Episode 21
Richard Thompson Ford
Richard Thompson Ford joins Leon Wieseltier to discuss what the legacy of slavery can and cannot explain about life in America.
There's nothing Artificial about our Intelligence
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.
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.
Agnes Callard joins Celeste Marcus to discuss the movie Winter Light (1963), faith, faithlessness, body hatred, and, of course, Ingmar Bergman.
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.