Eminent Americans

On this special Christmas episode of the podcast, my 9-year-old son Gideon interviews me for a school assignment about my writing, my day job, and my theories on why I’m an interesting person. He’s hoping there will be comments, so if you have any thoughts please share them. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe

This episode, with Democratic congressional candidate Caitlin Rourk, has an interesting backstory. Back in May my wife wrote an op-ed for the Austin American Statesman criticizing Republic congressman John Carter, whose district is adjacent to the one we live in. Carter isn’t particularly noxious, as these people go, but nor is he at all in possession of actual principles. He’s just a stooge for Trump and MAGA. My wife was frustrated and feeling powerless, as many of us were and are, and this was a small way to feel like she’s doing something, putting Carter on notice, to whatever extent he pays attention to the local news, that people are seeing what he’s doing and more importantly not doing, which is actually exercising independent judgement about what’s good for the country.Here’s a bit of it, to give you a sense:Republican Congressman John Carter, whose 31st district covers North Austin up to northwest of Waco, has long styled himself an old school defender of the U.S. Constitution. He invokes the founding document frequently — to oppose hate crime legislation, advocate for gun rights, criticize the Affordable Care Act, and decry executive actions by Democratic presidents. He presents himself as a public servant guided by deep constitutional principles.When it comes to Donald Trump, however, those principles disappear.In recent months, Trump has been openly contemptuous of the Constitution and its embedded system of checks and balances. He has willfully ignored bipartisan legislation requiring him to force a divestment of TikTok from its Chinese parent company, a direct challenge to the separation of powers and the legislative process. He has deported lawful U.S. residents without due process, in some cases sending them to countries where their lives are in grave danger. He has targeted activists and institutions for exercising their rights to free speech and academic freedom.These are not small matters. They are bright red constitutional lines that no president, regardless of party, should be permitted to cross.Congressman Carter has had nothing to say on the subject. One searches in vain—on his website and social media feeds, in his public appearances and newsletters—for a word of dissent or even disquiet. When he speaks at all, which seems increasingly rare, he focuses elsewhere. On April 14, for example, Carter said nothing about President Trump’s suggestion, in a joint press conference with El Salvador president Nayib Bukele, that perhaps American citizens should be sent off to prison in El Salvador. That same day, Carter issued a press release touting proposed legislation to address … a shortage of bus drivers in America.…If he truly cared about the rule of law and the balance of powers, he would speak out when anyone — Republican or Democrat — undermines them. Instead, he reserves his outrage for moments of partisan opportunity. He cries constitutional foul when it suits him and shrugs when the violations come from within his own political tribe.As Thomas Jefferson once put in, in a line that Carter quotes on his own website, “When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When people fear the government, there is tyranny.” Carter may wrap himself in the Constitution, but he cannot claim to honor it while turning a blind eye to the fear that the administration is instilling in the people.After that ran, Jess got an email from Rourk, who—at the time of our interview—was planning to run as a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Congress in Carter’s district. She has now shifted her candidacy to Texas’s 10th congressional district, I’m pretty sure because of court rulings on redistricting in Texas. It’s an open seat left by the retirement of Michael McCaul, and like Carter’s seat, a pretty safely red one, which in a normal election year would safely go to the Republican by 10 or 12 points. So, she’s no longer challenging John Carter, but the issues we discuss are all entirely germane.I asked Caitlin to talk I think out of the same motive that drove Jess to write the op-ed. I wanted to do something, or at least think about how one would do something. Winning the open 10th district seat as a Democrat is a long shot, but even if she (or whoever wins the Democratic primary, if it’s not her) loses, the fact of running a vigorous challenge is meaningful. A smaller loss than what would occur in a typical election year, e.g., would be a signal to Republicans that Trump is dragging them down. An energetic campaign is also an end in itself. It gets people involved, brings them into the process. It provides information about what kinds of attacks or policies work or don’t. It pushes the opposition to defend itself. And, and I think this is important too, it wards off despair.Caitlin and I talk about that. We also talk about her military service, why she chose to run, the realities of running in a district without national party backing, and the challenges—and opportunities—of building a campaign from the ground up. We talk about what it means to be authentic as a candidate, how to connect with voters who feel alienated or overlooked, and the importance of taking risks and trying new approaches in districts where the traditional playbook hasn’t worked. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe

This is part two of my two-part episode on Terry Gross. In part one, which was a paid episode, I talked to Sarah Hepola, Jason Thurlkill, and Meghan Daum about Terry Gross, what makes her great, and who should replace her whenever she chooses to retire. On this episode, which is a freebie, I talk to Mark Oppenheimer, Mike Pesca, and Jesse Adams/The Ivy Exile.Aside from being my brother, Mark Oppenheimer is host of his own podcast, the Arc podcast, or Arc with Mark, which is the flagship podcast of the magazine he edits. He is also the author of Judy Blume: A Life, the forthcoming biography of Judy Blume, which drops in March of next year. Mike Pesca is the host of The Gist, the longest running daily news podcast in history, and its affiliated Substack, The Gist List. He has two other, non-daily podcasts: Funny You Should Mention, in which he talks to stand up comedians, and Not Even Mad, which is dedicated to “joyful disagreement.” He is the author of Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History, which came out in 2018. Jesse Adams is the author of The Ivy Exile Substack, and a writer for, among other publications, the Washington Examiner and the New York Post. Thanks to all my guests, and listeners, for joining me in this endeavor. I have no immediate plans to do another special episode, but this felt like a success to me, so I’m sure at some point I’ll do it again. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.comThis is episode one of my long-awaited Terry Gross Project, where I tackle the question of who Terry Gross’s successor should be on Fresh Air and what we can learn, by playing around with that question, about the magic of Terry Gross, the cultural meaning and trajectory of NPR, the art of the interview, and various other related topics.

The text for today’s episode is Conversations with Kiese Laymon, which is a new anthology of interviews with Laymon. My guests are Laymon himself, , a previous guest on the podcast and one of the best nonfiction writers of my generation, and the editor of the book, Constance Bailey.Laymon’s memoir Heavy, which came out in 2018, was #60 on the New York Times list of the best hundred books of the 21st Century, and that really understates its brilliance. It’s a pretty amazing book, which you should read. He is also the author of the novel Long Division and the essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. He has a new children’s book out this year, City Summer, Country Summer, and is scheduled to have another memoir out next year, which is provisionally titled Good God. Constance Bailey is an assistant professor of African American literature and folklore at Georgia State University and, like Laymon, a native of Mississippi, though neither of them lives there now. Bailey’s in Atlanta and Laymon, who did go back home for a number of years to teach at Old Miss, is now in Houston, where he has an endowed chair of English and creative writing at Rice University.We talk about the origins of the book, both in terms of how Bailey sold it, as a new installment in part of the University of Mississippi Press’s storied “Literary Conversation” series, and why it was so appealing for Laymon to sign on (the series, as we learn in the conversation, was a meaningful influence on his development and self-conception as a young writer).We talk a lot about Mississippi itself and how it’s affected both of their lives and writing. We talk about race, money, writing, speaking, and what it means to perform for white dollars. It’s a good conversation—such a good conversation, in fact, that if anyone ever plans to do another collection of interviews with Kiese, they should let me know and I will send them the transcript of this conversation and give them permission to include it in their collection. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.comBlake and I talk about the long essays that each of us has written recently: Blake’s essay in Aeon on the New York intellectual and art critic Harold Rosenberg, and mine on the recent back and forth between Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates. We also engage Blake’s feelings about the the recent death of his father, Billy Smith, or rather on his evasion of my effort to get him to talk about his feelings

I invited Alex Perez and Ross Barkan to join me for this episode of the podcast because I’d seen both of them write essays or posts recently reflecting on their days as baseball players.Ross, as you’ll hear, topped out as a decent high school player. Alex was recruited to play for a top college team, and for a while had not implausible dreams of playing professionally.Both have experienced an intimate relationship between baseball and their lives and identities as writers.We talk about that. We also talk about the locker room culture and camaraderie of sports teams in general, its complicated set of pros and cons. We talk about the rival cultures of sports and literature, and how class status and mores play out in these two domains.One of my old friends who listens to the show said to me once that it’s all really just about men and masculinity. I don’t think that’s quite true, but it’s not totally untrue either. I could easily assemble a playlist of episodes of the podcast that deal either explicitly or heavily implicitly with the topic, and this one would certainly be on it.Ross is a writer and author who writes most often for New York magazine and also frequently for the New York Times Magazine. He is the founder and co-editor of the Substack native publication The Metropolitan Review, and his latest books are a novel, Glass Century, and a nonfiction work, Fascism or Genocide: How a Decade of Political Disorder Broke American Politics. He’s working on a book about presumptive New York mayor Zohran Mamdani.Alex is an associate editor at Panamerica Books, which is the new publishing imprint of County Highway. He’s also an editor for Real Clear Books, and has written for Tablet, County Highway, Compact, and other places. My opening anointment of him as an eminent America “by the power vested in me by the white women of publishing,” is a reference to a notorious interview he did with the Hobart Review (which I would link to except that it’s been taken down from their site) that featured a great deal of his unvarnished thoughts on issues of race, gender, and class in publishing. It led to a total meltdown of that journal as well as the creation of a general aura around Alex as a kind of barbarian of the literary scene.It’s a fun conversation. Hope you enjoy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe

Sam Kahn, a writer and publisher known for his critiques of the American left, joins David Sessions, a public intellectual and labor commentator. They delve into their personal relationships with the left, exploring whether liberalism and leftism are philosophically aligned. Kahn provocatively argues that the current left undermines broader coalitions, while Sessions reflects on his journey through various political movements. They discuss potential winning issues for liberals and the costs of their political shifts, all while contemplating the future of democratic discourse in a evolving media landscape.

Lillian Fishman, a novelist and critic known for her work on sexual culture, dives deep into the complex world of pornography. She examines how popular porn categories reflect societal fantasies and questions whether performers truly experience pleasure in their roles. Lillian critiques the contradictions in liberal writing on porn and argues that these narratives can sometimes escape moral scrutiny. With a focus on why we are drawn to certain cultural phenomena, she explores the implications of porn on desire and the generations that consume it.

My guest on the show today is Matt Dinniman, author of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, which is seven books into a projected 10 volume run.I happened upon the book when I was trawling Kindle unlimited for science fiction to read. It kept recommending it to me, and I kept resisting, because it was hard to take seriously a novel called Dungeon Crawler Carl. Finally I gave it a try, and literally within about three weeks I’d burned through all seven novels in the series, each of which runs around 600 pages or more.They are a blast: hilarious, absurd, propulsively plotted, just an immense amount of fun. Matt and I talk about the series, which was initially self-published but has now been re-issued by a big commercial publisher and is being adapted for television by Seth MacFarlane. We talk about his career prior to the recent success, when he mostly made his money by painting cats and dogs. We talk about changes in the publishing industry, and more. I enjoyed talking to Matt, who is precisely the kind of person you want enjoying this kind of unexpected mid life success. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe