The podcast of Liberties, a Journal of Culture and Politics. LibertiesTalk will be an irregular series of wide-ranging conversations on culture and politics hosted by Celeste Marcus, the managing editor of Liberties. These lively discussions will feature our writers and the larger Liberties community.
William Deresiewicz joins Celeste Marcus to discuss his upcoming book "The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society." In this conversation they broach many of the themes which Deresiewicz explores in his book, including the nature of attention, the meaning of art, the purpose of education, and the snares endemic to membership in any community.
Morten Høi Jensen joins Celeste Marcus to discuss literary biography as a failed genre, the impossibility of a writer ever achieving intimacy with her own subjects, and the license that futility conditions.
Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus discuss the La Ruche, Soutine, the romantic, fleeting world of the School of Paris, and its brutal destruction during WWII.
Laura Kipnis joins Celeste Marcus to discuss her most recent essay for Liberties, Gender: A Melee, in which Laura debunks the bad faith arguments and fear mongering which frequently plague conversations about gender.
Richard Thompson Ford joins Leon Wieseltier to discuss what the legacy of slavery can and cannot explain about life in America.
Martha Nussbaum joins Leon Wieseltier for a conversation about the relationship between the body and the soul.
Agnes Callard and Becca Rothfeld join Celeste Marcus to discuss the movie The Night Porter.
Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus discuss the many dimensions of the horror in Ukraine. “If you want to deter such obscenities, and if you want to be able to resist such obscenities then you need to have a world view that will prepare you for such obscenities to occur.”
Holly Brewer joins Celeste Marcus to discuss the intellectual history of a pernicious racist idea that Ibram Kendi wrongly attributed to John Locke.
Michael Kimmage and Leon Wieseltier discuss the rhetoric of declinism which is both ubiquitous and inaccurate, its origins, and the dangers it poses.
Benjamin Moser, in conversation with Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus, argues that translation is a form of cultural appropriation that does not appropriate nearly enough.
Jewher Ilham, Uyghur activist and the daughter of celebrated economist Ilham Tohti (now serving a life sentence in jail in China), joins Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus to discuss the Uyghur Genocide. Jewher describes how the conditions for Uyghurs have changed in China over the past few decades, what the concentration camps are and what goes on in them, who her father is and what he was fighting for, and what the international community can and should be doing to help the Uyghurs.
