Bright Minds: from the John Adams Institute

Bret Easton Ellis took 13 years to write The Shards. It’s a horror novel. Or maybe it’s an autobiography.  In fact, it’s both. The Shards is a fictionalized retelling of Mr. Ellis’s 18th year. 

It tells the story of a group of superficially sophisticated teens have their lives shattered by a series of terrible events. It’s 1981 Los Angeles and a local serial killer known only as The Trawler draws ever closer to Bret and his friends. He taunts them with grotesque threats and acts of violence. As Bret’s obsession with the killer grows, he spirals into paranoia and isolation.

This mesmerizing novel is a vivid and nostalgic fusion of fact and fiction at the edge of what’s real and fantasy. Bret Easton Ellis is probably best known for his now-iconic book American Psycho (1991) and the highly memeable film that followed.

Bret Easton Ellis was interviewed for the John Adams Institute by Dutch writer and critic Joost de Vries at Boom Chicago in January of 2023.

Become a Member of the John Adams
Subscribe to our newsletter

Support the show

In the third and final episode of the election specials of our podcast Bright Minds, America expert and podcaster Laila Frank talks to law professor, constitutional scholar, commentator and author Kim Wehle. She is an expert on constitutional law and the separation of powers, with particular emphasis on presidential power and administrative agencies. Her latest book Pardon Power - How the Pardon System works – and Why, just dropped. In the run-up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, she joined the John Adams to talk about her book How to Read the Constitution – and Why. What are her hopes, fears and expectations for this election cycle?

KimberlyWhele.com her personal website

Laila Frank  

Become a Member of the John Adams  

Want to find out more about the John Adams Institute? Check out our website!

Support the show

The current episodes of our podcast Bright Minds are all about the U.S. presidential elections. America journalist Laila Frank, specialized in politics and change in the U.S., will bring you conversations with remarkable American political thinkers about their hopes, fears and expectations for this election cycle.

In the second episode of our election specials, Laila Frank talks to author, journalist and political insider Mark Leibovich. What are his hopes, fears and expectations for this election cycle?

Mark is a staff writer for the Atlantic and the author of five books, including three New York Times best sellers, and two No. 1 Times best sellers, This Town (2013) and Thank You for Your Servitude. He is the recipient of a National Magazine Award for profile writing.  His latest piece in the Atlantic is a true gem of anecdotal yet brutal political analysis of the Republican Party.

Mark Leibovich's Film Pick:
All The President's Men

 
Episode Links:

Video of Mark Leibovich the John Adams Institute
Mark Leibovich’s page at The Atlantic

Laila Frank   

 Become a member and support us! The John Adams is an independent foundation without structural subsidy.

Want to find out more about the John Adams Institute? Check out our website and socials: 

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Support the show

The next three episodes of Bright Minds are all about the U.S. presidential elections. America journalist Laila Frank, specialized in politics and change in the U.S., will bring you conversations with remarkable American political thinkers about their hopes, fears and expectations for this election cycle.

First up is professor of African-American studies and author Carol Anderson. She is a renowned speaker and has written several books on race, systemic inequality and power structures. All are extremely relevant for the upcoming elections.

Carol Anderson’s Book Picks:
Tyranny of the Minority by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
Minority Rule by Ari Berman

In 2022, Carol Anderson took to the John Adams stage to talk about voting rights and the 2nd Amendment. Click here to watch the video.

Become a member and support us! The John Adams is an independent foundation without structural subsidy.

Want to find out more about the John Adams Institute? Check out our website and socials or subscribe to our newsletter.

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Support the show

This fourth episode of the Future 400 podcast is all about theater and dance. Battery Dance, New York City's longest running public dance festival, is hosting the Dutch-Turkish choreographer Rutkay Özpinar from Korzo Theater as part of the Future 400 exchange. And the Dutch theater director Ira Kip is working on her new play, Kings… Come Home, a reflection the impact of being uprooted, which will go to the National Black Theater and the Apollo Theater in New York. Both Kip and Özpinar are searching for a global conversation that brings disparate cultures and histories together on the stage. “The reason why we dance is not just the music,” says Rutkay. “In every culture you can find dance, from a prayer to a celebration.”

This is the final episode of the Future 400 podcast series from the Dutch Consulate in New York, created and presented by John Adams Institute director Tracy Metz. It marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam, the city that became New York. Each episode highlights a selection of the creative collaborations between artists, communities and institutions in both the Netherlands and the United States. For the full Future 400 cultural exchange program see www.dutchcultureusa.com. 

Support the show

Design your look, design your life. Rambler Studios is a creative platform for raw talent. It offers young people a safe space where they can discover what they’re good at and find a sense of belonging – and maybe a career in street fashion. Started by Carmen van der Vecht in Amsterdam in 2010, it has branched out to New York’s Lower East Side. It operates there under the wings of the Henry Street Settlement, a philanthropic institution dating back to the late 1800’s. In the same basement in a social housing project where he himself learned to sew, fashion coach Andres Biel helps kids create and market their own ideas – “with some help from TikTok!”. On both sides of the Atlantic, the young people in the program say: “The most important thing I’m getting here are life skills.”

 This is the third episode of the four-part bi-weekly Future 400 podcast series from the Dutch Consulate in New York, created and presented by John Adams Institute director Tracy Metz. It marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam, the city that became New York. Each episode highlights a selection of the creative collaborations between artists, communities and institutions in both the Netherlands and the United States. For the full Future 400 cultural exchange program see www.dutchcultureusa.com. 

Support the show

This second episode of the Future 400 podcast looks at work by Dutch and American photographers who are part of the annual international photo festival Photoville in Lower Manhattan. Dutch photographer Ernst Coppejans delves deep into the lives of LGBTQIA+ people living on the streets in New York. Kennedi Carter, a young Black photographer from the South, dresses people of color in a combination of garb from colonial times and contemporary streetwear. Photoville’s founder Sam Barzilay says: “Even though they are an Atlantic apart, there is a shared sensibility here.”

 Future 400 is a bi-weekly four-part podcast series from the Dutch Consulate in New York, created and presented by John Adams Institute director Tracy Metz. It marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam, the city that became New York. Each episode highlights a selection of the creative collaborations between artists, communities and institutions in both the Netherlands and the United States. Learn more about the whole two-year Future 400 program at dutchcultureusa.com.

Support the show

Future 400 is a bi-weekly four-part podcast series from the Dutch Consulate in New York. It is part of the two-year cultural program of the same name, marking the 400th anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam, the city that became New York. Each episode highlights a selection of the creative collaborations between artists, communities and institutions in both the Netherlands and the United States. 

Want to learn more about Future 400? The Dutch Consulate in New York City made a site for that! Just go to dutchcultureusa.com

 Presenter: Tracy Metz,  producers: Tracy Metz and Jonathan Groubert

Episode 1: New York Before New York

 When the Dutch colonists set foot on the island of Manhattan, four hundred years ago, there were already people living there: the Lenape. Historian Russell Shorto curated an exhibition for the New York Historical Society to tell the other stories about the town of New Amsterdam - and invited the Lenape to react with a powerful letter to an Unknown Ancestor, read by Brent Stonefish. And Pauline Toole, New York’s Commissioner of Records, tells us about the wonderful stories of real live people of many faiths and nationalities living in New Amsterdam that can be found in the 17th century archives. 

 John Adams Institute

 A video animation of the 1660 Castello Plan was made which you can rent online here:
Castello Plan

Support the show

Andrea Elliot’s 2022 Pulitzer winning book, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City, follows eight dramatic years in the life of a young woman named Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolize Brooklyn’s gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As she grows up, moving with her tight-knit family from shelter to shelter, this story goes back to trace the passage of Dasani’s ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north. By the time she comes of age, New York City’s homeless crisis is exploding as the chasm deepens between rich and poor. 

Dasani’s family have become emblematic of one of America’s most wicked problems: homelessness.  Andrea Elliott's  Pulitzer Prize winning story is a powerful expose on just how the disparity between those with wealth, and power, and those without, is rapidly growing.

Support the show

2024 is an election year. And in his book Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal', George Packer makes the case for why this may be the most important election since the civil war.

Packer accepts that America may be “a failed state”. A state that is in a “cold civil war” between four incompatible versions of the US: the Free America of libertarian Reagan, the Smart America of Clinton-era technocrats, the quote Real America quote of the bottom-feeding demagogue Donald Trump, and the Just America of #MeToo and BLM. Packer says this cold civil war has made Americans profoundly unreal to one another: they lack a shared reality, have burrowed into partisan encampments or sealed themselves in digital echo chambers of angry prejudice. But as Mr. Packer told our Amsterdam audience back in April of 2022, it isn’t all bad news. After all, America has had many such crises and has recovered from them all. And he offers a solution. The creation of a fifth version of the US: the “Equal America” – which involves extending the New Deal to Americans in more areas of their lives, from affordable and universal health care to a living minimum wage and beyond.

Want to find out more about the John Adams Institute? Check out our website: www.john-adams.nl.

Support the show