Public Intellectual

With the true crime boom, we have been awash in stories of dead women and girls. And while those stories have been used to romanticize the police and advocate for "safety" measures that just end in more surveillance and oppression, occasionally these stories show us just how broken our institutions from justice to politics have become. Sonia Faleiro is the author of the new book The Good Girls abo...

"The opposite of nostalgia is truth." So writes Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore in her new book The Freezer Door. We discuss how nostalgia fuels gentrification, why our streaming services are full of shows set in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, and how Patti Smith's "Just Kids" inspired suburbanites to flood into New York City.  Support this podcast: http://patreon.com/publicintellectual http://jessa...

There is a widening gap between the aims of feminism and the lived experience of women. Angela McRobbie, as a historian of women's magazines, is in a better position than most to see the lie of gender meritocracy and aggressive "have it all" narratives. She joins Jessa to discuss whether the pandemic is a crisis for feminism, and whether class consciousness can be reintroduced to the movement. Sup...

With such a rich history of film tackling sexual violence in horror, exploitation, and other genre films -- and doing it well -- why when we try to take it seriously does it come out all wrong. Vincent Chabany-Douarre returns to PI to discuss the disappointing Promising Young Woman, why our queen Gillian Flynn must return to us, and remind us that it's okay to be the villain sometimes. Support thi...

Americans have very good reasons to be angry. Hundreds of thousands of us are dead from the pandemic, stimulus checks are nowhere to be seen, our government serves the very rich and few else. So why are we upset about fictions like child slavery and blood drinking Satanists? Mark Blyth is one of the authors of Angrynomics, and he speaks with Jessa about moral outrage, the failures of representatio...

Many of the odd social media arguments over the last couple years -- from Scorsese v Marvel to teach Harry Potter instead of Nathaniel Hawthorne -- can be understood as being actually about uncertainty about what art is for. Which is a new development of the age old "what makes art meaningful" conversation. Rita Felski, the author of Hooked: Art and Attachment, speaks to Jessa about some of these...

We'll be returning to our regular weekly schedule starting January 11th. Until then, please enjoy this first entry in our series of bonus episodes about the opera with singer Amber Fasquelle. We discuss Don Giovanni, an opera about a murder and rapist, and using art to talk about trauma and tragedy.  Support this podcast: http://patreon.com/publicintellectual http://jessacrispin.com

On the darkest day of the year, and with Trent Reznor everywhere with two new scores, it seems an appropriate time to discuss the Nine Inch Nails masterpiece The Downward Spiral. How did someone with actually so few real hits become such an influential artist? Why do people love to take their clothes off to Closer? Will Trent ever go through another velvet phase (please please)?  Support this podc...

Chelsey Weber Smith runs the American Hysteria podcast, so who better to come on to discuss America's various conspiracy theories, cults, and moral panics? Chelsey and Jessa discuss the links between the Satanic Panic and Q, how abuse of authority leads to con men and frauds, how the greatest threat to your child is you, and why Jim Jones was right (for a while). Yes, America is falling apart, but...

We were promised great art under the Trump administration. Everyone said it: our suffering would lead to a Renaissance of art, literature, and music. It obviously did not happen. (Well, we got a baby Trump balloon, that was cool.) So what happened? Art critic and editor at Caesura Allison Hewitt Ward discuss the recent trends -- Decolonize, idpol, #resistance, portraits of Trump with a micropenis...

Over the last four years under Trump, we've seen the emergence of a far right with militias, the alt-right, and other weirdo fascists, but we've also seen a push to the revolutionary left. What happens with our polarized kin now that we've got another centrist? Natalie Wynn of Contrapoints joins Jessa to discuss the backlash she experienced for telling people to vote, and why guillotines were tren...

Talk about guns is now shorthand for a certain kind of American: white uneducated racists. But conversations and action around gun control often hurt those most vulnerable, including those who can't count on the police for their own protection because of their race, class, or past interactions. How do we bring sanity to the conversation around guns, and now that militias are cosplaying civil war,...

It's election week in America, so of course we're going to talk about horror, ghosts, and watching violent death as a way of relieving anxiety. Claire Cronin, author of Blue Light of the Screen, joins Jessa to discuss the body horror of Catholicism and why all these haunting shows are just manifestations of anxiety about real estate. Support this show: http://patreon.com/publicintellectual http://...

Who owns a cultural object? Who benefits from artistic production? Where is the line between looting and preservation? While museums have been thought of as this cultural good, these bright shining sacred institutions of learning and edification, they are also the sight of plunder, erasure, and exploitation. Dan Hicks, author of The Brutish Museums, talks with Jessa about what the hard work of dec...

Ladies love a fascist. In Victoria de Grazia's new book The Perfect Fascist, she tells the story of Lilliana Weinman -- a beautiful Jewish heiress, attracting love and devotion in opera houses around Europe -- and Attilio Teruzzi, head of the blackshirts in Mussolini's Italy. Their love story, and the way it falls apart, resonates with what drives men to fascist groups today, the political misdeed...

With the death of RBG and the Supreme Court once again in a position to overturn Roe v Wade, journalist Alissa Quart and Jessa attempt to complicate the abortion debate. We discuss how the pro-choice movement often fails to take care of women, how legality does not mean accessibility, and why pro-lifers are not your enemy. Support this podcast: http://patreon.com/publicintellectual http://jessacri...

Just a few days before the Pope release a barnfire of an encyclical about the evils of neoliberalism and capitalism, Eugene McCarraher (The Enchantments of Mammon) and Jessa discussed the tangled relationship between Christians and the Left, the soulfulness of anarchism, and how capitalism became the religion of modernity. Support this podcast: http://patreon.com/publicintellectual http://jessacri...

In his new memoir Inventory, Darran Anderson recounts growing up in Derry, Northern Ireland, in the 80s, amid all of the humiliation and intimidation by police and an occupying army, the polarized politics, and the roughness of working class life. He talks with Jessa about the inheritance of anger and violence, and what such an immersive experience tells us about how to live today. Support this po...

We continue our series on the stress the pandemic is putting on domestic spaces. Jen Howard, the author of the new book Clutter, talks to Jessa about pandemic hoarding, why Marie Kondo drives some (mostly white upper class people) absolutely insane, how we imbue the material world with meaning it doesn't actually deserve, and what to do with all of our stuff.  Support this podcast: http://patreon....

Mark Arax (The Dreamt Land) is one of our finest chroniclers of the American West, and he joins Jessa to discuss the wildfires, the mismanagement of resources like water, soil, and timber, and why California is our land of extremes.  Support this podcast: http://patreon.com/publicintellectual http://jessacrispin.com

Now that Samuel Beckett's "Fail Better" is a motivational poster in some Silicon Valley bro's office, what is the value of art in the neoliberal age? And is it possible to still create art -- rather than just Content -- with the pressures of branding, the anxiety of audience, and the crippling of the industry? Jessa talks to Marianna Ritchey about her book Composing Capital and the state of the ar...

What is hiding behind your Instagram photos of perfectly baked sourdough bread? First of all, all of the labor and time and knowledge it took to create it. Second, the strained and in some places broken food supply chain during the pandemic. And third, all of the money and countertop space that some have but most do not. Cookbook writer and teacher Jaimee Edwards joins Jessa to discuss how domesti...

Natalie Alford, a singer songwriter out of Chicago, started to feel sick in the spring. Now four months later, she's still sick. As a part of our conversation about the how health care in this country is going to have to change post-pandemic, I thought a one-on-one with someone hit with debilitating and longterm symptoms from covid would help illuminate what we're up against.  Support this podcast...

Often when we discuss health care reform, we're talking about issues of accessibility and affordability. It is assumed American medicine is great, top notch. The only problem is how expensive it is and how broken the insurance networks are. But patients with pain, headaches, chronic illness are too often not only not cared for in American medicine but mistreated. Cassie Thornton talks with Jessa a...

Do we and should we have free speech or not? Why can't anyone agree on that? Bosnian-born writer Elvis Bego joins Jessa to discuss how free speech went from being a leftist issue to a conservative talking point, the dangerous sentimentality of America, and why a media saturated with one demographic -- class-based, not race -- is the real issue. Support this podcast: http://patreon.com/publicintell...