There’s nothing new about the desire to control our dreams. After all, these highly subjective, intense, yet easily forgettable nighttime experiences have offered artists and spiritual leaders insights to their respective professions throughout history. In the April issue, Michael W. Clune writes about the profound insights offered by the Dormio, a device that offers users the opportunity to influence the content of their dreams. Its lead designer, Adam Haar Horowitz, hopes to create a community of dreamers Clune joins web editor Violet Lucca for a discussion of the relationship between dreams and the brain’s capacity for creativity and feeling, as well as how embracing subjectivity can open new ground for dream research. Along the way, they touch on psychedelics and addiction and imagine the possibilities for communities and rituals built around “dream incubation” as well as the lasting effects of Clune’s experiences with this new kind of dream machine. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com

Philosopher Agnes Callard and web editor Violet Lucca discuss the power and ethical implications of eros. They explore its depiction in history, the challenges of writing about sex, and the concepts of civility and loneliness. The podcast delves into personal struggles, the difficulty of objective storytelling, private worlds in relationships, and the emotional experiences of selfishness and loneliness.

How do birds make breakneck turns in perfect formation as they soar thousands of feet above the ground? Nobody knows. But the answer could allow us to better comprehend numerous natural systems, from subatomic particles to schools of fish to ourselves. In the March issue, Vanessa Gregory writes about a group of physicists investigating a similar mystery: how certain species of fireflies synchronize their flashing as part of an elaborate mating ritual. Gregory joins web editor Violet Lucca to delve into the myriad implications of complexity science, the history and methodology of firefly research, and whether systems in nature communicate in ways that don’t remotely resemble how humans do.Read Gregory’s story: https://harpers.org/archive/2022/03/bright-flight-fireflies-collective-behavior-blink/This episode was produced by Violet Lucca and Andrew Blevins This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com

Anyone who has cracked a smartphone screen or needed to replace a failing laptop battery knows the frustration that awaits. Devices that are vital to our daily lives are nearly impossible to fix ourselves, and manufacturer repairs are often so expensive that it makes more sense to trash it and buy a new one. Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson joins web editor Violet Lucca to discuss her article in the March 2022 issue on the Right to Repair movement, which seeks to empower users to fix ailing devices rather than consign them to the trash heap. Dickinson and Lucca discuss the scope of the problem, which pertains to everything from smartwatches to dishwashers to tractors, and how corporations have progressed from ceasing to publish technical manuals to using nonstandard parts that render their products impenetrable black boxes. They delve into the environmental impact of these corporate decisions and trace the progress of the Right to Repair movement from small online tinkerer communities to federal legislation and executive orders. All the while, Evitts Dickinson and Lucca plumb some of the deepest issues raised by the movement, including the role consumer behavior played in creating the current situation and the very nature of ownership.Read Evitts Dickinson’s annotation: https://harpers.org/archive/2022/03/your-own-devices-right-to-repair-movement-ifixit/This episode was produced by Violet Lucca and Andrew Blevins. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com

It’s often thought that world-famous athletes hype themselves up into a fit of frenzy or descend into a state of serene calm in order to excel in front of huge crowds. But many athletes can’t help but hear one voice inside their heads—that of their coach, who seems to guide them every step of the way. Stanford anthropologist T. M. Luhrmann spent two years interviewing elite athletes about what went through their heads while competing, and she joins web editor Violet Lucca to discuss her findings. Lucca and Luhrmann discuss the lingering effects for athletes who cede internal authority, as well as how others groups of people—such as evangelicals and those with schizophrenia—experience the voices that guide or threaten them. These relationships are often complex, and Lucca and Luhrmann explore the idea that hearing voices isn’t necessarily cause for alarm, but a part of our rich mental landscape that often goes undiscussed. By understanding how culture and human intention affect our interior world, we may come to a deeper understanding of the mind.Read Lurhmann’s story here: https://harpers.org/archive/2022/03/voice-lessons-how-coaches-get-in-athletes-headsThis episode was produced by Violet Lucca and Andrew Blevins This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com

Nicolas Cage—who draws inspiration from Elvis, superhero Luke Cage, Edgar Allen Poe, and others—has an unmistakable dramatic style that has garnered a cult following. Dan Piepenbring joins web editor Violet Lucca to analyze Cage’s “neo-shamanic” acting, how he stands apart from other actors who revel in bigness (aka hams), and how he has used the press to cultivate eccentricity and has made himself into something more interesting than, yet inseparable from, the characters he plays. Their discussion stretches across Cage’s massive filmography, from David Lynch’s Wild at Heart to Nick Powell’s Outcast, a direct-to-streaming release.Read Piepenbring’s review: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com

The broad strokes of the Jim Crow South are well-known: the laws, the cruelty, and the protest movements that ultimately brought the era to an end. But as Adolph Reed Jr. argues, less attention is paid to the quotidian details of everyday life within that socio-economic system. Reed, whose book The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives is excerpted in the February issue, joins web editor Violet Lucca to discuss his attempt to access historical truth through his own memory, and the implications of different ways of understanding America’s racial history. Reed and Lucca explore questions related to recent efforts to make slavery the essential formative black American experience, and Reed advocates for the preservation of the open-endedness of history—of seeking to understand the past as it was, rather than as a source of inspiration or moral superiority.Read the excerpt of The South: https://harpers.org/archive/2022/02/separate-and-unequal-the-south-jim-crow-and-its-afterlives-adolph-reed-jr/Class Matters podcast: https://classmatterspodcast.org/This episode was produced by Violet Lucca and Andrew Blevins This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com

Permitless carry is the law in more than twenty states, even though it’s unpopular with the vast majority of gun owners. Rachel Monroe, author of Savage Appetites: True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession, joins web editor Violet Lucca to discuss her latest report on the small, vocal groups of gun activists who are agitating to expand this right. The two also break down the false ideas that shape gun legislation in the U.S.—of the typical gun owner, a good guy with a gun, and of a purer past of gun ownership—along with an upcoming Supreme Court case that could lead to more armed people than ever before.Read Monroe’s cover story: https://harpers.org/archive/2022/02/free-country-permitless-carry-new-guns-rights-extremism/This episode was produced by Violet Lucca and Andrew Blevins. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com

Jessica Camille Aguirre joins web editor Violet Lucca to discuss “Another Green World,” her piece in the February issue that explores a new experiment inside the infamous Biosphere 2 facility near Tucson, Arizona. Together, they discuss the relationship between climate change, the desire to travel in space, and a failure to confront the lingering colonialist tendency to control and exploit earth’s natural resources until they are exhausted. Does the impetus to find another home for humanity betray a discomfort with our ecological interdependence? Is it an attempt to absolve ourselves for harming the planet when there’s still time to make it livable again? Issues around science and climate reporting are also discussed.Read Aguirre’s essay: https://harpers.org/archive/2022/02/biosphere-2-ecosystem-space-exploration-another-green-worldThis episode was produced by Violet Lucca and Andrew Blevins. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com

Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, a contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine, joins web editor Violet Lucca to discuss Findings, one of the most iconic sections of the magazine, and his recent short story, “An Errand.” Together, they explore his process for finding Findings and carefully juxtaposing recent scientific studies to form an alternately juvenile and highbrow comedic chronicle. They also delve into the world of Old Delhi to examine Kroll-Zaidi’s short story from the January issue, which finds a brother and sister on a quest to find a seller of hearts. They discuss the ways in which the story blends contemporary reality with folklore, and how Kroll-Zaidi’s work on Findings informs his fiction.Findings: https://harpers.org/sections/findings/“An Errand”: https://harpers.org/archive/2022/01/an-errand-rafil-kroll-zaidi/This episode was produced by Violet Lucca and Andrew Blevins. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit harpersmagazine.substack.com