Stop, Look, and Listen #48
A round-up of what I have been reading and listening to this past week.
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This post is part of the newsletter’s ‘Stop, Look, and Listen’ series, a digest of articles and podcasts that I’ve found engaging and insightful over the past week.
Five things to look at:
In this Guardian ‘Long Read’, Daniel Trilling explored the paradox of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s professional background as a human rights lawyer on one hand and his own government’s inconsistent record on human rights on the other, including Starmer’s own frequently ambiguous position on this issue.
Joshua Tait wrote for his To Live Is To Maneuver newsletter about the 1981 selection of William Bennett to chair the US’s National Endowment for the Humanities, and the contest between neoconservatives and paleoconservatives over Republican education policy that lay behind this appointment.
Jos Betts and Lydia Wilson examined the continuing fragmentation of UK politics, in this article for New Lines Magazine, and former Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zara Sultana’s vision for building a new left-wing party rooted in civic life a manner similar to the post-war Labour and Conservative parties.
In this post for his DigressionsImpressions newsletter, Eric Schliesser discussed Nicolo Machiavelli’s advocacy of checking potential tyrants within republican political systems through popular accountability, and how and why Montesquieu (and subsequently Alexander Hamilton) preferred a more elite-centred approach.
Liam Kofi Bright reflected for his Sooty Empiric blog on the ascendancy of ‘wokeness’ as an ideological paradigm in 2010s America, its main concerns, foibles, and achievements, and the question of its significance as a political discursive framework after the pandemic and Donald Trump’s 2024 election win.
Five things to listen to:
In this two-part episode of The Last Picture Show podcast, Genevieve Koski, Keith Phipps, Tasha Robinson, and Chris Klimek discussed the 1978 and 2025 Superman films respectively, including Superman’s enduring symbolism, the challenges of putting him on screen, and how both productions reflect the politics of their eras.
Samantha Hancox-Li spoke with Aaron Ross Powell on Liberal Currents’ Neon Liberalism podcast about the realignment of some US libertarians against Donald Trump’s right-wing coalition, and why the salience of minority rights has increased for a group that previously prioritised economic over social freedoms.
Hedi Nermin Aziz presented this episode of the BBC World Service’s Assignment programme on how contemporary Greenlanders are negotiating questions of identity, decolonisation, and potential future independence, amid continued economic dependence on Denmark and unwelcome US government attention.
In this instalment of the Institute of Historical Research’s Leading Labour series, Izzy Conn and guests considered James Callaghan’s spell as UK Prime Minister between 1976 and 1979, including his inclusive style of leading a divided party, and the economic problems and tactical errors that defined his premiership.
On this episode of BBC Radio Four’s Screenshot, Ellen E. Jones and Mark Kermode explored the economic and artistic dynamics of the cinematic remake, including for both Hollywood and television, and the question of how and under what conditions remakes might improve upon or add something to the original film.
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You might also enjoy these posts from the Academic Bubble archive:
Post-Referendum Olympic Blues
Wildly contrasting narratives of what the London 2012 Olympics had meant neatly captured the divides between the British political left, right, and centre in the wake of the 2016 Referendum.
New Labour on Desert Island Discs
Labour politicians who appeared on the Radio 4 show between the mid-1990s and mid-2010s used their musical choices to try and tell stories about their politics and personal lives.
The Apprentice
The depicted relationship between Roy Cohn and Donald Trump links law, real estate, and politics, as well as establishing a lineage of the American right running from the 1950s to the present day.