stopped growing, and when a devastating plague arrived in about 165 AD, which may well have been Europe’s first encounter with smallpox, it was probably already on a long slow decline caused by its diminishing importance as a trading hub.

To continue Roman London’s story to its eventual fate as an abandoned walled garden, Rosemary Hill is joined again by Dominic Perring, author of 'London in the Roman World', to consider what objects such as a Greek spell found on the Thames foreshore, and a small bronze archer found in Cheapside, can tell us about the fortunes of the city, and why the construction of the London Wall in the early third century marked a terminal transformation of its role in the Roman Empire.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

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Like Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare made good use of his time off when the theatres were shut for plague in 1593. 'Venus and Adonis' appeared in quarto that year and become by far the most popular work Shakespeare published in his lifetime, running to ten editions before his death (compared to just four for Romeo and Juliet). In this episode, Seamus and Mark consider the many ways in which Shakespeare’s poem displays its author's remarkable originality, from its peculiar reshaping of the Ovidian myth into a tale of comic mismatch, to its surprising diversion into the psychology of grief. They then look at his disturbing follow-up, 'The Rape of Lucrece' (1594), in which a chilling depiction of self-conscious, premeditated evil anticipates characters such as Iago and Macbeth.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

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Further reading in the LRB:

Stephen Orgel on Shakespeare's poems: https://lrb.me/npshakespeare01

Barbara Everett on the sonnets: https://lrb.me/npshakespeare02

In The Light Eaters (2024), Zoë Schlanger reports from the frontiers of botany, where researchers are discovering forms of sensing, signalling and responding that challenge our ideas of plants as passive life forms. Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith explore Schlanger’s account of new research into plant behaviour. They examine the case for plant agency – and the far more speculative claims for plant consciousness – and attempt to make sense of some astonishing discoveries.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrna⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ture

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsna⁠⁠⁠ture

Get the book: https://lrb.me/schlangercr

Further reading from the LRB:

Francis Gooding on mushroom brains:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n10/francis-gooding/from-its-myriad-tips

Andrew Sugden on the life of a leaf:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n03/andrew-sugden/hairy-spiny-or-naked

Ian Hacking on human thinking about plants:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v13/n04/ian-hacking/living-things

Francis Gooding on the hidden life of trees:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n04/francis-gooding/thinking-about-how-they-think

Next episode: ‘Blue Machine’ by Helen Czerski

https://lrb.me/czerskicr