My guest on the show this week in Timothy Shenk, assistant professor of history at The George Washington University and author, most recently, of Left Adrift: What Happened to Liberal Politics, which I reviewed for Air Mail some…

My guest on the show today is Ash Carter, writer and editor for Air Mail magazine and all around chronicler of the post-war cultural elite. I asked Ash to come on after reading the most recent in a series of profiles he’s written about great editors of the 20th century, some of whom, for reasons we discuss, were semi-cancelled in the last decade or two.

He’s written about, for instance, former New Republic editor and owner Marty Peretz, Peretz’s longtime literary editor Leon Wieseltier, Vintage Classics legend Gary Fisketjon, New York Review Classics visionary Edwin Frank, and Dick and Jeanette Seaver of Arcade Publishing.

It’s a fun conversation that hits on a few of my abiding concerns: the legacy of the WASP elite on our culture and politics, the ways in which we should think about people who do bad things but have made great things, and graphic design, which Ash cares about more than the average magazine editor.

I lead off the episode by saying something, perhaps against my better judgement, about Jeffrey Epstein (or Jeff Epstein, as we started calling him in my family for some reason).

Here’s what I say. I am genuinely befuddled.

I was listening to Jay Kang and Tyler Austin Harper’s podcast, Time to Say Goodbye, and they weren’t full conspiracy on Epstein, but I’d say 70% conspiracy.

Here’s Harper, for instance, on a recent episode:

it does appear to be true that …. There is an international network of very powerful pedophiles that have a not inconsiderable amount of leverage on various halls of power. It shouldn’t be lost. We’ve said this on the show before, but two out of the last four presidents were people who were very friendly with Epstein. But I think the real story here is that, yes, you have this hard kernel of like true blue elite pedophiles

And then on the other side of things I was reading some posts by Michael Tracey and Matt Taibbi, and their perspective seems to be that Epstein was basically an immensely sleazy guy who paid for sex with young women and didn’t look too closely at whether they were over or under 18 but didn’t necessarily have a particular desire to have sex with underage women. Their paradigm is that a lot of this is Russiagate style hysteria/moral panic, fueled both by conspiracy theorists of all stripes and by various political and media actors who are cynically pumping up the story to drive clicks and gain electoral advantage,

Claude AI comes in somewhere in the middle, telling me that “the evidence strongly supports that Epstein … Epstein deliberately and systematically sought out minors. The infrastructure he built—the recruitment network, the payments, the documentation—wasn’t consistent with someone who simply preferred young-looking women and occasionally made mistakes. It was consistent with someone whose preference was specifically for adolescent girls.”

It also says that when it comes to the question of other men being involved, it’s murky: “The names that circulate publicly—Clinton, Trump, Dershowitz, various billionaires—appear in flight logs or visitor records, but presence at Epstein’s properties doesn’t establish participation in abuse. Epstein cultivated legitimacy by surrounding himself with prominent people, many of whom may have had no idea what else was happening.”

I say all this not to offer my own two cents but just to articulate the opposite, which is that I have no clue. The evidence is too vast, and my time too limited, to feel as though I can have a direct interpretation of the evidence, and many of the people to whom I typically turn for a relatively sober account of reality, against conspiracy theory, or moderately conspiratorial. And then the people like Tracey and Taibbi complicate things too, because although their extreme skepticism of official narratives is so often distortionary, and therefore not a good guide to what’s actually going on, in some cases it can provide a very useful signal for when we should be skeptical of official narratives,

They were more right than wrong about Russiagate, or at least right about certain things that most people got wrong. So is this Russiagate all over again, and if so, what the hell does that mean, because as I ponder the comparison I realize I still don’t even know what to make of Russiagate?

I don’t know. It was always the case that the gatekeepers were wrong about some big things, but it used to be the case that we just swallowed their narratives anyway, because we weren’t exposed to alternatives. Now we’re living in this fractured informational environment where we’re so much more acutely aware of the fragility of the conventional narratives, and so much more exposed to alternatives, but our brains haven’t gotten bigger in proportion in order to sift through the data more efficiently and effectively.

I spend a lot of time thinking and reading about these things, and have a lot of faith in my capacity to perceive what’s going on most of the time with some accuracy, but here I’m just adrift, and I wonder if in my adriftness I’m experiencing firsthand something like what most people who don’t think, read, and write about this stuff as much as I do experience when confronting the political world, and what role this plays in pushing them into self contained bubbles or tribes that replicate, in a way, the single narrative cognitive environment we all had back in the days of the gatekeepers. So there’s still a conventional narrative that we have to protect us from too much cognitive dizziness, it’s just that there are many of them at once.

Anyway, that’s my two cents on Epstein. I’ll keep trying to get a handle on it, but I won’t have any guests on to talk about it because who needs another podcast about the Epstein files.

Hope you enjoy my conversation with Ash.

Peace.

My frequent conversation partner Blake Smith is back on the pod today to talk about his book-in-progress on the pioneering gay editor Michael Denneny as well as a related essay, “For the Love of the Gay World,” just published in a new anthology.

In both endeavors, I think, he’s doing some version of the same thing, which is to make his case, that gay men briefly had, then lost, but could have again a coherent, self-reflective cultural and intellectual world by and for themselves. As he writes:

Part of what the playwright Larry Kramer called, two decades ago, the tragedy of today’s gays is that in order to begin a potentially generative, or productively divisive, conversation about the state of male homosexuality (its culture and politics, its problems and affordances) we must undergo an ordeal of conceptual and historical clarification. Without doing so, we are likely to miss the real objects of our agreement and disagreement, wasting time with opinions expressed in each interlocutor’s jumble of inherited, half-comprehended categories.

It is hard for gays to talk sensibly to each other about where we are and how we got here; the ideas by which we understand that ‘we’ and its emergence in time are so contested and confused. This makes gay thinking peculiarly dizzied, harried and disoriented. It is often in doubt whether there is any gay ‘we’ (or any gay thinking) —or whether ‘we’ do in fact wish for our talk to reach out to such a ‘we’ rather than merely confirm ourselves individually in what we already take ourselves to think and know.

In the following I will try to do two things at the same time. I will try to clarify the routes through history by which certain concepts have come down to us, and to trace their relationships and contradictions. Disentangling homosexual, gay, and queer, and the movements by which these terms were conceived and contested, may allow us to talk more with more clarity about the objects of our dis/agreement. At the same time, as I lay out—in a sketchy, rapid, and admittedly contestable fashion—this history, I will show how there came to be, at a few different times and places, a self-conscious articulation of the interest and pleasure that we take in talking to each other about ourselves, and of the desire to perpetuate ourselves individually and collectively that is adumbrated in this talk.

Our talking together both reflects and forms what Hannah Arendt (whose relevance to gays will become clearer over the course of this essay) called a world. Which is not a physical place. A world, in this sense, is what is communicable to a group of people, what they can hold together in their talk. It is also the set of practices by which that communicability is maintained (the fact, for instance, of our having a shared vocabulary and grammar, but also of our having reasonably similar psychologies and common objects of perception). Worlds can expand and contract, and also collapse. Whether we want to speak to someone about an apparently external object or an apparently internal thought, the possibility of our doing so successfully depends there being already a world that contains us, our intended interlocutor, and the topic we want to address.

His framework involves a periodization of three distinct eras: the “homosexual” phase of the late 19th and early 20th century, when doctors, psychologists, and the men they studied were constructing new categories of identity; the “gay” era that emerged in the mid-20th century and flourished after Stonewall; and the “queer” phase that began in the 1980s and now dominates how we talk about sexual minorities.

His argument, stripped down, is that the gay era represented something genuinely new in the world. Before that point there existed various ways of characterizing sex between men, but there wasn’t a publicly visible and accessible identity oriented around the idea of two men being together as romantic equals, without one becoming feminized, without requiring a status differential, old and young, top and bottom.

This emerged organically from bars and cruising spots and men finding each other in mid-century American cities, and then from that base there evolved a self-conscious culture, one in which Denneny, through his magazine Christopher Street and his editorial work at St. Martin’s Press, was a central figure.

Then in some respects this culture died, or attenuated. Literally died, in many cases, with so many deaths from AIDS. But also at the hands of the queer paradigm, which supplanted it first in the universities, and then much more broadly in the culture. Queer as an identity, in Blake’s construction, did a few things. It conceptualized the queer as a potentially universal, or universally accessible, counter-normative, transgressive force. Anything could be queer, or queered, if it stood or was understood at certain angles to the normative.

More problematically, from Blake’s stance, it subsumed the gay male identity into a larger queer collective identity that included first lesbians and transgender people but soon anyone, including old fashioned straight folks, who wanted to align themselves with the queer. And this has meant, among other things, that there is simply less psychological and cultural energy available for the maintenance and development of the gay world, as Denneny understood it, particularly in the aftermath of the death of so many gay men from AIDS and particularly because gay men don’t biologically reproduce themselves. They need more conscious, deliberate reproduction of their culture, their world.

A subtext of our discussion, which we reference but don’t really delve into, is that Blake’s political orientation has shifted a lot over the last year or so, since Trump was left. He hasn’t gone left, precisely. His policy preferences remain roughly the same, basically old new school new deal left liberal social democracy-esque. He’s just not interested anymore in aiming his fire at certain elements of the left.

I think I’ve undergone a shift as well, though to a much lesser degree, and with no guilt. I’m more interested in critiquing and thinking about the flaws of the right, now that those flaws are so evident and so damaging to the country. That’s definitely a shift. But it still feels important to me to critique the left, in part because that’s just my beat, but also because the stakes are really high.

To this point, my brother Jonathan said something to me the other day that I hadn’t thought about but made a lot of sense. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and has been involved in the organizing there against the ICE invasion. What he said is that it’s pretty clear to him that people in the Twin Cities have internalized the hard lessons from mistakes made after the George Floyd killing. They’re thinking, much more strategically than the last time, about how to act so as to elicit sympathy rather than aversion from the broad mass of people in the middle politically. They’re sidelining the idiots from antifa and the abolish the police crowd. They’re super conscious of the need to avoid riots and looting. Etc.

And you can see the results, how powerful and effective their opposition has been. I think critique is a small but important element in the process that leads to that result. So I’ll keep being a pain in the ass on that front, but spend more time looking at the right and also try to spend more time in the space where I think blake is right now, which is trying to think constructively, creatively about new possibilities for culture and politics that we might want to explore on the other side of the culture wars.

If you want to hear my guest on the show today, Sam Tanenhaus, talk in depth about his magisterial new biography of William F. Buckley, which if there’s justice in the world will win all the awards, I recommend you listen to Andrew Sullivan’s interview with Tanenhaus, or the Know Your Enemy interview with Sam, or the

My guest on the show today is Justin Driver, the Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law at Yale Law School and, more importantly, an old friend of mine.

Among his many recognitions, he was appointed by President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. to serve on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, and is also a recipient of the American Society for Legal History’s William Nelson Cromwell Article Prize.

He’s the author of two books, the first of which was The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind, and the second of which is his new one, and the reason I had him on the show, The Fall of Affirmative Action: Race, the Supreme Court, and the Future of Higher Education.

The first time I met Justin, knowing only that he was a law school professor and not what topics he worked on, I said to him, a propos of I’m not sure what, that it felt like the conversation on race in America was kind of passé. It didn’t feel, I said, like there was much going on in the intellectual space around race that was very interesting.

This was 2009 or 2010, not long before the death of Trayvon Martin and then the birth of BLM, so it was a comically anti-prophetic thing to say. It was also rather insensitive, given that Justin was a young academic planting his flag, in part, in that space. But I don’t think it was wrong, precisely. Given Obama’s election, there was certainly a ton of words that people were writing about race, and an older generation of important race-focused intellectuals—the Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates types— still working steadily. What there wasn’t, and hadn’t been for some years, was a figure able to bend the political intellectual discourse around his or her gravitational force on the topic of race.

It would soon be Ta-Nehisi Coates, of course, and then a whole explosion of important intellectuals writing about race, including Justin himself. And so it’s been my good fortune to have him as a conversation partner these last 15 or so years, and a pleasure to have the chance to talk to him in the context of his new book, which was a surprising reading experience for me, given that I thought, incorrectly, that I had such a good handle on the debate around affirmative action that even reading an expert on the topic might feel gratuitous.

On this special Christmas episode of the podcast, my 9-year-old son Gideon interviews me for a school assignment about my writing, my day job, and my theories on why I’m an interesting person.

He’s hoping there will be comments, so if you have any thoughts please share them.

This episode, with Democratic congressional candidate Caitlin Rourk, has an interesting backstory. Back in May my wife wrote an op-ed for the Austin American Statesman criticizing Republic congressman John Carter, whose district is adjacent to the one we live in. Carter isn’t particularly noxious, as these people go, but nor is he at all in possession of actual principles. He’s just a stooge for Trump and MAGA.

My wife was frustrated and feeling powerless, as many of us were and are, and this was a small way to feel like she’s doing something, putting Carter on notice, to whatever extent he pays attention to the local news, that people are seeing what he’s doing and more importantly not doing, which is actually exercising independent judgement about what’s good for the country.

Here’s a bit of it, to give you a sense:

Republican Congressman John Carter, whose 31st district covers North Austin up to northwest of Waco, has long styled himself an old school defender of the U.S. Constitution. He invokes the founding document frequently — to oppose hate crime legislation, advocate for gun rights, criticize the Affordable Care Act, and decry executive actions by Democratic presidents. He presents himself as a public servant guided by deep constitutional principles.

When it comes to Donald Trump, however, those principles disappear.

In recent months, Trump has been openly contemptuous of the Constitution and its embedded system of checks and balances. He has willfully ignored bipartisan legislation requiring him to force a divestment of TikTok from its Chinese parent company, a direct challenge to the separation of powers and the legislative process. He has deported lawful U.S. residents without due process, in some cases sending them to countries where their lives are in grave danger. He has targeted activists and institutions for exercising their rights to free speech and academic freedom.

These are not small matters. They are bright red constitutional lines that no president, regardless of party, should be permitted to cross.

Congressman Carter has had nothing to say on the subject. One searches in vain—on his website and social media feeds, in his public appearances and newsletters—for a word of dissent or even disquiet. When he speaks at all, which seems increasingly rare, he focuses elsewhere. On April 14, for example, Carter said nothing about President Trump’s suggestion, in a joint press conference with El Salvador president Nayib Bukele, that perhaps American citizens should be sent off to prison in El Salvador. That same day, Carter issued a press release touting proposed legislation to address … a shortage of bus drivers in America.

…If he truly cared about the rule of law and the balance of powers, he would speak out when anyone — Republican or Democrat — undermines them. Instead, he reserves his outrage for moments of partisan opportunity. He cries constitutional foul when it suits him and shrugs when the violations come from within his own political tribe.

As Thomas Jefferson once put in, in a line that Carter quotes on his own website, “When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When people fear the government, there is tyranny.” Carter may wrap himself in the Constitution, but he cannot claim to honor it while turning a blind eye to the fear that the administration is instilling in the people.

After that ran, Jess got an email from Rourk, who—at the time of our interview—was planning to run as a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Congress in Carter’s district. She has now shifted her candidacy to Texas’s 10th congressional district, I’m pretty sure because of court rulings on redistricting in Texas. It’s an open seat left by the retirement of Michael McCaul, and like Carter’s seat, a pretty safely red one, which in a normal election year would safely go to the Republican by 10 or 12 points. So, she’s no longer challenging John Carter, but the issues we discuss are all entirely germane.

I asked Caitlin to talk I think out of the same motive that drove Jess to write the op-ed. I wanted to do something, or at least think about how one would do something. Winning the open 10th district seat as a Democrat is a long shot, but even if she (or whoever wins the Democratic primary, if it’s not her) loses, the fact of running a vigorous challenge is meaningful. A smaller loss than what would occur in a typical election year, e.g., would be a signal to Republicans that Trump is dragging them down. An energetic campaign is also an end in itself. It gets people involved, brings them into the process. It provides information about what kinds of attacks or policies work or don’t. It pushes the opposition to defend itself. And, and I think this is important too, it wards off despair.

Caitlin and I talk about that. We also talk about her military service, why she chose to run, the realities of running in a district without national party backing, and the challenges—and opportunities—of building a campaign from the ground up. We talk about what it means to be authentic as a candidate, how to connect with voters who feel alienated or overlooked, and the importance of taking risks and trying new approaches in districts where the traditional playbook hasn’t worked.

This is part two of my two-part episode on Terry Gross. In part one, which was a paid episode, I talked to Sarah Hepola, Jason Thurlkill, and Meghan Daum about Terry Gross, what makes her great, and who should replace her whenever she chooses to retire.

On this episode, which is a freebie, I talk to Mark Oppenheimer, Mike Pesca, and Jesse Adams/The Ivy Exile.Aside from being my brother, Mark Oppenheimer is host of his own podcast, the Arc podcast, or Arc with Mark, which is the flagship podcast of the magazine he edits. He is also the author of Judy Blume: A Life, the forthcoming biography of Judy Blume, which drops in March of next year. Mike Pesca is the host of The Gist, the longest running daily news podcast in history, and its affiliated Substack, The Gist List. He has two other, non-daily podcasts: Funny You Should Mention, in which he talks to stand up comedians, and Not Even Mad, which is dedicated to “joyful disagreement.” He is the author of Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History, which came out in 2018. Jesse Adams is the author of The Ivy Exile Substack, and a writer for, among other publications, the Washington Examiner and the New York Post.

Thanks to all my guests, and listeners, for joining me in this endeavor. I have no immediate plans to do another special episode, but this felt like a success to me, so I’m sure at some point I’ll do it again.

This is episode one of my long-awaited Terry Gross Project, where I tackle the question of who Terry Gross’s successor should be on Fresh Air and what we can learn, by playing around with that question, about the magic of Terry Gross, the cultural meaning and trajectory of NPR, the art of the interview, and various other related topics.

The text for today’s episode is Conversations with Kiese Laymon, which is a new anthology of interviews with Laymon. My guests are Laymon himself, , a previous guest on the podcast and one of the best nonfiction writers of my generation, and the editor of the book, Constance Bailey.

Laymon’s memoir Heavy, which came out in 2018, was #60 on the New York Times list of the best hundred books of the 21st Century, and that really understates its brilliance. It’s a pretty amazing book, which you should read. He is also the author of the novel Long Division and the essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. He has a new children’s book out this year, City Summer, Country Summer, and is scheduled to have another memoir out next year, which is provisionally titled Good God.

Constance Bailey is an assistant professor of African American literature and folklore at Georgia State University and, like Laymon, a native of Mississippi, though neither of them lives there now. Bailey’s in Atlanta and Laymon, who did go back home for a number of years to teach at Old Miss, is now in Houston, where he has an endowed chair of English and creative writing at Rice University.

We talk about the origins of the book, both in terms of how Bailey sold it, as a new installment in part of the University of Mississippi Press’s storied “Literary Conversation” series, and why it was so appealing for Laymon to sign on (the series, as we learn in the conversation, was a meaningful influence on his development and self-conception as a young writer).

We talk a lot about Mississippi itself and how it’s affected both of their lives and writing. We talk about race, money, writing, speaking, and what it means to perform for white dollars. It’s a good conversation—such a good conversation, in fact, that if anyone ever plans to do another collection of interviews with Kiese, they should let me know and I will send them the transcript of this conversation and give them permission to include it in their collection.