What Maggie Nelson Means When She Talks About Freedom

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR

Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 12 October 2021

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Since her childhood in 1970s San Francisco, critic and poet Maggie Nelson has been mulling the concept of freedom — particularly how we define, practice and experience it. She sat down with NPR's Ari Shapiro to talk about four areas in life — art, sex, addiction and climate change — and how we talk about freedom in regard to our collective wellbeing and individual rights.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Wade into any conversation that touches on a
0:08.3	culture war topic, you know, the types of discussions people who are always online call
0:13.1	discourse and normal people just call arguing, at the heart of it, you'll likely find a question
0:19.2	about freedom. Are you free to do something even if it harms someone else?
0:24.0	Should you be doing that thing?
0:25.9	You know, is it freedom to burn fossil fuels?
0:28.4	To laugh at an online video of a Nazi getting punched?
0:31.7	Or what even is freedom?
0:33.9	When I hear the word in pop songs or even in political discourse, I know the writhing
0:38.5	subterranean, you know, issues at hand, and I hear them.
0:43.2	Writer Maggie Nelson digs into these sticky questions in her new book, On Freedom,
0:47.3	and she spoke with NPR's Ari Shapiro about it.
0:50.2	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:55.0	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
0:59.5	On our new show, Sources and Methods.
1:01.5	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,
1:05.3	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:08.8	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:14.6	Politicians and pop stars often come back to the same refrain.
1:19.4	Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.
1:23.6	Freedom.
1:24.3	Freedom.
	...

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