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Ray D. Madoff is a professor at Boston College Law School and the cofounder and director of the Boston College Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good. She is the author of Immortality and the Law: The Rising Power of the American Dead and lead author of The Practical Guide to Estate Planning. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Review of Books, among other outlets. Get a copy of her brilliant book The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. He is the host of the podcast Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci. A graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Law School, he lives in Manhasset, Long Island.

Susannah Glickman, an assistant professor of history at Stony Brook University who specializes in the political economy of computation and information, sat down with Lawfare Associate Editor Olivia Manes to discuss the role of defense tech in the second Trump administration. Susannah unpacked her recent article in the New York Review of Books tracing the historical relationship between tech, defense, and the U.S. government, and explained how defense tech firms which have benefitted from U.S. industrial policy are now undermining it for the sake of short-term profits. To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My conversation with Waj starts at about 45 mins in to today's show after headlines and clips - "The Shit Show" Subscribe and Watch Interviews LIVE : On YOUTUBE.com/StandUpWithPete ON SubstackStandUpWithPete Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. This show is Ad free and fully supported by listeners like you! Venmo at the bottom! Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 750 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous soul Subscribe to Waj Substack Channel "The Left Hook" Check out his new show on youtube 'America Unhinged,' with Francesca Fiorentini and Wajahat Ali - Zeteo's new weekly show following Trump's first 100 days in office. Wajahat Ali is a Daily Beast columnist, public speaker, recovering attorney, and tired dad of three cute kids. Get his book Go Back To Where You Came From: And, Other Helpful Recommendations on Becoming American which will be published in January 2022 by Norton. He believes in sharing stories that are by us, for everyone: universal narratives told through a culturally specific lens to entertain, educate and bridge the global divides. Listen to Waj and DAnielle Moodie on Democracy-ish  He frequently appears on television and podcasts for his brilliant, incisive, and witty political commentary. Born in the Bay Area, California to Pakistani immigrant parents, Ali went to school wearing Husky pants and knowing only three words of English. He graduated from UC Berkeley with an English major and became a licensed attorney. He knows what it feels like to be the token minority in the classroom and the darkest person in a boardroom. Like Spiderman, he's often had the power and responsibility of being the cultural ambassador of an entire group of people, those who are often marginalized, silenced, or reduced to stereotypes. His essays, interviews, and reporting have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and New York Review of Books. Ali has spoken at many organizations, from Google to Walmart-Jet to Princeton University to the United Nations to the Chandni Indian-Pakistani Restaurant in Newark, California, and his living room in front of his three kids. On YOUTUBE.com/StandUpWithPete ON SubstackStandUpWithPete Pete on Blue Sky Pete on Threads Pete on Tik Tok Pete on YouTube  Pete on Twitter Pete On Instagram Pete Personal FB page Stand Up with Pete FB page   Gift a Subscription https://www.patreon.com/PeteDominick/gift Send Pete $ Directly on Venmo

In this Write Big session of the #amwriting podcast, host Jennie Nash welcomes Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Jennifer Senior for a powerful conversation about finding, knowing, and claiming your voice.Jennifer shares how a medication once stripped away her ability to think in metaphor—the very heart of her writing—and what it was like to get that voice back. She and Jennie talk about how voice strengthens over time, why confidence and ruthless editing matter, and what it feels like when you're truly writing in flow.It's an inspiring reminder that your voice is your greatest strength—and worth honoring every time you sit down to write.TRANSCRIPT BELOW!THINGS MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:* Jennifer's Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross: Can't Sleep? You're Not Alone* Atlantic feature story: What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind* Atlantic feature story: The Ones We Sent Away* Atlantic feature story: It's Your Friends Who Break Your Heart* The New York Times article: Happiness Won't Save You* Heavyweight the podcastSPONSORSHIP MESSAGEHey, it's Jennie Nash. And at Author Accelerator, we believe that the skills required to become a great book coach and build a successful book coaching business can be taught to people who come from all kinds of backgrounds and who bring all kinds of experiences to the work. But we also know that there are certain core characteristics that our most successful book coaches share. If you've been curious about becoming a book coach, and 2026 might be the year for you, come take our quiz to see how many of those core characteristics you have. You can find it at bookcoaches.com/characteristics-quiz.EPISODE TRANSCRIPTJennie NashHi, I'm Jennie Nash, and you're listening to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast. This is a Write Big Session, where I'm bringing you short episodes about the mindset shifts that help you stop playing small and write like it matters. This one might not actually be that short, because today I'm talking to journalist Jennifer Senior about the idea of finding and knowing and claiming your voice—a rather big part of writing big. Jennifer Senior is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2022 and was a finalist again in 2024. Before that, she spent five years at The New York Times as both a daily book critic and a columnist for the opinion page, and nearly two decades at New York Magazine. She's also the author of a bestselling parenting book, and frequently appears on NPR and other news shows. Welcome, Jennifer. Thanks for joining us.Jennifer SeniorThank you for having me. Hey, I got to clarify just one thing.Jennie NashOh, no.Jennifer SeniorAll Joy and No Fun is by no means a parenting book. I can't tell you the first thing about how to raise your kids. It is all about how kids change their parents. It's all like a sociological look at who we become and why we are—so our lives become so vexed. I like, I would do these book talks, and at the end, everybody would raise their hand and be like, “How do I get my kid into Harvard?” You know, like, the equivalent obviously—they wouldn't say it that way. I'd be like; I don't really have any idea, or how to get your kid to eat vegetables, or how to get your kid to, like, stop talking back. But anyway, I just have to clarify that, because every time...Jennie NashPlease, please—Jennifer SeniorSomeone says that, I'm like, “Noooo.” Anyway, it's a sociology book. Ah, it's an ethnography, you know. But anyway, it doesn't matter.Jennie NashAll right, like she said, you guys—not what I said.Jennifer SeniorI'm not correcting you. It came out 11 years ago. There were no iPads then, or social media. I mean, forget it. It's so dated anyway. But like, I just...Jennie NashThat's so funny. So the reason that we're speaking is that I heard you recently on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, where you were talking about an Atlantic feature story that you wrote called “Why Can't Americans Sleep?” And this was obviously a reported piece, but also a really personal piece and you're talking about your futile attempts to fall asleep and the latest research into insomnia and medication and therapy that you used to treat it, and we'll link to that article and interview in the show notes. But the reason that we're talking, and that in the middle of this conversation, which—which I'm listening to and I'm riveted by—you made this comment, and it was a little bit of a throwaway comment in the conversation, and, you know, then the conversation moved on. But you talked about how you were taking a particular antidepressant you'd been prescribed, and this was the quote you said: “It blew out all the circuitry that was responsible for generating metaphors, which is what I do as a writer. So it made my writing really flat.” And I was just like, hold up. What was that like? What happened? What—everything? So that's why we're talking. So… can we go back to the very beginning? If you can remember—Jess Lahey actually told me that when she was teaching fifth and sixth grade, that's around the time that kids begin to grasp this idea of figurative language and metaphor and such. Do you remember learning how to write like that, like write in metaphor and simile and all such things?Jennifer SeniorOh, that's funny. Do I remember it? I remember them starting to sort of come unbidden in my—like they would come unbidden in my head starting maybe in my—the minute I entered college, or maybe in my teens. Actually, I had that thing where some people have this—people who become writers have, like, a narrator's voice in their head where they're actually looking at things and describing them in the third person. They're writing them as they witness the world. That went away, that narrator's voice, which I also find sort of fascinating. But, like, I would say that it sort of emerged concurrently. I guess I was scribbling a little bit of, like, short story stuff, or I tried at least one when I was a senior in high school. So that was the first time maybe that, like, I started realizing that I had a flair for it. I also—once I noticed that, I know in college I would make, you know, when I started writing for the alternative weekly and I was reviewing things, particularly theater, I would make a conscientious effort to come up with good metaphors, and, like, 50% of them worked and 50% of them didn't, because if you ever labor over a metaphor, there's a much lower chance of it working. I mean, if you come—if you revisit it and go, oh, that's not—you know, that you can tell if it's too precious. But now if I labor over a metaphor, I don't bother. I stop. You know, it has to come instantaneously or...Jennie NashOr that reminds me of people who write with the thesaurus open, like that's going to be good, right? That's not going to work. So I want to stick with this, you know, so that they come into your head, you recognize that, and just this idea of knowing, back in the day, that you could write like that—you… this was a thing you had, like you used the word “flair,” like had a flair for this. Were there other signs or things that led you to the work, like knowing you were good, or knowing when something was on the page that it was right, like, what—what is that?Jennifer SeniorIt's that feeling of exhilaration, but it's also that feeling of total bewilderment, like you've been struck by something—something just blew through you and you had nothing to do with it. I mean, it's the cliché: here I am saying the metaphors are my superpower, which my editors were telling me, and I'm about to use a cliché, which is that you feel like you're a conduit for something and you have absolutely nothing to do with it. So I would have that sense that it had almost come without conscious thought. That was sort of when I knew it was working. It's also part of being in a flow state. It's when you're losing track of time and you're just in it. And the metaphors are—yeah, they're effortless. By the way, my brain is not entirely fogged in from long COVID, but I have noticed—and at first I didn't really notice any decrements in cognition—but recently, I have. So I'm wondering now if I'm having problems with spontaneous metaphor generation. It's a little bit disconcerting. And I do feel like all SSRIs—and I'm taking one now, just because, not just because long COVID is depressing, but because I have POTS, which is like a—it's Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, and that's a very common sequela from long COVID, and it wipes out your plasma serotonin. So we have to take one anyway, we POTS patients. So I found that nicotine often helped with my long COVID, which is a thing—like a nicotine patch—and that made up for it. It almost felt like I was doping [laughing]. It made my writing so much better. But it's been...Jennie NashWait, wait, wait, this is so interesting.Jennifer SeniorI know…it's really weird. I would never have guessed that so much of my writing would be dampened by Big Pharma. I mean—but now with the nicotine patches, I was like, oh, now I get why writers are smoking until into the night, writing. Like, I mean, and I always wished that I did, just because it looked cool, you know? I could have just been one of those people with their Gitanes, or however you pronounce it, but, yeah.Jennie NashWow. So I want to come—I want to circle back to this in a minute, but let's get to the first time—well, it sounds like the first time that happened where you were prescribed an antidepressant and—and you recognized that you lost the ability to write in metaphor. Can you talk about—well, first of all, can you tell us what the medication was?Jennifer SeniorYeah, it was Paxil, which is actually notorious for that. And at the top—which I only subsequently discovered—those were in the days where there were no such things as Reddit threads or anything like that. It was 1999… I guess, no, eight, but so really early. That was the bespoke antidepressant at the time, thought to be more nuanced. I think it's now fallen out of favor, because it's also a b***h to wean off of. But it was kind of awful, just—I would think, and nothing would come. It was the strangest thing. For—there's all this static electricity usually when you write, right? And there's a lot of free associating that goes on that, again, feels a little involuntary. You know, you start thinking—it's like you've pulled back the spring in the pinball machine, and suddenly the thing is just bouncing around everywhere, and the ball wasn't bouncing around. Nothing was lighting up. It was like a dis… it just was strange, to be able to summon nothing.Jennie NashWow. So you—you just used this killer metaphor to describe that.Jennifer SeniorYeah, that was spontaneous.Jennie NashRight? So—so you said first, you said static, static energy, which—which is interesting.Jennifer SeniorYeah, it's... [buzzing sound]Jennie NashYeah. Yeah. Because it's noisy. You're talking about...Jennie SeniorOh, but it's not disruptive noise. Sorry, that might seem like it's like unwanted crackling, like on your television. I didn't really—yeah, maybe that's the wrong metaphor, actually, maybe the pinball is sort of better, that all you need is to, you know, psych yourself up, sit down, have your caffeine, and then bam, you know? But I didn't mean static in that way.Jennie NashI understood what you meant. There's like a buzzy energy.Jennifer SeniorYeah, right. It's fizz.Jennie NashFizz... that's so good. So you—you recognized that this was gone.Jennifer SeniorSo gone! Like the TV was off, you know?Jennie NashAnd did you...?Jennifer SeniorOr the machine, you know, was unplugged? I mean, it's—Jennie NashYeah, and did you? I'm just so curious about the part of your brain that was watching another part of your brain.Jennifer Senior[Laughing] You know what? I think... oh, that's really interesting. But are you watching, or are you just despairing because there's nothing—I mean, I'm trying to think if that's the right...Jennie NashBut there's a part of your brain that's like, this part of my brain isn't working.Jennifer SeniorRight. I'm just thinking how much metacognition is involved in— I mean, if you forget a word, are you really, like, staring at that very hard, or are you just like, s**t, what's the word? If you're staring at Jack Nicholson on TV, and you're like, why can't I remember that dude's name?Multiple speakers[Both laughing]Jennifer SeniorWhich happens to me far more regularly now, [unintelligible]… than it used to, you know? I mean, I don't know. There is a part of you that's completely alarmed, but, like, I guess you're right. There did come a point where I—you're right, where I suddenly realized, oh, there's just been a total breakdown here. It's never happening. Like, what is going on? Also, you know what would happen? Every sentence was a grind, like...Jennie NashOkay, so—okay, so...Jennifer Senior[Unintelligible]... Why is this so effortful? When you can't hold the previous sentence in your head, suddenly there's been this lapse in voice, right? Because, like, if every sentence is an effort and you're starting from nothing again, there's no continuity in how you sound. So, I mean, it was really dreadful. And by the way, if I can just say one thing, sorry now that—Jennie NashNo, I love it!Jennifer SeniorYeah. Sorry. I'm just—now you really got me going. I'm just like, yeah, I know. I'm sort of on a tear and a partial rant, which is Prozac—there came a point where, like, every single SSRI was too activating for me to sleep. But it was, of course, a problem, because being sleepless makes you depressed, so you need something to get at your depression. And SNRIs, like the Effexor's and the Cymbalta's, are out of the question, because those are known to be activating. So I kept vainly searching for SSRIs, and Prozac was the only one that didn't—that wound up not being terribly activating, besides Paxil, but it, too, was somewhat deadening, and I wrote my whole book on it.Jennie NashWow!Jennifer SeniorIt's not all metaphor.Multiple Speakers[both laughing]Jennifer SeniorIt's not all me and no—nothing memorable, you know? I mean, it's—it's kind of a problem. It was—I can't really bear to go back and look at it.Jennie NashWow.Jennie NashSo—so the feeling...Jennifer SeniorI'm really giving my book the hard sell, like it's really a B plus in terms of its pro…—I mean, you know, it wasn't.Jennie NashSo you—you—you recognize its happening, and what you recognize is a lack of fizzy, buzzy energy and a lack of flow. So I just have to ask now, presumably—well, there's long COVID now, but when you don't have—when you're writing in your full powers, do you—is it always in a state of flow? Like, if you're not in a state of flow, do you get up and go do something else? Like, what—how does that function in the life of a writer on a deadline?Jennifer SeniorOK. Well, am I always in a state of flow? No! I mean, flow is not—I don't know anyone who's good at something who just immediately can be in flow every time.Jennie NashYeah.Jennifer SeniorIt's still magic when it happens. You know, when I was in flow almost out of the gate every day—the McIlvaine stories—like, I knew when I hit send, this thing is damn good. I knew when I hit send on a piece that was not as well read, but is like my second or third favorite story. I wrote something for The New York Times called “Happiness Wont Save You,” about a pioneer in—he wrote one of the foundational studies in positive psychology about lottery winners and paraplegics, and how lottery winners are pretty much no happier than random controls found in a phone book, and paraplegics are much less unhappy than you might think, compared to controls. It was really poorly designed. It would never withstand the scrutiny of peer review today. But anyway, this guy was, like, a very innovative thinker. His name was Philip Brickman, and in 1982 at 38 years old, he climbed—he got—went—he found his way to the roof of the tallest building in Ann Arbor and jumped, and took his own life. And I was in flow pretty much throughout writing that one too.Jennie NashWow. So the piece you're referring to, that you referred to previous to that, is What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind, which was a feature story in The Atlantic. It's the one you won the—Pul…Pulitzer for? It's now made into a book. It has, like...Jennifer SeniorAlthough all it is like, you know, the story between...Jennie NashCovers, right?Jennifer SeniorYeah. Yeah. Because—yeah, yeah.Jennie NashBut—Jennifer SeniorWhich is great, because then people can have it, rather than look at it online, which—and it goes on forever—so yeah.Jennie NashSo this is a piece—the subtitle is Grief, Conspiracy Theories, and One Family's Search for Meaning in the Two Decades Since 9/11—and I actually pulled a couple of metaphors from that piece, because I re-read it knowing I was going to speak to you… and I mean, it was just so beautifully written. It's—it's so beautifully structured, everything, everything. But here's a couple of examples for our listeners. You're describing Bobby, who was a 26-year-old who died in 9/11, who was your brother's college roommate.Jennifer SeniorAnd at that young adult—they—you can't afford New York. They were living together for eight years. It was four in college, and four—Jennie NashWow.Jennifer SeniorIn New York City. They had a two-bedroom... yeah, in a cheaper part... well, to the extent that there are cheaper parts in...Jennie NashYeah.Jennifer SeniorThe way over near York Avenue, east side, yeah.Jennie NashSo you write, “When he smiled, it looked for all the world like he'd swallowed the moon.” And you wrote, “But for all Bobby's hunger and swagger, what he mainly exuded, even during his college years, was warmth, decency, a corkscrew quirkiness.” So just that kind of language—a corkscrew quirkiness, like he'd swallowed the moon—that, it's that the piece is full of that. So that's interesting, that you felt in flow with this other piece you described and this one. So how would you describe—so you describe metaphors as things that just come—it just—it just happens. You're not forcing it—you can't force it. Do you think that's true of whatever this ineffable thing of voice—voices—as well?Jennifer SeniorOh, that's a good question. My voice got more distinct as I got older—it gets better. I think a lot of people's—writers'—powers wax. Philip Roth is a great example of that. Colette? I mean, there are people whose powers really get better and better, and I've gotten better with more experience. But do you start with the voice? I think you do. I don't know if you can teach someone a voice.Jennie NashSo when you say you've gotten better, what does that mean to you?Jennifer SeniorYeah. Um, I'm trying to think, like, do I write with more swing? Do I—just with more confidence because I'm older? Being a columnist…which is the least creative medium…Jennie NashYeah.Jennifer SeniorSeven hundred and fifty words to fit onto—I had a dedicated space in print. When David Leonhardt left, I took over the Monday spot, during COVID. So it's really, really—but what it forces you to do is to be very—your writing becomes lean, and it becomes—and structure is everything. So this does not relate to voice, but my—I was always pretty good at structure anyway. I think if you—I think movies and radio, podcasts, are, like, great for structure. Storytelling podcasts are the best thing to—I think I unconsciously emulate them. The McIlvaine story has a three-act structure. There's also—I think the podcast Heavyweight is sublime in that way.Jennie NashIs that Roxane Gay?Jennifer SeniorNo, no, no, no.Jennie NashOh, it's, um—Jennifer SeniorIt's Jonathan Goldstein.Jennie NashYes, got it. I'm going to write that down and link to that in our show notes.Jennifer SeniorIt's... I'm trying to think of—because, you know, his is, like, narratives, and it's—it's got a very unusual premise. But voice, voice, voice—well, I, you know, I worked on making my metaphors better in the beginning. I worked on noticing things, you know, and I worked on—I have the—I'm the least visual person alive. I mean, this is what's so interesting. Like, I failed to notice once that I had sat for an hour and a half with a woman who was missing an arm. I mean, I came back to the office and was talking—this is Barbara Epstein, who was a storied editor of The New York Review of Books, the story editor, along with Bob Silver. And I was talking to Mike Tomasky, who was our, like, city politic editor at the time. And I said to him, I just had this one—I knew she knew her. And he said, was it awkward? Was—you know, with her having one arm and everything? And I just stared at him and went one arm? I—I am really oblivious to stuff. And yet visual metaphors are no problem with me. Riddle me that, Batman. I don't know why that is. But I can, like, summon them in my head, and so I worked at it for a while, when my editors were responsive to it. Now they come more easily, so that seems to maybe just be a facility. I started noticing them in other people's writing. So Michael Ondaatje —in, I think it was In the Skin of a Lion, but maybe it was The English Patient. I've read, like, every book of his, like I've, you know— Running… was it Running in the Family? Running with the Family? I think it was Running in the—his memoir. And, I mean, doesn't—everything. Anil's Ghost—he— you know, that was it The Ballad of Billy the Kid? [The Collected Works of Billy the Kid] Anyway, I can go on and on. He had one metaphor talking about the evening being as serene as ink. And it was then that I realized that metaphors without effort often—and—or is that a simile? That's a simile.Jennie NashLike—or if it's “like” or “as,” it's a simile.Jennifer SeniorYeah. So I'm pretty good with similes, maybe more than metaphors. But... serene as ink. I realized that what made that work is that ink is one syllable. There is something about landing on a word with one syllable that sounds like you did not work particularly hard at it. You just look at it and keep going. And I know that I made a real effort to make my metaphors do that for a while, and I still do sometimes. Anything more than that can seem labored.Jennie NashOh, but that's so interesting. So you—you noticed in other people what worked and what you liked, and then tried to fold that into your own work.Jennifer SeniorYeah.Jennie NashSo does that mean you might noodle on—like, you have the structure of the metaphor or simile, but you might noodle on the word—Jennifer SeniorThe final word?Jennie NashThe final word.Jennifer SeniorYeah. Yeah, the actual simile, or whatever—yeah, I guess it's a simile—yeah, sometimes. Sometimes they—like I said, they come unbidden. I think I have enough experience now—which may make my voice better—to know what's crap. And I also, by the way, I'll tell you what makes your voice better: just being very willing to hit Select Alt, Delete. You know, there's more where that came from. I am a monster of self-editing. I just—I have no problem doing it. I like to do it. I like to be told when things are s**t. I think that improves your voice, because you can see it on the page.Jennie NashYeah.Jennifer SeniorAnd also, I think paying attention to other people's writing, you know, I did more and more of that, you know, reverse engineering stuff, looking at how they did stuff as I got older, so...Jennie NashSo I was going to ask a question, which now maybe you already answered, but the question was going to be… you said that you're—you feel like you're getting better as a writer as you got older. And you—you said that was due to experience. And I was going to ask, is it, or is it due to getting older? You know, is there something about literally living more years that makes you better, or, you know, like, is wisdom something that you just get, or is it something you work for? But I think what I'm hearing is you're saying you have worked to become the kind of writer who knows, you know, what you just said—you delete stuff, it comes again. But tell me if—you know, you welcome the kind of tough feedback, because you know that makes you better. You know, this sort of real effort to become better, it sounds like that's a practice you have. Is that—is that right?Jennifer SeniorOh yeah. I mean, well, let's do two things on that, please. I so easily lose my juju these days that, like, you've got to—if you can put a, you know, oh God, I'm going to use a cliché again—if you can put a pin in or bookmark that, the observation about, you know, harsh feedback. I want to come back to that. But yes, one of the things that I was going to keep—when I said that I have the confidence now, I also was going to say that I have the wisdom, but I had too many kind of competing—Jennie NashYeah. Yeah.Jennifer SeniorYou know, were running at once, and I, you know, many trains on many tracks—Jennie NashYeah, yeah.Jennifer Senior…about to leave, so…, Like, I had to sort of hop on one. But, like, the—the confidence and wisdom, yes, and also, like, I'll tell you something: in the McIlvaine piece, it may have been the first time I did, like, a narrative nonfiction. I told a story. There was a time when I would have hid behind research on that one.Jennie NashOoh, and did you tell a story. It was the—I remember reading that piece when it first came out, and there you're introducing, you know, this—the situation. And then there's a moment, and it comes very quickly at the top of the piece, where you explain your relationship to the protagonist of the story. And there's a—there's just a moment of like, oh, we're—we're really in something different here. There's really—is that feel of, this is not a reported story, this is a lived story, and that there's so many layers of power, I mean, to the story itself, but obviously the way that you—you present it, so I know exactly what you're talking about.Jennifer SeniorYeah, and by the way, I think writing in the first person, which I've been doing a lot of lately, is not something I would have done until now. Probably because I am older and I feel like I've earned it. I have more to say. I've been through more stuff. It's not, like, with the same kind of narcissism or adolescent—like, I want to get this out, you know. It's more searching, I think, and because I've seen more, and also because I've had these pent up stories that I've wanted to tell for a long time. And also I just don't think I would have had the balls, you know.Jennie NashRight.Jennifer SeniorSo some of it is—and I think that that's part of—you can write better in your own voice. If it's you writing about you, you're—there's no better authority, you know? So your voice comes out.Jennie NashRight.Jennifer SeniorBut I'm trying to think of also—I would have hid behind research and talked about theories of grief. And when I wrote, “It's the damnedest thing, the dead abandon you, and then you abandon the dead,” I had blurted that out loud when I was talking to, actually, not Bobby's brother, which is the context in which I wrote it, but to Bobby's—I said that, it's, like, right there on the tape—to his former almost fiancée. And I was thinking about that line, that I let it stand. I didn't actually then rush off and see if there was a body of literature that talked about the guilt that the living feel about letting go of their memories. But I would have done that at one point. I would have turned it into this... because I was too afraid to just let my own observations stand. But you get older and you're like, you know what? I'm smart enough to just let that be mine. Like, assume...Jennie NashRight.Jennifer SeniorIt's got to be right. But can we go back, also, before I forget?Jennie NashYeah, we're going to go back to harsh, but—but I would just want to use your cliché, put a pin in what you said, because you've said so many important things— that there's actual practice of getting better, and then there's also wisdom of—of just owning, growing into, embracing, which are two different things, both so important. So I just wanted to highlight that you've gone through those two things. So yes, let's go back to—I said harsh, and maybe I miss—can...misrepresenting what you meant.Jennifer SeniorYou may not have said that. I don't know what you said.Jennie NashNo, I did, I did.Jennifer SeniorYou did, okay, yeah, because I just know that it was processed as a harsh—oh no, totally. Like, I was going to say to you that—so there was a part of my book, my book, eventually, I just gave one chapter to each person in my life whom I thought could, like, assess it best, and one of them, so this friend—I did it on paper. He circled three paragraphs, and he wrote, and I quote, “Is this just a shitty way of saying...?” And then I was like, thank God someone caught it, if it was shitty. Oh my God. And then—and I was totally old enough to handle it, you know, I was like 44, whatever, 43. And then, who was it? Someone else—oh, I think I gave my husband the intro, and he wrote—he circled a paragraph and just wrote, “Ugh.” Okay, Select Alt, Delete, redo. You know, like, what are you going to do with that? That's so unambiguous. It's like, you know—and also, I mean, when you're younger, you argue. When you're older, you never quarrel with Ugh. Or Is this...Jennie NashRight, you're just like, okay, yep.Jennifer SeniorYeah. And again, you—you've done it enough that, you know, there's so much more where that came from.Jennie NashYeah.Jennifer SeniorWhy cling to anything that someone just, I don't know, had this totally allergic reaction to? Like, you know, if my husband broke out in a hive.Jennie NashYeah. So, circling back to the—the storyline of—you took this medication, you lost your ability to write in this way, you changed medications, presumably, you got it back. What did it feel like to get it back? Did you—do you remember that?Jennifer SeniorOh God, yes, it was glorious.Jennie NashReally?!Jennifer SeniorOh, you don't feel like yourself. I think that—I mean, I think there are many professions that are intertwined with identity. They may be the more professional—I'm sorry, the more creative professions. But not always, you know. And so if your writing voice is gone, and it's—I mean, so much of writing is an expression of your interior, if not life, then, I don't know some kind of thought process and something that you're working out. To have that drained out of you, for someone to just decant all the life out of your—or something to decant all the life out of your writing, it's—it's, I wouldn't say it's traumatic, that's totally overstating it, but it's—it's a huge bummer. It's, you know, it's depressing.Jennie NashWell, the word glorious, that's so cool. So to feel that you got back your—the you-ness of your voice was—was glorious. I mean, that's—that's amazing.Jennifer SeniorWhat—if I can just say, I wrote a feature, right, that then, like, I remember coming off of it, and then I wrote a feature that won the News Women's Club of New York story for best feature that year. Like, I didn't realize that those are kind of hard to win, and not like I won... I think I've won one since. But, like, that was in, like, 99 or something. I mean, like, you know, I don't write a whole lot of things that win stuff, until recently, you know. There was, like, a real kind of blackout period where, you know, I mean, but like—which I think, it probably didn't have to do with the quality of my writing. I mean, there was—but, I mean, you know, I wasn't writing any of the stuff that floated to the tippy top, and, like, I think that there was some kind of explosion thereof, like, all the, again, stuff that was just desperate to come out. I think there was just this volcanic outpouring.Jennie NashSo you're saying now you are winning things, which is indeed true. I mean, Pulitzer Prizes among them. Do you think that that has to do with this getting better? The wisdom, the practice, the glorious having of your abilities? Or, I guess what I'm asking is, like, is luck a part of—a part of all that? Is it just, it just happens? Or do you think there's some reason that it's happening? You feel that your writing is that powerful now?Jennifer SeniorWell, luck is definitely a part of it, because The Atlantic is the greatest place to showcase your feature writing. It gets so much attention, even though I think fewer people probably read that piece about Bobby McIlvaine than would have read any of my columns on any given day. The kind of attention was just so different. And it makes sense in a funny way, because it was 13,600 words or something. I mean, it was so long, and columns are 750 words. But, like, I think that I just lucked out in terms of the showcase. So that's definitely a part of it. And The Atlantic has the machinery to, you know, and all these dedicated, wonderful publicity people who will make it possible for people to read it, blah, blah, blah. So there's that. If you're older, you know everyone in the business, so you have people amplifying your work, they're suddenly reading it and saying, hey, everybody read it. It was before Twitter turned to garbage. Media was still a way to amplify it. It's much harder now, so passing things along through social media has become a real problem. But at that moment, it was not—Jennie NashYeah.Jennifer SeniorSo that was totally luck. Also, I wonder if it was because I was suddenly writing something from in the first person, and my voice was just better that way. And I wouldn't have had, like, the courage, you know?Jennie NashYeah.Jennifer SeniorAnd also, you're a book critic, which is what I was at The Times. And you certainly are not writing from the first person. And as a columnist, you're not either.Jennie NashYeah.Jennifer SeniorSo, you know, those are very kind of constricted forms, and they're also not—there are certainly critics who win Pulitzers. I don't think I was good enough at it. I was good, but it was not good enough. I could name off the top of my head, like, so many critics who were—who are—who haven't even won anything yet. Like Dwight Garner really deserves one. Why has he not won a Pulitzer? He's, I think, the best writer—him and Sophie Gilbert, who keeps coming close. I don't get it, like, what the hell?Jennie NashDo you—as a—as a reader of other people's work, I know you—you mentioned Michael Ondaatje that you'd studied—study him. But do you just recognize when somebody else is on their game? Like, do you recognize the voice or the gloriousness of somebody else's work? Can you just be like, yeah, that...?Jennifer SeniorWell, Philip Roth, sentence for sentence. Martin Amis, even more so—I cannot get over the originality of each of his sentences and the wide vocabulary from which he recruits his words, and, like, maybe some of that is just being English. I think they just get better, kind of more comprehensive. They read more comprehensively. And I always tell people, if they want to improve their voice, they should read the Victorians, like that [unintelligible]. His also facility with metaphor, I don't think, is without equal. The thing is, I can't stand his fiction. I just find it repellent. But his criticism is bangers and his memoirs are great, so I love them.Jennie NashYeah.Jennifer SeniorSo I really—I read him very attentively, trying to think of, like, other people whose kind of...Jennie NashI guess I was—I was getting at more... like, genius recognizes genius, that con... that concept, like, when you know you can do this and write in this way from time to time anyway, you can pull it off.Jennifer SeniorYeah, genius as in—I wouldn't—we can't go there.Jennie NashWell, that's the—that's the cliché, right? But, like...Jennifer SeniorOh no, I know, I know. Game—game, game recognizes game.Jennie NashGame recognizes game is a better way of saying it. Like, do you see—that's actually what the phrase is. I don't know where I came up with genius, but...Jennifer SeniorNo, it's fine. You can stick anything in that template, you know—evil recognizes evil, I mean, you know, it's like a...Jennie NashYeah. Do you see it? Do you see it? Like, you can see it in other people?Jennifer SeniorSure. Oh yeah, I see it.Jennie NashYeah.Jennifer SeniorI mean, you're just talking about among my contemporaries, or just as it...Jennie NashJust like anything, like when you pick up a book or you read an article or even listen to a storytelling pack podcast, that sense of being in the hands of somebody who's on it.Jennifer SeniorYeah, I think that Jonathan Goldstein—I mean, I think that the—the Heavyweight Podcast, for sure, is something—and more than that, it's—it's storytelling structure, it's just that—I think that anybody who's a master at structure would just look at that show and be like, yeah, that show nails it each and every time.Jennie NashI've not listened, but I feel like I should end our time together. I would talk to you forever about this, but I always like to leave our listeners with something specific to reflect or practice or do. And is there anything related to metaphor or practicing, finding your voice, owning your voice, that you would suggest for—for folks? You've already suggested a lot.Jennifer SeniorRead the Victorians.Jennie NashAwesome. Any particular one that you would say start with?Jennifer SeniorYeah, you know what? I find Dickens rough sledding. I like his, you know, dear friend Wilkie Collins. I think No Name is one of the greatest books ever. I would read No Name.Jennie NashAmazing. And I will add, go read Jennifer's work. We'll link to a bunch of it in the show notes. Study her and—and watch what she does and learn what she does—that there it is, a master at work, and that's what I would suggest. So thank you for joining us and having this amazing discussion.Jennifer SeniorThis has been super fun.Jennie NashAnd for our listeners, until next time, stop playing small and write like it matters.NarratorThe Hashtag AmWriting Podcast is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

The upcoming Chicago Review of Architecture will be produced in collaboration with the New York Review of Architecture.The magazine aims to give a critical eye  to the architecture around us including the politics of it all. The 21st Show is Illinois' statewide weekday public radio talk show, connecting Illinois and bringing you the news, culture, and stories that matter to the 21st state. Have thoughts on the show or one of our episodes, or want to share an idea for something we should talk about? Send us an email: talk@21stshow.org. If you'd like to have your say as we're planning conversations, join our texting group! Just send the word "TALK" to (217) 803-0730. Subscribe to our podcast and hear our latest conversations.  Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6PT6pb0 Find past segments, links to our social media and more at our website: 21stshow.org.

e-flux journal Associate Editor Andreas Petrossiants talks to author Andrew Ross about his recent book, The Weather Report: A Journey Through Unsettled Climates. Between the summers of 2023 and 2024, Andrew Ross visited Ramallah (Palestine), Dubai (UAE), Phoenix (USA), and Shanghai (China)—some of the landscapes most disturbed by human activity, whether through active warfare or massive development projects. Rather than offering another eco-polemic or recalling for us the dread prognostications of Malthus in the 19th century or Ehrlich in the 20th, The Weather Report is a clear-eyed and essentially optimistic book that proposes a pragmatic, just, and urgent new common ground reestablishing scalable projects of mutual aid and care as a new, essential center for our economic, ecological, and social well-being.  Andrew Ross is a social activist and Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. A contributor to The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, Artforum, Jacobin, New York Review of Books, and Al Jazeera, he is the author or editor of almost 30 books and hundreds of articles on a wide variety of topics—labor and work, urbanism, politics, technology, environmental justice, alternative economics, music, film, TV, art, architecture, and poetry. His articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines as well as in academic and public interest journals, and his books are published by mainstream trade, academic, and independent presses. He has lectured at hundreds of universities and cultural institutions in North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Australia. Politically active in many movement fields, he is the co-founder of several groups–Gulf Labor Artists Coalition, Global Ultra Luxury Faction, Coalition for Fair Labor, Occupy Student Debt Campaign, Strike Debt, the Debt Collective, and Decolonize This Place—and is an organizer with others, including the American Association of University Professors and the US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. He also serves on the steering committee of the national network of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine. Ross's books include The Weather Report; A Journey Through Unsettled Climates, Abolition Labor: The Fight to End Prison Slavery, Cars and Jails: Freedom Dreams, Debt, and Carcerality, Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing, Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel (winner of a Palestine Book Award), Creditocracy and the Case for Debt Refusal, Bird On Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City, Nice Work If You Can Get It: Life and Labor in Precarious Times, Fast Boat to China: Corporate Flight and the Consequences of Free Trade–Lessons from Shanghai, Low Pay, High Profile: The Global Push for Fair Labor, No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and its Hidden Costs, The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Property Value in Disney's New Town, Real Love: In Pursuit of Cultural Justice, The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life: Nature's Debt to Society, Strange Weather: Culture, Science and Technology in the Age of Limits, and No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture.

Amani Willett is a Boston-based photographer whose practice is driven by conceptual ideas surrounding family, history, memory, and the social environment. Working primarily with the book form, his three monographs have been published to widespread critical acclaim. Disquiet (Damiani, 2013), The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer (Overlapse, 2017) and “A Parallel Road (Overlapse 2020)” were selected by Photo-Eye as “best books” of the year and have been highlighted in over 70 publications including ​Photograph Magazine, PDN,​ ​Hyperallergic, Lensculture, New York Magazine, The New York Times, 1000 Words, NPR, The British Journal of Photography, Collector Daily and Buzzfeed and recommended by ​Todd Hido,​ ​Elisabeth Biondi (former Visuals Editor of The New Yorker), Vince Aletti and Joerg Colberg (Conscientious), among others. https://www.amaniwillett.com/invisiblesunbook https://www.instagram.com/amaniwillett/ INVISIBLE SUN is a visual meditation on survival, transformation, and fragility by artist Amani Willett. The project traces the impact of childhood medical traumas and the ways they continue to reverberate through the present. Slideshow from book: https://youtu.be/dl5-nDcpfoc Confronting these early challenges amid new chronic health challenges, Willett turned to intensive therapies. Within this process he encountered vivid, unsettling memories, often of his younger self, that became a generative source for the work. This podcast is sponsored by the Charcoal Book ClubBegin Building your dream photobook library today athttps://charcoalbookclub.com Amani's photographs are also featured in the books​ American Geography (SF Moma/Radius Books, 2021), Bystander: A History of Street Photography (2017 edition, Laurence King Publishing), ​Street Photography Now​ (Thames and Hudson), ​New York: In Color​ (Abrams), and have been published widely in places including The Atlantic, A​merican Photography,​ Newsweek​,​ Harper's,​ ​The Huffington Post, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine and The New York Review of Books​.​ His work resides in the collections of the Tate Modern, The Library of the Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Sir Elton John Photography Collection, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Oxford University, and Harvard University, among others.

Exploring and Collecting African American History Harriet Tubman is, if surveys are to be trusted, one of the ten most famous Americans ever born. Yet often she's a figure more out of myth than history, often rightly celebrated but seldom understood. Tiya Miles's Night Flyer changes all that, probing the ecological reality of Tubman's surroundings and examining her kinship with other enslaved women who similarly passed through a spiritual wilderness and recorded those travels in profound and moving memoirs. Tiya Miles is the author of eight books, including four prizewinning histories about race and slavery. She is a two-time winner of Yale's Frederick Douglass Prize and a two-time winner of the National Council on Public History Book Award. Her 2021 National Book Award winner, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake, was a New York Times bestseller that won eleven historical and literary prizes, including the Cundill History Prize. All That She Carried was named A Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, NPR, Publisher's Weekly, The Atlantic, Time, and more.  Her latest work, Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith and Dreams of a Free People, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography.  Her other nonfiction works include Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation, The Dawn of Detroit, Tales from the Haunted South, The House on Diamond Hill, and Ties That Bind. Miles publishes essays and reviews in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, and other media outlets. Miles is also the author of the novel, The Cherokee Rose, a ghost story set in the Native American plantation South. Check out more books by this author at your library. Miles has consulted with colleagues at historic sites and museums on representations of slavery, African American material culture, and the Black-Indigenous intertwined past, including, most recently, the Fabric of a Nation quilt exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Her work has been supported by a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Award, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation.  Miles was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, and she is currently the Michael Garvey Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard University. You can find her online at https://tiyamiles.com/ or on Facebook and Instagram  @TiyaMiles. Interviewer Tammy Cherry has taught at FSCJ as an English professor for 22 years. Along with composition classes, Tammy teaches African American literature and honors classes. She is a lifelong Jacksonville resident and recently served as co-host for the WJCT podcast Bygone Jax. --- Never miss an event! Sign up for email newsletters at https://bit.ly/JaxLibraryUpdates  Jacksonville Public LibraryWebsite: https://jaxpubliclibrary.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaxlibrary Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaxLibrary/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaxlibrary/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jaxpubliclibraryfl Contact Us: jplpromotions@coj.net 

Joseph O'Neill is the author of the novel Godwin, now available in trade paperback from Vintage. O'Neill was born in Ireland and grew up in Mozambique, Iran, Turkey, and Holland. His previous novels include the PEN/Faulkner Award–winning Netherland and the Booker Prize long-listed The Dog. O'Neill's short fiction appears regularly in The New Yorker and his political essays in The New York Review of Books. He lives in New York City. *** ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Otherppl with Brad Listi⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, etc. Get ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠How to Write a Novel,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Brad's email newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support the show on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Merch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠proud affiliate partner of Bookshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

653. Part 2 of our conversation with Kathleen DuVal about her book, Native Nations: A Millennium in North America. “Pulitzer Prize Winner - National Bestseller - A magisterial overview of a thousand years of Native American history” (The New York Review of Books), from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today. Winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Cundill History Prize, and the Mark Lynton History Prize. Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed. Now available: Liberty in Louisiana: A Comedy. The oldest play about Louisiana, author James Workman wrote it as a celebration of the Louisiana Purchase. Now it is back in print for the first time in 221 years. Order your copy today! This week in the Louisiana Anthology. Katie Bickham. "Widow's Walk, 1917." The word came that seven hundred thousand bodies had drawn their last breaths at Verdun, an earth-quaking number for those unacquainted with the greedy appetites of death. She had never been across the sea, but pictured the corpses laid in neat rows like chopped cane at harvest time.     “Apologies, ma'am,” came Small John's voice from the rear stairs.  “I'd'a sent Roberta, but she scared fiercely of high places. You got to come down. The sun will cook you through.”     Five weeks her husband had been gone, and she hadn't even heaved a sigh until she'd tried to fasten her silver bracelet on her own, a task best suited to a second pair of hands. Sweating, she gripped the chain until the metal grew hot in her palm.     “Ma'am?” Small John tried again.  Without turning, she could feel him moving closer. Had he ever touched her once in these long years? “Roberta said you in a fury.”     She turned from the iron railing and flung the bracelet at him hard.  It hit his shoulder, tinkled as it fell onto the slate. He lifted it by one end like a snake and walked toward her.  “I'd'a gone, too,” he said.  “Over there to fight. ‘Cept I don't see like I ought to, and my knee ain't right.”     He watched her as if she might bolt over the edge, body set to lunge. Her temper cooled quick, the way Louisiana afternoons went from sweltering to raising shivers on skin before a hurricane blew in from the gulf.  “Small John?” she asked. She held her shaking wrist out to him, her jaw and throat and chest all gone hot and raw.     She thought he might throw it back at her, but he looked at her straight on, barely glanced down as he slipped the tiny teeth of the clasp together around her wrist, never once touched her skin. This week in Louisiana history. November 22, 1886. 30 Negros killed/100 wounded by vigilanties to stop canefield strike in Thibodeaux, This week in New Orleans history. The New Orleans Recreation Department Keller Center at 1814 Magnolia Street was dedicated on November 22, 1971. It was named in honor of Rosa Freeman Keller who had dedicated decades of her life in New Orleans to racial and gender equality. This week in Louisiana. Christmas Wonderland in the Pines Locations around Jonesboro November 29, 2025 Grand Marshal Coffee and Ceremony - 10:00 AM in the Community Room in Town Hall. The Grand Marshal is presented a Proclamation from the Mayor declaring the day in their honor. Family, friends, and guest of the Grand Marshal are especially invited to attend the ceremony. All visitors and members of the public are also invited to attend. Business casual attire is encouraged. Official Turning on of the Christmas Lights - 12:00 PM Following the Grand Marshal Coffee, the over 5 million Christmas lights are officially turned on for the remainder of the holiday season. Annual Christmas Wonderland in the Pines Parade - 4:30 PM The annual parade starts along Cooper Avenue, turns at Third Street, comes down Allen Avenue toward the Courthouse and turns onto Jimmie Davis Boulevard, turns at Hudson Avenue, and finishes on Seventh Street. The judges' table is located on Jimmie Davis Blvd. at the steps of the Courthouse. Annual Firework Show - approximately 7:00 PM Once dark, the firework show will start. The fireworks are shot from the Public Works Department, under the supervision of the State Fire Marshal. The fireworks can be viewed from nearly anywhere in the city. Postcards from Louisiana. Aislinn Kerchaert. Thanksgiving.  Listen on Apple Podcasts. Listen on audible. Listen on Spotify. Listen on TuneIn. Listen on iHeartRadio. The Louisiana Anthology Home Page. Like us on Facebook. 

If you've got a cultural question or topic you'd like our hosts to tackle, now is your chance because we're preparing for our annual call-in show! Call and leave us a message with your cultural query at:  347-201-2397 On this week's show, Julia, Dana, Steve are off to the dystopian races with Edgar Wright's adaptation of The Running Man. Based on a novel by Stephen King and starring movie-star-to-be Glenn Powell, the film is chockfull of adrenaline and stylish wit but does it overcome its own authoritarian bleakness? They discuss with Slate's own Sam Adams. Next, they take a look at the oft-forgotten presidency and assassination of James A. Garfield in the Netflix limited series Death By Lightning, starring Michael Shannon, Matthew Macfadyen, and a whole lot of period accurate beards. Finally, they look to the heavens with the loftily ambitious, operatic, and polyglottal new album LUX by Rosalía.  In an exclusive bonus episode for Slate Plus subscribers, they continue their recap series and get into the twists and turns of the fourth episode of Pluribus. Endorsements Dana: The 17th century nun and poet (a very Rosalía-like divine feminine) Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and particularly the poem "The Ripcord of Love" as translated by Ada Límon. Steve: Joyce Carol Oates's iconic, lacerating subtweet for the ages—illustrated beautifully on Literary Hub—as well as the prolific author's essay about the novel We Have Always Lived In the Castle in The New York Review of Books. (Steve welcomes listener recommendations for their favorite Oates's novel.) Julia: The Alpine Men's Snow Boot from Xero, for when the Los Angeles Almanac predicts rain. Email us your thoughts at culturefest@slate.com.  Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's show, Julia, Dana, Steve are off to the dystopian races with Edgar Wright's adaptation of The Running Man. Based on a novel by Stephen King and starring movie-star-to-be Glenn Powell, the film is chockfull of adrenaline and stylish wit but does it overcome its own authoritarian bleakness? They discuss with Slate's own Sam Adams. Next, they take a look at the oft-forgotten presidency and assassination of James A. Garfield in the Netflix limited series Death By Lightning, starring Michael Shannon, Matthew Macfadyen, and a whole lot of period accurate beards. Finally, they look to the heavens with the loftily ambitious, operatic, and polyglottal new album LUX by Rosalía.  In an exclusive bonus episode for Slate Plus subscribers, they continue their recap series and get into the twists and turns of the fourth episode of Pluribus. If you've got a cultural question or topic you'd like our hosts to tackle, now is your chance because we're preparing for our annual call-in show! Call and leave us a message with your cultural query at:  347-201-2397 Endorsements Dana: The 17th century nun and poet (a very Rosalía-like divine feminine) Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and particularly the poem "The Ripcord of Love" as translated by Ada Límon. Steve: Joyce Carol Oates's iconic, lacerating subtweet for the ages—illustrated beautifully on Literary Hub—as well as the prolific author's essay about the novel We Have Always Lived In the Castle in The New York Review of Books. (Steve welcomes listener recommendations for their favorite Oates's novel.) Julia: The Alpine Men's Snow Boot from Xero, for when the Los Angeles Almanac predicts rain. Email us your thoughts at culturefest@slate.com.  Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you've got a cultural question or topic you'd like our hosts to tackle, now is your chance because we're preparing for our annual call-in show! Call and leave us a message with your cultural query at:  347-201-2397 On this week's show, Julia, Dana, Steve are off to the dystopian races with Edgar Wright's adaptation of The Running Man. Based on a novel by Stephen King and starring movie-star-to-be Glenn Powell, the film is chockfull of adrenaline and stylish wit but does it overcome its own authoritarian bleakness? They discuss with Slate's own Sam Adams. Next, they take a look at the oft-forgotten presidency and assassination of James A. Garfield in the Netflix limited series Death By Lightning, starring Michael Shannon, Matthew Macfadyen, and a whole lot of period accurate beards. Finally, they look to the heavens with the loftily ambitious, operatic, and polyglottal new album LUX by Rosalía.  In an exclusive bonus episode for Slate Plus subscribers, they continue their recap series and get into the twists and turns of the fourth episode of Pluribus. Endorsements Dana: The 17th century nun and poet (a very Rosalía-like divine feminine) Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and particularly the poem "The Ripcord of Love" as translated by Ada Límon. Steve: Joyce Carol Oates's iconic, lacerating subtweet for the ages—illustrated beautifully on Literary Hub—as well as the prolific author's essay about the novel We Have Always Lived In the Castle in The New York Review of Books. (Steve welcomes listener recommendations for their favorite Oates's novel.) Julia: The Alpine Men's Snow Boot from Xero, for when the Los Angeles Almanac predicts rain. Email us your thoughts at culturefest@slate.com.  Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Following a young woman over the course of one outrageous and insufferable downtown dinner party at the home of her estranged best friends—an artist and curator couple, whom she now realizes stands for everything she detests—Happiness and Love (Scribner, 2025) is a piercing debut novel about brazen materialism, self-obsession, and the empty careerism of so-called cultural elites.Years after escaping New York and the center of its artistic world—a group of self-important, depraved, and unscrupulous artists, curators, and hangers-on—our narrator is back in town. With no plans to see anyone she once knew, she's wandering around the Lower East Side, thinking about the recent death of her former best friend, Rebecca, when she runs into Eugene, one half of the artist-curator couple at the heart of her old social set. Despite her better judgement, she accepts his invitation to a dinner party. And though the party is held only hours after Rebecca's funeral, it not a memorial of Rebecca but a dinner held in honor of a young, newly famous actress whose lateness delays the party by hours.As the guests sip their natural wine and await the actress's arrival, the narrator, from her perch on the corner seat of a white sofa, silently, systematically, and mercilessly eviscerates them—their manners, their relationships, their delusions and failures, and the complete moral poverty that brings them here, to Nicole and Eugene's loft on the Bowery. When the guest of honor finally does arrive, she sets in motion a disastrous end to the evening, laying bare the depravity and decadence of the hosts' empty little lives—a hollowness that the narrator herself knows all too well. Zoe Dubno is a writer from New York. She attended Oberlin College and has an MFA from Rutgers University, Newark. Her writing has appeared in Granta, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, The Nation, Vogue, and elsewhere. Happiness and Love is her first novel. Recommended Books: Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Following a young woman over the course of one outrageous and insufferable downtown dinner party at the home of her estranged best friends—an artist and curator couple, whom she now realizes stands for everything she detests—Happiness and Love (Scribner, 2025) is a piercing debut novel about brazen materialism, self-obsession, and the empty careerism of so-called cultural elites.Years after escaping New York and the center of its artistic world—a group of self-important, depraved, and unscrupulous artists, curators, and hangers-on—our narrator is back in town. With no plans to see anyone she once knew, she's wandering around the Lower East Side, thinking about the recent death of her former best friend, Rebecca, when she runs into Eugene, one half of the artist-curator couple at the heart of her old social set. Despite her better judgement, she accepts his invitation to a dinner party. And though the party is held only hours after Rebecca's funeral, it not a memorial of Rebecca but a dinner held in honor of a young, newly famous actress whose lateness delays the party by hours.As the guests sip their natural wine and await the actress's arrival, the narrator, from her perch on the corner seat of a white sofa, silently, systematically, and mercilessly eviscerates them—their manners, their relationships, their delusions and failures, and the complete moral poverty that brings them here, to Nicole and Eugene's loft on the Bowery. When the guest of honor finally does arrive, she sets in motion a disastrous end to the evening, laying bare the depravity and decadence of the hosts' empty little lives—a hollowness that the narrator herself knows all too well. Zoe Dubno is a writer from New York. She attended Oberlin College and has an MFA from Rutgers University, Newark. Her writing has appeared in Granta, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, The Nation, Vogue, and elsewhere. Happiness and Love is her first novel. Recommended Books: Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins 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

Following a young woman over the course of one outrageous and insufferable downtown dinner party at the home of her estranged best friends—an artist and curator couple, whom she now realizes stands for everything she detests—Happiness and Love (Scribner, 2025) is a piercing debut novel about brazen materialism, self-obsession, and the empty careerism of so-called cultural elites.Years after escaping New York and the center of its artistic world—a group of self-important, depraved, and unscrupulous artists, curators, and hangers-on—our narrator is back in town. With no plans to see anyone she once knew, she's wandering around the Lower East Side, thinking about the recent death of her former best friend, Rebecca, when she runs into Eugene, one half of the artist-curator couple at the heart of her old social set. Despite her better judgement, she accepts his invitation to a dinner party. And though the party is held only hours after Rebecca's funeral, it not a memorial of Rebecca but a dinner held in honor of a young, newly famous actress whose lateness delays the party by hours.As the guests sip their natural wine and await the actress's arrival, the narrator, from her perch on the corner seat of a white sofa, silently, systematically, and mercilessly eviscerates them—their manners, their relationships, their delusions and failures, and the complete moral poverty that brings them here, to Nicole and Eugene's loft on the Bowery. When the guest of honor finally does arrive, she sets in motion a disastrous end to the evening, laying bare the depravity and decadence of the hosts' empty little lives—a hollowness that the narrator herself knows all too well. Zoe Dubno is a writer from New York. She attended Oberlin College and has an MFA from Rutgers University, Newark. Her writing has appeared in Granta, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, The Nation, Vogue, and elsewhere. Happiness and Love is her first novel. Recommended Books: Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

652. Part 1 of Kathleen DuVal's return to the podcast to talk about her book, Native Nations: A Millennium in North America. “Pulitzer Prize Winner - National Bestseller - A magisterial overview of a thousand years of Native American history (The New York Review of Books), from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today. Winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Cundill History Prize, and the Mark Lynton History Prize. Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed.” (Publisher's website), Now available: Liberty in Louisiana: A Comedy. The oldest play about Louisiana, author James Workman wrote it as a celebration of the Louisiana Purchase. Now it is back in print for the first time in 221 years. Order your copy today! This week in the Louisiana Anthology. Chad Adams. How to Walk in the Marsh. I stood behind the center console of my dad's flatboat, tucked closely against him, prouder than any seven-year-old boy could be, riding along while he drove in the darkness of an early cold November morning. We slowly maneuvered through the salty marshes of southern Louisiana in eager pursuit of my very first duck hunt.     As the blistering air seeped through the holes in my oversized camouflaged ski-mask, and the smell of the sputtering motor's exhaust made my nostrils flare, I worked a spotlight at my dad's command. The beam of light shined just over the head of our giddy black Labrador Retriever, past the bow of the boat, and onto the water in front of us. I was outright shivering, but not from the freezing weather. Instead, I was shaking from the icy adrenaline that ran through my veins and throughout all fifty-five pounds of me as I replayed in my head all the stories my dad told me leading up to this moment about the amazing experience of duck hunting. This week in Louisiana history. November 15, 1730. Gov. Perier and French defeated the Natchez Indians. This week in New Orleans history. The Central City Branch of the New Orleans Public Library opened in the Mahalia Jackson Childhood and Family Learning Center on November 15, 2010. This week in Louisiana. Louisiana Renaissance Festival Faire Grounds: 46468 River Rd, Hammond LA, 70401 2025 Theme Weekends Nov 1-2 All Hallows Weekend Nov 8-9 Pirate Weekend Nov 15-16 Celtic Weekend Nov 22-23 Wizards and Legends Nov 28-30 Viking Dec 6-7 Yuletide Market Also on Dec 6 and 7  Fireworks 9:45 AM to 5:00 PM Postcards from Louisiana. Doreen at Snug Harbor.  Listen on Apple Podcasts. Listen on audible. Listen on Spotify. Listen on TuneIn. Listen on iHeartRadio. The Louisiana Anthology Home Page. Like us on Facebook. 

Subscribe to listen to the entire episode. Enjoy all bonus content for $5 per month! Carl Schmitt was a German legal theorist who joined the Nazi Party after Hitler achieved power. Schmitt supplied legal justifications for the Third Reich as it crushed all opposition and persecuted Jews. Yet long after he collaborated with this monstrous regime, Schmitt's ideas remained influential, and he maintained a respectable following. What explains his popularity on the New Right today in the Age of Trump? Further reading: The American New Right Looks Like the European Old Right by Phil Magness and Jack Nicastro in Reason The Enemy of Liberalism by Mark Lilla in The New York Review

Margaux MacColl, co-author of a series of articles in the SF Standard, discusses Zoomer tech bros. Susannah Glickman, who wrote a recent piece for the New York Review of Books, looks at the new arms makers who want to disrupt the legacy prime contractors. Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.

Francesca Wade is the author of the biography Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, available from Scribner. Francesca Wade is the author of Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars (2020). She has received fellowships from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, the Leon Levy Center for Biography and the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and her writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Paris Review, Granta, and elsewhere. *** ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Otherppl with Brad Listi⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, etc. Get ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠How to Write a Novel,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Brad's email newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support the show on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Merch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠proud affiliate partner of Bookshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John J. Lennon is a prison journalist who is currently serving a 25-year sentence in Sing Sing prison in New York. His work has been featured by such leading publications as New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and New York magazine. John's new book is The Tragedy of True Crime. John shares his surreal experience of being on a book tour while inside prison and reflects on his own personal experiences with the "true crime" genre. He also warns about the seductive nature -- and problematic relationship these shows have with reality -- of The First 48, Law and Order, Cops, and others in the reality TV show - crime entertainment genre. John explains how his new book goes beyond the sensationalistic headlines and explores the human side and complexity of four men who have been convicted of murder. Robert Chambers, the so-called “Preppy Killer” of 1980s tabloid fame Milton E. Jones, drawn from petty crime into tragedy as a teenager Michael Shane Hale, a gay man facing the death penalty after a crime of passion Lennon himself, who discovered his voice as a writer while serving time for murder Chauncey DeVega shares what it is like in Chicago as Trump's DHS/ICE immigration dragnet "Operation Midway Blitz" and threats of a National Guard "invasion” have created a climate that feels ripped from a bad dystopian movie. To better understand who would want to take a job working for DHS/ICE as one of its enforcers, Chauncey shares a very important news story from the Intercept where they interview people at a job fair for that government agency. And Chauncey DeVega goes to the local cineplex and reviews three new films: Tron: Ares, The Smashing Machine starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and Paul Thomas Anderson's essential document and cultural artifact of this era One Battle After Another. WHERE CAN YOU FIND ME? On Twitter: https://twitter.com/chaunceydevega On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chauncey.devega My email: chaunceydevega@gmail.com HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT THE CHAUNCEY DEVEGA SHOW? Via Paypal at ChaunceyDeVega.com: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thechaunceydevegashow  https://www.patreon.com/TheTruthReportPodcast

Paris Marx is joined by Joanne McNeil to discuss the proliferation of delivery bots and robotaxis and how they recycle disproven claims about how technology will improve transportation. Joanne McNeil is a freelance writer and the author of Wrong Way and Lurking: How a Person Became a User. Tech Won't Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon. The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson. Also mentioned in this episode: Joanne wrote about delivery bots and robotaxis for the New York Review of Architecture. She's doing an event in Los Angeles discussing social media on November 1. Uber's driverless car killed a pedestrian, and the company scapegoated the backup driver. Sleep Dealer is a sci-fi movie by Alex Rivera. A GM Cruise self-driving car hit a pedestrian and dragged them 20 feet before stopping. Even Chuck E. Cheese is getting into the ghost kitchen business.

On this week's show, Dana, Steve, and Julia step into the gothic, visually rich world of Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein. It's been years in the making, gorgeously rendered, and stars the always compelling Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi, but it's up for debate if something like a soul emerges from del Toro's mad machinations. Next, author and journalist Stefan Fatsis joins the logophilic panel to talk about the uncertain fate of dictionaries as chronicled in his new book Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat To) the Modern Dictionary. Finally, the hosts talk about the sonically and narratively layered new podcast Fela Kuti: Fear No Man about the legendary Nigerian musician and activist— its acclaimed producer Jad Abumrad joins to discuss.   In an exclusive Slate Plus bonus episode, Jad sticks around to pepper the Gabfesters with questions about how we make our own podcast week after week. Email us your thoughts at culturefest@slate.com.  Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch. Endorsements Steve: Jad Abumrad's new podcast Fela Kuti: Fear No Man (yes, the one covered in this very episode— it's that good). Also, Ben Lerner's essay “Cardiography” in the New York Review of Books. Jad: The dark Macedonian fantasy You Won't Be Alone.  Julia: “Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage,” David Foster Wallace's classic essay originally published in Harpers.Dana: Adam Gopnik's recent piece "What Do We Want from Our Child Stars?" in The New Yorker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's show, Dana, Steve, and Julia step into the gothic, visually rich world of Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein. It's been years in the making, gorgeously rendered, and stars the always compelling Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi, but it's up for debate if something like a soul emerges from del Toro's mad machinations. Next, author and journalist Stefan Fatsis joins the logophilic panel to talk about the uncertain fate of dictionaries as chronicled in his new book Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat To) the Modern Dictionary. Finally, the hosts talk about the sonically and narratively layered new podcast Fela Kuti: Fear No Man about the legendary Nigerian musician and activist— its acclaimed producer Jad Abumrad joins to discuss.   In an exclusive Slate Plus bonus episode, Jad sticks around to pepper the Gabfesters with questions about how we make our own podcast week after week. Email us your thoughts at culturefest@slate.com.  Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch. Endorsements Steve: Jad Abumrad's new podcast Fela Kuti: Fear No Man (yes, the one covered in this very episode— it's that good). Also, Ben Lerner's essay “Cardiography” in the New York Review of Books. Jad: The dark Macedonian fantasy You Won't Be Alone.  Julia: “Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage,” David Foster Wallace's classic essay originally published in Harpers.Dana: Adam Gopnik's recent piece "What Do We Want from Our Child Stars?" in The New Yorker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lucy Sante joins us for the finale of Season 8. The Belgian-born American critic, writer, and artist talks about her lifelong textual engagement with an extraordinary miscellany of culture and history. Sante shares the figures that have shaped her work, from a grade-school report on Nostradamus to Barbara Epstein, her editor at the New York Review of Books, to her various writing students across twenty years of teaching at Columbia and Bard. For her “meaningful text,” Sante focuses on Manny Farber, an early inspiration whose writing "infected me from the word go." She reads from his essay “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art” (Film Culture, No. 27, Winter 1962/63), an electric ode to "termite tapeworm-fungus-moss art ... that goes always forward eating its own boundaries."Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews.Thanks to this episode's sponsors, Rabkin Foundation, PHI, and Esker Foundation, for supporting our work.Thanks to Lucy Sante for her contribution to this season.

Recorded October 15th 2025. The Trinity Long Room Hub is delighted to welcome author and historian William Dalrymple to present the 2025 Edmund Burke Lecture, entitled 'The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire', which is supported by a generous endowment in honour of Padraic Fallon by his family. About William Dalrymple William Dalrymple is one of Britain's great historians and the bestselling author of the Wolfson Prize-winning White Mughals, The Last Mughal, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Hemingway and Kapuściński award-winning Return of a King. His book, The Anarchy, was long-listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2019, and shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History, the Tata Book of the Year (Non-fiction) and the Historical Writers Association Book Award 2020. It was a Finalist for the Cundill Prize for History and won the 2020 Arthur Ross Bronze Medal from the US Council on Foreign Relations. His latest book, The Golden Road, is a revolutionary new history of the diffusion of Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics and mythology, along a Golden Road that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific. A frequent broadcaster, he has written and presented three television series, one of which won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series at BAFTA. He is the co-host of the Empire podcast, which explores the intricate stories of revolutions, imperial wars, and the people who built and lost empires. He has also won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, The Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, the Foreign Correspondent of the Year at the FPA Media Awards, and been awarded five honorary doctorates. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and has held visiting fellowships at Princeton, Brown and Oxford. He writes regularly for the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, and the Guardian. In 2018, he was presented with the prestigious President's Medal by the British Academy for his outstanding literary achievement and for co-founding the Jaipur Literature Festival. He was named one of the world's top 50 thinkers for 2020 by Prospect. Learn more at www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub

Pulitzer-winner Caroline Fraser maps the lives and crimes of Ted Bundy and his infamous peers—the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, and even Charles Manson—and explores an intriguing hypothesis: might environmental factors have played a role in the rise of serial killers in the 1970s and '80s? Caroline Fraser is the author of Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, which won the Pulitzer Prize. She is also the author of God's Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church, and her writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Los Angeles Times, and London Review of Books, among other publications. Her new book is Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers.

This week, “Monster: The Ed Gein Story” is the most watched show on Netflix. It's a dramatized retelling of the life of the serial killer who inspired “Psycho” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” The “Monster” franchise, which includes two earlier seasons about Jeffrey Dahmer and Lyle and Erik Menendez, is one of Netflix's splashiest hits – the Dahmer season is still the fourth-most viewed English language show in the history of the platform. And the true crime obsession only grows each year. On Netflix last year, 15 of the top 20 documentaries were true crime docs, compared to just six in 2020. But what does it mean for the subjects of these documentaries, that Americans endlessly crave stories about murder and bloodshed and terror? John J. Lennon is a contributing editor for Esquire and writes frequently for New York Review of Books and the New York Times. This week, he spoke to host Brooke Gladstone from Sing Sing Correctional Facility, where he's serving his 24th year of his 28-year-to-life sentence for murder, drug sales, and gun possession. They spoke about his new book, The Tragedy of True Crime, what it was like to watch himself get featured in a true crime documentary, and why he wants to upend the typical 'true crime' narratives of good vs. evil.  On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing onthemedia@wnyc.org.

Ashley Dawson returns to discuss his new piece at the New York Review of Books, "The Costs of the Cloud: How much power does AI consume?" "The Moment of Truth" with Jeff Dorchen follows the interview. Check out Ashley's article here: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/09/27/the-costs-of-the-cloud/ Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisishell Please rate and review This Is Hell! wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps the show ascend the algorithm to reach new listeners.

As the Supreme Court begins its new term, Trump lost six different cases in district courts just last week, ranging from bans on deploying the National Guard, to defending freedom of speech for noncitizens, to yet another court rejecting his executive order abolishing birthright citizenship. At the same time, Trump is claiming an illegitimate legal basis for ordering the murder of civilians he claims are trafficing in drugs. David Cole will comment—he's former national legal director of the ACLU.Also, There's a wonderful new history of New York City from the Depression thru WWII, out now - It's called “Gotham at War,” written by Mike Wallace. He won the Pulitzer Prize in History for the first volume in his “Gotham” series. To talk about ‘Gotham at War,' we'll turn to Brenda Wineapple, who writes for the New York Review and the New York Times Book Review; her most recent book is the Scopes trial--it's called ‘Keeping the Faith.'Our Sponsors:* this is a paid advertisement from BetterHelp. Check out BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/THENATIONAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

As the Supreme Court begins its new term, Trump lost six different cases in district courts just last week, ranging from bans on deploying the National Guard, to defending freedom of speech for noncitizens, to yet another court rejecting his executive order abolishing birthright citizenship. At the same time, Trump is claiming an illegitimate legal basis for ordering the murder of civilians he claims are trafficing in drugs. David Cole will comment—he's former national legal director of the ACLU.Also, There's a wonderful new history of New York City from the Depression thru WWII, out now - It's called “Gotham at War,” written by Mike Wallace. He won the Pulitzer Prize in History for the first volume in his “Gotham” series. To talk about ‘Gotham at War,' we'll turn to Brenda Wineapple, who writes for the New York Review and the New York Times Book Review; her most recent book is the Scopes trial--it's called ‘Keeping the Faith.'Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer who documents the extremes, from nightclubs to war zones. She's also the author of several books, including Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun, a memoir of the Syrian War co-written with Marwan Hisham. We sat down with Crabapple to talk about the difference between words and images, making art in the world, and the power of cartoonists to disrupt fascism.You can read a transcript of this episode here. And check out the following links:Check out our booklist with books recommended for this episode.Read Molly Crabapple's Drawing Blood, and you can pre-order her new book about the Jewish Labor Bund.See Molly's drawings and articles about the Dallas Six and the NYC taxi driver strike. You can also read Molly's interview with Art Spiegelman.Art Spiegelman's comic collaboration with Joe Sacco was published in The New York Review of Books earlier this year. You can check out Sacco's Palestine and his more recent War on Gaza from the library.

Melissa Febos is the author of The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex, available from Knopf. Febos is the national bestselling author of five books, including Abandon Me, Girlhood—which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, and, most recently, The Dry Season. Her awards and fellowships include those from the Guggenheim Foundation, LAMBDA Literary, the National Endowment for the Arts, The British Library, The Black Mountain Institute, MacDowell, the Bogliasco Foundation, The American Library in Paris, and others. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The Sun, The New York Times Magazine, The Best American Essays, Vogue, The Best American Travel and Food Writing, and New York Review of Books. Febos is a Roy J. Carver Professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program. She lives in Iowa City with her wife, the poet Donika Kelly. *** ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Otherppl with Brad Listi⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, etc. Get ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠How to Write a Novel,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Brad's email newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Support the show on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Merch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠proud affiliate partner of Bookshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We were delighted to have the chance to speak with Adam Szetela about his new book, That Book Is Dangerous! How Moral Panic, Social Media, and the Culture Wars Are Remaking Publishing. Adam shares what he learned from authors, agents, and editors about the effects of cancel culture in the publishing industry. His behind-the-scenes account is fascinating and sobering in equal measure.Show Notes* For more info on Adam Szetela, check out his website * Here is the official MIT Press link to Adam's book * The Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie audio clips come from her 2022 Reith Lecture on Free Speech (listen here; read the transcript here)* Matt Yglesias coined the term “The Great Awokening” in this 2019 Vox essay* “a rapid change in discourse and norms around social justice issues”: That's a quote from Stony Brook sociologist Musa al-Gharbi, one of the nation's foremost chroniclers of “The Great Awokening”* see Musa's 2024 book We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite * here are two Banished episodes featuring Musa: You Can't Be an Egalitarian Social Climber & Who Speaks the Language of Social Justice?* The Harper's Letter* Michael Hobbes, “Don't Fall for the ‘Cancel Culture Scam,'” HuffPo, July 10, 2020* This 2019 Zadie Smith essay from the New York Review of Books is the definitive rejoinder to the cultural critics who insist that we “should write only about people who are fundamentally ‘like us': racially, sexually, genetically, nationally, politically, personally”* On the controversy surrounding Amélie Wen Zhao's Blood Heir, see Alexandra Alter, “She Pulled Her Debut Book When Critics Found It Racist. Now She Plans to Publish,” New York Times, April 29, 2019* On the cancelation of Kosoko Jackson's book, A Place for Wolves, see Jennifer Senior, “Teen Fiction and the Perils of Cancel Culture,” New York Times, March 8, 2019* On the cancelation of a romance novel based on “criticism from readers over dialogue that some found racist or that praised Elon Musk,” see Alexandra Alter, “A Publisher Pulled a Romance Novel After Criticism From Early Readers,” New York Times, March 5, 2025* On the demographics of the people who work in the publishing industry, with an emphasis on racial diversity, see this 2022 report from Pen America, “Reading Between the Lines”* For more on literature and the culture wars, see Deborah Appleman's incisive 2022 book, Literature and the New Culture Wars: Triggers, Cancel Culture, and the Teacher's Dilemma * On the perils of teaching literature from a narrow social justice lens, see “Poverty of the Imagination,” an essay we wrote a few years back in Arc Digital* On what we keep getting wrong about the cancel culture debate, see this September 26, 2025 Banished post This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit banished.substack.com/subscribe

Osita Nwanevu is a contributing editor at The New Republic, a columnist at The Guardian, and the Democratic Institutions fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He is a former staff writer at The New Republic, The New Yorker, and Slate, and his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, Harper's Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, In These Times, Flaming Hydra, and Gawker. His new book is The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding. Osita discusses his new book about democracy's many flaws and the desperate need to amend the Constitution to correct the inequities in representation including those in the Supreme Court, Senate, and the electoral college. Got somethin' to say?! Email us at BackroomAndy@gmail.com Leave us a message: 845-307-7446 Twitter: @AndyOstroy Produced by Andy Ostroy, Matty Rosenberg, and Jennifer Hammoud @ Radio Free Rhiniecliff Design by Cricket Lengyel

Notes and Links to Nathan Thrall's Work       Nathan Thrall is an American writer living in Jerusalem. In 2024, he received the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for A Day in the Life of Abed Salama. An international bestseller, it was translated into more than thirty languages, selected as a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, and named a best book of the year by over twenty publications, including The New Yorker, The Economist, and Time. He is also the author of The Only Language They Understand. His reporting, essays, and criticism have appeared in the London Review of Books, The Guardian, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Review of Books. He spent a decade at the International Crisis Group, where he was director of the Arab-Israeli Project, and has taught at Bard College.  Buy A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy   Nathan's Website   2021 The New York Review of Books Article: “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama”   At about 1:15, Nathan recounts the experience of winning the Pulitzer Prize, and notes the wonderful ways in which the book's protagonists and others close to him have celebrated the achievement  At about 3:20, Nathan provides purchasing info and book details  At about 4:15, Nathan responds to Pete's question about the added significance of the book being published on October 3, 2023, four days before a pivotal event At about 6:30, Nathan reflects on how “nothing [much] has changed” regarding the organizations (the “gatekeepers”) who cancelled events with him and Abed Salama, with perhaps more of these organizations digging in on standing with Israel At about 9:30, Nathan notes that “organized political money” is all on one side in the “corrupt political system” At about 12:35, Pete wonders about the “tail wagging the dog” regarding the voting public and the politicians, and Nathan expands upon the reasoning and details for this “gap” At about 14:35, Pete asks Nathan about seeds for the book, and about how the book speaks to the idea that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict did not start on October 7, 2023 At about 15:35, Nathan explains the apartheid and “walled ghetto” at the center of the book, and talks about how this ghetto is a microcosm for Israeli policy At about 18:30, Nathan responds to Pete's questions about and admiration for his objective hand in writing the book At about 20:45, Pete sets the book's exposition At about 21:45, Nathan notes the “striking” fact of talking to parents with their “unwarranted” guilt since the bus accident, in response to Pete wondering about Nathan's broaching such a horrible topic with survivors At about 24:05, The two reflect on the innocence of youth as Nathan recounts the details of parents and family looking for their children and relatives after the bus accident At about 27:30, Nathan explains how just the telling of the basics of Abed's story, including his odyssey just to find his son in the hospital, was to “tell of apartheid” At about 29:00, Pete compliments the ways in which Nathan's tracing Abed's childhood and youth and Nathan expounds on how the personal stories have the reader see “the world through [the character's eyes]” At about 31:45, Nathan shares a recent experience that shows how life is micromanaged for Palestinians in Israel, revolving around a bridge crossing for Abed, his wife Haifa, and Nathan At about 34:45, Pete asks Nathan to explain the colored-permit system involving Palestinian ID cards and how the intifadas changed the processes, including for Abed At about 39:50, Pete and Nathan talk about different Palestinian cultural and political factions, as described in the book At about 40:30, Nathan explains “bypass roads” and the ways in which they represent Israeli control of Palestinians' lives; in so doing, he points out inaccuracies in the ways that democracy and Israel have often been linked  At about 47:35, Nathan expands on “fabric of life roads” and “sterile roads”-brutally racist as an official name-and “gerrymandering”-mapping-done by Dany Tirza, featured pretty prominently in the book At about 50:05, Nathan talks about schooling for Palestinians and how Israeli control is rendered in the book-he describes the "forensic analysis” of the bus accident and homes in on the forced walling-in of Palestinians  At about 53:00, Nathan further explains land use and land possession as strategies  At about 54:35, Pete remarks on the banal of the Israeli Occupation and asks Nathan's thoughts on the “reverberations” of Israel's seemingly-small and detailed actions/policy of moving the Palestinians out  At about 58:00, Nathan responds to Pete's questions about how an average Jewish Israeli lives his/her life with “informational apartheid”  At about 1:01:05, Nathan states the common narrative about Israel's history and the continued bloodshed for average Israelis At about 1:04:15, Nathan recounts an anecdote about a publishing company that has asked him multiple questions about early Israeli history  At about 1:06:05, Nathan reflects on the task of sitting with parents and relatives during the emotionally-wrenching times and listening to their stories     You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow Pete on IG, where he is @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where he is @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both the YouTube Channel and the podcast while you're checking out this episode.       Pete is very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. His conversation with Hannah Pittard, a recent guest, is up at Chicago Review.     Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl      Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting Pete's one-man show, DIY podcast and extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content!    This month's Patreon bonus episode features an exploration of flawed characters, protagonists who are too real in their actions, and horror and noir as being where so much good and realistic writing takes place.    Pete has added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show.     This is a passion project, a DIY operation, and Pete would love for your help in promoting what he's convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.    The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.     Please tune in for Episode 301 with Nishant Batsha, the author of the novel A Bomb Placed Close to the Heart, his 2025 novel set between California and New York at the dawn of World War I. His first novel, Mother Ocean Father Nation was a finalist for 2023 Lambda Literary Award, longlisted for a 2023 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and named one of the best books of 2022 by NPR.    This episode airs on October 7.    Please go to ceasefiretoday.org, and/or https://act.uscpr.org/a/letaidin to call your congresspeople and demand an end to the forced famine and destruction of Gaza and the Gazan people.

Art Spiegelman is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the graphic novel Maus, the story of his parents' experience during the Holocaust. We got to sit down with Spiegelman at Brooklyn Public Library's recording studio earlier this month to talk about Maus almost forty years after it first came out, about censorship, about the war in Gaza, and about what it means to stand up for others.You can read a transcript of this episode on our website, and check out these further resources:Check out our booklist with books recommended by Art Spiegelman, and more.Art Spiegelman's comic collaboration with Joe Sacco was published in The New York Review of Books earlier this year. You can check out Sacco's Palestine and his more recent War on Gaza from the library.Watch Art Spiegelman discuss MetaMaus with Dan Nadel at Brooklyn Public Library.

Mouin Rabbani explains what is behind all these fresh diplomatic recognitions of Palestine and speculates on the future of Gaza. Ernesto Semán, author of a recent piece for the New York Review of Books, looks at the Argentine situation and the US bailout of the libertarian Javier Milei. Read Mouin's article “The Meaning of Western Recognition of Palestine” here: https://jacobin.com/2025/09/recognition-palestine-israel-genocide-zionism Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global.

For about a millennium and a half, between 250 BC and A.D. 1200, India was a confident exporter of its own diverse civilizations, creating an empire of ideas, to a world that was a willing and eager recipient of a startlingly comprehensive mass transfer of Indian soft power. From religion such as Buddhism to mathematics that introduced the idea of zero, infinity, algebra, trigonometry to astronomy that proposed a spherical earth rotating on its own axis and trade, that Pliny the Elder complained drained the wealth of Rome into Indian pockets, Indian ideas infected the world.  In The Golden Road, William Dalrymple, draws on a lifetime of scholarship to give a name to the spread of Indian ideas that transformed the world. From the largest Hindu temple in the world at Angkor Wat to the Buddhism of China, from the trade that helped fund the Roman Empire, to the creation of the numerals we use today, Dalrymple shares the soaring history of how India transformed the culture and technology of the ancient world, and in doing so, the world today as we know it. About the Speaker William Benedict Hamilton-Dalrymple CBE, is a noted historian and best-selling author of nine books; the most recent, The Anarchy, was a finalist for the Cundill History Prize and one of Barack Obama's favorite books of 2019. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the world's largest writers' festival, the annual Jaipur Literature Festival. Dalrymple's books have won numerous awards and prizes, including the Wolfson Prize for History, the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, the Hemingway, the Kapuściński, the Arthur Ross Medal of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. He writes regularly for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and The Guardian. The Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public forum; we welcome donations made during registration to support the production of our programming. An Asia-Pacific Affairs Member-led Forum program. Forums and chapters at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums. Dalrymple photo by Debbie Mitra Singh; courtesy the publisher. Commonwealth Club World Affairs is a public forum. Any views expressed in our programs are those of the speakers and not of Commonwealth Club World Affairs. Organizer: Kalidip Choudhury  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Cole is a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University, a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, a former national legal director of the ACLU and author of the popular book on social change in the US, Engines of Liberty. This book, a must-read for anyone interested in social movements, is the focus of our discussion today.We spoke about the importance of local organising for political momentum, why incremental progress has seemed to work for other issues, the role of in-person community in social movements, and other lessons from the US marriage equality and gun rights movements.Chapters:The book in a nutshell (00:03:45)Why incrementalism was crucial for marriage equality (00:09:36)What can we learn from the NRA and gun rights? (00:17:19)Why socialising & identity formation are key for movements (00:23:32)Symbolic vs high-impact campaigns (00:32:11)Messaging strategies in the NRA vs marriage equality (00:36:58)Dave & James debrief and key takeaways (00:40:30)Resources: Engines of Liberty – David Cole The Engagement – Sasha IssenbergWith thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing! If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at hello@howilearnedtoloveshrimp.com. Enjoy!

Art Spiegelman's Maus almost single-handedly elevated comics from throw-away inserts in newspapers to a serious literary art worthy of winning the highest award in book publishing. But it's not an accident that this book is coming back to us now. Maus was swept once again into the public eye three years ago, when the conservative movement to target marginalized stories took aim at the beloved graphic novel. In this episode, we examine how comic book censorship in the 1950s led to the creation of Maus, and eventually shifted the way we tell stories about resistance, memory, and authoritarianism.You can read a transcript of this episode on our website. Further resources:Check out our booklist with books recommended by Art Spiegelman, and more.Read Amy Kurzweil's Flying Couch and Molly Crabapple's Drawing Blood. You can read more about both of them on their websites.Art Spiegelman's comic collaboration with Joe Sacco was published in The New York Review of Books earlier this year. You can check out Sacco's Palestine and his more recent War on Gaza from the library.Learn more about the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the history of comic book censorship.Listen to our interviews with Maia Kobabe, author of Gender Queer, and Mike Curato, author of Flamer from our previous series, Borrowed and Banned.Watch Art Spiegelman discuss MetaMaus with Dan Nadel at Brooklyn Public Library.

We were thrilled to have the opportunity to speak with Sarah McLaughlin about her new book, Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech. As a Senior Scholar at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Sarah is one of the leading experts on how global censorship intersects with free expression issues in the United States. In this episode of Banished, Sarah discusses her book's key findings and offers her reflections on the nerve-wracking, topsy-turvy free speech climate in the United States today. Show Notes* Follow Sarah on twitter here, bluesky here* Here is the official Johns Hopkins Press link to Sarah's book* On international student enrollment, see “International Students by the Numbers,” Inside Higher Ed * On Confucius Institutes, see Ethan Epstein, “How China Infiltrated U.S. Classrooms,” Politico Magazine, January 17, 2018* On the Olympics poster controversy at George Washington University, see:* Amna's interview with Badiucao, the poster's artist* Jeff's article on the dust-up in the Chronicle of Higher Education* this extraordinary open letter from the George Washington University Chinese Students and Scholars Association. On the subject of “sensitivity exploitation,” GW's CSSA drew quite shamelessly from social justice discourse: * On the challenges facing China scholars, see:* Perry Link, “China: The Anaconda in the Chandelier,” New York Review of Books, April 11, 2002* Sheena Chestnut Greitens and Rory Truex, “Repressive Experiences among China Scholars: New Evidence from Survey Data,” The China Quarterly, May 2019* On U.S. satellite campuses abroad, see Patrick Jack, “U.S. Universities Eye Branch Campuses as Way to ‘Survive Trump,'” Inside Higher Ed, May 16, 2025* Sarah describes Northwestern's cancellation of an event featuring an openly gay musician on its Qatar campus in 2020 here* On calls to have students, faculty, and staff fired because of disparaging comments about Charlie Kirk after he was murdered, see:* Ellie Davis, Gavin Escott, and Claire Murphy, “Employees and Students at These Colleges Have Been Punished for Comments on Charlie Kirk's Death,” Chronicle of Higher Education, September 17, 2025* Stephanie Saul, “The Firing of Educators Over Kirk Comments Follows a Familiar Playbook,” New York Times, September 22, 2025 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit banished.substack.com/subscribe

Since the start of the Trump Era over a decade ago, few words have been deployed as often as "democracy": how it's become imperiled, who threatens it, and what to do to defend it. In The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding, Osita Nwanevu sets out to understand the true meaning of democracy and defend it from its critics, not just on the right but those liberals who doubt the capacity of ordinary voters to determine their country's fate in a complex world. From there, he levels a critique of the Constitution for its myriad democratic deficits, then details what refounding the United States to be genuinely democratic—politically and economically—would require of us.Listen again: "The Wolfe in the White Suit" (w/ Osita Nwanevu), July 5, 2024Sources:Osita Nwanevu, The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding (2025)— "Conservatism's Baton Twirler," New York Review of Books, Sept 25, 2025. Sheldon Wolin, Fugitive Democracy: And Other Essays (2016)Michael J. Klarman, The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution (2016)Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998)Walter Lippman, Public Opinion (1922)Publius, Federalist 49 (February 1788)Matthew Sitman, "Will Be Wild," Dissent, April 18, 2023...and don't forget to subscribe on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

GUARDIAN AT THE GATEFOLD—Today's guest has become almost synonymous with graphic design and editorial publishing. His career began in the defiant New York “sex press” of the late 1960s, where not-actually-that-surprisingly, as a teenager he was already art-directing magazines like Screw and The New York Review of Sex. That unlikely starting point gave him a rare education in the power of design to command attention and shape meaning.We're talking about designer, author, editor, educator, and true legend, Steven Heller.Heller went on to spend more than three decades at The New York Times, most memorably as art director of The New York Times Book Review. There, he transformed the visual life of the section, commissioning bold, original illustration and making the case—over and over again—that design is not ornamental but integral to editorial voice. Through his advocacy, he helped elevate the status of designers in publishing offices, giving visual thinkers a seat at the table alongside editors and writers.Beyond the newsroom, Heller has been prolific almost to the point of obsession. He has written, edited, or co-authored more than two hundred books on design, creating an extraordinary record of the field's history, ideas, and influences. And most recently, he turned that critical eye inward with his memoir, Growing Up Underground, a candid account of his early years in New York's counterculture publishing scene.Steve is a practitioner, a chronicler, and an advocate for design—and he's also part of the team here at Magazeum. We are thrilled to turn the mic on him for this special conversation.—This episode is made possible by our friends at Commercial Type and Freeport Press. A production of Magazeum LLC ©2021–2025

Not just in the United States, but around the world, authoritarianism is rising and people's faith in the concept of “democracy” is collapsing. “In the absence of clarity from its defenders and amid the failures of our putatively democratic institutions,” Osita Nwanevu writes in his new book, The Right of the People, “democracy has become a specious and suspicious platitude, equally useful to marketers and would-be dictators—a hollow idea for a hollow, unserious time.” How did we get here? And what will it take to revive working people's faith in democracy, not just as a philosophical ideal, but as a real, practiced force that will improve their lives? In this podcast, recorded at Red Emma's Cooperative Bookstore and Cafe in Baltimore on August 12, 2025, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez and Chris Lehmann, DC Bureau Chief for The Nation, speak with Nwanevu about his new book and the fight to reclaim democracy in an age of rising authoritarianism. Guest: Osita Nwanevu is a contributing editor at The New Republic, a columnist at The Guardian, and the Democratic Institutions fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He is a former staff writer at The New Republic, The New Yorker, and Slate, and his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, Harper's Magazine, Columbia Journalism Review, In These Times, and Gawker. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.Additional resources: Osita Nwanevu, Random House, The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American FoundingOsita Nwanevu, The Nation, “To make democracy work, give more of it to workers”Credits: Studio Production: Maximillian AlvarezAudio Post-Production: David HebdenHelp us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

No news and clips today because I am on a college visit with my daughter. You can watch my conversation with Waj on YouTube Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. This show is Ad free and fully supported by listeners like you! Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 750 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls Subscribe to Waj Substack Channel "The Left Hook" Check out his new show on youtube ‘America Unhinged,' with Francesca Fiorentini and Wajahat Ali - Zeteo's new weekly show following Trump's first 100 days in office. Wajahat Ali is a Daily Beast columnist, public speaker, recovering attorney, and tired dad of three cute kids. Get his book Go Back To Where You Came From: And, Other Helpful Recommendations on Becoming American which will be published in January 2022 by Norton. He believes in sharing stories that are by us, for everyone: universal narratives told through a culturally specific lens to entertain, educate and bridge the global divides. Listen to WAj and DAnielle Moodie on Democracy-ish  He frequently appears on television and podcasts for his brilliant, incisive, and witty political commentary. Born in the Bay Area, California to Pakistani immigrant parents, Ali went to school wearing Husky pants and knowing only three words of English. He graduated from UC Berkeley with an English major and became a licensed attorney. He knows what it feels like to be the token minority in the classroom and the darkest person in a boardroom. Like Spiderman, he's often had the power and responsibility of being the cultural ambassador of an entire group of people, those who are often marginalized, silenced, or reduced to stereotypes. His essays, interviews, and reporting have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and New York Review of Books. Ali has spoken at many organizations, from Google to Walmart-Jet to Princeton University to the United Nations to the Chandni Indian-Pakistani Restaurant in Newark, California, and his living room in front of his three kids.  Bill Boyle is a well sourced and connected businessman who lives in Washington DC with his wife and son. Bill is a trusted friend and source for me who I met after he listened and became a regular and highly respected caller of my siriusxm radio show. Bill is a voracious reader and listeners love to hear his take. I think his analysis is as sharp as anyone you will hear on radio or TV and he has well placed friends across the federal government who are always talking to him. As far as I can tell he is not in the CIA. Follow him on twitter and park at his garages. Join us Monday's and Thursday's at 8EST for our Bi Weekly Happy Hour Hangout's !  Pete on Blue Sky Pete on Threads Pete on Tik Tok Pete on YouTube  Pete on Twitter Pete On Instagram Pete Personal FB page Stand Up with Pete FB page All things Jon Carroll  Follow and Support Pete Coe Buy Ava's Art  Hire DJ Monzyk to build your website or help you with Marketing Gift a Subscription https://www.patreon.com/PeteDominick/gift

Nell Stevens is an award-winning author of memoir and fiction. Her work has been awarded the Somerset Maugham Award, longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and shortlisted by the BBC National Short Story Award. She is the author of two novels, The Original and Briefly, a Delicious Life, and two memoirs: Bleaker House and Mrs Gaskell & Me. Her writing is published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vogue, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Granta and elsewhere. Nell is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick. Nell lives in Oxfordshire with her wife and two children. Recommended Books: Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead Ali Smith, Gliff Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of The Psychedelic Podcast, host Paul F. Austin welcomes cultural historian and acclaimed author Mike Jay. Find full show notes and links here: https://thethirdwave.co/podcast/episode-316/?ref=278 Together they explore the untold history of nitrous oxide, psychedelic experimentation in the Romantic era, and the deeper cultural and philosophical roots of psychedelic science. Mike shares insights from his latest book, Free Radicals, highlighting how figures like Humphry Davy and William James helped shape psychedelic thought long before the 1960s. The conversation weaves through ancient San Pedro rituals, colonial attempts to suppress peyote use, and the divergent paths of modern psychedelic medicine. From poetic self-experimentation to medicalized models, Mike unpacks the historical tensions between grassroots healing and institutional control—and what this means for the future of psychedelic culture. Mike Jay is a British author and cultural historian who has written widely on the history of drugs, consciousness, and medical science. His books include Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic, Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind, and Free Radicals: How a Group of Romantic Experimenters Gave Birth to Psychedelic Science. Mike contributes regularly to The London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, and The Wall Street Journal. Highlights: How early scientists used nitrous oxide for inner exploration Romantic poets as the original psychedelic self-experimenters Parallels between Humphry Davy and Alexander Shulgin What William James learned from nitrous, not mescaline Colonial suppression of peyote and indigenous resilience The enduring symbolism of San Pedro in Andean ritual How the counterculture reinterpreted Native practices Why modern psychedelic medicine may be repeating history The role of finance in shaping current therapy models Looking ahead: divergent futures of psychedelic healing Episode links:  Mike's website Mike's new book, Free Radicals Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind Manvir Singh's article in The Guardian “The Peyote Dance” by Antonin Artaud Episode sponsors:  Psychedelic Coacing Institute's Intensive for Psychedelic Professionals in Costa Rica - a transformative retreat for personal and professional growth. Golden Rule Mushrooms - Get a lifetime discount of 10% with code THIRDWAVE at checkout

10 Things from the Weekend!Happy Ja Morant (4:58)Ripped Luka Doncic (16:38)Pelton Offseason Grades (24:40)New York Review (34:23)Glorilla and Creed Concert Reviews (56:33)Happy Gilmore 2 (1:22:28)Jokic Weekend (1:30:35)Madden 99 Club (1:34:40)Kurt Kitayama (1:39:08)Tonight (1:43:26)Host: Chris VernonCo-Hosts: Jon Roser, Devin WalkerTechnical Director: Jaylon WallaceAssociate Producer: Jena Broyles 

Adam Gaffney, co-author of a recent article for the New York Review of Books, looks at Trump & Co.'s dismantling of health care and research. Also on the podcast, Alan Beattie of the Financial Times tries to make sense of Trump's nonsensical trade policy. Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html