Podcasts about New York Public Library

Headlined by news related to the Iran/Israel war, Jim presented details on the following stories and much more: --Iran said today it would refuse to hold nuclear talks with the U.S. while under attacks by Israel. --The Islamic regime in Tehran has shut down internet and cell phone lines across the nation. --On Wednesday, hundreds of protesters gathered on the steps of the New York Public Library in Manhattan to convey what they said was a clear message to the city and nation's elected officials: No war on Iran. --Representative Max Miller of Ohio, one of four Jewish Republicans in the House of Representatives, said that his car was run off the road by a pro-Palestinian activist who threatened him and his family earlier in the day. --Zohran Mamdani, the leading candidate for next Tuesday's New York City mayoral primary refused to condemn calls to globalize the intifada, arguing that the phrase is an expression of Palestinian rights. --The Department of Homeland Security released new data revealing that ICE law enforcement is now facing a 500% increase in assaults against them while carrying out enforcement operations. --Federal agents used non-lethal munitions to shut down a large group of protesters who tried to block law enforcement vehicles from entering and exiting an ICE facility in Portland, Oregon, on Wednesday evening. --Los Angeles Democratic Mayor Karen Bass on Tuesday lifted the curfew on the city's downtown that went into effect due to the riots. --An appeals court Thursday allowed President Trump to keep control of National Guard troops he deployed to Los Angeles following protests over immigration raids.

The All Local Afternoon Update for Friday June 20 2025

Headlined by news related to the Iran/Israel war, Jim presented details on the following stories and much more: --Iran said today it would refuse to hold nuclear talks with the U.S. while under attacks by Israel. --The Islamic regime in Tehran has shut down internet and cell phone lines across the nation. --On Wednesday, hundreds of protesters gathered on the steps of the New York Public Library in Manhattan to convey what they said was a clear message to the city and nation's elected officials: No war on Iran. --Representative Max Miller of Ohio, one of four Jewish Republicans in the House of Representatives, said that his car was run off the road by a pro-Palestinian activist who threatened him and his family earlier in the day. --Zohran Mamdani, the leading candidate for next Tuesday's New York City mayoral primary refused to condemn calls to globalize the intifada, arguing that the phrase is an expression of Palestinian rights. --The Department of Homeland Security released new data revealing that ICE law enforcement is now facing a 500% increase in assaults against them while carrying out enforcement operations. --Federal agents used non-lethal munitions to shut down a large group of protesters who tried to block law enforcement vehicles from entering and exiting an ICE facility in Portland, Oregon, on Wednesday evening. --Los Angeles Democratic Mayor Karen Bass on Tuesday lifted the curfew on the city's downtown that went into effect due to the riots. --An appeals court Thursday allowed President Trump to keep control of National Guard troops he deployed to Los Angeles following protests over immigration raids.

On this episode of The Object of History, we visit an item from the MHS collection currently on loan to the Museum of African American History on Boston's Beacon Hill. We examine the imposing stone that enabled the printing of William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist publication, The Liberator. While visiting the Museum, we learn more about the building's importance to African American history in Boston as well as the Museum's current exhibits.  Learn more about episode objects here: https://www.masshist.org/podcast/season-4-episode-7-Imposing-Stone  Email us at podcast@masshist.org. Episode Special Guests: Angela T. Tate is Chief Curator and Director of Collections at the Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket (MAAH). She oversees collections, exhibitions, interpretation, and content, focused on the lives and descendants of the Black communities in Boston and Nantucket, as well as New England. Prior to joining MAAH, she was inaugural women's history curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). She co-curated the permanent exhibit, Forces for Change: Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women's Activism, which highlights the strategies Black women have used to fight for justice and equality. Throughout her career, she has worked as curator and public historian in a variety of archives and museums in California and Illinois that focused on telling inclusive and expansive stories of the American past. She is a PhD candidate in History at Northwestern University and her dissertation discusses cultural diplomacy and Pan-Africanism through the 1950s-60s radio program hosted by Etta Moten Barnett in Chicago. This work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the New York Public Library, and the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute. Her work has been published in Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, the Smithsonian's Afrofuturism catalog, Ubuntu Dialogues, and several upcoming publications. Find more information at www.atpublichistory.com  Cara Liasson currently serves as the Collections Manager and Registrar for the Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket. Her career in the museum field spans over fifteen years, where she has worked at institutions such as Lowell National Historical Park and Old Sturbridge Village. She holds a B.A. in History from Wheaton College in Massachusetts and a graduate certificate in Museum Collections Management and Care from George Washington University. Selvin Backert is the Education Specialist at the Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket. Sage Morgan-Hubbard is the Director of Learning & Engagement  at the Museum of African American History, Boston and Nantucket. This episode uses materials from: Osprey by Chad Crouch (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International)        Psychic by Dominic Giam of Ketsa Music (licensed under a commercial non-exclusive license by the Massachusetts Historical Society through Ketsa.uk)        Curious Nature by Dominic Giam of Ketsa Music (licensed under a commercial non-exclusive license by the Massachusetts Historical Society through Ketsa.uk)

According to Deborah Baker, author of Charlottesville: An American Story, America has become the Charlottesville of the Unite the Right Rally of August 12, 2017. Baker, who grew up in Charlottesville in the shadow of Jefferson's Monticello, watched in shock as neo-Nazis marched through her hometown in August 2017 with torches and flags. What began as her attempt to understand how such hatred could manifest in a progressive college town became a deeper reckoning with America's buried histories and recurring tragedies. The fascist ideologies that once seemed confined to internet forums and fringe rallies have now, she argues, been institutionalized at the highest levels of government. The warning signs were there in 2017—but too many people, from university administrators to progressive leaders, chose to look away. If we close our eyes, she warns, it won't go away. five key takeaways1. America Has Institutionalized ExtremismWhat began as fringe internet movements and basement trolling has now moved into the mainstream of American politics and government institutions. The ideologies that shocked people in Charlottesville 2017 are now, according to Baker, embedded at the highest levels of power.2. Progressive Institutions Failed to Take the Threat SeriouslyUniversity administrators, mayors, and police chiefs in liberal Charlottesville told citizens to "stay home" and ignore the approaching Unite the Right rally. This pattern of progressive leadership closing their eyes to fascist organizing represents a dangerous institutional failure that continues today.3. White Supremacy Has Always Married Anti-Semitism with Anti-Black RacismThe Nazi flags at Charlottesville weren't separate from the Confederate monuments debate. White supremacist ideology consistently portrays Jews as the puppet masters behind Black civil rights movements, combining European fascism with Southern white supremacy into a unified hateful worldview.4. America's "Buried Histories" Keep RepeatingBaker discovered that Charlottesville had experienced a similar white supremacist rally in the 1950s that had been completely forgotten. This pattern of burying ugly chapters allows the same mistakes to be repeated, as communities fail to learn from their past encounters with organized hate.5. Economic and Political Destabilization Creates Fertile Ground for FascismThe conditions that radicalized figures like Richard Spencer include the "forever wars," the 2008 financial crisis, and the broader betrayal of working-class Americans. These "self-inflicted wounds" by American institutions create the chaos that fascist movements exploit to gain followers.Deborah Baker was born in Charlottesville and grew up in Virginia, Puerto Rico and New England. She attended the University of Virginia and Cambridge University. Her first book, written in college, was Making a Farm: The Life of Robert Bly, published by Beacon Press in 1982. After working as a book editor and publisher, in 1990 she moved to Calcutta where she wrote In Extremis; The Life of Laura Riding. Published by Grove Press and Hamish Hamilton in the UK, it was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography in 1994. Her third book, A Blue Hand: The Beats in India was published by Penguin Press USA and Penguin India in 2008. In 2008–2009 she was a Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis C. Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars at The New York Public Library. There she researched and wrote The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism, a narrative account of the life of an American convert to Islam. Published by Graywolf and Penguin India, The Convert was a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award in Non-Fiction. The Last Englishmen: Love, War and the End of Empire was published in October 2018. For this book she received a Whiting Creative Non-fiction grant and a Guggenheim fellowship. Charlottesville is her sixth work of narrative non-fiction. She is married to the writer Amitav Ghosh and lives in Brooklyn and Charlottesville.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of the Shakespeare and Company Podcast, Adam Biles speaks with acclaimed author Catherine Lacey about her daring new work The Möbius Book. Structured as a "Tête-bêche"—two intertwined texts printed back-to-back—the book pairs a memoir chronicling the fallout of a painful breakup with a novella that spirals into the psychological suspense of a possible murder next door. As the narratives bend and mirror each other, Lacey explores the porous boundary between fiction and nonfiction, faith and doubt, intimacy and estrangement.The conversation dives deep into Lacey's creative process, her early entanglement with religion, the disorienting legacy of male anger, and how the pandemic shaped her understanding of confinement and rupture. Candid and philosophical, Lacey reflects on memory's distortions, the ethics of writing memoir, and the liberating act of leaving questions unanswered. Buy The Möbius Book: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-mobius-bookCatherine Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, Pew, and Biography of X, and the short story collection Certain American States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award and twice been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, and was named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman's latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. In this Episode, Emily chats with "The Button Man", Harlem artist Beau McCall, an artist renowned for his unique use of buttons in wearable and visual art. McCall's work is featured in prominent collections such as New York's Museum of Arts and Design and London's Victoria and Albert Museum. McCall recounts his upbringing in Philadelphia, his move to Harlem, and his early inspirations. He explains how his fascination with buttons began with his mother's collection and grew through various craft classes. McCall shares memories of his artistic evolution, his experiences with the Harlem community, and the personal significance of his work, including tributes to friends lost to AIDS. The episode concludes with McCall's advice to aspiring artists and a nod to his ongoing support from his mother.About Artist Beau McCall :Drawing inspiration from the vast button collection of his mother and family, Beau McCall creates wearable and visual art by applying clothing buttons onto mostly upcycled fabrics, materials, and objects. With deliberate focus the buttons are arranged to stimulate one's curiosity and imagination, while simultaneously drawing attention to the unique history of buttons. Thereby McCall's work generates a discussion surrounding many topics such as pop culture and social justice.McCall began his professional career in Harlem in the 1980s after arriving from his native, Philadelphia with nothing more than a few hundred dollars, a duffel bag, and buttons. Circa 1988 he made his critically acclaimed wearable art debut at The Harlem Institute of Fashion (HIF) show for HARLEM WEEK. McCall went on to become an established force within HIF's Black Fashion Museum collective presenting at their shows consecutively through circa 1995, as well being featured in their museum exhibitions and prestigious events. During this time, McCall's visually captivating work was featured in the fashion bible Women's Wear Daily, on the PBS version of George C. Wolfe's The Colored Museum (1991), and in the award-winning film Quartier Mozart (1992), directed by Jean-Pierre Bekolo. The film won prizes at film festivals in Cannes, Locarno, and Montreal and was nominated, in 1993, for a British Film Institute award.McCall eventually applied his mastery of the button to visual art. Since then, he's been proclaimed by American Craft magazine as “The Button Man.” His visual and wearable art has been included in exhibitions at The Museum at FIT, Nordstrom, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Houston Museum of African American Culture, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Stax Museum of American Soul Music, the Langston Hughes House in partnership with the inaugural Columbia University Wallach Art Gallery Uptown triennial and StoryCorps, and Rush Arts Gallery. McCall's work is held in the permanent collection of public institutions and by private individuals including the Museum of Arts and Design (New York), Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia), Victoria and Albert Museum (London), The Museum at FIT (New York), Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (New York), Amistad Research Center (New Orleans), The Museum of Modern Art Library (New York), Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (New York), Stonewall National Museum & Archives (Fort Lauderdale), and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Library (San Francisco), Cyndi Lauper's True Colors Residence, Debbie Harry of Blondie, Jeffrey Gibson, and Cristina Grajales. McCall has also been commissioned by the Museum of Arts and Design, Columbia University, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. And his wearable art can be found in gift shops including the Newark Museum of Art. McCall has been featured in the NY Times, Associated Press, NPR, L.A. Times, and more. In addition, he has served as a teaching artist at the Newark Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, and the Harlem Arts Alliance. McCall has also created a wearable art line called, Triple T-shirts. For these pieces, he upcycles three T-shirts by combining them into one flowing garment that can be worn in six different ways. Each style—from poncho to hoodie to shawl and beyond—brings dynamic versatility to traditional T-shirts. The shirts are curated to form a narrative about various socially-conscious and lighthearted themes.In 2021, McCall released his debut artists' book titled, REWIND: MEMORIES ON REPEAT, commissioned and published by SHINE Portrait Studio@ Express Newark, Rutgers University-Newark. The book honors the legacy of ten of McCall's deceased friends through collages composed of archival photos and images from his button artwork. The collages capture the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, from Philadelphia to New York, during the LGBTQ+ rights movement, the height of disco music and the AIDS crisis.In 2024, McCall debuted his first-ever retrospective and exhibition catalog titled, Beau McCall: Buttons On! at Fuller Craft Museum. The exhibition is currently on a nationwide tour.Through his work, McCall remains committed to channeling and contributing to the universal cultural legacy one button at a time.Visit Beau's Website:  BeauMcCall.ComFollow Beau on Instagram: @Beau_McCallFor more on Beau's exhibit "Buttons On!" CLICK HERE--About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWilFollow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast--CREDITS:Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 LicenseThe Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com

In the fall of 1940, an employ of the Consolidated Edison Company in Manhattan discovered a bomb in the company's main offices, along with a note that read “Con Edison crooks – this is for you.” The bomb was discovered before it detonated and no one was harmed, but a year later the company received a second bomb, followed by a note to NYPD in which the bomber announced he would make no bombs for the duration of WWII, but would begin again as the war ended.As promised, a new series of bombings began across New York in the winter of 1951, beginning with an explosion at Grand Central Station. In the five years that followed, “The Mad Bomber,” as he would come to be known, would place explosives at some of New York's most iconic locations including Radio City Music Hall, Penn Station, and the New York Public Library. The bombs were often followed by cryptic letters sent to the press, usually referencing the Consolidated Edison Company.Th Mad Bomber's reign of terror finally came to an end with his capture in 1957, and neither the suspect nor his motives made much sense to the New Yorkers who'd lived in fear for five years.Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!ReferencesAssociated Press. 1955. "The 'Mad Bomber' threatens Macy's." Buffalo News, May 5: 47.—. 1957. "'Bomber' sick but innocent, sisters say." Newsday, Janaury 22: 3.Baird, John, and Harry Schlegal. 1956. "Mad Bomber blast in B'klyn movie; 6 hurt." Daily News, December 3: 2.Berger, Meyer. 1957. "Bomber is booked; sent to Bellevue for mental tests." New York Times, January 23: 1.Demeusy, Gerald. 1981. "'Bomber' says life all broken dreams." Hartford Courant, November 16: 15.Greenburg, Michael M. 2011. The Mad Bomber of New York: The Extraordinary True Story of the Manhunt That Paralyzed a City. New York, NY: Union Square Press.Kaufman, Michael. 1973. "'Mad Bomber,' now 70, goes free." New York Times, December 13: 1.New York Times. 1957. "2d 'Bomber' note cites old injury." New York Times, January 16: 25.—. 1953. "A homemade bomb rips station locker." New York Times, May 7: 28.—. 1951. "Bomb blast in terminal: Homemade device explodes in Grand Central--no one is hurt." New York Times, March 30: 24.—. 1954. "Bomb in music hall injures 4 in crowd." New York Times, November 8: 1.—. 1951. "Bomb laid to prankster." New York Times, September 13: 33.—. 1957. "'Bomber' ordered to state hospital." New York Times, April 19: 44.—. 1957. "'Bomber' presses threat on utility." New York Times, January 11: 16.—. 1951. "Ex-Edison worker held in bomb case." New York Times, November 7: 32.—. 1966. "'Mad Bomber' to get hearing on sanity." New York Times, April 29: 17.—. 1957. "Metesky indicted on bomb charges." New York Times, January 31: 29.—. 1955. "Penn Station bomb blast is ignored by commuters." New York Times, Janaury 12: 11.—. 1951. "Police find bomb in Paramount Lounge; note spurs search for one at Penn Station." New York Times, October 23: 30.—. 1957. "Suspect is held as 'Mad Bomber'; he admits role." New York Times, January 22: 1.—. 1956. "The Mad Bomber." New York Times, December 30: B2.O'Kane, Lawrence. 1955. "Bomb left in Roxy; linked to 22 others." New York Times, August 12: 1.Parke, Richard. 1957. "Sisters shocked, loyal to brother." New York Times, January 23: 20.Sheridan, Mike. 1977. "Former Mad Bomber now a homebody." Hartford Courant, May 1: 22.Stay in the know - wondery.fm/morbid-wondery.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the fall of 1940, an employ of the Consolidated Edison Company in Manhattan discovered a bomb in the company's main offices, along with a note that read “Con Edison crooks – this is for you.” The bomb was discovered before it detonated and no one was harmed, but a year later the company received a second bomb, followed by a note to NYPD in which the bomber announced he would make no bombs for the duration of WWII, but would begin again as the war ended.As promised, a new series of bombings began across New York in the winter of 1951, beginning with an explosion at Grand Central Station. In the five years that followed, “The Mad Bomber,” as he would come to be known, would place explosives at some of New York's most iconic locations including Radio City Music Hall, Penn Station, and the New York Public Library. The bombs were often followed by cryptic letters sent to the press, usually referencing the Consolidated Edison Company.Th Mad Bomber's reign of terror finally came to an end with his capture in 1957, and neither the suspect nor his motives made much sense to the New Yorkers who'd lived in fear for five years.Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!ReferencesAssociated Press. 1955. "The 'Mad Bomber' threatens Macy's." Buffalo News, May 5: 47.—. 1957. "'Bomber' sick but innocent, sisters say." Newsday, Janaury 22: 3.Baird, John, and Harry Schlegal. 1956. "Mad Bomber blast in B'klyn movie; 6 hurt." Daily News, December 3: 2.Berger, Meyer. 1957. "Bomber is booked; sent to Bellevue for mental tests." New York Times, January 23: 1.Demeusy, Gerald. 1981. "'Bomber' says life all broken dreams." Hartford Courant, November 16: 15.Greenburg, Michael M. 2011. The Mad Bomber of New York: The Extraordinary True Story of the Manhunt That Paralyzed a City. New York, NY: Union Square Press.Kaufman, Michael. 1973. "'Mad Bomber,' now 70, goes free." New York Times, December 13: 1.New York Times. 1957. "2d 'Bomber' note cites old injury." New York Times, January 16: 25.—. 1953. "A homemade bomb rips station locker." New York Times, May 7: 28.—. 1951. "Bomb blast in terminal: Homemade device explodes in Grand Central--no one is hurt." New York Times, March 30: 24.—. 1954. "Bomb in music hall injures 4 in crowd." New York Times, November 8: 1.—. 1951. "Bomb laid to prankster." New York Times, September 13: 33.—. 1957. "'Bomber' ordered to state hospital." New York Times, April 19: 44.—. 1957. "'Bomber' presses threat on utility." New York Times, January 11: 16.—. 1951. "Ex-Edison worker held in bomb case." New York Times, November 7: 32.—. 1966. "'Mad Bomber' to get hearing on sanity." New York Times, April 29: 17.—. 1957. "Metesky indicted on bomb charges." New York Times, January 31: 29.—. 1955. "Penn Station bomb blast is ignored by commuters." New York Times, Janaury 12: 11.—. 1951. "Police find bomb in Paramount Lounge; note spurs search for one at Penn Station." New York Times, October 23: 30.—. 1957. "Suspect is held as 'Mad Bomber'; he admits role." New York Times, January 22: 1.—. 1956. "The Mad Bomber." New York Times, December 30: B2.O'Kane, Lawrence. 1955. "Bomb left in Roxy; linked to 22 others." New York Times, August 12: 1.Parke, Richard. 1957. "Sisters shocked, loyal to brother." New York Times, January 23: 20.Sheridan, Mike. 1977. "Former Mad Bomber now a homebody." Hartford Courant, May 1: 22.Stay in the know - wondery.fm/morbid-wondery.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Francesca Wade is the author of Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars, which was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. She has received fellowships from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, the Leon Levy Center for Biography and the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and her work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Granta and other places. On this episode of Little Atoms she talks to Neil Denny about her latest book Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this episode is Sid Sharp. Sid is an artist and illustrator whose debut graphic novel for young readers, The Wolf Suit, was featured in Best of the Year lists by the New York Public Library, School Library Journal, and The Globe and Mail, and has been translated into French, German, and Italian. Their most recent graphic novel, Bog Myrtle, was published in 2024 by Annick Press, and was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection. It has also been nominated for an Eisner and Doug Wright awards. Publishers Weekly called the book a “lighthearted and surreal take on evergreen themes surrounding the benefits of kindness that's more Brothers Grimm than classic Disney.”Sid and I talk about how they originally had no plans to create work for children, about the fun but very exhausting experience of meeting young readers in the wild, and about how they need, in their words, to “draw some weird, sad stuff for grown-ups” before tackling another kids' book.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Tickets for the live onstage interview with Anne Michaels on July 10 at the Humber Lakeshore Campus in Toronto. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Learn more at TheCityLife.org

Within her work, Catalina Chervin (b. 1953, Argentina) depicts what the human mind intuits rather than what the eyes see—replacing empirical knowledge with subconscious feeling. Chervin studied at the Escuela Nacional Superior Ernesto de la Cárcova in Buenos Aires and worked with the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in New York City. Her work is held in prominent institutions worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Brooklyn Museum, New York; the New York Public Library; El Museo del Barrio, New York; the Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC; the Blanton Museum of Art (University of Texas), Austin; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; The British Museum, London; and the Albertina Museum, Vienna. Catalina Chervin Untitled, 2004 Hard and soft ground etching with spite bite aquatint, printed on Somerset White paper Master Printer: Lothar Osterburg, New York, 2004 Image size: 15 x 11 in (38.1 x 27.9 cm) Sheet size: 21 x 16 in (53.3 x 40.6 cm) Artist proof edition of 5 Catalina Chervin Song 3, 2010 Hard ground and soft ground etching with dry point, printed on Rives De Lin with Kozo chine collé Master printer: Lothar Osterburg, New York, 2010 Image size: 15 x 11 in (38.1 x 27.9 cm) Sheet size: 21 x 16 in (53.3 x 40.6 cm) Edition of 20 Catalina Chervin, IT 1, 2015, Hard and soft ground etching, printed on Somerset Textured White paper, Master Printer: Lothar Osterburg, New York, 2015, Image size: 15 x 11 in (38.1 x 27.9 cm), Sheet size: 21 x 16 in (53.3 x 40.6 cm), Edition of 20

Betsy Bird is the Collection Development Manager of Evanston Public Library and the former Youth Materials Specialist of New York Public Library. She writes for the School Library Journal blog A Fuse #8 Production and reviews for Kirkus. She is the host of the Story Seeds podcast as well as the co-host of the Fuse 8 n' Kate podcast that she creates with her sister. Betsy is the author of picture books, anthologies, and the middle grade novel Long Road to the Circus, illustrated by David Small. In this, our second interview we celebrate her new picture book Pop! Goes the Nursery Rhyme, illustrated by Andrea Tsurumi (Union Square Kids, March, 2025). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Betsy Bird is the Collection Development Manager of Evanston Public Library and the former Youth Materials Specialist of New York Public Library. She writes for the School Library Journal blog A Fuse #8 Production and reviews for Kirkus. She is the host of the Story Seeds podcast as well as the co-host of the Fuse 8 n' Kate podcast that she creates with her sister. Betsy is the author of picture books, anthologies, and the middle grade novel Long Road to the Circus, illustrated by David Small. In this, our second interview we celebrate her new picture book Pop! Goes the Nursery Rhyme, illustrated by Andrea Tsurumi (Union Square Kids, March, 2025). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With his new graphic novel, INSECTOPOLIS (WWNorton), Peter Kuper brings us the 400-million-year history of insects in their own words as they take a post-human tour of the New York Public Library. We talk about how Insectopolis began when he was around 4 years old and saw the 17-year cicada brood, how Peter needed a new mode of comics-making for this book, and how he made the NYPL a key character in the project. We get into mankind's dependence on insects, the stories of forgotten entomologists (and why they were forgotten), his experience getting a Cullman fellowship at the NYPL during COVID and how he found all the great & secret rooms while the place was near-empty, the INterSECTS exhibition that evolved from the fellowship and how it grew in scale, and his realization that entomologists are like comic fans. We also discuss his wife's great advice going into this project, the fun of getting experts to vet every chapter of Insectopolis, the alchemy that happens when people's passions overlap, how he harnesses the dread of imminent apocalypse to make his art, and more. Follow Peter on Bluesky, and Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

S04E18 - La New York Public LibraryLa New York Public Library : Un temple du savoir au cœur de ManhattanLa New York Public Library, l'une des bibliothèques les plus emblématiques au monde, se dresse majestueusement sur la Cinquième Avenue, à l'angle de la 42e Rue, en plein cœur de Manhattan. Inaugurée en 1911, cette institution publique est bien plus qu'un simple lieu de lecture : c'est un symbole de savoir, de culture et d'accès à l'information pour tous.Son bâtiment principal, la Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, impressionne par son architecture de style Beaux-Arts. La façade en marbre blanc est gardée par deux célèbres lions de pierre, surnommés "Patience" et "Fortitude", qui sont devenus les fiers symboles de la bibliothèque. Dès l'entrée, le visiteur est accueilli par un hall majestueux menant à de vastes salles de lecture, dont la célèbre Rose Main Reading Room, avec ses plafonds ornés, ses longues rangées de tables en bois et ses lustres élégants.La bibliothèque abrite des millions de documents : livres, manuscrits rares, cartes, photographies, et archives historiques. Parmi ses trésors, on trouve une Bible de Gutenberg, les papiers de Malcolm X, ou encore des manuscrits originaux de Charles Dickens.Lieu d'étude, de recherche et de découverte, la New York Public Library est ouverte à tous, New-Yorkais comme visiteurs du monde entier. Elle accueille également de nombreuses expositions, conférences et événements culturels, perpétuant sa mission d'éducation et d'enrichissement intellectuel.Retrouvez tous les liens des réseaux sociaux et des plateformes du podcast ici : https://linktr.ee/racontemoinewyorkHébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

100 years ago this week, the New York Public Library opened a special collection at its 135th Street branch in Harlem called the Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints, now known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. On May 8, the Schomburg Center opens a new exhibition, "100: A Century of Collections, Community, and Creativity." Director Joy Bivins discusses the history of the Center, Arturo Schomburg's legacy, and plans for the centennial celebration.

Diane Rosenthal, Executive Director at Student Advocacy, Inc. in Westchester, NY, is the epitome of servant leadership. Beginning her career as a middle school teacher, she moved from the classroom into the nonprofit world, leading the New York Public Library's adult literacy program which served over 1000 students per year. Diane's leadership helped shape the social and literacy skills needed for students to achieve independence and self-sufficiency. She remained in adult literacy for many years, leading Literacy Volunteers of Stamford, CT, which was ranked among the top 10% of volunteer-based programs nationally. A true visionary, she created programs and wrote grants that would significantly benefit the adult learner community. She also facilitated a successful merger with a larger non-profit program that resulted in more resources and programming to serve the needs of their clients. Diane currently leads Student Advocacy, an organization that provides legal representation and counsel on education related matters for families with children who have special needs due to disabilities or other challenges. Their services are free for families with limited resources.. Diane's impact and leadership have been powerful over the decades of her career. She has made a significant difference in helping families, children, and youth in the areas of literacy, workforce development, and assistance for those facing challenges with the educational system. Student Advocacy will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Overcoming the Odds Awards Celebration on May 14th at Abigail Kirsch at Tappan Hill, Tarrytown, NY, where they will honor students who have faced challenges, yet made education and giving back to others their priority.

Louisa Tatum, Career Services Manager at the New York Public Library, talks about the job and career landscape for people without college degrees—and we'll take calls from listeners who are looking for career advice.EVENT:The New York Public Library is hosting a free job fair and career expo at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building's Celeste Bartos Forum. That's on Friday, May 23, 2025, 10 AM - 3 PM. More information at the link below:https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2025/05/23/nypls-free-tech-job-fair-expo-2025-connect-learn-get-hiredSupport of WNYC's coverage of economic mobility and opportunity is provided in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For more information about how the Gates Foundation supports economic mobility and opportunity, visit usprogram.gatesfoundation.org.

[REBROADCAST FROM April 10, 2025] In the new novel The Dream Hotel, one woman's dreams are analyzed by AI, interpreted, and used against her.The novel is the first work of speculative fiction from acclaimed author Laila Lalami. It follows a woman named Sarah, who is detained by members of the Risk Assessment Administration. They claim that her dreams reveal that she is likely about to harm her own husband, a man she loves dearly. We've selected The Dream Hotel as our April Get Lit with All Of It Book Club selection, and Laila Lalami discusses the novel in a preview conversation ahead of our May 6 event.To find out how to borrow your e-copy of the novel from the New York Public Library, and to snag your free tickets to our Get Lit event, click here.

Creating isn't just about what you make…it's about who you become. We're back with the brilliant Nana Brew-Hammond for her second visit to Reframe to Create, and this time, it's a full-circle moment.  In Episode 21, Nana shared “How to Stay Committed to an Imperfect Creating Journey.”  And in this episode, we see how that commitment has blossomed.  Nana walks us through the very different experiences she had while writing her two latest books: ✨ Blue– a children's picture book that dives into the rich history of a single color ✨ My Parents' Marriage – an adult novel that explores the complex dynamics of family, love, and identity.   The process of creating each of these works taught Nana different things.  And in this conversation, she shares two key lessons she learned along the way.  Lessons about transformation, flexibility, and what it really means to grow alongside your work. Honestly? This conversation lit something in me. It reminded me that no matter how smooth or bumpy the road, the journey itself is doing something deep and lasting in us.  If you want to experience the joy and power of Nana's work, you can check out both books at nanabrewhammond.com.  You'll be glad you did.   About my guest: Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is an American-Ghanaian writer of novels, short stories and a poet.   In 2014 she was chosen as one of 39 of Sub-Saharan Africa's most promising writers under the age of 40, showcased in the Africa39 project.  Nana has been featured on MSNBC, NY1, SaharaTV, ARISE TV, and has been published in Ebony Magazine.   Her latest novel for adult readers, My Parents' Marriage, was featured in The New York Times Book Review's July 7, 2024 “...Also Out Now” column, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Booklist, and more.  The author Melissa Rivero called it “a propulsive read that will take hold of you with its honesty, determination, and heart,” while the author Vanessa Walters described it as “an arrestingly evovative story…which dismantles immigrant clichés. Her children's picture book BLUE: A history of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky, illustrated by Caldecott Honor artist Daniel Minter, was named among the best of 2022 by NPR, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, The Center for the Study of Multicultural Literature, Bank Street College of Education, and more.  BLUE is on the 2023-2024 Texas Bluebonnet Master List; it has been honored with the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award® recognizing excellence in writing of non-fiction for children; and it is an NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literature for Chidlren.  It was named to the American Libary Association's 2023 Notable Children's Books and nominated for a 2025 Georgia Chidlren's Book Award.   Brew-Hammond also wrote the young adult novel Powder Necklace, which Publishers Weekly called “a winning debut”, and she edited RELATIONS: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices.  Kirkus Reviews called the anthology “smart, generous…a true gift” in its starred review.   Nana is also co-founder of Exit 14, a made in Ghana lifestyle line that has been featured in Vogue.     About: The Reframe to Create podcast is hosted by Joy Spencer, an Executive Leadership and Storytelling Coach, Speaker, and Organizational Development Consultant working with professionals and leaders at all levels within organizations.  Joy leverages over 17 years of experience she gained while working to champion change in social justice movements, including those related to global access to essential medicines and consumer advocacy for online privacy.  This work required a dogged commitment to not merely challenging the status quo, but to reimagining and working towards creating an ideal future.  It is this commitment to creating that has shaped Joy's coaching philosophy and approach today. Using her signature C.R.E.A.T.E. framework, Joy guides her clients through a process to become incomparable in work so they can get paid to be themselves.   Follow Joy on LinkedIn  - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joy-spencer  

-WFUV's Lainey Nguyen discusses Governor Hochul's response to President Trump's first 100 days in office -WFUV's Nora Malone reports on a new affordable housing option for New Yorkers -WFUV's Florinda Gjypi takes us to a musical performance at the New York Public Library -WFUV's Ben Oppenheimer gives us a sports update on the Knicks, the NFL Draft, and Fordham Baseball

Jia Tolentino joins us to discuss how to finally accept all sides of you:  Why your un-productivity matters most;  When your shame is good;  How to make your real life bigger than your internet life; How to let motherhood energize you instead of drain you; and  How to stop scrolling in the middle of the night.   Plus, we talk acid trips, the sorority rush that Jia and Amanda shared, why Glennon's friends track Jia's words – and whether Glennon's mug shot will inspire Jia's next show.   About Jia:  Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a screenwriter, and the author of the New York Times bestseller Trick Mirror. In 2020, she received a Whiting Award as well as the Jeannette Haien Ballard Prize, and has most recently won a National Magazine Award for three pieces about the repeal of Roe v. Wade. Trick Mirror was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize and the PEN Award and was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Public Library, the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, NPR, the Chicago Tribune, GQ, and the Paris Review. Jia lives in Brooklyn. TW: @jiatolentino IG: @jiatortellini To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Watch the Q&A session here: https://youtu.be/-TsWDdeQK34Composed by Jerry Herman of Hello, Dolly! fame, ‘I Am What I Am' first appeared in the Broadway musical La Cage aux Folles (1983). As well as gaining importance as a gay anthem during the AIDS crisis, the song has gone on to become a hit for several Black divas including Gloria Gaynor and Shirley Bassey. This lecture was recorded by Dominic Broomfield-McHugh on 3rd of April 2025 at Conway Hall, London.Dominic Broomfield-McHugh is Gresham Visiting Professor of Film and Theatre Music. He is also Professor of Music at the University of Sheffield and is a graduate of King's College London.His scholarship focuses on the American musical on stage and screen, and he has published eight books including Loverly: The Life and Times of 'My Fair Lady' (OUP, 2012), The Letters of Cole Porter (Yale, 2019) and The Oxford Handbook of the Hollywood Musical (2022).He is Associate Producer of the PBS documentary Meredith Willson: America's Music Man and has appeared on all the main BBC television and radio stations as well as NPR in America. He has given talks and lectures at the Sydney Opera House, New York City Center, the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Sadler's Wells, and Lincoln Center, among many others.The transcript of the lecture is available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/lgbt-showstopper-i-am-what-i-amGresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham College's mission, please consider making a donation: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-today Website:  https://gresham.ac.ukX: https://x.com/GreshamCollegeFacebook: https://facebook.com/greshamcollegeInstagram: https://instagram.com/greshamcollegeBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/greshamcollege.bsky.social TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@greshamcollegeSupport Us: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/get-involved/support-us/make-donation/donate-todaySupport the show

Marc J. Seifer, PhD., is the author of more than 100 articles and a dozen books, including the acclaimed Wizard: The Life & Times of Nikola Tesla, Ozone Therapy for the Treatment of Viruses and his latest Tesla: Wizard at War. Having lectured at every International Tesla Conference held in Colorado Springs from 1984 to 1996, Dr. Seifer has also spoken at Brandeis University, Federal Reserve Bank in Boston, LucasFilms Industrial Light & Magic, at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities in England, West Point Military Academy, the New York Public Library and the United Nations. Featured in The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, MIT's Technology Review and New York Times, Marc has appeared on Coast to Coast radio, the BBC, NPR's All Things Considered, and in the 5-part limited series The Tesla Files which he helped create, which has gone out to 40 countries and played on the History Channel.

Marc J. Seifer, PhD., is the author of more than 100 articles and a dozen books, including the acclaimed Wizard: The Life & Times of Nikola Tesla, Ozone Therapy for the Treatment of Viruses and his latest Tesla: Wizard at War. Having lectured at every International Tesla Conference held in Colorado Springs from 1984 to 1996, Dr. Seifer has also spoken at Brandeis University, Federal Reserve Bank in Boston, LucasFilms Industrial Light & Magic, at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities in England, West Point Military Academy, the New York Public Library and the United Nations. Featured in The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, MIT's Technology Review and New York Times, Marc has appeared on Coast to Coast radio, the BBC, NPR's All Things Considered, and in the 5-part limited series The Tesla Files which he helped create, which has gone out to 40 countries and played on the History Channel.

Investigators, it is a double drop week here on Done and Dunne! We turn our focus in this episode to Nick's sister-in-law Joan Didion, wo is really having a moment this month! The archives of Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne are available now at the New York Public Library, after their acquisition in 2023. Additionally, there is a whole new work from Joan dropping April 22 – today – titled Notes to John. This release gives an alternative insight into Joan Didion about her work, motherhood, and the loss of her daughter, Quintana Roo, just two short years after the death of John Gregory Dunne. Lots of moments happening with our favorite sister-in-law – all the details happening here in this springtime bonus! See sources and more at doneanddunne.com. Continue your investigation with ad-free and bonus episodes on Patreon! To advertise on Done & Dunne, please reach out to info@amplitudemediapartners.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Josh Rogosin is the engineer responsible for shaping the sound of NPR's “Tiny Desk.” Now, he runs “Global Sound Concerts,” a music series which travels the world, producing videos in the cities and locations that matter to artists. He's also a judge for WNYC's Public Song Project (which you too can join through April 28). Tonight, he'll be at the New York Public Library's Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library to lead a free masterclass on recording and mixing. Jenna Li, program manager for NYPL's Studio 40 and Technology Training, also joins us to talk about the the NYPL's recording resources for local musicians.

So what, exactly, was “The Enlightenment”? According to the Princeton historian David A. Bell, it was an intellectual movement roughly spanning the early 18th century through to the French Revolution. In his Spring 2025 Liberties Quarterly piece “The Enlightenment, Then and Now”, Bell charts the Enlightenment as a complex intellectual movement centered in Paris but with hubs across Europe and America. He highlights key figures like Montesquieu, Voltaire, Kant, and Franklin, discussing their contributions to concepts of religious tolerance, free speech, and rationality. In our conversation, Bell addresses criticisms of the Enlightenment, including its complicated relationship with colonialism and slavery, while arguing that its principles of freedom and reason remain relevant today. 5 Key Takeaways* The Enlightenment emerged in the early 18th century (around 1720s) and was characterized by intellectual inquiry, skepticism toward religion, and a growing sense among thinkers that they were living in an "enlightened century."* While Paris was the central hub, the Enlightenment had multiple centers including Scotland, Germany, and America, with thinkers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Hume, and Franklin contributing to its development.* The Enlightenment introduced the concept of "society" as a sphere of human existence separate from religion and politics, forming the basis of modern social sciences.* The movement had a complex relationship with colonialism and slavery - many Enlightenment thinkers criticized slavery, but some of their ideas about human progress were later used to justify imperialism.* According to Bell, rather than trying to "return to the Enlightenment," modern society should selectively adopt and adapt its valuable principles of free speech, religious tolerance, and education to create our "own Enlightenment."David Avrom Bell is a historian of early modern and modern Europe at Princeton University. His most recent book, published in 2020 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution. Described in the Journal of Modern History as an "instant classic," it is available in paperback from Picador, in French translation from Fayard, and in Italian translation from Viella. A study of how new forms of political charisma arose in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the book shows that charismatic authoritarianism is as modern a political form as liberal democracy, and shares many of the same origins. Based on exhaustive research in original sources, the book includes case studies of the careers of George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Toussaint Louverture and Simon Bolivar. The book's Introduction can be read here. An online conversation about the book with Annette Gordon-Reed, hosted by the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, can be viewed here. Links to material about the book, including reviews in The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Harper's, The New Republic, The Nation, Le Monde, The Los Angeles Review of Books and other venues can be found here. Bell is also the author of six previous books. He has published academic articles in both English and French and contributes regularly to general interest publications on a variety of subjects, ranging from modern warfare, to contemporary French politics, to the impact of digital technology on learning and scholarship, and of course French history. A list of his publications from 2023 and 2024 can be found here. His Substack newsletter can be found here. His writings have been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Hebrew, Swedish, Polish, Russian, German, Croatian, Italian, Turkish and Japanese. At the History Department at Princeton University, he holds the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Chair in the Era of North Atlantic Revolutions, and offers courses on early modern Europe, on military history, and on the early modern French empire. Previously, he spent fourteen years at Johns Hopkins University, including three as Dean of Faculty in its School of Arts and Sciences. From 2020 to 2024 he served as Director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. Bell's new project is a history of the Enlightenment. A preliminary article from the project was published in early 2022 by Modern Intellectual History. Another is now out in French History.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. FULL TRANSCRIPTAndrew Keen: Hello everybody, in these supposedly dark times, the E word comes up a lot, the Enlightenment. Are we at the end of the Enlightenment or the beginning? Was there even an Enlightenment? My guest today, David Bell, a professor of history, very distinguished professor of history at Princeton University, has an interesting piece in the spring issue of It is One of our, our favorite quarterlies here on Keen on America, Bell's piece is The Enlightenment Then and Now, and David is joining us from the home of the Enlightenment, perhaps Paris in France, where he's on sabbatical hard life. David being an academic these days, isn't it?David Bell: Very difficult. I'm having to suffer the Parisian bread and croissant. It's terrible.Andrew Keen: Yeah. Well, I won't keep you too long. Is Paris then, or France? Is it the home of the Enlightenment? I know there are many Enlightenments, the French, the Scottish, maybe even the English, perhaps even the American.David Bell: It's certainly one of the homes of the Enlightenment, and it's probably the closest that the Enlightened had to a center, absolutely. But as you say, there were Edinburgh, Glasgow, plenty of places in Germany, Philadelphia, all those places have good claims to being centers of the enlightenment as well.Andrew Keen: All the same David, is it like one of those sports games in California where everyone gets a medal?David Bell: Well, they're different metals, right, but I think certainly Paris is where everybody went. I mean, if you look at the figures from the German Enlightenment, from the Scottish Enlightenment from the American Enlightenment they all tended to congregate in Paris and the Parisians didn't tend to go anywhere else unless they were forced to. So that gives you a pretty good sense of where the most important center was.Andrew Keen: So David, before we get to specifics, map out for us, because everyone is perhaps as familiar or comfortable with the history of the Enlightenment, and certainly as you are. When did it happen? What years? And who are the leaders of this thing called the Enlightenment?David Bell: Well, that's a big question. And I'm afraid, of course, that if you ask 10 historians, you'll get 10 different answers.Andrew Keen: Well, I'm only asking you, so I only want one answer.David Bell: So I would say that the Enlightenment really gets going around the first couple of decades of the 18th century. And that's when people really start to think that they are actually living in what they start to call an Enlightenment century. There are a lot of reasons for this. They are seeing what we now call the scientific revolution. They're looking at the progress that has been made with that. They are experiencing the changes in the religious sphere, including the end of religious wars, coming with a great deal of skepticism about religion. They are living in a relative period of peace where they're able to speculate much more broadly and daringly than before. But it's really in those first couple of decades that they start thinking of themselves as living in an enlightened century. They start defining themselves as something that would later be called the enlightenment. So I would say that it's, really, really there between maybe the end of the 17th century and 1720s that it really gets started.Andrew Keen: So let's have some names, David, of philosophers, I guess. I mean, if those are the right words. I know that there was a term in French. There is a term called philosoph. Were they the founders, the leaders of the Enlightenment?David Bell: Well, there is a... Again, I don't want to descend into academic quibbling here, but there were lots of leaders. Let me give an example, though. So the year 1721 is a remarkable year. So in the year, 1721, two amazing events happened within a couple of months of each other. So in May, Montesquieu, one of the great philosophers by any definition, publishes his novel called Persian Letters. And this is an incredible novel. Still, I think one of greatest novels ever written, and it's very daring. It is the account, it is supposedly a an account written by two Persian travelers to Europe who are writing back to people in Isfahan about what they're seeing. And it is very critical of French society. It is very of religion. It is, as I said, very daring philosophically. It is a product in part of the increasing contact between Europe and the rest of the world that is also very central to the Enlightenment. So that novel comes out. So it's immediately, you know, the police try to suppress it. But they don't have much success because it's incredibly popular and Montesquieu doesn't suffer any particular problems because...Andrew Keen: And the French police have never been the most efficient police force in the world, have they?David Bell: Oh, they could be, but not in this case. And then two months later, after Montesquieu published this novel, there's a German philosopher much less well-known than Montesqiu, than Christian Bolz, who is a professor at the Universität Haller in Prussia, and he gives an oration in Latin, a very typical university oration for the time, about Chinese philosophy, in which he says that the Chinese have sort of proved to the world, particularly through the writings of Confucius and others, that you can have a virtuous society without religion. Obviously very controversial. Statement for the time it actually gets him fired from his job, he has to leave the Kingdom of Prussia within 48 hours on penalty of death, starts an enormous controversy. But here are two events, both of which involving non-European people, involving the way in which Europeans are starting to look out at the rest of the world and starting to imagine Europe as just one part of a larger humanity, and at the same time they are starting to speculate very daringly about whether you can have. You know, what it means to have a society, do you need to have religion in order to have morality in society? Do you need the proper, what kind of government do you need to to have virtuous conduct and a proper society? So all of these things get, you know, really crystallize, I think, around these two incidents as much as anything. So if I had to pick a single date for when the enlightenment starts, I'd probably pick that 1721.Andrew Keen: And when was, David, I thought you were going to tell me about the earthquake in Lisbon, when was that earthquake?David Bell: That earthquake comes quite a bit later. That comes, and now historians should be better with dates than I am. It's in the 1750s, I think it's the late 1750's. Again, this historian is proving he's getting a very bad grade for forgetting the exact date, but it's in 1750. So that's a different kind of event, which sparks off a great deal of commentary, because it's a terrible earthquake. It destroys most of the city of Lisbon, it destroys other cities throughout Portugal, and it leads a lot of the philosophy to philosophers at the time to be speculating very daringly again on whether there is any kind of real purpose to the universe and whether there's any kind divine purpose. Why would such a terrible thing happen? Why would God do such a thing to his followers? And certainly VoltaireAndrew Keen: Yeah, Votav, of course, comes to mind of questioning.David Bell: And Condit, Voltaire's novel Condit gives a very good description of the earthquake in Lisbon and uses that as a centerpiece. Voltair also read other things about the earthquake, a poem about Lisbon earthquake. But in Condit he gives a lasting, very scathing portrait of the Catholic Church in general and then of what happens in Portugal. And so the Lisbon Earthquake is certainly another one of the events, but it happens considerably later. Really in the middle of the end of life.Andrew Keen: So, David, you believe in this idea of the Enlightenment. I take your point that there are more than one Enlightenment in more than one center, but in broad historical terms, the 18th century could be defined at least in Western and Northern Europe as the period of the Enlightenment, would that be a fair generalization?David Bell: I think it's perfectly fair generalization. Of course, there are historians who say that it never happened. There's a conservative British historian, J.C.D. Clark, who published a book last summer, saying that the Enlightenment is a kind of myth, that there was a lot of intellectual activity in Europe, obviously, but that the idea that it formed a coherent Enlightenment was really invented in the 20th century by a bunch of progressive reformers who wanted to claim a kind of venerable and august pedigree for their own reform, liberal reform plans. I think that's an exaggeration. People in the 18th century defined very clearly what was going on, both people who were in favor of it and people who are against it. And while you can, if you look very closely at it, of course it gets a bit fuzzy. Of course it's gets, there's no single, you can't define a single enlightenment project or a single enlightened ideology. But then, I think people would be hard pressed to define any intellectual movement. You know, in perfect, incoherent terms. So the enlightenment is, you know by compared with almost any other intellectual movement certainly existed.Andrew Keen: In terms of a philosophy of the Enlightenment, the German thinker, Immanuel Kant, seems to be often, and when you describe him as the conscience or the brain or a mixture of the conscience and brain of the enlightenment, why is Kant and Kantian thinking so important in the development of the Enlightenment.David Bell: Well, that's a really interesting question. And one reason is because most of the Enlightenment was not very rigorously philosophical. A lot of the major figures of the enlightenment before Kant tended to be writing for a general public. And they often were writing with a very specific agenda. We look at Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau. Now you look at Adam Smith in Scotland. We look David Hume or Adam Ferguson. You look at Benjamin Franklin in the United States. These people wrote in all sorts of different genres. They wrote in, they wrote all sorts of different kinds of books. They have many different purposes and very few of them did a lot of what we would call rigorous academic philosophy. And Kant was different. Kant was very much an academic philosopher. Kant was nothing if not rigorous. He came at the end of the enlightenment by most people's measure. He wrote these very, very difficult, very rigorous, very brilliant works, such as The Creek of Pure Reason. And so, it's certainly been the case that people who wanted to describe the Enlightenment as a philosophy have tended to look to Kant. So for example, there's a great German philosopher and intellectual historian of the early 20th century named Ernst Kassirer, who had to leave Germany because of the Nazis. And he wrote a great book called The Philosophy of the Enlightened. And that leads directly to Immanuel Kant. And of course, Casir himself was a Kantian, identified with Kant. And so he wanted to make Kant, in a sense, the telos, the end point, the culmination, the fulfillment of the Enlightenment. But so I think that's why Kant has such a particularly important position. You're defining it both ways.Andrew Keen: I've always struggled to understand what Kant was trying to say. I'm certainly not alone there. Might it be fair to say that he was trying to transform the universe and certainly traditional Christian notions into the Enlightenment, so the entire universe, the world, God, whatever that means, that they were all somehow according to Kant enlightened.David Bell: Well, I think that I'm certainly no expert on Immanuel Kant. And I would say that he is trying to, I mean, his major philosophical works are trying to put together a system of philosophical thinking which will justify why people have to act morally, why people act rationally, without the need for Christian revelation to bolster them. That's a very, very crude and reductionist way of putting it, but that's essentially at the heart of it. At the same time, Kant was very much aware of his own place in history. So Kant didn't simply write these very difficult, thick, dense philosophical works. He also wrote things that were more like journalism or like tablets. He wrote a famous essay called What is Enlightenment? And in that, he said that the 18th century was the period in which humankind was simply beginning to. Reach a period of enlightenment. And he said, he starts the essay by saying, this is the period when humankind is being released from its self-imposed tutelage. And we are still, and he said we do not yet live in the midst of a completely enlightened century, but we are getting there. We are living in a century that is enlightening.Andrew Keen: So the seeds, the seeds of Hegel and maybe even Marx are incant in that German thinking, that historical thinking.David Bell: In some ways, in some ways of course Hegel very much reacts against Kant and so and then Marx reacts against Hegel. So it's not exactly.Andrew Keen: Well, that's the dialectic, isn't it, David?David Bell: A simple easy path from one to the other, no, but Hegel is unimaginable without Kant of course and Marx is unimagineable without Hegel.Andrew Keen: You note that Kant represents a shift in some ways into the university and the walls of the universities were going up, and that some of the other figures associated with the the Enlightenment and Scottish Enlightenment, human and Smith and the French Enlightenment Voltaire and the others, they were more generalist writers. Should we be nostalgic for the pre-university period in the Enlightenment, or? Did things start getting serious once the heavyweights, the academic heavyweighs like Emmanuel Kant got into this thing?David Bell: I think it depends on where we're talking about. I mean, Adam Smith was a professor at Glasgow in Edinburgh, so Smith, the Scottish Enlightenment was definitely at least partly in the universities. The German Enlightenment took place very heavily in universities. Christian Vodafoy I just mentioned was the most important German philosopher of the 18th century before Kant, and he had positions in university. Even the French university system, for a while, what's interesting about the French University system, particularly the Sorbonne, which was the theology faculty, It was that. Throughout the first half of the 18th century, there were very vigorous, very interesting philosophical debates going on there, in which the people there, particularly even Jesuits there, were very open to a lot of the ideas we now call enlightenment. They were reading John Locke, they were reading Mel Pench, they were read Dekalb. What happened though in the French universities was that as more daring stuff was getting published elsewhere. Church, the Catholic Church, started to say, all right, these philosophers, these philosophies, these are our enemies, these are people we have to get at. And so at that point, anybody who was in the university, who was still in dialog with these people was basically purged. And the universities became much less interesting after that. But to come back to your question, I do think that I am very nostalgic for that period. I think that the Enlightenment was an extraordinary period, because if you look between. In the 17th century, not all, but a great deal of the most interesting intellectual work is happening in the so-called Republic of Letters. It's happening in Latin language. It is happening on a very small circle of RUD, of scholars. By the 19th century following Kant and Hegel and then the birth of the research university in Germany, which is copied everywhere, philosophy and the most advanced thinking goes back into the university. And the 18th century, particularly in France, I will say, is a time when the most advanced thought is being written for a general public. It is being in the form of novels, of dialogs, of stories, of reference works, and it is very, very accessible. The most profound thought of the West has never been as accessible overall as in the 18 century.Andrew Keen: Again, excuse this question, it might seem a bit naive, but there's a lot of pre-Enlightenment work, books, thinking that we read now that's very accessible from Erasmus and Thomas More to Machiavelli. Why weren't characters like, or are characters like Erasmuus, More's Utopia, Machiavell's prints and discourses, why aren't they considered part of the Enlightenment? What's the difference between? Enlightened thinkers or the supposedly enlightened thinkers of the 18th century and thinkers and writers of the 16th and 17th centuries.David Bell: That's a good question, you know, I think you have to, you, you know, again, one has to draw a line somewhere. That's not a very good answer, of course. All these people that you just mentioned are, in one way or another, predecessors to the Enlightenment. And of course, there were lots of people. I don't mean to say that nobody wrote in an accessible way before 1700. Obviously, lots of the people you mentioned did. Although a lot of them originally wrote in Latin, Erasmus, also Thomas More. But I think what makes the Enlightened different is that you have, again, you have a sense. These people have have a sense that they are themselves engaged in a collective project, that it is a collective project of enlightenment, of enlightening the world. They believe that they live in a century of progress. And there are certain principles. They don't agree on everything by any means. The philosophy of enlightenment is like nothing more than ripping each other to shreds, like any decent group of intellectuals. But that said, they generally did believe That people needed to have freedom of speech. They believed that you needed to have toleration of different religions. They believed in education and the need for a broadly educated public that could be as broad as possible. They generally believed in keeping religion out of the public sphere as much as possible, so all those principles came together into a program that we can consider at least a kind of... You know, not that everybody read it at every moment by any means, but there is an identifiable enlightenment program there, and in this case an identifiable enlightenment mindset. One other thing, I think, which is crucial to the Enlightenment, is that it was the attention they started to pay to something that we now take almost entirely for granted, which is the idea of society. The word society is so entirely ubiquitous, we assume it's always been there, and in one sense it has, because the word societas is a Latin word. But until... The 18th century, the word society generally had a much narrower meaning. It referred to, you know, particular institution most often, like when we talk about the society of, you know, the American philosophical society or something like that. And the idea that there exists something called society, which is the general sphere of human existence that is separate from religion and is separate from the political sphere, that's actually something which only really emerged at the end of the 1600s. And it became really the focus of you know, much, if not most, of enlightenment thinking. When you look at someone like Montesquieu and you look something, somebody like Rousseau or Voltaire or Adam Smith, probably above all, they were concerned with understanding how society works, not how government works only, but how society, what social interactions are like beginning of what we would now call social science. So that's yet another thing that distinguishes the enlightened from people like Machiavelli, often people like Thomas More, and people like bonuses.Andrew Keen: You noted earlier that the idea of progress is somehow baked in, in part, and certainly when it comes to Kant, certainly the French Enlightenment, although, of course, Rousseau challenged that. I'm not sure whether Rousseaut, as always, is both in and out of the Enlightenment and he seems to be in and out of everything. How did the Enlightement, though, make sense of itself in the context of antiquity, as it was, of Terms, it was the Renaissance that supposedly discovered or rediscovered antiquity. How did many of the leading Enlightenment thinkers, writers, how did they think of their own society in the context of not just antiquity, but even the idea of a European or Western society?David Bell: Well, there was a great book, one of the great histories of the Enlightenment was written about more than 50 years ago by the Yale professor named Peter Gay, and the first part of that book was called The Modern Paganism. So it was about the, you know, it was very much about the relationship between the Enlightenment and the ancient Greek synonyms. And certainly the writers of the enlightenment felt a great deal of kinship with the ancient Greek synonymous. They felt a common bond, particularly in the posing. Christianity and opposing what they believed the Christian Church had wrought on Europe in suppressing freedom and suppressing free thought and suppassing free inquiry. And so they felt that they were both recovering but also going beyond antiquity at the same time. And of course they were all, I mean everybody at the time, every single major figure of the Enlightenment, their education consisted in large part of what we would now call classics, right? I mean, there was an educational reformer in France in the 1760s who said, you know, our educational system is great if the purpose is to train Roman centurions, if it's to train modern people who are not doing both so well. And it's true. I mean they would spend, certainly, you know in Germany, in much of Europe, in the Netherlands, even in France, I mean people were trained not simply to read Latin, but to write in Latin. In Germany, university courses took part in the Latin language. So there's an enormous, you know, so they're certainly very, very conversant with the Greek and Roman classics, and they identify with them to a very great extent. Someone like Rousseau, I mean, and many others, and what's his first reading? How did he learn to read by reading Plutarch? In translation, but he learns to read reading Plutach. He sees from the beginning by this enormous admiration for the ancients that we get from Bhutan.Andrew Keen: Was Socrates relevant here? Was the Enlightenment somehow replacing Aristotle with Socrates and making him and his spirit of Enlightenment, of asking questions rather than answering questions, the symbol of a new way of thinking?David Bell: I would say to a certain extent, so I mean, much of the Enlightenment criticizes scholasticism, medieval scholastic, very, very sharply, and medieval scholasticism is founded philosophically very heavily upon Aristotle, so to that extent. And the spirit of skepticism that Socrates embodied, the idea of taking nothing for granted and asking questions about everything, including questions of oneself, yes, absolutely. That said, while the great figures of the Red Plato, you know, Socrates was generally I mean, it was not all that present as they come. But certainly have people with people with red play-doh in the entire virus.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Benjamin Franklin earlier, David. Most of the Enlightenment, of course, seems to be centered in France and Scotland, Germany, England. But America, many Europeans went to America then as a, what some people would call a settler colonial society, or certainly an offshoot of the European world. Was the settling of America and the American Revolution Was it the quintessential Enlightenment project?David Bell: Another very good question, and again, it depends a bit on who you talk to. I just mentioned this book by Peter Gay, and the last part of his book is called The Science of Freedom, and it's all about the American Revolution. So certainly a lot of interpreters of the Enlightenment have said that, yes, the American revolution represents in a sense the best possible outcome of the American Revolution, it was the best, possible outcome of the enlightened. Certainly there you look at the founding fathers of the United States and there's a great deal that they took from me like Certainly, they took a great great number of political ideas from Obviously Madison was very much inspired and drafting the edifice of the Constitution by Montesquieu to see himself Was happy to admit in addition most of the founding Fathers of the united states were you know had kind of you know We still had we were still definitely Christians, but we're also but we were also very much influenced by deism were very much against the idea of making the United States a kind of confessional country where Christianity was dominant. They wanted to believe in the enlightenment principles of free speech, religious toleration and so on and so forth. So in all those senses and very much the gun was probably more inspired than Franklin was somebody who was very conversant with the European Enlightenment. He spent a large part of his life in London. Where he was in contact with figures of the Enlightenment. He also, during the American Revolution, of course, he was mostly in France, where he is vetted by some of the surviving fellows and were very much in contact for them as well. So yes, I would say the American revolution is certainly... And then the American revolutionary scene, of course by the Europeans, very much as a kind of offshoot of the enlightenment. So one of the great books of the late Enlightenment is by Condor Say, which he wrote while he was hiding actually in the future evolution of the chariot. It's called a historical sketch of the progress of the human spirit, or the human mind, and you know he writes about the American Revolution as being, basically owing its existence to being like...Andrew Keen: Franklin is of course an example of your pre-academic enlightenment, a generalist, inventor, scientist, entrepreneur, political thinker. What about the role of science and indeed economics in the Enlightenment? David, we're going to talk of course about the Marxist interpretation, perhaps the Marxist interpretation which sees The Enlightenment is just a euphemism, perhaps, for exploitative capitalism. How central was the growth and development of the market, of economics, and innovation, and capitalism in your reading of The Enlightened?David Bell: Well, in my reading, it was very important, but not in the way that the Marxists used to say. So Friedrich Engels once said that the Enlightenment was basically the idealized kingdom of the bourgeoisie, and there was whole strain of Marxist thinking that followed the assumption that, and then Karl Marx himself argued that the documents like the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, which obviously were inspired by the Enlightment, were simply kind of the near, or kind of. Way that the bourgeoisie was able to advance itself ideologically, and I don't think that holds much water, which is very little indication that any particular economic class motivated the Enlightenment or was using the Enlightment in any way. That said, I think it's very difficult to imagine the Enlightement without the social and economic changes that come in with the 18th century. To begin with globalization. If you read the great works of the Enlightenment, it's remarkable just how open they are to talking about humanity in general. So one of Voltaire's largest works, one of his most important works, is something called Essay on Customs and the Spirit of Nations, which is actually History of the World, where he talks learnedly not simply about Europe, but about the Americas, about China, about Africa, about India. Montesquieu writes Persian letters. Christian Volpe writes about Chinese philosophy. You know, Rousseau writes about... You know, the earliest days of humankind talks about Africa. All the great figures of the Enlightenment are writing about the rest of the world, and this is a period in which contacts between Europe and the rest the world are exploding along with international trade. So by the end of the 18th century, there are 4,000 to 5,000 ships a year crossing the Atlantic. It's an enormous number. And that's one context in which the enlightenment takes place. Another is what we call the consumer revolution. So in the 18th century, certainly in the major cities of Western Europe, people of a wide range of social classes, including even artisans, sort of somewhat wealthy artisians, shopkeepers, are suddenly able to buy a much larger range of products than they were before. They're able to choose how to basically furnish their own lives, if you will, how they're gonna dress, what they're going to eat, what they gonna put on the walls of their apartments and so on and so forth. And so they become accustomed to exercising a great deal more personal choice than their ancestors have done. And the Enlightenment really develops in tandem with this. Most of the great works of the Enlightment, they're not really written to, they're treatises, they're like Kant, they're written to persuade you to think in a single way. Really written to make you ask questions yourself, to force you to ponder things. They're written in the form of puzzles and riddles. Voltaire had a great line there, he wrote that the best kind of books are the books that readers write half of themselves as they read, and that's sort of the quintessence of the Enlightenment as far as I'm concerned.Andrew Keen: Yeah, Voltaire might have been comfortable on YouTube or Facebook. David, you mentioned all those ships going from Europe across the Atlantic. Of course, many of those ships were filled with African slaves. You mentioned this in your piece. I mean, this is no secret, of course. You also mentioned a couple of times Montesquieu's Persian letters. To what extent is... The enlightenment then perhaps the birth of Western power, of Western colonialism, of going to Africa, seizing people, selling them in North America, the French, the English, Dutch colonization of the rest of the world. Of course, later more sophisticated Marxist thinkers from the Frankfurt School, you mentioned these in your essay, Odorno and Horkheimer in particular, See the Enlightenment as... A project, if you like, of Western domination. I remember reading many years ago when I was in graduate school, Edward Said, his analysis of books like The Persian Letters, which is a form of cultural Western power. How much of this is simply bound up in the profound, perhaps, injustice of the Western achievement? And of course, some of the justice as well. We haven't talked about Jefferson, but perhaps in Jefferson's life and his thinking and his enlightened principles and his... Life as a slave owner, these contradictions are most self-evident.David Bell: Well, there are certainly contradictions, and there's certainly... I think what's remarkable, if you think about it, is that if you read through works of the Enlightenment, you would be hard-pressed to find a justification for slavery. You do find a lot of critiques of slavery, and I think that's something very important to keep in mind. Obviously, the chattel slavery of Africans in the Americas began well before the Enlightment, it began in 1500. The Enlightenment doesn't have the credit for being the first movement to oppose slavery. That really goes back to various religious groups, especially the Fakers. But that said, you have in France, you had in Britain, in America even, you'd have a lot of figures associated with the Enlightenment who were pretty sure of becoming very forceful opponents of slavery very early. Now, when it comes to imperialism, that's a tricky issue. What I think you'd find in these light bulbs, you'd different sorts of tendencies and different sorts of writings. So there are certainly a lot of writers of the Enlightenment who are deeply opposed to European authorities. One of the most popular works of the late Enlightenment was a collective work edited by the man named the Abbe Rinal, which is called The History of the Two Indies. And that is a book which is deeply, deeply critical of European imperialism. At the same time, at the same of the enlightenment, a lot the works of history written during the Enlightment. Tended, such as Voltaire's essay on customs, which I just mentioned, tend to give a kind of very linear version of history. They suggest that all societies follow the same path, from sort of primitive savagery, hunter-gatherers, through early agriculture, feudal stages, and on into sort of modern commercial society and civilization. And so they're basically saying, okay, we, the Europeans, are the most advanced. People like the Africans and the Native Americans are the least advanced, and so perhaps we're justified in going and quote, bringing our civilization to them, what later generations would call the civilizing missions, or possibly just, you know, going over and exploiting them because we are stronger and we are more, and again, we are the best. And then there's another thing that the Enlightenment did. The Enlightenment tended to destroy an older Christian view of humankind, which in some ways militated against modern racism. Christians believed, of course, that everyone was the same from Adam and Eve, which meant that there was an essential similarity in the world. And the Enlightenment challenged this by challenging the biblical kind of creation. The Enlightenment challenges this. Voltaire, for instance, believed that there had actually been several different human species that had different origins, and that can very easily become a justification for racism. Buffon, one of the most Figures of the French Enlightenment, one of the early naturalists, was crucial for trying to show that in fact nature is not static, that nature is always changing, that species are changing, including human beings. And so again, that allowed people to think in terms of human beings at different stages of evolution, and perhaps this would be a justification for privileging the more advanced humans over the less advanced. In the 18th century itself, most of these things remain potential, rather than really being acted upon. But in the 19th century, figures of writers who would draw upon these things certainly went much further, and these became justifications for slavery, imperialism, and other things. So again, the Enlightenment is the source of a great deal of stuff here, and you can't simply put it into one box or more.Andrew Keen: You mentioned earlier, David, that Concorda wrote one of the later classics of the... Condorcet? Sorry, Condorcets, excuse my French. Condorcès wrote one the later Classics of the Enlightenment when he was hiding from the French Revolution. In your mind, was the revolution itself the natural conclusion, climax? Perhaps anti-climax of the Enlightenment. Certainly, it seems as if a lot of the critiques of the French Revolution, particularly the more conservative ones, Burke comes to mind, suggested that perhaps the principles of in the Enlightment inevitably led to the guillotine, or is that an unfair way of thinking of it?David Bell: Well, there are a lot of people who have thought like that. Edmund Burke already, writing in 1790, in his reflections on the revolution in France, he said that everything which was great in the old regime is being dissolved and, quoting, dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. And then he said about the French that in the groves of their academy at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing but the Gallows. So there, in 1780, he already seemed to be predicting the reign of terror and blaming it. A certain extent from the Enlightenment. That said, I think, you know, again, the French Revolution is incredibly complicated event. I mean, you certainly have, you know, an explosion of what we could call Enlightenment thinking all over the place. In France, it happened in France. What happened there was that you had a, you know, the collapse of an extraordinarily inefficient government and a very, you know, in a very antiquated, paralyzed system of government kind of collapsed, created a kind of political vacuum. Into that vacuum stepped a lot of figures who were definitely readers of the Enlightenment. Oh so um but again the Enlightment had I said I don't think you can call the Enlightement a single thing so to say that the Enlightiment inspired the French Revolution rather than the There you go.Andrew Keen: Although your essay on liberties is the Enlightenment then and now you probably didn't write is always these lazy editors who come up with inaccurate and inaccurate titles. So for you, there is no such thing as the Enlighten.David Bell: No, there is. There is. But still, it's a complex thing. It contains multitudes.Andrew Keen: So it's the Enlightenment rather than the United States.David Bell: Conflicting tendencies, it has contradictions within it. There's enough unity to refer to it as a singular noun, but it doesn't mean that it all went in one single direction.Andrew Keen: But in historical terms, did the failure of the French Revolution, its descent into Robespierre and then Bonaparte, did it mark the end in historical terms a kind of bookend of history? You began in 1720 by 1820. Was the age of the Enlightenment pretty much over?David Bell: I would say yes. I think that, again, one of the things about the French Revolution is that people who are reading these books and they're reading these ideas and they are discussing things really start to act on them in a very different way from what it did before the French revolution. You have a lot of absolute monarchs who are trying to bring certain enlightenment principles to bear in their form of government, but they're not. But it's difficult to talk about a full-fledged attempt to enact a kind of enlightenment program. Certainly a lot of the people in the French Revolution saw themselves as doing that. But as they did it, they ran into reality, I would say. I mean, now Tocqueville, when he writes his old regime in the revolution, talks about how the French philosophes were full of these abstract ideas that were divorced from reality. And while that's an exaggeration, there was a certain truth to them. And as soon as you start having the age of revolutions, as soon you start people having to devise systems of government that will actually last, and as you have people, democratic representative systems that will last, and as they start revising these systems under the pressure of actual events, then you're not simply talking about an intellectual movement anymore, you're talking about something very different. And so I would say that, well, obviously the ideas of the Enlightenment continue to inspire people, the books continue to be read, debated. They lead on to figures like Kant, and as we talked about earlier, Kant leads to Hegel, Hegel leads to Marx in a certain sense. Nonetheless, by the time you're getting into the 19th century, what you have, you know, has connections to the Enlightenment, but can we really still call it the Enlightment? I would sayAndrew Keen: And Tocqueville, of course, found democracy in America. Is democracy itself? I know it's a big question. But is it? Bound up in the Enlightenment. You've written extensively, David, both for liberties and elsewhere on liberalism. Is the promise of democracy, democratic systems, the one born in the American Revolution, promised in the French Revolution, not realized? Are they products of the Enlightment, or is the 19th century and the democratic systems that in the 19th century, is that just a separate historical track?David Bell: Again, I would say there are certain things in the Enlightenment that do lead in that direction. Certainly, I think most figures in the enlightenment in one general sense or another accepted the idea of a kind of general notion of popular sovereignty. It didn't mean that they always felt that this was going to be something that could necessarily be acted upon or implemented in their own day. And they didn't necessarily associate generalized popular sovereignty with what we would now call democracy with people being able to actually govern themselves. Would be certain figures, certainly Diderot and some of his essays, what we saw very much in the social contract, you know, were sketching out, you knows, models for possible democratic system. Condorcet, who actually lived into the French Revolution, wrote one of the most draft constitutions for France, that's one of most democratic documents ever proposed. But of course there were lots of figures in the Enlightenment, Voltaire, and others who actually believed much more in absolute monarchy, who believed that you just, you know, you should have. Freedom of speech and freedom of discussion, out of which the best ideas would emerge, but then you had to give those ideas to the prince who imposed them by poor sicknesses.Andrew Keen: And of course, Rousseau himself, his social contract, some historians have seen that as the foundations of totalitarian, modern totalitarianism. Finally, David, your wonderful essay in Liberties in the spring quarterly 2025 is The Enlightenment, Then and Now. What about now? You work at Princeton, your president has very bravely stood up to the new presidential regime in the United States, in defense of academic intellectual freedom. Does the word and the movement, does it have any relevance in the 2020s, particularly in an age of neo-authoritarianism around the world?David Bell: I think it does. I think we have to be careful about it. I always get a little nervous when people say, well, we should simply go back to the Enlightenment, because the Enlightenments is history. We don't go back the 18th century. I think what we need to do is to recover certain principles, certain ideals from the 18 century, the ones that matter to us, the ones we think are right, and make our own Enlightenment better. I don't think we need be governed by the 18 century. Thomas Paine once said that no generation should necessarily rule over every generation to come, and I think that's probably right. Unfortunately in the United States, we have a constitution which is now essentially unamendable, so we're doomed to live by a constitution largely from the 18th century. But are there many things in the Enlightenment that we should look back to, absolutely?Andrew Keen: Well, David, I am going to free you for your own French Enlightenment. You can go and have some croissant now in your local cafe in Paris. Thank you so much for a very, I excuse the pun, enlightening conversation on the Enlightenment then and now, Essential Essay in Liberties. I'd love to get you back on the show. Talk more history. Thank you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Hello, Protagonists!My guest today on CREATIVE. INSPIRED. HAPPY is Téa Obreht, winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, National Book Award Finalist, and international bestseller of The Tiger's Wife and other novels. Her latest book, The Morningside, is out in paperback now.Today, we talk about:* how being an immigrant influences her storytelling,* writing in English while sometimes translating in her head from her first language,* how she wove in a Serbian folktale into a novel about climate disaster* why Téa dislikes writing in first person,* her advice for writers on spending time on social media,* where she discovers her next reads,* and so much more.

Laurie Sheck's novel A Monster's Notes, a reimagining of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,  was long listed for the Dublin Impac International Fiction Prize. Her book of poems, The Willow Grove, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has appeared widely in the Paris Review, the New Yorker and elsewhere. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. A member of the MFA Creative Writing faculty at the New School, she lives in New York City. This interview focuses on her new book, Cyborg Fever.

Join "Dance Talk” ® with Joanne Carey  and special guests: Duke Dang, Executive Director of Works & Process and Alison Manning, Co-Executive Director of Harkness Dance Center.In this episode of "Dance Talk” ®, host Joanne Carey chats with Duke Dang, and Alison Manning, about their organizations upcoming collaboration: the Uptown Rhythm Dance Festival. The festival is a collaborative project aimed at celebrating various forms of rhythm dance. Alison and Duke discuss the festival's programming, community engagement, and the importance of inclusivity and accessibility in dance. The dialogue highlights the festival's diverse lineup of artists, workshops, and the significance of dance in fostering community connections. Get your tickets, you won't want to miss this festival!Alison Manning is the former Executive Director and Co-Producer of The Yard on Martha's Vineyard, from 2008-2020. She is founding Co-Artistic Director and Choreographer of DanceTheYard, The Yard's year-round professional dance company, with choreographic partner and company Co-Artistic Director Jesse Keller Jason. Alison is a passionate Horton teacher and an avid tap and rhythm dancer and advocate. She discovered her love for the Horton technique as a scholarship student at Jacob's Pillow, working with the great Milton Myers, and has continued studying with mentors Mr. Myers, Kristina Berger, Karen Gayle and other lauded Horton Teachers through the years. She taught the technique on Faculty at The Yard each summer, and as a guest teaching artist at NYU Steinhardt School, Wesleyan Univeristy, Peridance Capezio Center, and STEPS on Broadway. In addition to teaching, Alison dances and performs with The Bang Group and has worked for The Peggy Spina Tap Company, Xodus Dance Collective, Kinodance company among others. She is the current President of the Marymount Manhattan College Dance Advisory Board as well as a member of the Adjunct Faculty. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from said institution with a BFA in Modern Dance and a Minor in Art History. Alison lives in New York City with her wife and four children and is honored to be shepherding the Harkness School of Dance during this exciting time at The 92nd Street Y, New York.https://www.92ny.org/Duke Dang is the executive director of Works & Process, a performing arts organization that champions and resources artists and their creative process from studio-to-stage by partnering with over a dozen residency centers across Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York to provide fully-funded residencies and presents iteratively at the Guggenheim Museum, Lincoln Center, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and SummerStage.  Works & Process was honored with a 2021 Dance Magazine Award and nominated in 2021 and 2022 for the APAP William Dawson Award for Programmatic Excellence and Sustained Achievement. Born at a UN refugee camp in the Philippines to Vietnamese parents seeking political asylum, Duke immigrated to California growing up with the assistance of Section 8 housing vouchers, food stamps, and attending Head Start. Prior to Works & Process, Duke worked at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Glimmerglass Festival, and Sydney Theatre Company. He earned in BA in Art History from Boston University and MA in Performing Arts Administration from New York University.To Find out about Works & Process ⁠https://www.worksandprocess.org/ To get your tickets to Uptown Dance Festivalhttps://www.92ny.org/event/uptown-rhythm-dance-festival“Dance Talk” ® with Joanne Carey wherever you listen to your podcasts. ⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dancetalkwithjoannecarey.com/...⁠ ⁠Follow Joanne on Instagram @westfieldschoolofdanceTune in. Follow. Like us. And Share.Please leave a review!“Dance Talk” ® with Joanne Carey"Where the Dance World Connects, the Conversations Inspire, and Where We Are Keeping Them Real."

The new novel The Dream Hotel is the first work of speculative fiction from acclaimed author Laila Lalami. It follows a woman named Sarah, who is detained by members of the Risk Assessment Administration, which probes people's dreams with Artificial Intelligence. They claim that Sarah's dreams reveal that she is likely to harm her own husband, a man she loves dearly. The Dream Hotel is our April Get Lit with All Of It Book Club selection, and Laila Lalami discusses the novel in a preview conversation ahead of our May 6 event. To find out how to borrow your e-copy of the novel from the New York Public Library, and to snag your free tickets to our Get Lit event, click here.

Ron Currie is the award-winning author of five novels. He has won the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award, the Addison M. Metcalf Award, the Alex Award, and the Pushcart Prize. His books have been translated into fifteen languages, and his short fiction and nonfiction have received recognition in Best American anthologies. As a screenwriter he worked most recently on the Apple TV+ series Extrapolations and has developed projects with AMC Studios, Amblin Television, and ITV America. He lives in Portland, Maine, and teaches in the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast MFA program. On this episode of Little Atoms he talks to Neil Denny about his latest novel The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Juliana Soltis is an innovative cellist who has done extensive research to connect listeners with some forgotten stories of classical music. In this episode we talked about her recent album American Woman which features cello and piano music of women composers; you'll hear Juliana's insights into the lives of Mary Howe, Amy Beach, Margaret Bonds, Helen Crane, Dorothy Rudd Moore and Florence Price and hear excerpts from this album which Juliana recorded with the wonderful pianist Ruoting Li. Many listeners will be familiar with Juliana's playing as a Baroque cellist, and it was fascinating to hear about how the French relinquished their beloved viol relunctuantly to the Italian cello. I really love Juliana's recording of the complete Suites for solo cello of J.S. Bach and you'll hear some music from her album Going off Script: the Ornamented Suites for cello. Juliana shared great advice about performing from an athlete's perspective and also the joy of connecting with audiences. This interview begins with one of her beautiful greyhounds, and for those of you watching this on YouTube, hopefully you'll enjoy this comforting canine presence throughout this inspirational conversation. Like all my episodes , you can watch the video or listen to the podcast on all the podcast platforms, and I've also linked the transcript to my website, everything linked here: https://www.leahroseman.com/episodes/juliana-soltisOther episodes: Samantha Ege, Julia MacLaine, Dorothy Lawson of ETHEL, Edwin Barker, Euclid QuartetJuliana Soltis Website Podcast Newsletter sign-up Buy me a coffee ? Merchandise storephoto: Teresa Tam(00:00) Intro(02:37)the greyhounds, American Woman album (05:16) archives New York Public Library, Helen Crane(10:42) clip of Ballade Fantasque by Howe(12:20) Mary Howe (16:51) racist divide between Black and white composers(20:47) clip of Troubled Water by Margaret Bonds (22:12) baroque cello (33:57) Courante J.S. Bach Solo Suite in G major(37:14) creating Going off Script: the Ornamented Suites for cello(37:43) other episodes (38:36) the art of ornamentation, recording the Bach album(43:45) lessons with Catharina Meints Caldwell(48:33) connecting with audiences, using social media(56:37) clip of Dirge and Deliverance by Dorothy Rudd Moore(58:00) Kermit Moore, Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, Amy Beach(01:04:23) Berceuse by Beach(01:10:25) 3rd Idyll op. 51 by Helen Crane(01:19:01) how athletic training helps with performance nerves

Join the conversation by letting us know what you think about the episode!It's time for the next installment of our Banned Books Series! This month's book is The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo. Published in 2018, The Poet X tells the story of a 15-year-old Dominican American girl finding her voice as she grows up and comes to terms with life, school, and family.Although The Poet X is classified as a Young Adult book there's more than enough substance for "not so young" adults to hold on to. Join us in the discussion and let us know what you thought of the book if you've already read it or let us know what has tempted you to pick it up if you haven't yet. About Elizabeth Acevedo:Elizabeth Acevedo was the 2022 Young People's Poet Laureate and the New York Times-bestselling author of The Poet X, which won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, the Pura Belpré Award, the Carnegie medal, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and the Walter Award. She is also the author of With the Fire on High—which was named a best book of the year by the New York Public Library, NPR, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal—and Clap When You Land, which was a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor book and a Kirkus finalist.She holds a BA in Performing Arts from The George Washington University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. Acevedo is also a National Poetry Slam Champion.Support the showBe part of the conversation by sharing your thoughts about this episode, what you may have learned, how the conversation affected you. You can reach Raquel and Jennifer on IG @madnesscafepodcast or by email at madnesscafepodcast@gmail.com.Share the episode with a friend and have your own conversation. And don't forget to rate and review the show wherever you listen!Thanks!

Mayor Eric Adams says he'll bypass the June 24th Democratic primary and run as an independent in November's general election, just one day after a judge dismissed his federal corruption case for good. Meanwhile, the New York Public Library's new Joan Didion archive is drawing researchers and fans from across the country. Plus, WNYC's Jon Campbell joins us to explain how Adams' decision could reshape the mayoral race.

This week, we're talking about the Boston Public Library, a beloved institution that started in two rooms and grew into a palace of learning. My guests Katherine Mitchell and Anna Fahey-Flynn tell me about BPL's history, how the library is changing with the times, and offer tips on making the most of your next visit. Plus, "Here Comes the Pizza!" Bok Bar reopens. Nick Castellanos has a favorite super hero. With origins at MIT, torpedo bats take MLB by storm. "Here comes the pizza!" plus a deep dive from ESPN. EBtM "Boston" versus Boston with Garrett Dash Nelson. New York Public Library on ice in Day After Tomorrow. Have feedback on this episode or ideas for upcoming topics? DM me on Instagram, email me, or send a voice memo.

In 1992 Bill Duke teamed up with Laurence Fishburne and Jeff Goldblum to create one of the best film noirs ever made and a masterpiece of Black cinema. Walter Greason and Tim Fielder join in to talk about it, the rise of hip hop, and the early 90s. About our guests:A native of Mississippi, Tim Fielder is an illustrator, cartoonist, animator and OG Afrofuturist. He is the founder of Dieselfunk Studios, an intermedia storytelling company, and is an educator for institutions such as the New York Film Academy and Howard University. Tim has served clients such as Marvel, Tri-Star Pictures, Ubisoft Entertainment, and the Village Voice, and is known for his TEDx Talk on Afrofuturism. He won the prestigious 2018 Glyph Award, and his work has been showcased in the Hammonds House Museum, Exit Art and NYU Gallatin Gallery. He attended Jackson State University, School of Visual Arts, and New York University. He lives in New York City.Walter Greason teaches American and world history, using media ecology, economics, and African diaspora studies. His areas of research include urban planning, Afrofuturism, and multimedia user experience design. He is an author, editor, and contributor to more than twenty books, mostly notably the award-winning books Suburban Erasure and The Black Reparations Project.  His work on the Timothy Thomas Fortune Cultural Center has garnered international acclaim for the innovative use of digital technology, leading to multiple urban revitalization projects in Minnesota, Florida, New Jersey, and Louisiana. He has written for or appeared as the feature guest on media outlets ranging from the Washington Post, USA Today, the Canadian Broadcast Channel, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Huffington Post, National Public Radio, Historians at the Movies, the New York Times Read Along, WURD Philadelphia, and Today with Dr. Kaye (WEEA, Baltimore). He was a Future Faculty Fellow at Temple University where he completed his Ph.D. in History and a Presidential Scholar at Villanova University where he studied History, English, Philosophy, Peace and Justice Studies, and Africana Studies. His most recent project, The Graphic History of Hip Hop, with Afrofuturist illustrator Tim Fielder, has been featured at the United Nations, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum for African American History and Culture, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Schomburg Center in the New York Public Library system, and San Diego Comic-Con in 2024.

Jay McInerney is a New York Times best selling author known for his breakout novel Bright Lights Big City. He also wrote the screenplay for the 1988 film adaption of Bright Lights Big City and co-wrote the screenplay for the 1998 film Gia, starring Angelina Jolie. In addition to his fiction work, McInerney was the wine columnist for House & Garden magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and currently writes the wine column for Town & Country magazine. His essays on wine have been collected in Bacchus & Me (2000) and A Hedonist in the Cellar (2006) and his book of short stories, titled How It Ended, was named one of the 10 best books of the year by The New York Times in 2009. McInernay has also been honored by the New York Public Library as a “Literary Lion” and won the James Beard MFK Fisher Award for Distinguished Writing.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Audio is a little wonky, but thanks for listening!Check out the Raphael Lemkin Collection via the New York Public Library⁠.

Mitch Horowitz is one of today's most literate voices of occultism, mysticism, and the unexplained. He has bylines in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, Time, and The Wall Street Journal, and appearances in Sundance-premiering movies, popular TV docuseries, and award-winning documentaries, as well as on CBS Sunday Morning, Dateline NBC, NPR's All Things Considered, and other major media. Mitch also worked for many years in publishing, including as a vice president at Penguin Random House where he was editor-in-chief of Tarcher/Penguin, an imprint dedicated to metaphysics.He now hosts the Discovery/HBO Max TV series, Alien Encounters: Fact or Fiction, and he appears regularly on seasons one and two of History's The UnBelievable with Dan Ackroyd and in numerous docuseries including MGM+'s BEYOND: UFOs and the Unknown. He is also the host of the podcast series Extraordinary Evidence: ESP Is Real out from SpectreVision. Mitch also hosted, cowrote, and produced a feature documentary about the occult classic The Kybalion directed by Emmy-nominee Ronni Thomas and shot on location in Egypt.Mitch is a former writer-in-residence at the New York Public Library and the PEN Award-winning and wildly prolific author of many books including Occult America, One Simple Idea, The Miracle Club, Modern Occultism, and his newest offering, Practical Magick: Ancient Tradition and Modern Practice which is out on March 25th and available for preorder now.On this episode, Mitch discusses his dual roles as an occult historian and practitioner, why self-expression and true desire are the keys to effective spellcasting, and how his belief in “anarchic magick” has led him to a happier and more fulfilling life.Pam also talks about the magic of wishes, and answers a listener question about staying protected as a public witch.Check out the video of this episode over on YouTube (and please like and subscribe to the channel while you're at it!)Donate to Pam's fundraiser for The ACLU hereGet 20% off DeleteMe here (not an official sponsor, just a personal recommendation from Pam. Disclosure: Pam does get a small referral fee for each registration.) Our sponsors for this episode are The Witch Summit, Ritual + Shelter, Mithras Candle, BetterHelp, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, and The Alchemist and the Academic podcastWe also have print-on-demand merch like Witch Wave shirts, sweatshirts, totes, stickers, and mugs available now here, and all sorts of other bewitching goodies available in the Witch Wave shop.And if you want more Witch Wave, please consider supporting us on Patreon to get access to detailed show notes, bonus Witch Wave Plus episodes, Pam's monthly online rituals, and more! That's patreon.com/witchwave

It's deep dive day here at Fated Mates and we're reading an absolute banger of a historical -- Julie Anne Long's fifth Pennyroyal Green book, What I Did for a Duke. We talk about great romance kisses, about age gaps and how they operate in books, about house parties and art and sacrifice and how sexy it is when someone actually sees you for who you are. If you haven't read this one yet, do yourself a favor and do it right now. It's so great.If you want more Fated Mates in your life, please join our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.The BooksWhat I Did for a Duke by Julie Anne Long The Pennyroyal Green SeriesShow NotesThe main building you think of when you think of the New York Public Library with the lions is officially called the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. From what I can tell, it didn't actually have anything to do with Andrew Carnegie, but he did donate $5 million to ensure that the New York Public Library had branch libraries in communities around the city. He also donated a lot of money to other things, that's a fun thing billionaires used to do. Read more about doing the forbidden kind of “romance stuff” in the library. Jen talked to the New York Public Library's Best New Romance List Committee Co-Chairs Kate Fais and Grace Loiacon back in February.In 2022, we recorded our “Break in case of emergency” episode, and it was in fact two sisters, Cait and Kara who requested the episode. PS: We are in emergency. Feel free to break those out now.Julie Anne Long's The Beast Takes a Bride was on our Best of 2024 episode. What I Did for a Duke is the 5th book in her Pennyroyal Green series. “It must have been a lie,” is what Jen's grandma Betty used to say if you lost your train of thought and couldn't remember what you were saying. This is a good speech from Crash Davis, the pitcher played by Kevin Costner in the 1988 movie Bull Durham (also, Nuke says “what's all that molecule stuff?” which is pretty funny considering the title of this episode).The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston had a Titian exhibition back in 2022 called Women, Myth and Power, and it seems like a thing Genevive would have liked it a lot.

Have you ever heard a song and were suddenly transported back in time? A memory of a school dance, a sporting event, or the memory of that song you listened to on repeat after a break-up. Imagine watching a movie without music, would it have the same impact? No! Music is a universal tool a “language” and there are instruments that date back tens of thousands of years. It has been a part of life for so long and often an unrecognized source for personal and professional development. In this beautiful and rich conversation, Sara Leila Sherman, who is a distinguished classical musician and educator, renowned for her work in making music accessible to young audiences through her children's concert series, Mozart for Munchkins, joins us. We discuss the idea of treating music as you would diet or exercise— something that is integral to your well-being. Sara shares how music can be used as part of a mindfulness practice as well as a tool to develop better habits. You'll hear how music is a way to foster connection with others and why it's good to expand our musical interests. She is the co-author of “Resonant Minds: The Transformative Power of Music, One Note at a Time” which you'll learn more about in this episode. Join Michele's Newsletter + Get a List of 52-Selfcare Tips Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@michelelamoureux Follow + Listen, + Review: APPLE PODCASTS Follow + Listen, + Review: SPOTIFY PODCASTS Website: https://mozartformunchkins.com/ Book: Resonant Minds: The Transformative Power of Music, One Note at a Time   Guest Bio: Sara Leila Sherman is a distinguished classical musician and educator, renowned for her work in making music accessible to young audiences through her children's concert series, Mozart for Munchkins, and the non-profit Little Mozart Foundation. Blending music and mindfulness, she has pioneered innovative approaches that empower educators and parents to use music as a tool for mindful learning and personal growth at esteemed institutions such as Lincoln Center Kids, The New York Public Library, and Hudson Yards to ensure music is available to all communities. She is the co-author of the upcoming book Resonant Minds: The Transformative Power of Music, One Note at a Time (foreword by Goldie Hawn; Bloomsbury; April 15th, 2025).

Matt Haig reads an excerpt from The Midnight Library, backed by an original Storybound remix with Robert Wynia, and sound design and arrangement by Jude Brewer. Robert Wynia is a founding member of the Portland band Floater. Known for their progressive concept albums, Floater is famous for incorporating stylized storytelling. Wynia also releases music under his own name and released his book Night Walks with its own accompanying soundtrack in 2020. Storybound comes to you from The Podglomerate and Lit Hub Radio. Season 4 is some of their most inspired work yet, so be sure to subscribe today on Apple Podcasts or wherever you tune in. Matt Haig is the author of 20 books including the #1 bestselling memoir, Reasons to Stay Alive, five novels – including How to Stop Time – and several award-winning children's books. His work has been translated into over 40 languages. His latest novel is The Midnight Library, a runaway, #1 bestseller and reader favorite of 2020. It was a Goodreads Choice Awards Best Fiction Book of 2020, a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Amazon, the New York Public Library, among many others. The New York Times said of the book, "An absorbing ... vision of limitless possibility, of new roads taken, of new lives lived, of a whole different world available to us somehow, somewhere, [perhaps] exactly what's wanted in these troubled and troubling times.” Stay calm and write on … [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] Show Notes: How NY Times Bestselling Author Matt Haig Writes MattHaig.com The Midnight Library: A Novel by Matt Haig (Amazon) Matt Haig Amazon author page Matt Haig on Instagram Matt Haig on Facebook Matt Haig on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Order The Memory Palace book now, dear listener. On Bookshop.org, on Amazon.com, on Barnes & Noble, or directly from Random House. Or order the audiobook at places like Libro.fm.The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Radiotopia is a collective of independently owned and operated podcasts that's a part of PRX, a not-for-profit public media company. If you'd like to directly support this show, you can make a donation at Radiotopia.fm/donate. I have recently launched a newsletter. You can subscribe to it at thememorypalacepodcast.substack.com. Music Pockets of Light by Ludomyr Melnyk All in Circles and Janvie by Shida Shahabi Between Trees by Akria Kosemura NotesThere are a million things to read about Stonewall, but the thing that I feel like deepened my understanding enough was The New York Public Library's The Stonewall Reader. Particularly the audiobook. Couldn't recommend it enough. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Internationally bestselling author, Matt Haig, spoke with me about how the novelist became an accidental "mental health expert," why writers need resilience, and the process behind The Midnight Library. "The only reader you're ever going to truly know ... is yourself." – Matt Haig Matt is the author of 20 books, including the #1 bestselling memoir Reasons to Stay Alive, five novels, including How to Stop Time, and several award-winning children's books. His work has been translated into over 40 languages. His latest novel is The Midnight Library, a runaway, #1 bestseller and reader favorite of 2020. It was a Goodreads Choice Awards Best Fiction Book of 2020, a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Amazon, the New York Public Library, among many others. The New York Times said of the book, "An absorbing ... vision of limitless possibility, of new roads taken, of new lives lived, of a whole different world available to us somehow, somewhere, [perhaps] exactly what's wanted in these troubled and troubling times.” Stay calm and write on … **Audio excerpted courtesy Penguin Random House Audio from The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, read by Carey Mulligan. [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Matt Haig and I discussed: His superhero origins and the blog post that became a book How to write "like no one's watching" Inconsistent routines and the power of deadlines Why writers need to surprise themselves How he got Carey Mulligan to record his audiobook And more! Show Notes: MattHaig.com The Midnight Library: A Novel by Matt Haig (Amazon) Matt Haig Amazon author page On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King Matt Haig on Instagram Matt Haig on Facebook Matt Haig on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In their 15 years on the scene, Spotify has reshaped the way that people listen to music. A new book explores what the streaming company did to get so powerful, and how it is continuing to alter the music landscape, often in ways that disadvantage the artists it claims to support. Journalist Liz Pelly discusses the reporting from her book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist. Liz Pelly will be in conversation with WNYC's John Schaefer at the New York Public Library's Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library on March 11.

Laurie Anderson is an artist and performer who came to fame in the UK with her 1981 hit O Superman. Her work spans music, film and multimedia projects which interrogate our relationship with technology and tell stories about the world we live in.She was born in Chicago in 1947, the second-oldest of eight children, and started learning the violin when she was five. She studied Art History at Barnard College in New York and took a Masters in Sculpture at Columbia University.In the 1970s she was part of the downtown New York art scene and her friends and contemporaries included Philip Glass, Gordon Matta-Clark and the choreographer and dancer Trisha Brown. One of Laurie's first performance art pieces featured a symphony played by car horns.In 1992 she met Lou Reed, the singer and songwriter who fronted the Velvet Underground. They were together for 21 years until his death in 2013. Laurie is the head of Lou's archive which is at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and open to anyone who wants to learn more about his musical adventures.In 2024 Laurie was awarded a Lifetime Achievement award at the Grammys and a Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication. DISC ONE: Pony Time - Chubby Checker DISC TWO: Gracias a la vida - Violetta Parra DISC THREE: Tusen Tankar - Triakel DISC FOUR: Part 1 - Philip Glass Ensemble, conducted by Michael Riesman DISC FIVE: Flibberty Jib - Ken Nordine with the Fred Katz Group DISC SIX: Doin' the Things That We Want To - Lou Reed DISC SEVEN: Washington, D.C - The Magnetic Fields DISC EIGHT: Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago – Soul Coughing BOOK CHOICE: Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov LUXURY ITEM: A dog collar CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Gracias a la vida - Violetta Parra Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Paula McGinley