The LRB Podcast

Trump’s war on Iran has highlighted recent dramatic changes in the politics of oil. While the United States still guarantees maritime security in the Middle East, it is no longer the primary beneficiary, with most oil and gas exports from the Persian Gulf going to Asia. In Britain, meanwhile, debates over drilling in the North Sea point to the urgent need for electrification, both to achieve greater energy security and to reach net zero by 2050.

In this episode, James is joined by Helen Thompson, a professor of political economy at the University of Cambridge, who argues that the war, though far from inevitable, stems in part from regional and international tensions caused by the shifting of energy flows. They discuss the central role that finance, and insurance in particular, plays in deciding whether tankers can sail, and how energy requirements helped Trump to secure the backing of major US corporations in the 2024 presidential election.

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Diabetes has been recognised as a fatal condition for thousands of years: its symptoms are described in ancient Chinese, Sanskrit and Greek texts. But it wasn’t until the late 19th century that its cause began to be understood, as scientists conducted experiments on dogs. It was a pair of researchers at the University of Toronto in the early 1920s who – through a gruelling series of experiments that would not pass an ethics review today – eventually isolated the hormone that patients with diabetes are lacking.

On this episode, Liam Shaw, who reviewed the latest edition of Michael Bliss’s classic book The Discovery of Insulin in a recent issue of the LRB, joins Thomas Jones to discuss the history of diabetes treatments from insulin to Ozempic, the all-too-human scientists who discovered them and the companies that profit from them.

Read Liam’s piece: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n06/liam-shaw/bring-me-bimagrumab

From the LRB

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Something has gone wrong in the way we discuss politics. If democratic systems since the Athenian polity have been founded on debate, then what does debate do for us today, aside from making us angrier and filling billionaire-owned social media sites with monetisable content? Sarah Stein Lubrano has argued that the ‘marketplace of ideas’ is a myth and the best ideas often don’t win out. In this episode she joins James Butler to talk about the things that do and don’t change people’s minds and why meaningful change is better achieved through means other than argument, such as social ties and collective action. They also consider what technology has done to shape the political landscape and individual behaviour, and the ways in which it has been exploited most effectively by those on the right.Sarah Stein Lubrano is the author of Don’t Talk About Politics.

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‘I hadn’t wanted to have sex with the prince,’ Virginia Giuffre said, ‘but I felt I had to.’ Reviewing Giuffre’s memoir, Nobody’s Girl, in the LRB, Andrew O’Hagan writes: ‘All the pomp, tradition, ceremony and “loyalty” in the world can’t wash away the simple facts. Ghislaine Maxwell took this young girl to Jeffrey Epstein, who abused her a number of times, then they flew her around the world to be abused by their powerful friends.’

In the same issue, Susan Pedersen observes that ‘the scandal lays bare the entitlement felt and impunity enjoyed by the powerful and crass,’ while pointing out that ‘a girl doesn’t have to fall into Epstein’s clutches to see sexual abuse up close.’

On this episode of the podcast, Susan and Andrew join Thomas Jones to discuss whether the Epstein scandal has anything new to tell us about sexual abuse.

Find further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/ordinaryabuse

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Less than two years after winning a huge majority, even many of Keir Starmer’s own MPs think he’s doomed. But is he? Despite a historic loss to the Green Party in the Gorton and Denton by-election last month, the prime minister has managed to cling on, for now. His critics point to a lack of vision in government, the alienation of Labour members and a failure to accept the need for radical reform. Those less critical argue it’s simply a problem with communicating his achievements, and that Britain is pretty much ungovernable anyway.James Butler is joined by Sienna Rodgers, deputy editor at the House magazine, and Jeremy Gilbert, professor of cultural and political theory at the University of East London, to consider the reasons for Starmer’s mess, from the selection of his MPs to the ‘iron law of oligarchy’. And if he’s not prime minister at the end of the year, who will be?

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