LA Review of Books
The Los Angeles Review of Books is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and disseminating rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts. The Los Angeles Review of Books magazine was created in part as a response to the disappearance of the traditional newspaper book review supplement, and, with it, the art of lively, intelligent long-form writing on recent publications in every genre, ranging from fiction to politics. The Los Angeles Review of Books seeks to revive and reinvent the book review for the internet age, and remains committed to covering and representing today’s diverse literary and cultural landscape.
Episodes
July 4, 2025 • 59 mins
For Independence Day, we dive into the archives to bring you an episode that still feels timely. Ruth Wilson Gilmore joins Kate Wolf and Eric Newman to talk about her collection, "Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation," which covers three decades of her thinking about abolition, activism, scholarship, the carceral system, the political economy of racism, and much more. For Gilmore, these are not siloed issues; rather, they ...
Mark as Played
June 27, 2025 • 57 mins
Susan Choi joins Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher to speak about her new novel, "Flashlight." An epic story that spans multiple generations of a single family, the book is an astute exploration of identity, migration, memory, kinship and the irrepressibility of the past. It begins in the wake of the mysterious disappearance of a young academic named Serk. An ethnic Korean, who was raised in Japan and decided to continue his studies there...
Mark as Played
June 20, 2025 • 54 mins
In this double episode celebrating pride month, Kate Wolf speaks with the critic Vince Aletti about his new book, "Physique," an assortment of hundreds of physique photos from Aletti’s own personal collection. The images in the book represent a time when homosexual life in the US was illegal, existed mostly underground, and was by necessity furtive and coded. Yet throughout the country there were photo studios producing erotic and ...
Mark as Played
June 13, 2025 • 50 mins
Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher speak with Alison Bechdel about her new graphic novel, "Spent." Bechdel is the author of "Essential Dykes to Watch Out For," "Fun Home," and "Are You My Mother?" "Spent" fictionalizes Bechdel’s life with her wife Holly on their pygmy goat sanctuary in Vermont. The comic chronicles political and local dramas, generational shifts, experiments with polyamory, and navigating the relationship between succes...
Mark as Played
June 6, 2025 • 50 mins
In this special episode, hosts Kate Wolf, Medaya Ocher, and Eric Newman wrestle with the question: What are we to do about shame? Using Frédéric Gros’s recent book, "A Philosophy of Shame," as a guidepost, they discuss shame’s place in culture, politics, and our personal lives. Are there social benefits to feeling shame? And what are the repercussions of trying to avoid it? The hosts debate the possibility of a post-shame society a...
Mark as Played
May 30, 2025 • 54 mins
Dan Nadel joins Kate Wolf and Eric Newman to speak about his new biography, "Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life." The book traces the life and art of Robert Crumb, arguably the most influential cartoonist of the last half century. Crumb emerged from the world of underground comics that he helped create in the late 1960s to both mainstream fame and commercial success. But he was a reticent celebrity who often felt at odds with the hippie cu...
Mark as Played
May 23, 2025 • 50 mins
Eric Newman speaks with journalist and author Vauhini Vara about her new book “Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age.” The book hybrid blend of memoir and modern tech history explore how the internet, AI, and the corporate tech giants behind them have shaped the way we see ourselves and connect with others. Through Vara’s personal anecdotes and digital history deep dives—including a nostalgic look at AOL chat rooms, a rundown of he...
Mark as Played
May 16, 2025 • 52 mins
Eric Newman speaks with Jon Hickey about his debut novel "Big Chief." The book is a gripping political thriller about the struggle for power, belonging, and destiny set against a tribal election campaign on a fictional reservation. It follows the story of Mitch Caddo and his childhood friend Max Beck, who is seeking reelection as the tribal president of the Passage Rouge Nation. As Max’s reelection turns ruthless and agitated prote...
Mark as Played
May 9, 2025 • 44 mins
Medaya Ocher is joined by TV writer, memoirist and librettist Sarah Labrie, author of the book "No One Gets to Fall Apart." The book is a memoir of LaBrie’s fraught relationship with her mother, who suffers a psychotic break in 2017 and is found on the side of a freeway, convinced that she is being followed by FBI agents. LaBrie is then forced to confront the difficulties and mysteries of her childhood, the way her family dealt wit...
Mark as Played
May 2, 2025 • 50 mins
Eric Newman and Kate Wolf speak with Sarah Schulman about her latest book, "The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity." With a focus on practical politics, Schulman explores both how we imagine solidarity and what the work of solidarity requires. Rather than a horizontal movement, the book focuses on the ways achieving today's most pressing political goals—from Palestine's self-determination to immigration reform and protecting LBGTQ...
Mark as Played
April 25, 2025 • 52 mins
Maggie Nelson joins Kate Wolf to discuss her new book "Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth." It is at once a compressed record of her long struggle with chronic pain and a document of the boundless blur of the pandemic era. It combines vignettes of daily life and doctor’s visits with dreams and memories, pushing at the partition between interior and exterior, symptom and experience, containment and surrender. Nelson depicts the my...
Mark as Played
April 18, 2025 • 44 mins
Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher speak with writer Katie Kitamura about her recent novel, "Audition," which explores a tense, complex relationship between a middle-aged actress and a young man who may or may not be her son. The book raises questions about the roles we play, the stories we inhabit, and the many choices we make. “Audition” is LARB’s Book Club pick this month. Join in on the conversation at https://lareviewofbooks.org/ev...
Mark as Played
April 11, 2025 • 52 mins
Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher speak with Andrea Long Chu about "Authority," a collection of previously published and new essays and criticism. "Authority" interrogates what it means to be a critic today, analyzing the work that the critic does in interpreting a book, film, or TV show for us as well as how the status of the critic has developed from antiquity to the present. Andrea, Medaya, and Eric talk about finding one's voice as ...
Mark as Played
April 2, 2025 • 39 mins
Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher speak to Lynne Tillman about her latest book, "Thrilled to Death," a collection of short stories selected from over four decades of her work. The stories in "Thrilled to Death" attest to Tillman’s range as a writer and stylist, showcasing her frenetic humor, deep psychological insight, and her innovation of the form. Ever playful and perverse, these stories cover terrains of urban existence, romantic obse...
Mark as Played
March 27, 2025 • 48 mins
The writer Pankaj Mishra joins Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher to discuss his new book, "The World After Gaza: A History." It probes how the legacy of the Holocaust has shaped the contemporary world order, including how it has shaped the government of Israel, and the current war in Gaza. The book grapples with how, within the relentless violence of the 20th century, trauma can lead to nationalism, and also how one genocide can lead to a...
Mark as Played
March 18, 2025 • 52 mins
Eric Newman speaks with Bruce Robbins about his latest book, "Atrocity: A Literary History," which explores how literary accounts of mass killing came to shape our collective moral indignation against such violence. Moving from the pre-modern era to the twentieth century, Robbins's book wrestles with how texts from the Bible to Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" reckon–or fail to reckon–with atrocity, drawing out the risks of re...
Mark as Played
March 11, 2025 • 49 mins
Eric Newman speaks with Torrey Peters about her new story collection, "Stag Dance," which spans genre, time, and place to explore the shifting sands of gender, sex, desire, and identity. From a post-apocalyptic world in which everyone is trans to a pirate logging camp in the early 1900s where desire and gender explode in surprising ways, the stories in "Stag Dance" plumb the murky and often ugly feelings that contradict the “good p...
Mark as Played
March 5, 2025 • 49 mins
Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher speak to writer Haley Mlotek about "No Fault: A Memoir of Divorce and Romance." The book blends the history of divorce law and custom in North America over the last century with cultural criticism on the way divorce has been portrayed in literature, film, and online. Mlotek also records her own experience of ending a marriage, and the front row seat she had growing up to the dissolution of many other unio...
Mark as Played
February 25, 2025 • 46 mins
In this special episode, host Eric Newman joins LARB senior editor Paul Thompson and Film Comment co-editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute for a look at this year’s Oscar nominees ahead of this weekend’s award ceremony. Surveying this rather strange year in film, the gang discusses the gory camp of The Substance, the omnipresence of Wicked, the multi-genre madness of Emilia Pérez, and much more.
Mark as Played
February 18, 2025 • 48 mins
Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher are joined by the art critic and historian Hal Foster to speak about his latest book, "Fail Better: Reckonings with Artists and Critics." A collection of essays that brings together over three decades of Foster’s work, the book exhibits a rigorous philosophical and political engagement with a celebrated group of critics and artists who span the 1960s to the present. Foster digs deep into the work of Pop m...
Mark as Played
Popular Podcasts
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!