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Endgame with Fintan O’Toole

Join Fintan O’Toole, Advising Editor at The New York Review, as he and his guests discuss the great unraveling of the American order—and imagine what comes next.

Each week they’ll explore some of the major contradictions that have shaped the United States since its founding 250 years ago, looking closely at subjects that range from Civil War history to contemporary fiction, from Thomas Jefferson to Bernie Sanders, from Gilded Age monopolies to tech oligarchs. What can Shakespeare and Nazi Germany tell us about the current presidency? Making unexpected connections and always drawing out the human drama within complicated ideas, Fintan and his guests—including Annette Gordon-Reed, Ben Lerner, Colin Grant, Jean Strouse, and Dan Chiasson—take the best of New York Review essays and turn them into a conversation.

Endgame with Fintan O’Toole is a New York Review podcast.

Show Art: Jason Logan

Latest Episodes:

The Texture of Reality: Ben Lerner Nov 10, 2026

Show notes

In the fifth episode of Endgame with Fintan O’Toole, the poet and novelist Ben Lerner speaks with O’Toole about his latest novel, Transcription. The novel’s concern with the human voice and the technologies that reproduce it—or fail to do so—leads O’Toole and Lerner to discuss the screen-mediated experience of the pandemic, the tradition of literary mentorships, the ways that human voices are embedded in historical memory, and the uncanny sublime of “Zoom funerals” and “remote learning.”

Ben Lerner is the author of nine books of poetry and prose as well as several collaborations with visual artists. His honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation, and his latest novel, Transcription, received the 2026 George Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. His recent essay for the Review, “Cardiography,” was included in The Best American Essays 2026. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College.

Endgame with Fintan O'Toole is a New York Review podcast. Our theme music is "Political World" by Bob Dylan, courtesy of Universal Music Publishing Group and Sony Music Entertainment. Our show art is designed by Jason Logan. And our producer is Erica Getto.

New episodes drop every Tuesday across podcast platforms and at YouTube.com/@nybooks. For more, head to nybooks.com.

Trump, Hitler, and Democracy’s Trip Wires: Christopher R. Browning Nov 03, 2026

Show notes

The fourth episode of Endgame with Fintan O'Toole welcomes the Holocaust historian Christopher Browning, whose most recent essay for the Review, "Surely Not?," considers how an actual "Manchurian candidate" in the White House would never dare to be as radical and widely destructive as Donald Trump has in fact been. Acknowledging the risks and limitations of comparing Trump (and Trumpism) to Hitler (and Nazi ideology), O'Toole and Browning explore the parallels and differences between these two leaders. Trump's embrace of war as a fascist-style tactic, which has helped him seize control of a more traditional establishment, may be his most consequential point of similarity to Hitler, and democracy in the US is in a race against time.

Christopher Browning's nine books include Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1992) and The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942 (2004). He has written some two dozen articles for the Review since 2012, including on István Deák's Europe on Trial and Götz Aly's Why the Germans? Why the Jews? Envy, Race Hatred, and the Prehistory of the Holocaust. He is the Frank Porter Graham Professor of History Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Endgame with Fintan O'Toole is a New York Review podcast. Our theme music is "Political World" by Bob Dylan, courtesy of Universal Music Publishing Group and Sony Music Entertainment. Our show art is designed by Jason Logan. And our producer is Erica Getto.

New episodes drop every Tuesday across podcast platforms and at YouTube.com/@nybooks. For more, head to nybooks.com.

America's Second Gilded Age: Jean Strouse Oct 27, 2026

Show notes

In the third episode of Endgame with Fintan O'Toole, the historian Jean Strouse discusses the parallels between our current American moment and the Gilded Age. She and O’Toole talk about the roots of our modern American institutions in the Gilded Age, when the country's business leaders imported cultural as well as financial capital, and relied greatly on migration. Looking at the origins of figures like J. Pierpont Morgan and Levi Strauss, Strouse examines how a kind of enlightened self-interest motivated the robber barons and industrial capitalists who set the course for much of the American twentieth century.

Jean Strouse is the author, most recently, of Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers—about the painter's relationship to the family of Asher Wertheimer, a London art dealer who commissioned portraits of himself, his wife, and all ten of their children—as well as biographies of Alice James and J. Pierpont Morgan. She has written for the Review on subjects that range from Henry James to Sargent portraits to a late-life romance between Morgan and Lady Victoria Sackville to the Transatlantic cable. Strouse was the director of The New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers from 2003 to 2017, and began her career at TNYRB, where she worked as editorial assistant to Robert Silvers right after graduating from Radcliffe College.

Endgame with Fintan O'Toole is a New York Review podcast. Our theme music is "Political World" by Bob Dylan, courtesy of Universal Music Publishing Group and Sony Music Entertainment. Our show art is designed by Jason Logan. And our producer is Erica Getto.

New episodes drop every Tuesday across podcast platforms and at YouTube.com/@nybooks. For more, head to nybooks.com.

Bernie Sanders’s Utopia Lab: Dan Chiasson Oct 20, 2026

Show notes

The second episode of Endgame with Fintan O’Toole welcomes the poet and critic Dan Chiasson, whose recent Bernie for Burlington: The Rise of the People’s Politician ispart intellectual biography, part memoir and paean to a region of the country where progressives have often gone to test out their visions for a better society. O’Toole and Chiasson talk about Bernie Sanders’s early embrace of public media, his commitment to labor, and his lifelong emphasis on the pursuit of happiness as a political goal.

Dan Chiasson has been writing for the Review since 2009, focusing initially on new poetry collections and quickly expanding to include subjects as various as Keith Richards and Richard Linklater and Lydia Davis and the future of the humanities. He is the author of five books of poems and two books of poetry criticism, in addition to his recent book on Bernie Sanders. He is the Lorraine C. Wang Professor of English at Wellesley.

Endgame with Fintan O'Toole is a New York Review podcast. Our theme music is "Political World" by Bob Dylan, courtesy of Universal Music Publishing Group and Sony Music Entertainment. Our show art is designed by Jason Logan. And our producer is Erica Getto.

New episodes drop every Tuesday across podcast platforms and at YouTube.com/@nybooks. For more, head to nybooks.com.

Jefferson, Independence, and Slavery: Annette Gordon-Reed Oct 13, 2026

Show notes

For our series premiere, Annette Gordon-Reed joins Fintan O'Toole to discuss Thomas Jefferson's political convictions and contradictions, including his early drafts of the Declaration of Independence, his relationships with the Hemings family, and the contemporary resonance of his advocating for freedom within a racist society.

Annette Gordon-Reed has been a frequent contributor to The New York Review for the last ten years. Her Pulitzer Prize–winning The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family revised our understanding of Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings, and for the Review she has written about subjects ranging from W.E.B. Du Bois to Hillary Clinton to the history of Texas. She is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard. Her latest book is Jefferson on Race: A Reader.

Endgame with Fintan O'Toole is a New York Review podcast. Our theme music is "Political World" by Bob Dylan, courtesy of Universal Music Publishing Group and Sony Music Entertainment. Our show art is designed by Jason Logan. And our producer is Erica Getto.

New episodes drop every Tuesday across podcast platforms and at YouTube.com/@nybooks. For more, head to nybooks.com.

The Great Unraveling: Fintan O'Toole Oct 13, 2026

Show notes

Welcome to Endgame, where every week Fintan O'Toole will be exploring some of the major contradictions that have shaped the United States since its founding 250 years ago.
For our launch week, Fintan dropped by the New York Review offices to reflect on this "endgame" moment, as the midterms approach and the hopes of the world seem to hang on the outcome. After two years of building frustration with an administration that disregards core allies, the rule of law, and even Republican disaffection on issues like data centers, Fintan discusses the possibility of change set against the fundamental nature of American denialism.
Endgame with Fintan O'Toole is a New York Review podcast. Our show art is designed by Jason Logan. And our producer is Erica Getto.

New episodes drop every Tuesday across podcast platforms and at YouTube.com/@nybooks. For more, head to nybooks.com.

Introducing: Endgame with Fintan O'Toole Oct 12, 2026

Show notes

Join Fintan O'Toole, Advising Editor at The New York Review, as he and his guests discuss the great unraveling of the American order—and imagine what comes next.

Endgame with Fintan O'Toole is a New York Review podcast. New episodes drop every Tuesday across podcast platforms and at YouTube.com/@nybooks. For more, head to nybooks.com.

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