In the first in a series Liberties X Interintellect salons, Benjamin Moser joins Celeste Marcus to discuss his forthcoming book The Upside Down World. Arriving as a young writer in an ancient Dutch town, Moser was overwhelmed by the language, people, and culture. The great painters of the Dutch Golden Age —Rembrandt, Hals, and Vermeer among them— offered him entry into his strange new universe. This book is a portrait of seventeen of these artists, and of Moser’s peculiar conception of each of them.

Becca Rothfeld and Celeste Marcus pepper Agnes Callard with questions about motherhood, among them: how it changes one, whether it's possible to prepare for it, and if one's own identity is enriched or extinguished through it.

Justin E H Smith joins Celeste Marcus to discuss the thought and style of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Benjamin Moser joins Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus to discuss Rembrandt and the nature of evil. 

Agnes Callard and Celeste Marcus use "Scenes from a Marriage," the television series directed by Ingmar Bergman and released in 1973, to consider themes such as whether  loneliness is inevitable, whether one has a moral imperative either to lie or to be wholly honest with their partner, what personal liberation means, and whether or not it is possible.

Jared Marcel Pollen joins Leon Wieseltier to discuss Václav Havel and the proper relationship between power and justice. 

Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus discuss the rise of the radical Israeli right and the peculiar pain of responsible loyalty to a state 

Justin E. H. Smith joins Leon Wieseltier and Celeste Marcus to discuss the gamification of reality, and the pernicious compulsion to control and describe more and more of human existence via algorithms and technology.

William Deresiewicz joins Celeste Marcus to discuss his upcoming book "The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society." In this conversation they broach many of the themes which Deresiewicz explores in his book, including the nature of attention, the meaning of art, the purpose of education, and the snares endemic to membership in any community.

Morten Høi Jensen joins Celeste Marcus to discuss literary biography as a failed genre, the impossibility of a writer ever achieving intimacy with her own subjects, and the license that futility conditions.