Eminent Americans

Reading list: * Windex Ain’t Scared: Here’s Our Statement on Israel/Palestine , by Jeff Maurer * Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell , by The Onion * Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake , by The Onion * American Life Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie , by The Onion My guests on the podcast today are Jeff Maurer, author of “ Windex Ain’t Scared ,” and my brother...

Reading List: * The zeitgeist is changing. A strange, romantic backlash to the tech era looms , by Ross Barkan * Notes Toward a New Romanticism , by Ted Gioia * The Invisible College: Modern British Literatur e, by John Pistelli * The Three Segments of American Culture , by Ross Barkan * Major Arcana: Preface , by John Pistelli My guests on the show today are writers Ross Barkan and John Pistelli,...

Reading List: * Oh, Mr Hitchens! by Laura Kipnis * The Journalist and the Editor , by Laura Kipnis * Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe , Laura Kipnis * My Title IX Inquisition , by Laura Kipnis * Christopher Hitchens' last years: Islam, the Iraq war and how a man of the left found his moment by breaking with the left , by Daniel Oppenheimer My guest on the show today is Laura Kipnis . Laura is a cul...

In this episode of the podcast, I talk to Blake Smith and Gary Kornblau about the 30th anniversary edition of Dave Hickey’s seminal 1993 book The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty. Blake is currently a fellow with the Center for Advanced Study in Sofia, Bulgaria, as well as the author a great (which is to say, very flattering) review of my 2021 book on Hickey, and he was a stalwart participa...

Reading list: * A personal and stirring guide to the great Dutch painters , by Sebastian Smee * Benjamin Moser on What We Can Learn from Failed Dutch Painters , by Benjamin Moser * How Gayness Changed During My Lifetime , by Benjamin Moser * Enemies of Promise , by Cyril Connolly My guest on the podcast today is Benjamin Moser , who was born in Houston but has lived for the past twenty plus years...

Reading list: * An Open Letter to Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Liberals Who Love Him , by Cedric Johnson * The Enduring Solidarity of Whiteness [a reply to Johnson’s open letter], by Ta-Nehisi Coates * The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now , by Cedric Johnson * What Black Life Actually Looks Like , by Cedric Johnson * The Case for Reparations , by Ta-Nehisi Coates * The Coates Chronicles: The White Period ,...

Reading List: * “ Why the Culture of the So-Called Great Books is Hostile to Trans People ,” by Naomi Kanakia * “ Brandon Taylor’s online writing is vibrant, funny, and true. Why is his fiction trying so hard to be something else? ” by Laura Miller * “ A Review of ‘The Late Americans’ is Sending Book Twitter Into A Tailspin ,” by Katherine Esters * “ The New, Weirdly Racist Guide to Writing Fictio...

If you live in Austin as I have for the past 17 years, the phrase “new Austin” is pretty self-explanatory. Over the past few decades, the population of Austin has exploded, going from about 340,000 in 1980 to just shy of a million today, and that's actually a little bit of an understatement. That's just Austin proper rather than the whole metro area. With that growth has come a comparably dramatic...

Reading list: * “ The Last Essay I Need to Write about David Foster Wallace ,” by Mary K. Holland * “ I Really Didn’t Want to Go ,” by Lauren Oyler * “ Lauren Oyler tries a fun thing David Foster Wallace never did again ,” by Sophia Nguyen and Lauren Oyler * “ Where be your jibes now? ” by Patricia Lockwood * “ The Wonder of Wallace-L ,” by Maria Bustillos * “ Reclaiming David Foster Wallace from...

Reading list for episode: * “ John Pistelli ,” by Blake Smith * “ The Souls of Yellow Folk , by Wesley Yang ,” by John Pistelli * “ The Souls of Yellow Folk —A Review ,” by Daniel Oppenheimer * “ Platonic Complex: Why Do the Intellectuals Rage? "“ by John Pistelli * “ The Face of Seung-Hui Cho ,” by Wesley Yang Critic, novelist, and sorta-academic John Pistelli and I have two things on our agenda...

My guest on this episode of the podcast is Timothy Lensmire , professor of Education at the University of Minnesota and the author or editor of, among other works, White Folks: Race and Identity in Rural America ; Powerful Writing, Responsible Teaching ; and Whiteness at the Table: Antiracism, Racism, and Identity in Education . He is also a co-founder of the Midwest Critical Whiteness Collective...

Reading list: * Corey Robin's Facebook Page * Not Yet Falling Apart: Two thinkers on the left offer a guide to navigating the stormy seas of modernity , by moi * Straight Outta Chappaqua: How Westchester-bred lefty prof Corey Robin came to loathe Israel, defend Steven Salaita, and help cats , by Phoebe Maltz Bovy * Online Fracas for a Critic of the Right , by Jennifer Schuessler * Scholar Behind U...

Episode Reading List: * From Queer to Gay to Queer , James Kirchick * How Hannah Arendt’s Zionism Helped Create American Gay Identity , Blake Smith * When the Pope Hits Your Eye Like a Big Pizza Pie, That’s Ahmari , James Kirchick * Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Big Fat Nonbinary Mistake , Blake Smith * Are Conservatives the New Queers? , Blake Smith * Wesley Yang, The Souls of Yellow Folk , John Pistel...

This podcast was recorded about a week before its subject, Andrea Long Chu, was awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, so it doesn't come up in the conversation with Blake Smith, but it's interesting to keep in mind as he and I analyze Chu and try to understand the particular role she plays in the broader intellectual and journalistic ecosystem. Our story begins in early 2018, when the hip...

It would be very easy to hate Ezra Klein. He’s only 38, and already has been a pioneering political blogger, a pioneering explanatory journalist for the Washington Post , the founder of Vox.com, the author of the best-selling book Why We’re Polarized , and now a marquis podcaster and columnist for the New York Times . The amount of good fortune that’s come his way is staggering. Not just journalis...