Episodes
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On Honesty
After watching Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's new documentary You Can See Everything, we're revisiting our chat show, "On Honesty," this week. In this special episode, Kate Wolf, Medaya Ocher, and Eric Newman discuss the "honesty crisis" facing contemporary culture. Using a recent book by…
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Looking Back: 'Once Upon a Time in Harlem'
Kate Wolf and Eric Newman are joined by the director and cinematographer, David Greaves, and his daughter, producer Liani Greaves, to speak about their new documentary, Once Upon a Time in Harlem. Originally conceived by David's father, the filmmaker William Greaves, Once Upon a Time in Harlem…
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Fady Joudah's "Exhibit G"
Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher are joined by Palestinian American poet, translator and physician Fady Joudah to discuss his latest book, Exhibit G. The collection, a nominee for the National Book Award in Poetry, brings together poetry, prose, and photographs on the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In…
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Trauma!
In this special chat episode, Medaya Ocher, Eric Newman, and Kate Wolf use Catherine Liu's new book Traumatized to dive into the political uses and pitfalls of trauma. Liu argues that the elite professional class has fully absorbed the trauma narrative; the story of an individual's suffering and...
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Samuel Stein's "A Right to Housing?"
The writer and housing policy advocate Samuel Stein joins Kate Wolf to speak about his new book, A Right to Housing? It lays out how housing could indeed become a human right, accessible to all, through things like the decommodification of the real estate market, the construction of—and…
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Astra Taylor and Naomi Klein's "End Times Fascism"
Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher speak to Astra Taylor and Naomi Klein about their new book, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World. A remarkably up to date analysis of our present moment of "messianic" wars in the Middle East and Silicon Valley's go-for broke investment in AI and space...
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Izabella Scott's "The Bed Trick"
Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher are joined by writer Izabella Scott. Scott is the author of the new book The Bed Trick: Sex and Deception on Trial. Her work has appeared in the Financial Times, Granta, London Review of Books, and on BBC Radio 4's Free Thinking. She was formerly co-editor of The…
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Izabella Scott's "The Bed Trick"
Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher are joined by writer Izabella Scott. Scott is the author of the new book The Bed Trick: Sex and Deception on Trial. Her work has appeared in the Financial Times, Granta, London Review of Books, and on BBC Radio 4's Free Thinking. She was formerly co-editor of The…
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Marlon James' "The Disappearers"
Eric Newman speaks with Marlon James about his latest novel, The Disappearers. Returning to Jamaica as an historical setting for the first time since his Booker-prize winning A Brief History of Seven Killings, James's latest tells a haunting story of violence and recovery against the backdrop of...
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Susan Stryker's "Changing Gender"
Medaya Ocher and Eric Newman speak with Susan Stryker about her new book Changing Gender. Part cultural history, part grammar lesson, and part memoir, Changing Gender confronts not only the long historical slipperiness of gender and identity in U.S. culture, but also the ways in which the very...
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Chang-Rae Lee's "A Tender Age"
Eric Newman speaks with Chang-Rae Lee about his latest novel, A Tender Age, a coming-of-age novel centered on Jeon-Gi, the troubled son of hardworking Korean immigrants, who must navigate the meaning of masculinity, desire, and identity as he begins the journey into adulthood. After a violent...
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Claudia Rankine's "Triage"
Claudia Rankine joins Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher to speak about her new book, Triage. It follows the lifelong friendship between its narrator and someone she refers to as the "theorist." The two meet in college and begin to play a game called "collapse" — they simply fall to the floor whenever…
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Eleni Sikelianos' "Memory Rehearsal"
The writer and poet Eleni Sikelianos joins Kate Wolf to discuss Memory Rehearsal, a hybrid-memoir that tracks the history of her great-grandparents, the Greek poet Angelos Sikelianos and the American actress, writer, and artist Eva Palmer. The book probes ancestry, legacy, ancient history, and...
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Erin Maglaque's "Presence"
Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf speak to historian Erin Maglaque about Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body, which interrogates contemporary notions of how women's bodies work. The book is both a personal account as well as an excavation of the rituals, beliefs, and experiences of women from...
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Kim Phillips-Fein on the Anti-Egalitarian Strain in American Culture and Politics
Host Eric Newman and LARB Editor-in-Chief Medaya Ocher speak with Columbia history professor Kim Phillips-Fein about her new book Country of Lords: Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality in America. Phillips-Fein examines a powerful countertradition...
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Rachel Aviv's "Strangers to Ourselves"
This week we are listening back to Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher speak with New Yorker staff writer Rachel Aviv as she discuss her first book, Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us. The book collects the stories of people whose mental health crises subvert our usual...
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Pemi Aguda's "One Leg on Earth"
Medaya Ocher and Eric Newman speak with the Nigerian writer Pemi Aguda about her debut novel, One Leg on Earth. Set in Lagos, a young woman is at the start of a promising new architecture career working on an ultra-luxury development when she becomes pregnant after a one night stand. As she's...
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Forever Young
Medaya Ocher, Kate Wolf, and Eric Newman come together for a special episode about aging. In the past decade, medical miracles and technological innovations have given us the chance to cheat or at least elude death longer. But what social and cultural changes are necessary to sustain a world in...
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Harriet Clark's "The Hill"
Harriet Clark joins Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher to speak about her debut novel, The Hill, which mirrors Clark's own life story. It follows a young girl named Suzanna whose mother is a political radical and was incarcerated for a bank robbery gone wrong when her daughter was only a year old.…
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Carlos Barragán's "The Yahoo Boys"
Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher are joined by journalist Carlos Barragán, whose new book is called The Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception, and the Real Lives of Nigeria's Romance Scammers. After his own mother is targeted by a scammer pretending to be an American soldier, reporter and researcher Barragán...
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Barry Walters' "Mighty Real"
Eric Newman and Kate Wolf speak to journalist and music critic Barry Walters about Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music 1969-2000. Spanning three decades of pop, disco, rock, funk, folk, and much more, Mighty Real looks at the power of popular music to challenge sexual norms and gender…
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Kimberlé Crenshaw's "Backtalker: an American Memoir"
Eric Newman interviews Kimberlé Crenshaw about her memoir Backtalker: An American Memoir. One of the most influential legal scholars of the past half century, Crenshaw is widely known for developing the analytical framework of intersectionality and pioneering the field of critical race theory. In...
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Andrew Durbin's "The Wonderful World that Almost Was"
Kate Wolf and Eric Newman speak with Andrew Durbin about his new biography, The Wonderful World that Almost Was: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek. A joint portrait of two influential yet under-sung American artists, the book follows Thek and Hujar's romance and deep friendship as it parallels...
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Nose Jobs and Reality TV
A double header show on beauty, class, surgical intervention, media manipulation, and assimilation American style. First Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher speak with debut novelist Sarah Wang about her book, New Skin, a mother-daughter story rendered in the hallucinatory glare of Los Angeles and its...
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On Honesty
In this special episode, Kate Wolf, Medaya Ocher, and Eric Newman discuss the "honesty crisis" facing contemporary culture. Using a recent book by the philosopher Christian Miller for reference, the hosts examine the internet as an engine for dishonesty, fueling everything from deepfakes to...
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Suzy Hansen's "From Life Itself"
Kate Wolf speaks to the Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Suzy Hansen about her new book, From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdogan. It centers on Istanbul's neighborhood of Karagümrük, which Hansen first began reporting on in 2015. She writes about the influx...
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Lucrecia Martel "Nuestra Tierra"
Acclaimed filmmaker Lucrecia Martel joins Kate Wolf to discuss her documentary Nuestra Tierra, which follows a 2018 trial in Argentina over a crime in the remote northwestern region of Tucaman. In a showdown between a local landowner and the indigenous people of the area, a man named Javier...
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A Return to the Queer 90's
Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf are joined by French writer Ann Scott, whose cult novel, Superstars, was just translated into English. Superstars depicts Paris' queer techno scene—the music, the fashion, the drugs, as well as the passionate love affairs. Scott talks about that era and how she turned...
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Patrick Radden Keefe's "London Falling"
Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher are joined by investigative journalist and New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, to discuss his new book, London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth. The book begins with the 2019 death of 19-year-old Zac Brettler in...
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Karan Mahajan's "The Complex"
Medaya Ocher and Eric Newman speak with Karan Mahajan about his latest novel, The Complex. Taking its name from the collection of buildings that patriarch SP Chopra built for his family in Delhi amid the fallout of the 1947 partition crisis, the novel explores how Chopra's descendants struggle to...
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Reynaldo Rivera's "Propiedad Privada"
Kate Wolf and Eric Newman are joined by photographer Reynaldo Rivera, whose work is featured on the cover of the LARB's spring issue, which celebrates 15 years of the Los Angeles Review of Books. Rivera discusses his latest photobook, Propiedad Privada, edited by Lauren Mackler and Hedi El…
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Hyperpolitics
In this special episode, Medaya Ocher, Kate Wolf, and Eric Newman discuss the current political quagmire we find ourselves in through the frame of Anton Jäger's Hyperpolitics. Moving from the 1990s to the present, Jäger's new book charts how the US has moved away from the mass political movements...
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The War in Iran and the Limits of American Journalism
Kate Wolf is joined by veteran journalist Jonathan Shainin, who has worked at The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The Caravan, among other publications. Most recently, he is one of the founding editors of Equator, a new magazine covering politics, culture and art, launched as a response to what the...
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LARB Radio Hour x Film Comment 2026 Oscars Preview
In this special episode, host Eric Newman is joined by LARB Film Editors Annie Berke and Elizabeth Alsop and Film Comment co-editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute for a look back at the year in film and the current crop of Oscar nominees ahead of this year's awards.
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Vigdis Hjorth's "Repetition"
Kate Wolf speaks to Vigdis Hjorth about her latest novel, Repetition. In the book, the narrator, a novelist in her 60s, returns with an almost trancelike intensity to an episode from her youth in which she had her first sexual experience. Leading up to her encounter with the young man she loses…
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Lauren Groff's "Brawler"
Eric Newman speaks with Lauren Groff about her latest story collection, "Brawler," an intimate and tender exploration of the all-too-human struggle to balance a life between compassion and hatred, love and vengeance. Groff shares her approach to writing stories, from the inception of a gossamer...
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Namwali Serpell's "On Morrison"
Kate Wolf and Eric Newman are joined by the novelist and critic Namwali Serpell to discuss her latest book, On Morrison. Through close readings of Toni Morrison's many novels, as well as her plays, short stories, and early work as a book editor, Serpell's book appraises how critics, scholars, and...
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Richard Hell's "Godlike"
Richard Hell joins Kate Wolf to speak about the reissue of his novel, Godlike. Originally published in 2005, Godlike transposes the relationship of the 19th century poets Arthur Rimabaud and Paul Verlaine to 1970s New York. Told from the hospital room of poet Paul Vaughn, the story centers on his...
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Kristin Ross's "The Politics and Poetics of Everyday Life"
In this week's episode from the archives, Eric Newman and Kate Wolf speak to the author Kristin Ross about her book, The Politics and Poetics of Everyday Life, a collection of essays that examine how everyday life emerges as a vantage point for understanding and transforming our social world. The...
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Hamza Walker's Monuments and Senga Nengudi's Populated Air
A double header show on sculpture, public art, communal space, and gaps and omissions in American history. First, Kate Wolf speaks to Hamza Walker, co-curator of "Monuments," an exhibition currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and The Brick. The show presents a series of...
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Lauren Rothery's "Television"
Medaya Ocher is joined by writer Lauren Rothery to discuss her novel Television, which follows an aging movie star named Verity, his on and off lover Helen, and Phoebe a screenwriter and filmmaker. One day, on a whim, Verity decides to hold a lottery, giving away his earnings from a massive...
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Caroline Fraser's "Murderland"
Kate Wolf and Eric Newman speak with Caroline Fraser about her new book, Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers. Taking an ecological approach to true crime, the book explores how decades of industrial pollution from large smelting plants in the Pacific Northwest may have...
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Susan Orlean's "Joyride: A Memoir"
Medaya Ocher is joined by writer and author Susan Orlean, whose latest book is Joyride: A Memoir. In Joyride, Orlean recounts how she became a writer: the strokes of luck, as well as the ambition and talent that led her from alt-weeklies to Esquire, Vogue and The New Yorker, where she has been a...
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Sally Mann's "Art Work: On the Creative Life"
This week, we are revisiting our episode with photographer and writer Sally Mann about her book, Art Work: On the Creative Life. Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf speak with Mann, whose book describes her path to becoming an artist and provides prospective artists with insights on how to weather...
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Special Show: Jenny Slate and Sarah Manguso
Today's episode features a live recording from a LARB Luminary Dinner honoring writer, performer and actor Jenny Slate. Author Sarah Manguso sits down with Slate for an intimate conversation exploring the complexities of balancing artistic practice with the demands of parenthood and the ways...
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Tales from Two Critics: A.S. Hamrah and Melissa Anderson on the Year in Film
Kate Wolf is joined by two of today's finest film critics to discuss the current state of Hollywood—including the sale of Warner Brothers Discovery—the art of writing about movies, and some of the year's best films. Up first is critic A.S. Hamrah, author of two new books: Last Week In End Times...
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Best of 2025
It's that time of the year again! Hosts Kate Wolf, Medaya Ocher, and Eric Newman look back on some of the bright lights from a pretty dark year with a rundown of their favorite books, movies, TV shows, music, and scandals from 2025. For a full list of this year's picks, visit...
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Julia Loktev "My Undesirable Friends"
Medaya Ocher and Eric Newman speak with director Julia Loktev about her new documentary My Undesirable Friends. Filmed in 2021, just before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the five-hour epic follows independent journalists at TV Rain as they navigate escalating government repression and the…
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Robin Coste Lewis's "Archive of Desire"
Kate Wolf and Eric Newman speak with Robin Coste Lewis about her new poetry collection, Archive of Desire. The four part collection emerged out of a collaboration with other artists commissioned by the Onassis Foundation to celebrate the 160th birthday of poet Constantin Cavafy, exploring Lewis's...
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Brandon Taylor's "Minor Black Figures"
Eric Newman speaks to Brandon Taylor about his latest novel, Minor Black Figures. It centers on Wyeth, a Black artist in his thirties wrestling with creative stagnation and the pressures of sudden fame after some of his paintings unexpectedly go viral. As he resists the temptation to produce the...