Open Source with Christopher Lydon

We’re getting our heads around the invasion of Venezuela and what feels like a rough new rule book for the so-called world order. Cue Greg Grandin, the hemispheric historian who wrote that big book America, ... The post Age of Hemispheric Empires appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 8 January 2026

We’re talking about capitalism this time, trying to reckon the power of big money to shape—even rule—the human species. Capitalism is the one-word name given to a thousand-year-old force. It’s not a science or doctrine ... The post A Thousand Years of Capitalism appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 26 November 2025

We’re rediscovering John Updike in the afterlife of a great writer. The Selected Letters of John Updike, just published, come to 800 pages of unguarded messages to his wives and lovers, to his mother and ... The post John Updike’s Vocation appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 15 November 2025

Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope is Brandon Terry’s long-awaited personal and philosophical case for struggle and optimism in the long civil rights movement in our country. It’s a map of our minds and our memories, a ... The post Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 28 October 2025

What is breaking down or what’s broken when the governor of Illinois says he’s being invaded by the National Guard of Texas under President Trump’s orders, or when the president is dueling with Oregon and ... The post Stress-Testing the Rule of Law appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 9 October 2025

Call this Mrs. Dalloway’s podcast. We’re reading classic fiction from a century ago for light on the strangeness of the world in our day, or maybe just for relief reading a great old book. The ... The post Mrs. Dalloway at 100 appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 25 September 2025

We’re with the cultural historian Robin D.G. Kelley at UCLA, who has the nerve to ask: where have our thinkers gone in Trump time? Not the experts or the influencers, but the grander minds who ... The post Where Are the Intellectuals? appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 11 September 2025

We’re in the fourth summer of hot warfare between Russia and Ukraine. It’s a cruel and deadly war that doesn’t know how to stop. Anatol Lieven. Our guest to offer a helping hand is the ... The post Russia and Ukraine in 2025 appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 29 August 2025

We’re grappling with the prize historian Greg Grandin’s take on the making of the modern world. There’s a 600-page version in hard covers, but also a two-word version in his title, America, América, code for ... The post America, América appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 14 August 2025

We’re retracing our steps out of the last bad-dream era in American life. Michael Ansara was in the thick of that struggle too, around war and justice. The Hard Work of Hope is his memoir ... The post The Hard Work of Organizing appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 24 July 2025

We’re in Saratoga, New York, with the soulful American believer Marilynne Robinson, prize novelist and teacher of novelists. She’s known over the decades as the storyteller we trust to observe the troubled heart of our ... The post Occupied America appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 10 July 2025

We’re in the Orwellian aftermath of what President Trump has called his 12-day war in the Middle East. It’s over, he proclaimed on Monday. “Congratulations world,” he said on his Truth Social site, “it’s time ... The post Trump at War appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 26 June 2025

This week, it’s a conversation on the democracy question and the embattled fate of our own, beset as it is from within. Philosopher-historian Danielle Allen is our guest examiner of the cranky American condition. It ... The post Divided, Defensive Democracy appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 19 June 2025

We’re with the writer Paul Elie, recalling the moment when popular culture came to sound like public prayer. There was Madonna in 1989, singing her number one hit “Like a Prayer.” The song is a ... The post The Last Supper appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 5 June 2025

We’re staring down the several crises in our economy—and recalling the grand old joke that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. John Cassidy. John Cassidy of The ... The post Capitalism and Its Critics appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 15 May 2025

We’re staring down the global trade war with Mark Blyth at Brown University. He is the People’s Economist from Scotland, who takes us home to his village pub in Dundee every once in a while ... The post Trade, Trumped appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 8 May 2025

We have a key, finally, to the mystery of Donald Trump and where he came from. He was born almost exactly 100 years ago in the imagination of the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. What he ... The post Gatsby at 100: Fitzgerald’s Warning about Trumpism appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 1 May 2025

We’re considering the Jesus story with the historian Elaine Pagels. Her new book is a marvel, crowning a lifetime of bestselling scholarship, sifting the sources and retuning the narrative in and around the Christian Gospels. ... The post Miracles and Wonder appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 17 April 2025

We’re tracking President Trump’s squeeze on higher education, and the argument in the Ivy League: whether or not to make a fight of it. First, Columbia surrendered under a Trump threat to cut $400 million ... The post Trump vs. Harvard appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 10 April 2025

We’re reading our way out of a ruined time with the model reader, Patricia Lockwood. She’s the poet laureate of the internet, for starters. She’s a big-league literary critic, master of social media and the ... The post From Social to Spiritual Media appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 27 March 2025

We’re looking for our American place in what can feel like a new world order, with Stephen Walt, our first and favorite so-called realist in the foreign policy game—realists being the people who steer by ... The post A New World appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 13 March 2025

Angus King is the anti-partisan, independent United States Senator from the cranky Yankee state of Maine. He is giving us a conversational civics lesson in the tradition of James Madison and also of Schoolhouse Rock, ... The post Angus King’s Civics Lesson appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 27 February 2025

In the fog of Trump Two, we’re asking: what’s new? The co-presidency with Elon Musk is surely new, also the raging battle of exotic ideas among techno-optimists and libertarian anarcho-capitalists at war with the very ... The post Muskology appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 14 February 2025

We’re picking up the pieces of our country in the age of Trump, Part II. Is the USA still here? Is it still us? Kurt Andersen. Cue Kurt Andersen, with his finger in the wind. ... The post Trump Part II appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 31 January 2025

We’re with writer-world’s exotic traveller and truth-teller Pico Iyer. He’s been the Dalai Lama’s friend from boyhood, and our friend, too, in years now of reading and talk. In his new book, Aflame, subtitled Learning ... The post Aflame appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 23 January 2025

We’re here with a capsule of memory from late last year. It was a spark of generosity in Liz Walker’s story that lit up the Christmas season for lots of us, and maybe the path ... The post From Boston to Bethlehem appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 10 January 2025

We’re with the one-off diplomat, strategist, and historian Chas Freeman. Chas Freeman. Call this “Curious Citizen Meets the Most Knowledgeable Straight-Talker Anywhere Near the U.S. Government.” At a turn in the calendar, a transition in ... The post A Geopolitical Check-Up appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 27 December 2024

We’re with the celebrated Scots-accented people’s economist—celebrated above all when he’s home with the locals in his own old pub in Dundee, settling all the arguments there are around money and power, and populism on ... The post Blyth is Back appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 12 December 2024

We’re with the Nobel Prize novelist from Turkey, Orhan Pamuk. It’s not your standard book chat: closer to head-butting than conversation, as you’ll hear. But it’s polite enough and nobody gets hurt. Chris and Orhan ... The post Not Your Standard Book Chat appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 6 December 2024

We’re saluting one man’s century in American music. Roy Haynes was the jazz drummer from Boston who shaped the bebop sound in Harlem 80 years ago. He got nicknamed Snap Crackle for his own crisp, ... The post The Roy Haynes Century appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 26 November 2024

We’re with the writer’s writer Joshua Cohen—beyond category, but ever ahead of the game. He’s a realist, a fantasist, a satirist, New Jersey-born and at home in Israel. Joshua Cohen. It’s his imagination we need, ... The post Joshua Cohen’s Camp appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 15 November 2024

Fintan O’Toole has made a brilliant career watching Ireland (his home country) transform itself—its Catholic culture, its vanishing population, its frail economy—into something very modern and profoundly different. And he’s covered our country so well ... The post United States of Fear appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 7 November 2024

In the long weekend of solemn suspense before our presidential election in 2024, our guest is Amber. I met Amber on a call-in radio show almost 30 years ago, and we’ve been talking ever since. ... The post Amber’s America: Love and Outrage appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 2 November 2024

Richard Powers may just be the bravest big novelist out there. His new book is titled Playground, in which AI plays with the natural world. The question is whether and how the digital transformation might ... The post Playground appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 24 October 2024

For our shattering Age of October 7, Nathan Thrall has written a double masterpiece, in my reading. Already a Pulitzer Prize-winner for non-fiction, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is a searching work ... The post A Jerusalem Tragedy appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 10 October 2024

We’re in Climate Week 2024, with the indispensable, independent activist and authority Bill McKibben. We catch him packing, in Vermont, for what’s far from his first climate rodeo in New York. The post The Climate Story’s Breaking Point appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 26 September 2024

We’re in our very own post-debate spin room, taking the measure of Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and of ourselves, as the voters they were pitching. Did we get what we expected? Did we get what ... The post Bear-Baiting Debating appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 12 September 2024

There’s a puzzle in this podcast, and it comes with our prize sociologist, Tressie McMillan Cottom. It’s roughly this: How does Kamala Harris, after the Democratic convention in Chicago and for the rest of this ... The post The Harris Machine appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 29 August 2024

Cornel West is our guest, the preacher-teacher in a tradition of black prophetic fire, as he puts it, the line of holy anger in American history, and this time on the presidential ballot in a ... The post In It to the Finish appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 15 August 2024

The novelist Marilynne Robinson has a nearly constitutional role in our heads, our culture by now. She’s the artist we trust to observe the damaged heart of America, and to tell us what we’re going ... The post American Believer appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 1 August 2024

In the strangeness of mid-summer 2024, the cosmopolitan novelist Joseph O’Neill is our bridge between the Republican convention in Milwaukee and the Summer Olympics in Paris. He knows both sides of that gap: politics and ... The post Political Football appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 18 July 2024

In a forlorn Fourth of July week, in the pit of an unpresidential, anti-presidential campaign year, 2024, we welcome back John Kaag, who writes history with a philosophical flair, never more colorful than in his ... The post American Bloods appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 4 July 2024

Zionism has been the question that keeps changing. Once it was: “How to build a safe home for the Jews of the world?” Today it’s more nearly: “How to build a safe neighborhood around the ... The post The Zionism Riddle appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 20 June 2024

We’re on a hometown spree along the famous Fenway in the heart of Boston. Fenway Park is where the Red Sox play, John Updike’s “lyric little bandbox of a ballpark.” Fenway Court, built around the ... The post Chasing Beauty appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 6 June 2024

We’re taking a drawing lesson with Nicholson Baker—yes, the multifarious writers’ writer Nick Baker; the COVID lab leak detective; the pacifist historian of World War II in his book Human Smoke; he’s also the cherubic ... The post Nicholson Baker Finds a Likeness appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 23 May 2024

We’re sampling the uproar rising from American campuses: it’s a full blown, leaderless movement by now, in an established American tradition, but still contested, still finding its way, looking for its pattern. Columbia and USC ... The post Campus Uproar appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 9 May 2024

The key battle taking place in this American crisis year of 2024 is happening in our heads, according to the master historian Richard Slotkin. He’s here to tell us all that we’re in a 40-year ... The post American Disorder appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 25 April 2024

We’re calling on Hannah Arendt for the twenty-first century—could she teach us how to think our way out of the authoritarian nightmare? Arendt wrote the book for all time on Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet ... The post Lessons from Hannah Arendt appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 11 April 2024

We’re going to school on Taylor Swift, in the Harvard course. And all we know is, as her song says, we’re enchanted to meet her. Taylor Swift comes out of literature but she’s more than ... The post Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 28 March 2024

We speak of the mystery of Herman Melville, or the misery of Melville, the American masterpiece man. For Moby-Dick alone, he is our Shakespeare, our Dante—though he fled the writing of prose for the last ... The post Of Melville and Marriage appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Transcribed - Published: 14 March 2024