NYIH Conversations

André Aciman's 2007 novel Call Me By Your Name was the rare work of literary fiction that managed to develop an especially enthusiastic following, particularly in the wake of the recent film adaptation. With his recent novel Find Me, Aciman revisited the protagonists of his earlier work. A longtime fellow of the Institute, Aciman spoke to us about literary followups, music and literature, and the...

Robert Boynton talks with Eliza Griswold, poet and author of Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe is the author of Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, a New York Times Bestseller, winner of the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Writing, and one of the 10 Best Books of 2019” according to both The New York Times and The Washington Post. In this episode, he talks with Melanie Rehak about Belfast of the past, the present, a...

Lawrence "Ren" Weschler is the former director of the New York Institute for the Humanities and a two-time winner of the George Polk Award and won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle award for criticism. In this episode, Weschler describes the extraordinary and taxing story behind the writing of his most recent book, a biographical memoir of his late friend Oliver Sacks--a story that took almost...

Jad Abumrad is the co-host and creator of Radiolab. He studied creative writing and music composition at Oberlin and, in 2011, was awarded a MacArthur Grant. In 2016 he launched More Perfect, a show about the US Supreme Court. In the fall of 2018, Abumrad produced The Most Perfect Album, a musical reimagining of the Constitution's 27 Amendments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm...

Institute fellow and University of Virginia media studies scholar Siva Vaidyanathan discusses his book, Anti-Social Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Institute fellow Damion Searls discusses his new translation of German writer Uwe Johnson's 1700-page novel of New York, Jahrestage--published by New York Review Classics under the title Anniversaries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is virtuosity—and what does a music critic make of it? Worship it? Reject it? Ben Ratliff joins us to talk about the good and bad of virtuoso performance and how it has helped him think about the role of the critic in the age of Spotify. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Philip Dray reads "The Hunting of the Deer." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From Daniel Boone to "DIY" hipster hunting, The Fair Chase shows that hunting in America is a story as vast as the country itself, touching on everything from conservation to the history of guns to the emergence of modern sports. NYIH Fellow and Pulitzer Prize finalist Philip Dray spoke to us about his new book, which chronicles the surprising and sometimes fraught ways that hunting has touched so...

In the nineteen-seventies, New York Review of Books editor Ian Buruma lived in Japan, where he explored its film, literature, and theater. In this interview with Robert Boynton, Ian discusses his memoir, A Tokyo Romance, in which he reflects on these formative years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Trump White House is a place where a powder-keg masculinity is on dangerous display, ready to explode at any moment. Since his arrival in Washington, Rhonda Garelick’s cultural criticism has brilliantly argued that to understand the man and his administration, you have to pay attention to the women. At a time when the political dynamics around gender are especially volatile, Garelick, a profes...

NYU philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah talks with Robert Boynton about his book The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity. In it, Appiah explores how racial essentialism and our inadequate understanding of history distorts our conception of culture and identity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the New York Institute for the Humanities podcast. Learn more about the history of the Institute and our shows. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices