The LRB Podcast

It could be argued that Christopher Nolan has been remaking the Odyssey for his whole career, and his latest film revisits many of the themes of his earlier movies, as once again a male protagonist embarks on a desperate quest to recover a female love object. But, as Emily Wilson argues, while Homer’s Odyssey might seem the perfect source material for Nolan, the ancient Greek poem also excels at many things the director isn't so good at, not least dialogue and characterisation.

Wilson, who has translated both the Odyssey and the Iliad, joins Thomas Jones to talk through the new adaptation, discussing its echoes of Nolan’s earlier films and his use of the Trojan Horse as a parable about wars built on lies. They also look at the compositional history of Homer’s poem and consider why this archetypal journey narrative is also a story about stasis and the desire to resist time.

Listen to Emily and Tom's Close Readings episode on the Odyssey here:

Apple: https://lrb.me/odysseyapple

Spotify: https://lrb.me/odysseyspotify

LRB website: https://lrb.me/odysseyweb

GET 50% OFF a 12-month Close Readings subscription with the code 'SUMMER50' when you sign up here:

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The US tech giant Palantir ‘holds public contracts worth hundreds of millions of pounds in everything from financial regulation to local government’, Peter Geoghegan and Lucas Amin wrote recently in the LRB. The newsletter where they work, Democracy for Sale, ‘has been looking into Palantir’s business in the UK, and particularly its contracts with the NHS’. On this episode, Peter joins Thomas Jones to discuss the company's origins, rapid rise and expansion – with the help of Peter Mandelson – into the British state. They talk about the risks of handing our most personal data over to a company whose billionaire founders have poured millions into right-wing political campaigns in the US, and ask whether the software’s actually any good at doing what it promises.

Read Peter Geoghegan and Lucas Amin on Palantir: https://lrb.me/palantirpod

From the LRB

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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

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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 Frears’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
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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

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Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storelrbpod⁠⁠

Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.uk
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