The American Interest

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Latest Episodes:

The Right Not To Be Lonely Sep 25, 2020

Relevant Reading:

Being Sure of Each Other: An Essay on Social Rights and Freedoms
Kimberley Brownlee, Oxford University Press, 2020, $50

What are the ethical implications of the pandemic of loneliness that has been sweeping the modern world well before the COVID pandemic made us all grapple with social isolation? Do we have a human right to not be lonely, and is there, therefore, an ethical imperative towards openness to others? And how do we balance these rights and obligations with the need to ostracize people who are dangerous to society?

Philosopher Kimberley Brownlee joins our host Richard Aldous to discuss her new book, and to help unpack how her research can help us think about our current challenging times.

And don’t forget to the subscribe to the show on your podcast provider, leave a review, and follow @aminterest on Twitter.

The Life and Art of Ornette Coleman Aug 09, 2020

Relevant Reading:

Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure
Maria Golia, Reaktion Books, 2020, $22.50

In Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure, Maria Golia explores the life of one of the most innovative American musicians of the 20^th century. Born into the conservative and deeply segregated city of Fort Worth, Texas in 1930, Coleman became a musical pioneer, with early albums like Free Jazz and The Shape of Jazz to Come becoming hallmarks of avant-garde jazz. Coleman continued to innovate restlessly until his death in 2015.

Golia, who met Coleman during her own job managing the “Caravan of Dreams” performing arts center in Fort Worth, has written a book that is less a straightforward biography than an exploration of the key places, people, and ideas that shaped Coleman’s life. From the Jim Crow South to the Five Spot jazz club in New York, the book traces the remarkable career of a restless musical trailblazer, and offers lessons for artists of all stripes.

Maria Golia is an American writer of fiction and non-fiction based in Cairo; she also serves as the Middle East reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement. Maria recently spoke with guest host Matt Hanson—a contributing editor at The Arts Fuse and a frequent contributor to The American Interest—about her acclaimed new book.

Be sure to tune in for this special episode, and don’t forget to follow @aminterest and @MattHansonAF on Twitter. And be sure to the subscribe to the show on your podcast provider, and leave us a review!

The New Authoritarian Temptation Jul 24, 2020

Relevant Reading:

Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism
Anne Applebaum, Doubleday, 2020, $25.00

Plumbing the Allure of Authoritarianism
Gabriel Schoenfeld in The American Interest (2020)

Relevant Listening:

How Stalin Waged Agricultural Warfare on Ukraine
Anne Applebaum on the TAI Podcast (2017)

With Twilight of Democracy, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum turns from the study of authoritarianism past to authoritarianism present. How is it, Applebaum asks, that the triumph of democracy at the end of the Cold War has in so much of the West given way to disillusionment with democracy—and why have so many intellectuals aided the process? From Hungary and Poland to Britain and the United States, Applebaum sees signs of anti-democratic sentiments on the rise, often encouraged by her own former allies in the anti-communist movement.

The result is a book that is both politically relevant and deeply personal, grappling with the profound political changes that have been roiling the West for the past three decades.

Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Senior Fellow of the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, as well as an editorial board member of The American Interest. Be sure to tune in this week as she joins Richard Aldous to discuss her new book. And don’t forget to the subscribe to the show on your podcast provider, leave a review, and follow @aminterest and @anneapplebaum on Twitter.

Strange Rites and New Religions with Tara Isabella Burton Jun 16, 2020

Relevant Reading:

Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World
Tara Isabella Burton, PublicAffairs, 2020, $28.00

The Rise of Progressive Occultism
Tara Isabella Burton in The American Interest (2019)

What the Culture War Is Really About
Tara Isabella Burton in The American Interest (2020)

According to most accounts, modern America is rapidly secularizing, with a marked increase in religious “nones” who profess no religious affiliation at all. In her new book Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, Tara Isabella Burton complicates the picture, noting that many Americans are disaffiliating from institutional religion but seeking spiritual outlets in other forms—from consumer trends like SoulCycle to the progressive social justice movement to the darker corners of the alt-right.

These “intuitional religions,” Burton argues, are already reshaping our political landscape, from Silicon Valley to the White House— and they have only become more prominent in the wake of COVID-19 and the ongoing national unrest.

Tara Isabella Burton is a contributing editor at The American Interest. Today, on her book’s release day, she joins Richard Aldous to discuss its timely implications for our current politics. Be sure to tune in, catch up on Tara’s past writing in our pages, and don’t to forget to follow @aminterest and @NotoriousTIB on Twitter.

The Rise of Britain’s Intelligence Services Jun 05, 2020

Relevant Reading:

Secret History: Writing the Rise of Britain’s Intelligence Services
Simon Ball, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020, $34.95

How did Britain’s intelligence agencies, famously fictionalized by Ian Fleming and John le Carré, rise to prominence in real life? In Secret History: Writing the Rise of Britain’s Intelligence Services, historian Simon Ball tells the story through the agencies’ own case histories, constructed internal narratives that shaped British intelligence culture and helped elevate MI5 and MI6 from small, scrappy agencies to the heart of the British state.

Simon Ball is a professor of international history and politics at the University of Leeds, and he joins host Richard Aldous this week to discuss the book. Be sure to tune in for a fascinating discussion of espionage history—and don’t forget to subscribe to the show on your podcast provider, and follow @aminterest on Twitter.

The Making of Henry Kissinger May 27, 2020

Relevant Reading:

The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World
Barry Gewen, W.W. Norton & Company, 2020, $30.00

What is a War Crime?
Barry Gewen in The American Interest (2006)

The Education of Henry Kissinger
Richard Aldous in The American Interest (2015)

Today, Henry Kissinger turns 97 years old. Admired by many as a sophisticated advocate of realpolitik, denounced by others as a war criminal, Kissinger remains an enduring figure of controversy more than four decades after leaving public office.

In his new book The Inevitability of Tragedy, Barry Gewen offers a new perspective on America’s 56th Secretary of State. Rather than a straightforward biography, the book provides an intellectual portrait of Kissinger through studies of key intellectual influences—including Hans Morgenthau, Leo Strauss, and Hannah Arendt—and accounts of key turning points in his life, including his childhood in Germany and decision-making on Chile and Vietnam. Ultimately, Gewen argues, Kissinger’s tragic worldview and ambivalence about democracy made him an uneasy fit for his adopted country—but also represent wisdom worth heeding at a time when America’s foreign policy seems rudderless.

Barry Gewen is an editor at the New York Times Book Review, and he joins Richard Aldous this week to discuss the book. Be sure to tune in to this fascinating conversation, and don’t forget to subscribe to the show on your podcast provider and follow @aminterest on Twitter.

Talking China (and Coronavirus) with Sulmaan Wasif Khan May 01, 2020

Relevant Reading:

How to Think About China
Sulmaan Wasif Khan in The American Interest

Haunted by Chaos: China’s Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping
Sulmaan Wasif Khan

As COVID-19 continues to sweep the globe, should we blame Beijing exclusively for the outbreak? What does China’s response suggest about political dynamics within the country? And, for all the heated rhetoric, does the U.S. government have a coherent strategy to deal with China in the aftermath?

Joining to discuss this week is Sulmaan Wasif Khan, author of “How to Think About China,” a recent review essay in the latest print issue of The American Interest. Khan also holds the Denison Chair in History and Diplomacy at the Fletcher School, Tufts University, and is the author of Haunted by Chaos: China’s Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping.

Tune in this week as Sulmaan joins Richard Aldous to discuss the questions at the top of everyone’s minds. And don’t forget to follow @aminterest on Twitter, and subscribe to the podcast on the app of your choice.

Furtwängler, Shostakovich, and Music in a Time of Crisis Apr 10, 2020

Relevant Reading:

Furtwängler and Shostakovich, Bearing Witness in Wartime
Joseph Horowitz in The American Interest

Understanding Toscanini: A Social History of American Concert Life
Joseph Horowitz

Wilhelm Furtwängler was a giant of German music, a great conductor who controversially continued to perform in Germany during Hitler’s rule; on the other side of the war, composer Dmitry Shostakovich debuted his Seventh Symphony amid the siege of Leningrad. Both artists, argues Joseph Horowitz in a recent essay for The American Interest, possessed the rare ability to bear witness, through music, to the unique circumstances of their time.

This week, Horowitz joins Richard Aldous on the podcast to discuss their musical legacies, while reflecting on the role of music in a time of crisis. Don’t miss this special episode, which features excerpts from rare Furtwängler performances of Brahms’s First Symphony (in January 1945) and Schubert’s Ninth Symphony (in December 1942).

Joseph Horowitz is the Executive Director of PostClassical Ensemble, an “experimental music laboratory” based in Washington, DC, and the author of 10 books, including Understanding Toscanini (1987), the most controversial classical music book of its time. He also blogs at ArtsJournal. Be sure to tune in and follow @aminterest on Twitter, and subscribe to the podcast on the app of your choice.

The Wall, the Square, and the Post-Cold War Order Apr 03, 2020

Relevant Reading:

Post Wall, Post Square: How Bush, Gorbachev, Kohl, and Deng Shaped the World after 1989
Kristina Spohr
Yale University Press, 2020, $40.00

The world’s exit from the Cold War, argues historian Kristina Spohr, is really a two-fold story: one set in Berlin, where the fall of the Berlin Wall put an end to communism and inspired electoral revolutions across Europe, and one in Beijing, where Deng Xiaoping’s crackdown at Tiananmen Square put a brutal end to a burgeoning protest movement. We cannot understand one event without the other, Spohr argues—and we cannot understand the world that emerged without careful attention to the diplomatic decisions made in the dizzying aftermath of both events.

In Post Wall, Post Square: How Bush, Gorbachev, Kohl, and Deng Shaped the World after 1989, Spohr offers a sweeping diplomatic history of the period, showing how the “conservative diplomacy” of leaders like George H.W. Bush and Helmut Kohl helped usher in a peaceful new order, while also exploring how missed opportunities and blindspots created tensions that remain with us today.

Kristina Spohr is the Helmut Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). This week, she joins host Richard Aldous to discuss the book. Be sure to tune in and follow @aminterest on Twitter, and don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on the app of your choice.

How History Shaped Brexit Mar 25, 2020

Relevant Reading:

Island Stories: An Unconventional History of Britain
David Reynolds
Basic Books, 2020, $30.00

The 2016 Brexit campaign, notes historian David Reynolds, was dominated by appeals to history—particularly to Winston Churchill and Britain’s “Finest Hour” in 1940. But the Brexit result also confounded popular narratives of British history, halting the UK’s integration with Europe and raising a question of identity to the center of national debate: What does it mean to be British in the 21^st century?

In Island Stories: An Unconventional History of Britain, historian David Reynolds explores this question, while placing the Brexit vote in a long historical context stretching back to 1066. He also offers a broader reflection on how historical narratives and national memory shape political debates, with lessons for the United States as well as Britain.

David Reynolds is professor of international history at Christ’s College, Cambridge and the prize-winning author of 11 books, including America, Empire of Liberty. This week, he joins host Richard Aldous to discuss his latest. Be sure to tune in and follow @aminterest on Twitter, and don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on the app of your choice.

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