164. Jill Lepore (Historian) – Why America keeps going to pieces
As Alexander Hamilton put it, the American Experiment puts to the test the question “of whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice…or...
29 Sep 201849min
163. Four Letter You – Merve Emre (scholar and critic)
Did you ever see the 1951 Disney version of Alice in Wonderland? Where the caterpillar, voiced by actor Richard Haydn, sits laconically on his giant toadstool, wreathed in hookah smoke, peers at Alice...
22 Sep 201840min
162. Emily Nemens (Editor, The Paris Review) — The Literary Industrial Complex
I have a confession to make: Literary magazines have always kind of intimidated me. Give me an 800 page, impenetrable work of literature any day. Like Captain Ahab, I’ll pursue it relentlessly unto th...
15 Sep 201847min
161. Congo: This Seemingly Impossible Knot – Daniel McCabe (documentary filmmaker)
THIS IS CONGO, a new documentary film, attempts to wrap its mind around the incomprehensible realities of the Democratic Republic of Congo, almost 60 years after it was founded. At one point, commenti...
18 Aug 201855min
160. Bassem Youssef (political satirist) – Now I Have to Answer for This?
My grandmother used to tell a story about coming to America from Poland. How she sang God Bless America to cheer up all the grownups on the ship. She was 5 or 6 years old, traveling alone with her mom...
11 Aug 201846min
159. Change is Made by the Ones Who Stay – Paula Eiselt (documentary filmmaker)
When I started college at New York University in 1990, nobody lived in Brooklyn. Brooklyn was the dark side of the moon. At least that’s how we NYU students thought about it. Lots of people lived in B...
4 Aug 201854min
158. Parker Posey (actor) – I See a Dachshund In You
The impulse to make art is with us from childhood. It’s the desire to play. To say “hey! Look what I made!” It’s the wild fun of making a big mess that’s nobody else’s but your own—and not having to ...
28 Jul 20181h 8min
157. The Spiders From Mars – Jason Heller (Hugo Award-winning writer)
The other day I was at a kid’s birthday party and a fellow dad was joking that “When we were kids, it was all ‘bang-bang-bang!’ and now it’s all ‘pew-pew-pew!’”He was talking about video games and las...
21 Jul 201857min
