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.
Becca Rothfeld and Celeste Marcus pepper Agnes Callard with questions about motherhood, among them: how it changes one, whether it's possible to prepare for it, and if one's own identity is enriched or extinguished through it.
Justin E. H. Smith joins Celeste Marcus to discuss the thought and style of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Agnes Callard and Celeste Marcus use "Scenes from a Marriage," the television series directed by Ingmar Bergman and released in 1973, to consider themes such as whether loneliness is inevitable, whether one has a moral imperative either to lie or to be wholly honest with their partner, what personal liberation means, and whether or not it is possible.
Jared Marcel Pollen joins Leon Wieseltier to discuss Václav Havel and the proper relationship between power and justice.
Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus discuss the rise of the radical Israeli right and the peculiar pain of responsible loyalty to a state
Justin E. H. Smith joins Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus to discuss the gamification of reality, and the pernicious compulsion to control and describe more and more of human existence via algorithms and technology.
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.
