Recall This Book

On March 20th, John talked to Stephen McCauley, author of such brilliant comic novels as Object of My Affection (also a Jennifer Aniston movie) and most recently My Ex-Life. Steve brings light to dark corners in this the second installment of Books in Dark Times. He sings the praises of Charles Dickens, of Anthony Trollope … Continue reading "25 RTB Books in Dark Times 2: Stephen McCauley (JP)" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Books In Dark Times” takes its inspiration from Hannah Arendt’s Men in Dark Times, which proposes “That even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and that such illumination may well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and … Continue reading "24 RTB Books in Dark Times 1: Alex Star (JP)" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the first of several RTB episodes about the history of money. We are ranging from the earliest forms of labor IOUs to the modern world of bitcoin and electronically distributed value. Our idea is that forms matter, and matter in ways that those who profit from those forms often strive to keep hidden. … Continue reading "23 Recall This Buck 1: Chris Desan on Making Money (EF, JP)" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As we prepare our mini-season on the history of money (Recall This Buck) we dive back into the archives for our very first Rebroadcast. And our first asterisk, too: was that the right symbol to use? The egress of Elizabeth Warren from the race for the Democratic nomination saddened us: after all, we both belong … Continue reading "9* Women in Political Power, with Manduhai Buyandelger (Rebroadcast, in honor of Elizabeth Warren)" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ajantha Subramanian‘s new book The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India is much more than simply an historical and ethnographic study of the elite Indian Institutes of Technology. John and Elizabeth speak with Ajantha about the language of “merit” and the ways in which it can conceal the continuing relevance of caste (and class, … Continue reading "22 Ajantha Subramanian: Meritocracy, Caste, and Class (EF, JP)" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Not long after Maurizio Cattelan taped a banana to the wall, John and Elizabeth met with Silvia Bottinelli from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts to talk about food as art and art as food. Silvia is a Modern and Contemporary Art historian in the Visual and Material Studies Department at SMFA and … Continue reading "21 Silvia Bottinelli: Food, Art, Food Art!" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John sits down with Columbia University professor Sharon Marcus to discuss her latest book, The Drama of Celebrity, a tour-de-force argument about how stars are born, publicized, and in time devoutly scrapbooked by adoring fans. They tackle a question at least as old as Sarah Bernhardt: who or what makes a star? Rather than crediting … Continue reading "20 The Drama of Celebrity with Sharon Marcus (JP)" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode John and Elizabeth sit down with Brandeis string theorist Albion Lawrence to discuss cooperation versus solitary study across disciplines. They sink their teeth into the question, “Why do scientists seem to do collaboration and teamwork better than other kinds of scholars and academics?” The conversation ranges from the merits of collective biography … Continue reading "19 Scientists, collaboration, and groupthink with Albion Lawrence (EF, JP)" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John travelled to Odense, Denmark for a conference called “Love Etc.” (RTB is for it…) and fell into this conversation about empathy, identification and “uncritical reading” with the novelist Namwali Serpell and literary theorist Rita Felski. Hannah Arendt’s distrust of too much feeling, not enough thinking loomed large; so did Zadie Smith’s recent article in … Continue reading "18 Fictional Empathy. Rita Felski and Namwali Serpell (with JP)" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The British filmmaker Mike Leigh puts the move into movies: he never stops changing, never stops inventing. In nearly 50 years of filmmaking, he has ranged from comic portrayals of ordinary life amid the social breakdowns of Thatcher’s Britain (Life is Sweet, High Hopes) to gritty renditions of working-class constraint and bourgeois hypocrisy (Meantime, Abigail’s Party, … Continue reading "17 In Focus: Mike Leigh (JP)" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices