The LRB Podcast

• How They Built the Pyramids

  In 2013, a group of French and Egyptian archaeologists discovered of cache of papyri as old as the Great Pyramid of Giza. Some of the texts were written by people who had worked on the pyramids: a tally of their daily labour ferrying stones, for instance, between quarry and building site, and the payment they received in fabrics and beer. Robert Cioffi reviewed The Red Sea Scrolls: How Ancient Papyri Reveal the Secrets of the Pyramids by Pierre Tallet and Mark Lehner in the latest issue of the paper. On the podcast this week, he joins Tom to discuss how and why the pyramids were built, and by whom, as well as his own, hair-raising experiences helping to raise a fallen column at an Egyptian archaeological site.Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/pyramidspodSponsored links:To find out about financial support for professional writers visit the Royal Literary Fund here: https://www.rlf.org.uk/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Cold War Pen-Pals

  The Soviet Women’s Anti-Fascist Committee was set up in 1941 to foster connections with Allied countries and encourage British and US women to ‘invest personally’ in the war effort. Two years later, the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship in New York started its own letter-writing programme. The correspondence between a few hundred pairs of women in the US and the Soviet Union – sharing the details of their everyday lives, discovering what they had in common as well as their differences – carried on until the mid-1950s, even as hostilities between their governments escalated. In this episode, Miriam Dobson joins Tom to talk about her recent review of Dear Unknown Friend by Alexis Peri, which documents this ‘remarkable correspondence’. Drawing on her own research, Dobson also discusses other exchanges between ordinary people on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, and how the letter-writing changed the women's ideas about their own lives.Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/penpalspodLRB AudioDiscover audiobooks, Close Readings and more from the LRB: https://lrb.me/audiolrbpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Close Readings: 'Vanity Fair' by William Makepeace Thackeray

  Thackeray's comic masterpiece, 'Vanity Fair', is a Victorian novel looking back to Regency England as an object both of satire and nostalgia. Thackeray’s disdain for the Regency is present throughout the book, not least in the proliferation of hapless characters called George, yet he also draws heavily on his childhood experiences to unfold a complex story of fractured families, bad marriages and the tyranny of debt. In this episode, taken from our Close Readings podcast series 'Novel Approaches', Colin Burrow and Rosemary Hill join Tom to discuss Thackeray’s use of clothes, curry and the rapidly changing topography of London to construct a turbulent society full of peril and opportunity for his heroine, Becky Sharp, and consider why the Battle of Waterloo was such a recurrent preoccupation in literature of the period.To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrnaIn other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsnaSponsored Links:'Wahnfried' at Longborough Festival Opera: https://lfo.org.uk/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Conceiving Pregnancy

  It's now possible to take a home pregnancy test eight days after ovulation, yet in the 16th century, women sometimes turned to astrologers for confirmation. And in the 1950s and 1960s, one might send a urine sample to an address in Sloane Street where they would inject it into a tropical frog that would lay eggs. In this episode of the LRB Podcast, Erin Maglaque joins Thomas Jones to discuss how the understanding of conception has changed over the centuries since the early modern period, what knowledge has been gained but also what may have been lost.Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/conceptionpodLRB AudioDiscover audiobooks, Close Readings and more from the LRB: https://lrb.me/audiolrbpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  40:38
• Trump’s War by Executive Order

  Judith Butler and Aziz Rana join Adam Shatz to discuss Donald Trump’s use of executive orders to target birthright citizenship, protest, support of Palestinian rights, academic freedom, constitutionally protected speech and efforts to ensure inclusion on the basis of race, gender and sexual orientation. They consider in particular the content of Executive Order 14168, which ‘restores’ the right of the government to decide what sex people are, as well as the wider programme of rights-stripping implied by Trump’s agenda.Read Judith's piece here:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n06/judith-butler/this-is-wrongRead Adam on Columbia University:https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/march/submissionLRB AudioDiscover audiobooks, Close Readings and more from the LRB: https://lrb.me/audiolrbpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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