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.
Mamtimin Ala, a Uyghur activist and intellectual, talks with Celeste Marcus not only about the Uyghur genocide in China, but also about the syncretistic beauty and wealth of Uyghur tradition. Among the tragedies of the Uyghur story is that they are known most often for the horrors they now endure, and not for their vast, rich history. The Analysis of Uyghur culture - and Chinese culture - sheds much light on the origins of the current outrage.
Michelle Dauphinais Echols talks with Celeste Marcus about the alleged rape and torture of Michelle's nine cousins, the Charbonneau sisters, at St. Paul's Indian School in the 1960s and 1970s.
Becca Rothfeld and Celeste Marcus discuss Sanctimony Literature, the relationship between art and politics, and how to evaluate political art.
Ramachandra Guha talks with Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus about Modi's disastrous mishandling of the pandemic in India, the ensuing disaster, and the historical and political context for the current crisis.
Andrea Marcolongo talks with Celeste Marcus about how the pandemic has altered her self-perception as a writer, and about what a writer's role is.
Elliot Ackerman and Leon Wieseltier talk with Celeste Marcus about American foreign policy. Regarding the decision to pull all troops out of Afghanistan: "We'll either never think about this again or we'll think about this in eighteen months when Kabul falls to the Taliban and people are being executed in the streets and we have to answer for it in some way."
David Greenberg talks with Celeste Marcus about the process of renaming public spaces and buildings, concerns about how such decisions are made, and suggestions for how to ameliorate these processes.
Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus discuss the Syrian crisis in honor of its tenth anniversary, and use that occasion to talk about American foreign policy over the past decade and going forward.
Thomas Chatterton Williams talks with Celeste Marcus about making sense of and participating in the vicissitudes of American culture from across the ocean in Paris.
Shawn McCreesh talks with Celeste Marcus about what it was like to grow up in a suburb of Philadelphia ravaged by the opioid crisis.
Michael Ignatieff, rector of Central European University, chats with Celeste Marcus about what it was like to watch America desecrate its own sacred institutions from Europe, and what that desecration represents for the United States and the world.
Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus talk about hope and fear, and how to keep our heads in all our crises.
