Podcast Archives - Open Source with Christopher Lydon

In 1854, when the escaped slave Anthony Burns was captured in Boston and returned in chains to slave-owners in Virginia, despite riotous resistance on the dock in Boston, Henry David Thoreau himself was shattered. Lewis ... The post Thoreau Meets ICE appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Who remembers Bernie Goetz? Who remembers his victims? Or was Bernie Goetz the victim—the subway shooter who, back in 1984, fired at four black teenagers in a crowded subway car in Manhattan because he felt ... The post Fear and Fury appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

How should we see the Israeli-American War on Iran? How should we understand it, or maybe even escape it? The writer and historian Daniel Immerwahr is our guest, with the essential qualifications, starting with his ... The post Hit-and-Run Belligerence appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

I must say, among all the wise people commenting on this world’s situation, I honor Jeffrey Sachs especially for being relentless on the dangers out there, going back to the Biden years. Jeffrey Sachs. He ... The post Sleepwalking into World War III appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re sorting puzzle pieces from the opening rounds of war with Iran. The U.S. and Israel started it. The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic in Iran was among the first to die in it, ... The post War with Iran appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re tracking the Bernie Sanders story from a Brooklyn boyhood to the Green Mountain socialism that he implanted in Vermont, and then to his two offbeat campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination: in 2016, and ... The post Bernie’s Journey appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re going off script out here in the afterlife, in the imagination of the triple-threat novelist George Saunders. He’s eminent as a writer of stories and novels, as a critical reader, and as a teacher ... The post George Saunders on Life and the Afterlife appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Pico Iyer is the global citizen and now, inadvertently, the movie star—in the winter’s hot movie, Marty Supreme. Across a hundred conversations over the years, we thought we knew everything about him, the transcendentalist Buddhist ... The post Pico Supreme appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re getting our heads around the invasion of Venezuela and what feels like a rough new rule book for the so-called world order. Cue Greg Grandin, the hemispheric historian who wrote that big book America, ... The post Age of Hemispheric Empires appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re talking about capitalism this time, trying to reckon the power of big money to shape—even rule—the human species. Capitalism is the one-word name given to a thousand-year-old force. It’s not a science or doctrine ... The post A Thousand Years of Capitalism appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re rediscovering John Updike in the afterlife of a great writer. The Selected Letters of John Updike, just published, come to 800 pages of unguarded messages to his wives and lovers, to his mother and ... The post John Updike’s Vocation appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope is Brandon Terry’s long-awaited personal and philosophical case for struggle and optimism in the long civil rights movement in our country. It’s a map of our minds and our memories, a ... The post Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

What is breaking down or what’s broken when the governor of Illinois says he’s being invaded by the National Guard of Texas under President Trump’s orders, or when the president is dueling with Oregon and ... The post Stress-Testing the Rule of Law appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Call this Mrs. Dalloway’s podcast. We’re reading classic fiction from a century ago for light on the strangeness of the world in our day, or maybe just for relief reading a great old book. The ... The post Mrs. Dalloway at 100 appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re with the cultural historian Robin D.G. Kelley at UCLA, who has the nerve to ask: where have our thinkers gone in Trump time? Not the experts or the influencers, but the grander minds who ... The post Where Are the Intellectuals? appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re in the fourth summer of hot warfare between Russia and Ukraine. It’s a cruel and deadly war that doesn’t know how to stop. Anatol Lieven. Our guest to offer a helping hand is the ... The post Russia and Ukraine in 2025 appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re grappling with the prize historian Greg Grandin’s take on the making of the modern world. There’s a 600-page version in hard covers, but also a two-word version in his title, America, América, code for ... The post America, América appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re retracing our steps out of the last bad-dream era in American life. Michael Ansara was in the thick of that struggle too, around war and justice. The Hard Work of Hope is his memoir ... The post The Hard Work of Organizing appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re in Saratoga, New York, with the soulful American believer Marilynne Robinson, prize novelist and teacher of novelists. She’s known over the decades as the storyteller we trust to observe the troubled heart of our ... The post Occupied America appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re in the Orwellian aftermath of what President Trump has called his 12-day war in the Middle East. It’s over, he proclaimed on Monday. “Congratulations world,” he said on his Truth Social site, “it’s time ... The post Trump at War appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

This week, it’s a conversation on the democracy question and the embattled fate of our own, beset as it is from within. Philosopher-historian Danielle Allen is our guest examiner of the cranky American condition. It ... The post Divided, Defensive Democracy appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re with the writer Paul Elie, recalling the moment when popular culture came to sound like public prayer. There was Madonna in 1989, singing her number one hit “Like a Prayer.” The song is a ... The post The Last Supper appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re staring down the several crises in our economy—and recalling the grand old joke that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. John Cassidy. John Cassidy of The ... The post Capitalism and Its Critics appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re staring down the global trade war with Mark Blyth at Brown University. He is the People’s Economist from Scotland, who takes us home to his village pub in Dundee every once in a while ... The post Trade, Trumped appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We have a key, finally, to the mystery of Donald Trump and where he came from. He was born almost exactly 100 years ago in the imagination of the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. What he ... The post Gatsby at 100: Fitzgerald’s Warning about Trumpism appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re considering the Jesus story with the historian Elaine Pagels. Her new book is a marvel, crowning a lifetime of bestselling scholarship, sifting the sources and retuning the narrative in and around the Christian Gospels. ... The post Miracles and Wonder appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re tracking President Trump’s squeeze on higher education, and the argument in the Ivy League: whether or not to make a fight of it. First, Columbia surrendered under a Trump threat to cut $400 million ... The post Trump vs. Harvard appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re reading our way out of a ruined time with the model reader, Patricia Lockwood. She’s the poet laureate of the internet, for starters. She’s a big-league literary critic, master of social media and the ... The post From Social to Spiritual Media appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re looking for our American place in what can feel like a new world order, with Stephen Walt, our first and favorite so-called realist in the foreign policy game—realists being the people who steer by ... The post A New World appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Angus King is the anti-partisan, independent United States Senator from the cranky Yankee state of Maine. He is giving us a conversational civics lesson in the tradition of James Madison and also of Schoolhouse Rock, ... The post Angus King’s Civics Lesson appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

In the fog of Trump Two, we’re asking: what’s new? The co-presidency with Elon Musk is surely new, also the raging battle of exotic ideas among techno-optimists and libertarian anarcho-capitalists at war with the very ... The post Muskology appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re picking up the pieces of our country in the age of Trump, Part II. Is the USA still here? Is it still us? Kurt Andersen. Cue Kurt Andersen, with his finger in the wind. ... The post Trump Part II appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re with writer-world’s exotic traveller and truth-teller Pico Iyer. He’s been the Dalai Lama’s friend from boyhood, and our friend, too, in years now of reading and talk. In his new book, Aflame, subtitled Learning ... The post Aflame appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re here with a capsule of memory from late last year. It was a spark of generosity in Liz Walker’s story that lit up the Christmas season for lots of us, and maybe the path ... The post From Boston to Bethlehem appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re with the one-off diplomat, strategist, and historian Chas Freeman. Chas Freeman. Call this “Curious Citizen Meets the Most Knowledgeable Straight-Talker Anywhere Near the U.S. Government.” At a turn in the calendar, a transition in ... The post A Geopolitical Check-Up appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re with the celebrated Scots-accented people’s economist—celebrated above all when he’s home with the locals in his own old pub in Dundee, settling all the arguments there are around money and power, and populism on ... The post Blyth is Back appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re with the Nobel Prize novelist from Turkey, Orhan Pamuk. It’s not your standard book chat: closer to head-butting than conversation, as you’ll hear. But it’s polite enough and nobody gets hurt. Chris and Orhan ... The post Not Your Standard Book Chat appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re saluting one man’s century in American music. Roy Haynes was the jazz drummer from Boston who shaped the bebop sound in Harlem 80 years ago. He got nicknamed Snap Crackle for his own crisp, ... The post The Roy Haynes Century appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re with the writer’s writer Joshua Cohen—beyond category, but ever ahead of the game. He’s a realist, a fantasist, a satirist, New Jersey-born and at home in Israel. Joshua Cohen. It’s his imagination we need, ... The post Joshua Cohen’s Camp appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Fintan O’Toole has made a brilliant career watching Ireland (his home country) transform itself—its Catholic culture, its vanishing population, its frail economy—into something very modern and profoundly different. And he’s covered our country so well ... The post United States of Fear appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

In the long weekend of solemn suspense before our presidential election in 2024, our guest is Amber. I met Amber on a call-in radio show almost 30 years ago, and we’ve been talking ever since. ... The post Amber’s America: Love and Outrage appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Richard Powers may just be the bravest big novelist out there. His new book is titled Playground, in which AI plays with the natural world. The question is whether and how the digital transformation might ... The post Playground appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

For our shattering Age of October 7, Nathan Thrall has written a double masterpiece, in my reading. Already a Pulitzer Prize-winner for non-fiction, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is a searching work ... The post A Jerusalem Tragedy appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re in Climate Week 2024, with the indispensable, independent activist and authority Bill McKibben. We catch him packing, in Vermont, for what’s far from his first climate rodeo in New York. The post The Climate Story’s Breaking Point appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

We’re in our very own post-debate spin room, taking the measure of Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and of ourselves, as the voters they were pitching. Did we get what we expected? Did we get what ... The post Bear-Baiting Debating appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

There’s a puzzle in this podcast, and it comes with our prize sociologist, Tressie McMillan Cottom. It’s roughly this: How does Kamala Harris, after the Democratic convention in Chicago and for the rest of this ... The post The Harris Machine appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.