Airlift from Berlin Review

Anne Carson won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.” Born in Canada in 1950, Carson is a classicist, translator and poet. Her works have been translated around the world, and she has won numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Genius grant.

In this conversation Lauren Oyler and Tobias Haberkorn talk about what Carson does to the Greek myth, how easy it is to lose track of what’s real while reading her, how she was inspired by the Brontës and her recent essay on writing with Parkinson’s.

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Airlift is hosted by Lauren Oyler and Tobias Haberkorn.

Recorded live in front of an audience in Berlin, Emily Greenhouse, editor of The New York Review of Books, and Merve Emre, critic and staff writer at The New Yorker, talk with Berlin Review editor Tobias Haberkorn about how magazines get made and who they're made for.

They discuss what an editor owes a writer, why the ideal edit dissolves both egos, and what happens when a piece goes viral online but barely registers on the magazine's own site. Along the way: Omer Bartov on the Eastern Front, Pankaj Mishra on Germany in 1933, Aryeh Neier's essay on genocide in Gaza, and the endless something-maxing headlines.

Berlin Review is an independent magazine, funded by its readers and listeners. Subscribe at blnreview.de/abo.

Airlift is hosted by Lauren Oyler and Tobias Haberkorn.

Recorded live in front of an audience, the writer, translator, and artist Miriam Stoney reads from her new essay and talks with Berlin Review editor Hana Szabo about characters: in fiction, in film, and in the self.

They get into how a literary character is built backwards while a self is built forwards; the difference between being disliked and being hated; and who is granted the nuance to be unlikable without collapsing into a stereotype. Along the way: Marguerite Duras, Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights and its whitewashing of Heathcliff, Tony Tulathimutte's Rejection, and the critic Andrea Long Chu on criticism and cruelty.

Berlin Review is an independent magazine, funded by its readers and listeners. Subscribe at blnreview.de/abo.

In this episode Hannah Szabó speaks with the historian Faith Hillis about the Jewish Labor Bund and the renewed interest in the history of Jewish radicalism, including two books Faith reviewed or Berlin Review: Molly Crabapple’s “Here Where We Live is Our Country” and “The Radical Jewish Tradition" by Donny Gluckstein and Janey Stone.

They discuss the scattered archives and memoirs where Faith has researched the history of this radical movement, what anti-Zionism meant before the war and how it differs from definitions today and how the tradition of Bundism might be carried forward today.

Faith’s essay “Radical Jewish Traditions: Then and Now” in Reader 7 of Berlin Review: https://blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/2026-06/geschichte-juedischer-radikalitaet-faith-hillis

You can also find all our reviews, essays and podcasts at blnreview.de.

Berlin Review is an independent magazine that depends on the support of its readers and listeners. If you already subscribe, thank you. If not, give it a try. For 9 euros, you get a print and online subscription, with the current issue delivered to your door.

In diesem Interview spricht Samir Sellami mit der Philosophin und Autorin Eva von Redecker über ihr Buch «Dieser Drang nach Härte. Über den neuen Faschismus».

Wenn Sie weiterlesen möchten, erscheint in diesen Tagen eine Besprechung von Eva von Redeckers Buch von Jan Werner Müller auf unserer Website blnreview.de

Eva von Redeckers Essay «Vom Riss zum Abyss» finden Sie auf blnreview.de.

Berlin Review ist eine unabhängige Zeitschrift, die auch über Ihre Leser:innen und Hörer:innen finanziert. Ein Abo gibt es unter blnreview.de/abo.

In diesem Gespräch vor Live-Publikum in Wien spricht Tobias Haberkorn mit Raphaela Edelbauer über die Longevity-Bewegung, die katholische Gebets-App Hallow und darüber, wie der Wunsch nach einem ewigen Leben im Diesseits zu einer Bedrohung für die Demokratie wird.

Raphaela Edelbauers Essay erscheint im Reader 7 der Berlin Review und auf blnreview.de.

Berlin Review ist eine unabhängige Zeitschrift, die auch über Ihre Leser:innen und Hörer:innen finanziert. Ein Abo gibt es unter blnreview.de/abo.

Claudia Durastanti was born in Brooklyn in the eighties and grew up between the US and rural southern Italy. Her novel La Straniera was a finalist for the Premio Strega. The English translation Strangers I Know received a PEN award. She now lives in Rome, where she writes and translates, including the latest Italian edition of The Great Gatsby.

For Berlin Review, Claudia wrote about transfuge de classe narratives, the genre of literature where writers from poor backgrounds escape their circumstances and look back on their upbringings with a mix of shame, guilt and pride. You can read about why Claudia says this genre began booming just as the reality of upward mobility for working class people became out-of-reach.

Read her essay, “A Literature for the Downwardly Mobile,” at https://blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/2026-06/durastanti-literature-for-the-downwardly-mobile

Subscribe to Berlin Review — essays, criticism, and fiction from around the world. From €5/month: https://blnreview.de/en/subscribe

Airlift is produced in the Studio of Jacobin Germany. Hosted by Lauren Oyler and Tobias Haberkorn.

Lauren Oyler talks with anthropologist Biao Xiang, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. His concepts of “suspension,” “involution,” and “the disappearance of the nearby” have gone mainstream with a whole generation of young people in China.

Lauren and Biao Xiang discuss how loneliness, a condition once considered a luxury problem for artists or philosophers, has now become widespread, reaching even those who are surrounded by others, like young people and members of the working class.

They also discuss the role of AI and neo-liberalism in loneliness, the loss of pride in the working class and why gossip is important to the social fabric. They close with Hannah Arendt’s distinction between loneliness and solitude and a conversation on lonely deaths in Germany and Japan.

Read “Dying Alone,” the essay on lonely deaths at https://blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/2026-05/dying-alone-lonely-deaths-germany-japan

Subscribe to Berlin Review — essays, criticism, and fiction from around the world. From €5/month: https://blnreview.de/en/subscribe

Airlift is produced in the Studio of Jacobin Germany. Hosted by Lauren Oyler and Tobias Haberkorn.

In this episode, Lauren and Tobias discuss a literary scandal in the English-speaking and what writers get wrong about AI.

Tobias recommends Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom. Lauren recommends Empire of AI by Karen Hao, on the companies building these systems and what they are really after.

For more on culture in the age of AI, the current issue of Berlin Review includes "AI UGLIES," an essay by the writer and researcher Enis Maci on AI, image manipulation, and propaganda.

You can find it, along with all our reviews and episodes, at blnreview.de.

Airlift is recorded in the studio of Jacobin Germany.

The podcast is hosted by Tobias Haberkorn and Lauren Oyler. Produced and edited by Kaitlin Roberts with Najla Said.

Florian Meinel ist Professor für Staatstheorie und Vergleichendes Staatsrecht an der Universität Göttingen. Für Berlin Review hat er das Buch „Meinungsfreiheit" von Ronen Steinke besprochen.

In diesem Gespräch erklärt Meinel, wie das strafrechtliche Regime der Bundesrepublik aus dem Nachkriegskompromiss entstanden ist, was der Streit um „From the River to the Sea" über den Zustand der deutschen Demokratie verrät, und warum Rechtsunsicherheit Menschen mit unsicherem Aufenthaltsstatus zur Zwangsdepolitisierung zwingt.

Florains Essay „Meinungsfreiheit heute oder Vom Sinn der unklaren Rechtslage" ist auf blnreview.de zu lesen.

Die 7. Druckausgabe der Berlin Review, in der der Text ebenfalls erscheint, kommt Ende Juni 2026 heraus. Ein Print-Abo für 9 Euro gibt es unter blnreview.de/abo.