エピソード

  • On Who Blew Up Nord Stream: A Conversation with Author Bojan Pancevski

    On Who Blew Up Nord Stream: A Conversation with Author Bojan Pancevski
    2026/07/28
    The September, 2022 attack on the Nord Stream pipelines transporting Russian gas to Germany was perhaps the greatest single act of sabotage in modern history. In The Nord Stream Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Explosions that Shook the World (Henry Holt, 2026), Bojan Pancevski makes a compelling case that the culprit was an intrepid team of Ukrainian intelligence agents, military personnel and civilian divers. In our conversation, he explains how he came to this conclusion. And we touch on the wider issue of what Pancevski calls the “Cossack spirit,” at the heart of the determination of courageous and resourceful Ukrainians to resist, by all means available, Moscow’s efforts to subdue Ukraine. Pancevski is the chief European political correspondent of The Wall Street Journal and has considerable experience covering Ukraine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1 時間 1 分
  • “American Elegy” with author Ed Simon

    “American Elegy” with author Ed Simon
    2026/07/11
    I discuss with the author his book American Elegy: Reflections on 250 Years of the Dis-United States of America (Ig Publishing, 2026). Simon is the founding editor of The Pittsburgh Review of Books. The book is a lively and lyrical medley of short “flash” essays, as he calls them, and our conversation ranges from his notes on “General Tso’s Chicken” as a sticky American fusion classic to his thoughts on Jane Jacob’s early 1960’s exploration of what makes for a vibrant urban milieu. As Simon tells me, there is much in the American experience—in the American song, it can be said—to celebrate notwithstanding all of the discordant notes. Veteran journalist Paul Starobin is a former Moscow bureau chief for Business Week and a former contributing editor of The Atlantic. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications. His latest book, Putin’s Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia (Columbia Global Reports) will be published in January. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    続きを読む 一部表示
    47 分
  • How “They” See “Us” with editor Madeleine Schwartz

    How “They” See “Us” with editor Madeleine Schwartz
    2026/07/04
    The remarkable political ascent of Donald J. Trump and his sustained grip on a certain segment of American society have given fresh life to a question as old as Tocqueville’s visit to Jacksonian America a century ago: How do foreigners regard America, Americans and the American experiment? I explore this question in a conversation with Madeline Schwartz, founder and editor in chief of The Dial, an online publication. She wrote the Introduction to a collection of essays featuring work commissioned by The Dial, the new book titled How We See It: The World Looks at America in the Age of Trump (The New Press, 2026). We discuss perspectives from Italy, Argentina and South Africa, among other places Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    続きを読む 一部表示
    39 分
  • Understanding Themistocles: A Discussion with Author Michael Scott

    Understanding Themistocles: A Discussion with Author Michael Scott
    2026/06/09
    Themistocles is one of the great personages of ancient Athens, known for his heroics in warfare as well as for his overweening and ultimately tragic ambitions. In Themistocles: The Rise and Fall of Athen’s Naval Mastermind (Yale UP, 2026), Michael Scott takes a distinctly human measure of this complex figure. As he tells me in our conversation, it would be wrong to see Themistocles, as some ancient scribes were disposed to, as the product of a fixed nature. Born and raised as an outsider in the status-obsessed world of Athens, he shaped his destiny through his own choices, some of them flawed. Scott is professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick, UK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    続きを読む 一部表示
    36 分
  • What AI Means for Fiction: A Discussion with Literary Critic Mark McGurl

    What AI Means for Fiction: A Discussion with Literary Critic Mark McGurl
    2026/05/26
    How is the tool of Artificial Intelligence shaping the writing of fiction? Is AI emerging as more than just a potentially handy aid to an author—and, ominously, more like an actual author? I discuss these ripe questions and others with the literary critic Mark McGurl, professor of English at Stanford. He is the author of The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Harvard University Press, 2009) and Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon (Verso, 2021). As our conversation shows, McGurl is a nuanced, reasoned voice on an emotive subject that all too readily lends itself to apocalyptic or pollyannaish pronouncements. Mark McGurl is a Professor of English at Stanford University. Veteran journalist Paul Starobin is a former Moscow bureau chief for Business Week and a former contributing editor of The Atlantic. His companion Substack newsletter, America and Beyond,” offers commentary and insights on the podcast. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications. His most recent book is Putin’s Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia (Columbia Global Reports, 2024). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    続きを読む 一部表示
    56 分
  • Fiction’s Lost Ambition with Writer Sam Kahn

    Fiction’s Lost Ambition with Writer Sam Kahn
    2026/04/08
    Fiction has “lost its ambition,” and not only that, “its centrality to the culture,” Sam Kahn says in a recent piece on “Castalia,” his popular Substack newsletter. We explore that proposition in our wide-ranging conversation about contemporary fiction and its ailments. What’s especially sad about the diminished role that fiction plays in the culture is that, in our Age of Upheaval, circumstances beg for the sort of wide-angled treatment that novelists like Saul Bellow and Norman Mailer supplied in their day. What happened? Kahn is also an editor at the digital-magazine Persuasion and he edits “The Republic of Letters” on Substack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    続きを読む 一部表示
    57 分
  • On Our Continuing Age of Oil with Journalist Stanley Reed

    On Our Continuing Age of Oil with Journalist Stanley Reed
    2026/03/28
    Stanley Reed has been covering energy and the Middle East from London for more than three decades, most recently for The New York Times. With the war in Iran and its threat to global energy supplies as backdrop, we have a wide-ranging conversation about the Age of Oil. Despite longstanding predictions of Peak Oil, this era is by no means over, Reed tells me. Big Oil is used to political risk, as in the Persian Gulf region. Even now, the oil majors are busy exploring for deposits in Namibia. Venezuela could become a major producer again. The fundamental determinant, Reed says, is not the supply of fossil fuels but the demand for their use. The global Age of Oil, which began in the 19th century with commercial extractions in the United States and Caspian Sea region, huffs and puffs its way along in the 21st century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    続きを読む 一部表示
    47 分
  • On Trump as a “World Historical Individual” with author John B. Judis

    On Trump as a “World Historical Individual” with author John B. Judis
    2026/03/25
    The philosopher G.W.F. Hegel “viewed history as consisting of stages punctuated by times of upheaval,” the author John B. Judis wrote in a recent essay for NOTUS, and “assigned to what he called ‘world-historical individuals’ a special role in spurring the transition from one era to another.” Trump, Judis posited, “is exactly such an individual,” comparable in this respect to Alexander the Great, Caesar and Napoleon. In our conversation, we discuss this proposition—including the forces that brought Trump to this role and the bleak destiny that typically greets “world-historical individuals.” Judis is the author of a number of books, including The Populist Explosion (Columbia Global Reports, 2016). John B. Judis is an author and American journalist, a contributing editor at Talking Points Memo, a former senior writer at the National Journal, and a former senior editor at The New Republic Veteran journalist Paul Starobin is a former Moscow bureau chief for Business Week and a former contributing editor of The Atlantic. His companion Substack newsletter, America and Beyond,” offers commentary and insights on the podcast. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications. His most recent book is Putin’s Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia (Columbia Global Reports, 2024). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    続きを読む 一部表示
    35 分