This year, resolve to think differently about habit. Meghan O’Gieblyn, author of God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning, discusses the spiritual, cognitive, and creative benefits of embracing routine in an increasingly automated world. O’Gieblyn dispenses with narrow notions of life hacking and argues that habits can free us from rigid algorithms to create space for contemplation. Routine doesn’t have to mean killing all spontaneity, but instead can function as a bulwark against mindlessness. 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

What does advice from the world’s most notorious consulting firm look like? Ian MacDougall discusses the McKinsey mystique, its work culture, the inner workings of its project to reduce violence at New York’s Rikers Island jail complex, and how the firm has shaped American capitalism over nine decades. You can read MacDougall’s annotation of one of McKinsey’s PowerPoint slides, created for the Rikers Island project—along with the entire presentation—here: https://harpers.org/archive/2022/01/a-firm-hand-mckinsey-goes-to-rikers-islandThis 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

Writer Scott Sayare discusses his most recent piece for Harper’s Magazine, which addresses what little we know for certain about our ability to smell, as well as the secretive world of the fragrance industry and our tendency to take olfaction for granted. Sayare also explains new methods of helping those who’ve lost their ability to smell, a common lingering effect of COVID-19. 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

Lauren Oyler, a critic and novelist known for her sharp literary insights, shares her complex feelings about W. G. Sebald's influential work. She dissects the discrepancies in Carol Angier’s biography, diving into Sebald's unique blend of fiction and memoir. The conversation navigates his significant cultural impact, the ethics of literary appreciation, and the emotional connections formed through literary tourism. Oyler raises questions about modern societal anxieties and the personal resonance of Sebald's narratives.

Will Self, author of Umbrella, How the Dead Live, and a new memoir, Will, discusses his provocative argument that trauma—in literary, historical, and cultural criticism—is wildly overused and misapplied. Rather than it being a phenomenon that has persisted throughout human history, Self contends that it is a product of modernity; while past injustices and injurious experience (war, slavery, abuse) may seem to have produced trauma-like symptoms, we have no way of judging whether they resemble trauma as we now conceive of it. Harper’s Magazine web editor Violet Lucca talks through the finer points of Self’s thesis.Read Self’s essay: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/12/a-posthumous-shock-trauma-studies-modernity-how-everything-became-trauma/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

Thomas Chatterton Williams is an expatriate writer and a former Harper’s Magazine Easy Chair columnist. He joins editor in chief Christopher Beha to discuss his essay, “Continental Divide,” in which Williams travels to Leukerbad, Switzerland, to retrace James Baldwin’s journey in “Stranger in the Village.” The two reflect on the rewarding perspectives gained from living outside one’s home country, and survey the souring relationship between the United States and France.Read Baldwin’s “Stranger in the Village”:https://harpers.org/archive/1953/10/stranger-in-the-village/ Read Williams’s “Continental Divide”: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/10/continental-divide-stranger-in-the-village/Read Williams’s final column for Harper’s: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/12/under-the-surface 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

Rachel Riederer joins web editor Violet Lucca to discuss Riederer’s November cover story about the potential for military conflict in space. At present, there is no common understanding of what constitutes an act of war in space, nor are there clear guidelines for private companies entering orbit. In this episode of the podcast, Riederer and Lucca parse these inadequacies, the vulnerabilities of military and commercial satellites, recent attempts to update the rules that govern space, and the question of whether the Pentagon is inflating these threats.Read Riederer’s story: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/11/ad-astra-the-coming-battle-over-space/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

Sierra Crane Murdoch, author of Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country, discusses her latest essay for Harper’s Magazine, which asks a simple yet provocative question: What makes a good mother? Murdoch, a childless white woman, speaks with web editor Violet Lucca about the process of affirming to the state her belief that her friend and the subject of her book Lissa Yellow Bird, a Native woman, would make a good foster parent. Murdoch and Lucca discuss the colonized notions that haunt not only foster care but also journalism, and how, for nonwhite women, surviving trauma can be viewed as a liability rather than resiliency. 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

Memoirist and critic Vivian Gornick joins Violet Lucca to discuss Gornick’s essay “Put on the Diamonds” with novelist Sigrid Nunez, whose review of Italo Svevo’s A Very Old Man also runs in the October issue. Together Gornick and Nunez consider the inescapable evil that is humiliation; the unevenness of power; its connections to vulnerability and vengefulness; and the dire need to think well of ourselves. Later they unpack the concept of “sturdiness” in one’s voice and discover the lines in storytelling through a surrogated versus an unsurrogated self. Read Gornick’s essay: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/10/put-on-the-diamonds-notes-on-humiliation-vivian-gornick/Read Nunez’s review: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/10/a-very-old-man-italo-svevo/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

In this episode of the podcast, Lisa Wells, the author of Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World, discusses her latest report for Harper’s Magazine, “To Be a Field of Poppies,” with Ann Neumann, the author of The Good Death, and Harper’s web editor Violet Lucca. The trio’s discussion of death is profound and unorthodox, yet humor-filled as well. Wells lays out the process of natural organic reduction (NOR), Neumann delves into society’s fascination with the dead rather than the dying, and Lucca opens a conversation about the role of capitalism in the funeral industry. This episode is unquestionably life-affirming.Read Wells’s article: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/10/to-be-a-field-of-poppies-natural-organic-reduction-composting-corpse/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