Bright Minds: from the John Adams Institute

The John Adams Institute is Amsterdam's home for independent American thought. John Adams himself said, "Let us tenderly and kindly cherish... the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write." For four decades, we have amassed a unique archive of great thinkers, speakers and writers, from Toni Morrison to Timothy Snyder, and from Jane Fonda to Jill Lepore. It ha...

Alice Walker is an internationally celebrated author, poet and activist whose books included novels, collections of short stories, children’s books, and volumes of essays and poetry. Her best known novel, The Color Purple , was adapted by Steven Spielberg into  a major motion picture. In 1992 she spoke at the John Adams Institute about her novel Possessing the Secret of Joy , about the devastating...

Kim Stanley Robinson is the author of 22 novels of speculative and science fiction. The Ministry for the Future is set in the near future in which the world is suffering the disastrous consequences of climate change. But it also details the steps humanity takes to mitigate them. It is ultimately an optimistic story about technological and political innovation. The Ministry for the Future reaffirms...

In South Carolina in the 1850s, an enslaved woman named Rose gives a simple cotton bag to her daughter Ashley. Ashley is about to be separated from her mother, sold as chattel to the highest bidder. The bag contains all her worldly possessions, and precious reminders about her family. From Harvard historian and National Book Award-winning author Tiya Miles comes All That She Carried . Blending fir...

In 2018, the tech and democracy activist Yaël Eisenstat joined Facebook as the head of Global Elections Integrity for political ads. Six months later, she left. She was disappointed and disillusioned at how Facebook financially profits from voter manipulation. This, of course, was years before Mark Zuckerberg's recent announcement that Facebook’s parent company, Meta, would get rid of all its...

A gem rescued from the archives! We are re-releasing the Toni Morrison episode after cleaning up the audio. Toni Morrison writes about history, slavery, racism, resilience and survival with an unflinching voice. Her novels, once a staple of every American school bookshelf, are now the targets of politically motivated reviews and book bannings. Despite this, there is no getting around the fact that...

Ivo Daalder is a Dutch born American citizen, who became  the U.S. representative to NATO from 2009 to 2013 under President Barack Obama and was a foreign policy advisor for his 2008 presidential campaign. He also served in the United States Security Council during the Clinton administration. He’s now the CEO of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The John Adams Institute and the Netherlands At...

Super Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020. Professor of law, a constitutional scholar, commentator and author Kim Wehle joined the John Adams to lay out exactly what was at stake in the election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The constitutional issues were, and still are, enormous.   In her book How to Read the Constitution – and Why Kim Wehle describes in clear language what is actually in the Constitu...

It’s April 14th, 1865. The actor John Wilkes Booth pulls a gun and assassinates President Lincoln who is sitting in a balcony of the Ford Theatre in Washington DC. Booth becomes one of the most infamous men in American history. But what about his family? Who were they? What did they believe? Did they have any role in the killing? These are questions author and Man Booker finalist Karen Joy Fowler...

History is entering a new phase, where old forms and ideas clash with present realities. The John Adams Institute was excited to welcome Francis Fukuyama back to Amsterdam to discuss his findings in his book, Liberalism and Its Discontents . In this rigorous and trim volume, Fukuyama returns to liberalism, arguing that it cannot grow complacent. Liberalism—despite its flaws—appears to be the only...

Bret Easton Ellis took 13 years to write The Shards . It’s a horror novel. Or maybe it’s an autobiography.  In fact, it’s both. The Shards is a fictionalized retelling of Mr. Ellis’s 18th year.  It tells the story of a group of superficially sophisticated teens have their lives shattered by a series of terrible events. It’s 1981 Los Angeles and a local serial killer known only as The Trawler draws...

In the third and final episode of the election specials of our podcast Bright Minds , America expert and podcaster Laila Frank talks to law professor, constitutional scholar, commentator and author Kim Wehle . She is an expert on constitutional law and the separation of powers, with particular emphasis on presidential power and administrative agencies. Her latest book Pardon Power - How the Pardon...

The current episodes of our podcast Bright Minds are all about the U.S. presidential elections. America journalist Laila Frank , specialized in politics and change in the U.S., will bring you conversations with remarkable American political thinkers about their hopes, fears and expectations for this election cycle. In the second episode of our election specials , Laila Frank talks to author, journ...

The next three episodes of Bright Minds are all about the U.S. presidential elections. America journalist Laila Frank , specialized in politics and change in the U.S., will bring you conversations with remarkable American political thinkers about their hopes, fears and expectations for this election cycle. First up is professor of African-American studies and author Carol Anderson . She is a renow...

This fourth episode of the Future 400 podcast is all about theater and dance. Battery Dance, New York City's longest running public dance festival, is hosting the Dutch-Turkish choreographer Rutkay Özpinar from Korzo Theater as part of the Future 400 exchange. And the Dutch theater director Ira Kip is working on her new play, Kings… Come Home, a reflection the impact of being uprooted, which...

Design your look, design your life. Rambler Studios is a creative platform for raw talent. It offers young people a safe space where they can discover what they’re good at and find a sense of belonging – and maybe a career in street fashion. Started by Carmen van der Vecht in Amsterdam in 2010, it has branched out to New York’s Lower East Side. It operates there under the wings of the Henry Street...

This second episode of the Future 400 podcast looks at work by Dutch and American photographers who are part of the annual international photo festival Photoville in Lower Manhattan. Dutch photographer Ernst Coppejans delves deep into the lives of LGBTQIA+ people living on the streets in New York. Kennedi Carter, a young Black photographer from the South, dresses people of color in a combination o...

Future 400 is a bi-weekly four-part podcast series from the Dutch Consulate in New York. It is part of the two-year cultural program of the same name, marking the 400th anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam, the city that became New York. Each episode highlights a selection of the creative collaborations between artists, communities and institutions in both the Netherlands and the United St...

Andrea Elliot ’s 2022 Pulitzer winning book, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City , follows eight dramatic years in the life of a young woman named Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolize Brooklyn’s gentri...

2024 is an election year. And in his book  Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal', George Packer makes the case for why this may be the most important election since the civil war. Packer accepts that America may be “a failed state”. A state that is in a “cold civil war” between four incompatible versions of the US: the Free America of libertarian Reagan, the Smart America of Clinton-...

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones ’s 1619 project has inspired both throngs of like-minded people as well as a severe backlash. This hasn’t stopped her from devoting her career to exposing systemic and institutional racism in the United States. The 1619 Project WAS published in New York Times Magazine—and is now a successful podcast and television series. So, why 1619? That was...

2024 is an election year and Donald Trump is running again. This makes journalist and political commentator Mark Leibovich’s second nonfiction blockbuster T hank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission , particularly timely. Mr. Leibovich sketches the political landscape of Washington during the Trump presidency. We all know how Mr. Trump bent the Republican p...

From Hollywood to Hanoi, Jane Fonda has endeared and enraged Americans for decades with her sparkling performances and outspoken views. Following an eclectic career as an actress, activist and fitness guru plus a string of high-profile husbands, the acclaimed Fonda tells all in her autobiography My Life So Far. In this episode of Bright Minds , Jane Fonda reveals intimate details and universal tru...

From Hemingway to Dickens, from Nabokov to Twain, from Isak Dinesen to Graham Greene, many of the world’s great writers were also great travel writers. Paul Theroux, arguably the most renowned living travel writer, has capped a fifty-year writing career with The Tao of Travel , a collection of travel stories – by himself and others. Join us for a trip around the world with the man who gave us The...

President Bill Clinton’s former Secretary of Labor argues in his important book that in the last thirty years capitalism has flourished at the expense of democracy. Robert Reich – one of America’s most renowned economists – says people now see themselves as buyers and sellers first and citizens only later, if at all. The rise of supercapitalism has meant fantastically increased choices for consume...