We’re with the writer’s writer Joshua Cohen—beyond category, but ever ahead of the game. He’s a realist, a fantasist, a... more

Fintan O’Toole has made a brilliant career watching Ireland (his home country) transform itself—its Catholic culture, its vanishing population, its... more

In the long weekend of solemn suspense before our presidential election in 2024, our guest is Amber. I met Amber... more

Richard Powers may just be the bravest big novelist out there. His new book is titled Playground, in which AI... more

For our shattering Age of October 7, Nathan Thrall has written a double masterpiece, in my reading. Already a Pulitzer... more

We’re in Climate Week 2024, with the indispensable, independent activist and authority Bill McKibben. We catch him packing, in Vermont,... more

We’re in our very own post-debate spin room, taking the measure of Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and of ourselves, as... more

There’s a puzzle in this podcast, and it comes with our prize sociologist, Tressie McMillan Cottom. It’s roughly this: How... more

Cornel West is our guest, the preacher-teacher in a tradition of black prophetic fire, as he puts it, the line... more

The novelist Marilynne Robinson has a nearly constitutional role in our heads, our culture by now. She’s the artist we... more

In the strangeness of mid-summer 2024, the cosmopolitan novelist Joseph O’Neill is our bridge between the Republican convention in Milwaukee... more

In a forlorn Fourth of July week, in the pit of an unpresidential, anti-presidential campaign year, 2024, we welcome back... more

Zionism has been the question that keeps changing. Once it was: “How to build a safe home for the Jews... more

We’re on a hometown spree along the famous Fenway in the heart of Boston. Fenway Park is where the Red... more

We’re taking a drawing lesson with Nicholson Baker—yes, the multifarious writers’ writer Nick Baker; the COVID lab leak detective; the... more

We’re sampling the uproar rising from American campuses: it’s a full blown, leaderless movement by now, in an established American... more

The key battle taking place in this American crisis year of 2024 is happening in our heads, according to the... more

We’re calling on Hannah Arendt for the twenty-first century—could she teach us how to think our way out of the... more

We’re going to school on Taylor Swift, in the Harvard course. And all we know is, as her song says,... more

We speak of the mystery of Herman Melville, or the misery of Melville, the American masterpiece man. For Moby-Dick alone,... more

The subject, in a word, is despair, both public and private. The poets and spiritual seekers Christian Wiman and his... more

Frantz Fanon is our interest in this podcast. The man had charisma across the board in a short life and... more

The question is how digital tech picks and chooses the content that comes to your phones and your brain, or,... more

Oldest and far the richest among American universities, Harvard is the apex, in some sense, of American intellectualism, and it... more

The only way into this podcast is a long leap headfirst into postcolonial French fiction, of all things, and a... more

On the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, we’re face to face, almost, with an American political type that’s... more

With the historian John Judis we are looking for a longer timeline in the crisis of Gaza, Israel, Palestine. It... more

The question that resurfaces in a time of horror may be what remains when memory is wiped out, when the... more

Just a month into the ferociously brutal and reckless war in Israel-Palestine, on what feels like a hinge of history—outcomes... more

In this podcast, two old friends in and out of journalism talk about the Middle East war, which comes to... more

We are listening in the dark, after a catastrophe yet to be contained: more than 1,000 Israeli civilians killed in... more

The question is marriage. The answer in this podcast is Clare Carlisle’s sparkling book, The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double... more

Zadie Smith is a writer who matters, twenty years now after White Teeth, her breakthrough novel when she was just... more

It’s Labor Day week, 2023, and Henry David Thoreau is the heart of our conversation. It’s not with him, but... more

Harry Smith was the oddest duck you never heard of in the art underground: an unsightly, often obnoxious genius. Only... more

It is said about Noam Chomsky that he has been to the study of language what Isaac Newton was to... more

In The Country of the Blind, where the writer Andrew Leland is guiding our tour, they do things differently. They... more

This is the vitalism episode, with the passionate polymath Jackson Lears. His new book is beyond category, and gripping, too:... more

We’re marking the 20th birthday of podcasting in conversation with Erica Heilman, a prize practitioner. Here we are with Erica... more

We’re back in the pub a year later with Mark Blyth, the outspoken political economist at Brown University—which means he... more