Required Reading from Liberties

Abbas Milani and Morten Høi Jensen discuss Milani's recent Liberties essay "Ali Khamenei: A Profile in Dogma"

Yahia Lababidi discusses his recent essay "Secretaries of Silence" with Morten Høi Jensen. The essay is about the relationship between Czesław Miłosz and Thomas Merton.

James Wolcott and Morten Høi Jensen discuss Wolcott's essay "Gloire Days" and Trump's obsession with Mar-a-Lago.

Dan Sinykin and Morten Høi Jensen discuss Close Reading For The Twentieth Century, the book that Dan Sinykin and Johanna Winnant edited and which was published recently by Princeton University Press.

Morten Høi Jensen and Celeste Marcus discuss their respective books The Master of Contradictions: Thomas Mann and the Making of the Magic Mountain and Chaim Soutine: Genius, Obsession, and a Dramatic Life in Art.

On this episode of Required Reading, Morten Høi Jensen and Lance Richardson discuss Richardson’s new biography Peter Matthiessen, True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen, exploring the author’s environmentalism, his time working for the CIA, and his fascination with the Bigfoot Legend."

On November 7th, 2019, the Indian government revoked Aatish Taseer's Indian citizenship. In this episode of Required Reading, MORTEN HØI JENSEN and AATISH TASEER discuss Taseer’s recent book Return to Self: Excursions in Exile, a memoir about processing that violent ejection and grappling with the shards of self which remain after statehood.

Daniel Elkind and Morten Høi Jensen discuss Elkind's new book, Dr Chizhevsky's Chandelier: The Decline of the USSR and other Heresies of the Twentieth Century.

Oliver Moody and Morten Høi Jensen discuss Moody's new book and explain how the history of the Baltic sea and the countries that surround it reveal a hopeful vision for a European future.

Luka Ivan Jukić and Morten Høi Jensen discuss Luka's recent book and ask and answer whether "Central Europe" even exists.

Alissa Wilkinson and Morten Høi Jensen discuss Wilkinson's most recent book We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine. The book is about Didion, but it's also about America in her lifetime. This episode includes talk about the Dustbowl, Hays Code, Bonnie and Clyde and the human addiction to delusion.

Ben Libman and Morten Høi Jensen discuss Ben's new book The Third Solitude, religion, tradition, and a modern Jew's relationship with and responsibility to his inheritance.

Guy Stagg joins Required Reading's new host Morten Høi Jensen to discuss his new book The World Within.On writing the book: "All my life I have dreamed of retreat. Of letting go each responsibility and cutting every tie. And I know I’m not the only one. But, when I learnt about the creative figures who left their lives behind, I began to ask myself: what is gained and what is lost when we withdraw from the world?"

Carlos Fraenkel and Agnes Callard discuss Carllard's new book Open Socrates and make the case for a life of philosophical inquiry.

Scott Spillman on his recent book Making Sense of Slavery which illustrates how the study of slavery has been at the heart of American intellectual and political life for the past two centuries. 

Rob Rubsam and Celeste Marcus discuss the movie Red Rooms and the case it makes for the inescapable depravity of contemporary human life.

Ryan Ruby discusses his new book Context Collapse with Christopher McCaffery and Celeste Marcus.

Jessica Pishko and Celeste Marcus discuss what immigration policies will look like in the next Trump administration

Henry Oliver and Celeste Marcus discuss Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece Brideshead Revisited.

Dave Kelsey talks with Celeste Marcus about his projects to heal local journalism and literary culture -- at least a little bit.

Sean Wilentz and Johann Neem join Celeste Marcus to discuss their recent essays about the threat Trump poses to American liberal democracy.

Jessica Pishko joins Celeste Marcus to discuss her book The Highest Law in the Land, a meticulously researched and reported account of how sheriffs came to believe they were the final arbiters on American law.

In a conversation about two books recounting the horrors of October Seventh, Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus explore the themes of collective memory, personal versus national trauma, commemoration, hope, and despair.

Zack Beauchamp joins us for a discussion about the chapter of his book The Reactionary Spirit which focuses on Carl Schmitt, Schmittian anti-liberalism, and the relationship between liberalism and democracy.

The writer, director, and producer David Shields discusses his new book How We Got Here with Liberties' managing editor Celeste Marcus. How We Got Here tracks the history of ideas from the enlightenment to 2024 and makes the case that the same forces which yielded post-enlightenment intellectual freedom have led to the current contempt for truth.

Public defender Elena Kagan joins Christopher McCaffery and Celeste Marcus to discuss Judith Shklar's seminal essay Liberalism of Fear.