States of Shock

The LRB Podcast

London Review of Books

Society & Culture

4.4 • 581 Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2020

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Pankaj Mishra talks to Adam Shatz about his latest piece for the LRB, which looks at the ways the US and UK have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests, and what those botched responses reveal about the broader failures of Anglo-America. Their discussion also touches on the recent ‘open debate’ letter to Harper’s, the lingering prevalence of Cold War thinking among Western intellectuals, and the extent to which a Biden administration may or may not bring change. Read Pankaj Mishra's piece here: https://lrb.me/pnakajmishrapod Subscribe to the LRB from just £1 per issue: mylrb.co.uk/podcast20b Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the LRB podcast. If you subscribe to the LRB, you can get the first 12 issues for just £12.
0:08.0	To find out more, go to lrb.me forward slash listen. That's LRB.m e forward slash listen.
0:17.0	Welcome to the LRB podcast. I'm Adam Schatz.
0:21.6	It's my pleasure to welcome Pankaj Mishra today.
0:25.0	Pankaj is one of the most influential writers on politics and culture at work today,
0:29.8	and one of the most treasured contributors to the London Review of Books.
0:34.1	His 2017 book, The Age of Anger, is among the most incisive analyses we have of the politics of resentment and rage that have swept the globe, bringing to power demagogic leaders in the societies that he knows best, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
0:51.8	What's distinguished Pankaj's work and set it apart from the writings of
0:55.6	mainstream pundits is that it has grounded the erosion of Anglo-American democracy in the
1:02.2	long duet of Western liberal thought and in what might be called a crisis of the political
1:07.8	and moral imagination. The occasion for our conversation today is Pankaj's latest essay in the London Review of Books,
1:15.3	a powerful reflection on what the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of anti-racist protest movements
1:22.2	in both the U.S. and the U.K. have revealed about the failing or flailing states of the United States and the U.K.
1:29.5	And about the comparative strength of countries like Germany, Japan, and South Korea.
1:34.8	Welcome to the LRB podcast, Pankaj.
1:37.5	Thank you, Adam.
1:38.2	In this essay, you write that the early winners of modern history now appear to be its
1:43.6	biggest losers with their
1:45.1	delegitimized political systems, grotesquely distorted economies, and shattered social contracts.
1:52.1	What happened? Why have the UK and the U.S. proved so unprepared in the face of the challenges
1:57.4	they've faced in the last several years, from populist anger to the COVID-19
2:03.0	pandemic, to the challenges of these anti-racist revolts?
	...

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