Rachel Kushner is an American author and essayist. The daughter of two beatnik scientists, Kushner began her Bachelor’s degree in political economy at the University of California aged 16, and then moved to San Francisco and worked in nightclubs. After an MFA at Columbia, studying under Jonathan Franzen, Rachel Kushner published her first book, Telex from Cu ... Show More
Apr 2025
Meloni meets Trump, Eczema, Girl choristers, Singledom
Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni - the first woman to occupy that role - has faced one of her biggest international tests yet. She is the first European leader to go to Washington to meet President Trump since his recent announcement of new tariffs on the EU. So how did Melo ... Show More
57m 31s
Jun 2025
The Best-Paid Woman in NYC
As J.P. Morgan's personal librarian, entrusted with building his collection, Belle da Costa Greene could ‘spend more money in an afternoon than any other young woman of 26’, as the New York Times put it in 1912. In the latest LRB, Francesca Wade reviews a new biography of Greene ... Show More
40m 30s
Jul 2025
Best Of: Barbara Kingsolver on ‘Urban-Rural Antipathy’
<p>“It’s so insidious, people don’t realize it,” Barbara Kingsolver told me, describing the prejudice against “country people.” Kingsolver is one of those “country people,” as well as a literary legend in her own time, who set out to write the “great Appalachian novel.” And I thi ... Show More
1h 1m
May 2023
Jessica Stilling, "After the Barricades" (DX Varos, 2023)
Today I talked to Jessica Stilling about her new novel After the Barricades (DX Varos, 2023).
After her mother dies in a tragic accident, Anna cleans out her closet and finds a striking painting that she’d never seen before. She also finds a trove of letters from Stefan Terre, a ... Show More
29m 22s
Aug 2024
Ronnie Grinberg, "Write like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals" (Princeton UP, 2024)
In the years following World War II, the New York intellectuals became some of the most renowned critics and writers in the country. Although mostly male and Jewish, this prominent group also included women and non-Jews. Yet all of its members embraced a secular Jewish machismo t ... Show More
54m 6s