Into the Zone

Look on the bright side! In a country obsessed with positivity, Hari traces the path of exiled German intellectual Theodor Adorno to sunny California, where he gets stuck in traffic with the British writer Geoff Dyer. How this positivity relates to church and state? Turns out there’s a lot to complain about.

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In the 1920s, a messianic visitor to Hari's family home unveils the connection between Indian Independence movement and the astral plane. Nearly a century later, Hari travels to the orange groves of Southern California, where the guru made his home, to examine the globetrotting legacy of New Age spirituality.

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Country? Rap? Lil Nas X’s chart-topping “Old Town Road” revived a long debate about borders and boundaries in American popular music. To sort out this strange history, Hari heads down to the foothills of Virginia, where a legendary collection of blues records holds the key to understanding the insidious separation of “Black” and “white” culture.

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Hari’s visit to Stonehenge on the solstice prompts an investigation into the gray zone between being a native and a migrant, and his memories of growing up in Essex during the Thatcher years. He also tracks down an old friend, whose work with Harvard geneticist David Reich overturns centuries of nationalist thinking.

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Hosted by novelist Hari Kunzru, Into the Zone is a new podcast about opposites, and how borders are never as clear as we think.

Coming September 3, 2020 from Pushkin Industries.

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