An Introduction to NYIH Studios
Welcome to the New York Institute for the Humanities podcast. Learn more about the history of the Institute and our shows.
Dec 8, 2021
Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres
A Conversation with Kelefa Sanneh
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2021
Institute fellow Ben Ratliff talks with Kelefa Sanneh about his new book, Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres, which tells the story of popular music during the past fifty years.
Apr 16, 2021
The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War
A Conversation with Louis Menand
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2021
The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, is Luke Menand’s fourth book. His last, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America, won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for history. Menand is a professor of English at Harvard, and a staff writer forThe New Yorker magazine
Nov 20, 2020
Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost
A Conversation with Caitlin Zaloom
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2020
Caitlin Zaloom is a Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Her first book, Out of the Pits: Traders and Technology From Chicago to London, an ethnographic study of the international financial system, appeared in 2006. Her second book, Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost, was published in 2019.
Nov 6, 2020
My Last Eight Thousand Days: An American Man in His Seventies
A Conversation with Lee Gutkind
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2020
Lee Gutkind is the founder and editor of Creative Nonfiction, and teaches in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University. His memoir, My Last Eight Thousand Days: An American Man in His Seventies, was published by Georgia University Press.
May 19, 2020
On My Friend Philip Roth
A Conversation with Ben Taylor
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2020
Novelist and Institute Fellow Ben Taylor talks about Here We Are, a memoir of his friendship with Philip Roth. Taylor is the author of two previous memoirs--Naples Declared: A Walk Around the Bay, and The Hue and Cry in Our House, which received the 2018 Los Angeles Times/Christopher Isherwood Prize.
May 12, 2020
Our Revolution: A Mother and Daughter Mid-Century
A Conversation with Honor Moore
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2020
In addition to three collections of poetry, NYIH fellow Honor Moore is the author of several celebrated works of nonfiction, including The White Blackbird: A Life of the Painter Margaret Singer by Her Granddaughter and The Bishop's Daughter, a memoir of her father. Her newest book is Our Revolution: A Mother and Daughter Mid-Century. Here, she talks about the book, women's lives and second-wave feminism, writing a hybrid of biography memoir, and the experience of publishing a book in the middle of a pandemic.
May 5, 2020
On Susan Sontag
A Conversation with Ben Moser
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2020
Biographer Benjamin Moser talks with Robert Boynton about the making of his 2019 biography of Susan Sontag, which was awarded to Pulitizer Prize. Moser’s previous book, a biography of the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Apr 20, 2020
Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me
A Conversation with Deirdre Bair
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2020
This episode pays tribute to longtime fellow Deirdre Bair, who passed away on April 18, 2020. The author of six biographies and two memoirs, Bair received the National Book Award for her 1978 biography of Samuel Beckett. At a January 2020 NYIH luncheon, she discussed her final book, Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me: A Memoir, and looked back at her celebrated career.
Apr 1, 2020
H. G. Adler and Holocaust
A Conversation with Peter Filkins
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2020
Poet and NYIH Fellow Peter Filkins talks with Eric Banks about his exceptional involvement with the work of H.G. Adler, the Holocaust survivor who authored definitive fictional and ethnographic portraits of life in the camps. In 2019 Filkins published his biography of this extraordinary figure, a book that was preceded by his translation of the novelistic trilogy.
Feb 24, 2020
On Mardi Gras's Caribbean Roots
A Conversation with Joshua Jelly-Schapiro
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2020
NYIH Fellow Josh-Jelly-Schapiro is a geographer and writer whose last book, Island People, explored the Caribbean in all its complexities. On the occasion of Mardi Gras, he sat down with us to talk about New Orleans’s deep Caribbean roots.
Feb 19, 2020
What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues
A Conversation with Clifford Thompson
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2020
NYIH Fellow Clifford Thompson joins us to discuss his latest book, written in the aftermath of the 2016 election, What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues (Other Press).
Feb 11, 2020
Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader
A Conversation with Vivian Gornick
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2020
Celebrated memoirist and critic (and NYIH fellow) Vivian Gornick discusses her newest book, Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader, and tells us what she learned when she revisited the works that nourished her at different points in her life.
Feb 3, 2020
Find Me
A Conversation with André Aciman
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2023
André Aciman's 2007 novel Call Me By Your Name was the rare work of literary fiction that managed to develop an especially enthusiastic following, particularly in the wake of the recent film adaptation. With his recent novel Find Me, Aciman revisited the protagonists of his earlier work. A longtime fellow of the Institute, Aciman spoke to us about literary followups, music and literature, and the books that make readers weep.
Dec 19, 2019
Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America
A Conversation with Eliza Griswold
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2023
Robert Boynton talks with Eliza Griswold, poet and author of Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2019.
Nov 27, 2019
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
A Conversation with Patrick Radden Keefe
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2019
New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe is the author of Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, a New York Times Bestseller, winner of the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Writing, and one of the 10 Best Books of 2019” according to both The New York Times and The Washington Post. In this episode, he talks with Melanie Rehak about Belfast of the past, the present, and the mind.
Nov 12, 2019
On Oliver Sacks
A Conversation with Lawrence Weschler
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2022
Lawrence "Ren" Weschler is the former director of the New York Institute for the Humanities and a two-time winner of the George Polk Award and won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle award for criticism. In this episode, Weschler describes the extraordinary and taxing story behind the writing of his most recent book, a biographical memoir of his late friend Oliver Sacks--a story that took almost three decades before culminating in the now published And How Are You, Dr. Sacks?
Jan 29, 2019
Jad Abumrad on Radiolab
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2019
Jad Abumrad is the co-host and creator of Radiolab. He studied creative writing and music composition at Oberlin and, in 2011, was awarded a MacArthur Grant. In 2016 he launched More Perfect, a show about the US Supreme Court. In the fall of 2018, Abumrad produced The Most Perfect Album, a musical reimagining of the Constitution's 27 Amendments.
Jan 22, 2019
Anti-Social Media
A Conversation with Siva Vaidyanathan
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2019
Institute fellow and University of Virginia media studies scholar Siva Vaidyanathan discusses his book, Anti-Social Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy
Jan 10, 2019
Translating Uwe Johnson's “Anniversaries”
A Conversation with Damion Searls
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2019
Institute fellow Damion Searls discusses his new translation of German writer Uwe Johnson's 1700-page novel of New York, Jahrestage--published by New York Review Classics under the title Anniversaries.
Nov 19, 2018
What Is Virtuosity?
A Conversation with Ben Ratliff
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2018
What is virtuosity—and what does a music critic make of it? Worship it? Reject it? Ben Ratliff joins us to talk about the good and bad of virtuoso performance and how it has helped him think about the role of the critic in the age of Spotify.
Nov 5, 2018
Philip Dray reads "The Hunting the Deer"
A Bonus Episode
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2018
Philip Dray reads "The Hunting of the Deer."
Oct 22, 2018
The Fair Chase
A Conversation with Philip Dray
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2018
From Daniel Boone to "DIY" hipster hunting, The Fair Chase shows that hunting in America is a story as vast as the country itself, touching on everything from conservation to the history of guns to the emergence of modern sports. NYIH Fellow and Pulitzer Prize finalist Philip Dray spoke to us about his new book, which chronicles the surprising and sometimes fraught ways that hunting has touched so many aspects of the American experience.
Oct 2, 2018
Trump's Women
A Conversation with Rhonda Garelick
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2018
The Trump White House is a place where a powder-keg masculinity is on dangerous display, ready to explode at any moment. Since his arrival in Washington, Rhonda Garelick’s cultural criticism has brilliantly argued that to understand the man and his administration, you have to pay attention to the women. At a time when the political dynamics around gender are especially volatile, Garelick, a professor at the University of Nebraska and an institute fellow since 2016, has become one of our most original observers, combining her celebrated scholarly work on the history of design, fashion, literature, and performance with a shrewd eye on the intersection of power, gender, and high-stakes theatricality.
Sep 21, 2018
The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity
A Conversation with Kwame Anthony Appiah
NEW BOOKS NETWORK 2022
NYU philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah talks with Robert Boynton about his book The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity. In it, Appiah explores how racial essentialism and our inadequate understanding of history distorts our conception of culture and identity.