Judith Butler joins Adam Shatz for the first episode of Human Conditions to look at Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1946 book Anti-Semite and Jew, originally published in French as Réflexions Sur La Question Juive. Sartre’s ‘portraits’ of the ‘anti-Semite’ and the ‘Jew’, as he saw them, caused controversy at the time for directly confronting anti-Jewish bigotry in F ... Show More
Aug 31
Narrative Poems: ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’ by Robert Browning
‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’ has baffled readers and critics ever since it was published in Men and Women in 1855. It baffled its author, too. It ‘came upon me as a kind of dream’, Browning recalled. ‘I had to write it then and there, and I finished it the same day.’ Th ... Show More
18m 1s
Aug 24
Nature in Crisis: ‘Lessons for Survival’ by Emily Raboteau
Over the past twelve years, the walls and shop shutters of Upper Manhattan have been gradually filled by giant paintings of climate-threatened birds, inspired by the species depicted by the artist John James Audubon, who lived in the area. Emily Raboteau’s ‘Lessons for Survival’ ... Show More
12m 6s
Aug 17
Who’s afraid of realism? ‘Pnin’ by Vladimir Nabokov
If Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day (1956) belongs firmly to postwar American realism, then Pnin (1957) certainly doesn’t. With its self-conscious fictionality and unreliable narrator, Nabokov’s novel is a model of postmodernism. Yet for all its playfulness, the book maintains, in its ... Show More
23m 43s
Sep 2024
Jean-Paul Sartre: 'Being and Nothingness'
This week, a chapter from a new LRB audiobook, Becoming a Philosopher: Spinoza to Sartre by Jonathan Rée. This collection of ten biographical pieces, read by Rée, describes the lives of some of most influential thinkers of the past four hundred years and the radical and sometimes ... Show More
36m 41s
Nov 2023
Next Year on Close Readings: Human Conditions
In the second of three introductions to our full Close Readings programme for 2024, Adam Shatz presents his series, Human Conditions, in which he’ll be talking separately to three guests – Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards – about some of the most revolutionary ... Show More
26m 33s
Oct 2019
#173 — Anti-Semitism and Its Discontents
<p>Sam Harris speaks with Bari Weiss about her book "How to Fight anti-Semitism." They discuss the three different strands of anti-Semitism (rightwing, leftwing, and Islamic), the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh, the difference between anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, ... Show More
28m 5s
Oct 2018
Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, & Existentialism (w/ Existential Comics)
<p>Existential Comics (aka Corey Mohler) joins Brett to discuss the philosophy, politics, and historical context of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Together they investigate the contradictions between Marxism and Existentialism and discuss the public dispute that ended Camus a ... Show More
1h 21m