The Intellectual

Writers Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and John McWhorter share common concerns about language, race and politics in our polarized society. They discuss the chilling of civic discourse for fear of political censure and how wokeness is condescending to Black people at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival.  

In Episode 135 of A is for Architecture, Assistant Professor in Architectural History and Theory in the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge, Dr Fiona Smyth, discusses her book, Pistols in St Paul's: Science, music, and architecture in the twentieth century (Manchester University Press, 2024) ‘a ground-breaking account of the scientists and architects who pioneered acoustics in twentieth-century Britain’.

As the publisher’s blurb elegantly puts it, ‘On a winter's night in 1951, shortly after Evensong, the interior of St Paul's Cathedral echoed with gunfire. This was no act of violence but a scientific demonstration of new techniques in acoustic measurement. It aimed to address a surprising question: could a building be a musical instrument? […] the scientists, architects and musicians who set out to answer this question […] would come to define the field of 'architectural acoustics'. 

Fiona can be found on the Cambridge University website, and on her research website too. The book is linked above

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick

1.      How does Sabine describe the current moment in trans literature? Why do we need a handbook of trans literature now?
2.      What might the relationship between trans literature and ecocriticism be?
3.      Why is science fiction an interesting but also potentially problematic genre when it comes to depiction of transness and gender nonconformity?
4.     What is Sabine gesturing to when speaking about the relationship between feminist science fiction and transness in the late 20th century and feminism and transness today?
5.      What can we learn from trans literature?

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In his landmark multi-volume biography of Stalin, Stephen Kotkin shows how totalitarian power worked not just through terror from above, but through millions of everyday decisions from below. Currently a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution after 33 years at Princeton, Kotkin brings both deep archival work and personal experience to his understanding of Soviet life, having lived in Magnitogorsk during the 1980s and seen firsthand how power operates in closed societies.

Tyler sat down with Stephen to discuss the state of Russian Buddhism today, how shamanism persists in modern Siberia, whether Siberia might ever break away from Russia, what happened to the science city Akademgorodok, why Soviet obsession with cybernetics wasn't just a mistake, what life was really like in 1980s Magnitogorsk, how modernist urban planning failed there, why Prokofiev returned to the USSR in 1936, what Stalin actually understood about artistic genius, how Stalin's Georgian background influenced him (or not), what Michel Foucault taught him about power, why he risked his tenure case to study Japanese, how his wife's work as a curator opened his eyes to Korean folk art, how he's progressing on the next Stalin volume, and much more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded November 13th, 2024.

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Welcome to What Just Happened, a Recall This Book experiment. In it you will hear three friends of RTB reacting to the 2024 election and discussing the coming four years. In this episode, Vincent Brown (History professor at Harvard) last spoke with us about his own work on Caribbean slave revolts; his many other well-known projects include the recent PBS series The Bigger Picture.

What exactly happened and will happen? Well, Vince has sympathy for Bernie Sanders Boston Globe op-ed about the Democrat's neglect of working-class and Gabriel Wynant's "Exit Right" abut the need to remake left-wing politics. He also takes seriously Thomas Piketty's theory of the rise of "Brahmin Left". That's a topic explored in the Recall This Book series on the Brahmin left ( Jan-Werner Muller, Matthew Karp and Thomas Piketty).

Any hopeful note to end on? Well, bad government breeds righteous opposition. From Ronald Reagan we got...Minor Threat and the Bad Brains.

Tune in tomorrow to hear John speak with David Cunningham; the previous conversation, already up on New Books Network, was with Mark Blyth.

Listen and Read here.

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This is the story of America's longest held prisoner of war. John 'Jack' Downey, an American CIA operative, was imprisoned by the Chinese for 21 years during the Cold War.

Don speaks to Barry Wirth, author of 'Prisoner of Lies: Jack Downey's Cold War.' They explore why the CIA were in Asia in the 1950s, Downey's capture and imprisonment, and why it took so long for him to be released.

Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.

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Historian Kathryn Olmsted discusses her recent book, The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler, and explains how anti-interventionist attitudes by publishers such as Hearst, McCormick, and Lord Beaverbrook hindered the U.S. and British responses to Hitler's rise to power. Show transcripts are available at https://journalism-history.org/podcast.

"The historian [of the vineyard] gave us regular feedback on what she was finding, and she also brought in oral historians to take our own life histories. There's also a psychoanalytical point to be made here - you can take refuge in this scholarly exercise, going into archives and finding out things that happened hundreds of years ago, you can all too easily remove yourself from that: 'This is what happened long, long ago'. But all of us on this farm, we had all lived through Apartheid. The oral historians who wanted to participate, we met over many sessions in my living room and the oral historians asked each of us who volunteered to participate to tell our stories of our lives and it was a real revelation to me. Despite my abstract awareness, the actual concrete listening to people who I was getting to know as individuals, to hear one after another account of the grinding poverty of what it actually is like to be a poor black farm worker in South Africa under Apartheid."

Episode Description: Mark shares with us his original intent to make a "citizen-sized contribution to the reconstruction" of South Africa through redressing the inequalities that formed a basis of his family's vineyard. He describes going through a painful process of enlightenment where good intentions themselves were insufficient to honor the historical processes that lived inside the owner and the tenant farmers who have been on the land for generations. Psychoanalytically informed, he consulted a historian and archeologist to, along with the farmers, dig into both the land and the lives of all involved. This led to a rebalancing of the pride/shame dynamic that had existed in the owner/workers. When faced with the inevitable question, "Must I give the farm back?" Mark discusses what he felt was the difference between 'self-interest' and 'selfish-interest'. He shares with us the efforts he took to enable the workers to become landowners, to become educated and also to become discoverers and messengers of their historically rich cuisine and music. He also details the 'not so happy ending; of these efforts as his farm has struggled financially under the burden of these considerable costs and government corruption. Things have turned around of late and there is reason to be optimistic for the long-term flourishing of his vineyard and his "citizen sized" contribution to the well-being of those with whom he works.

Our Guest: Mark Solms, PhD is a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society and the American and South African Psychoanalytic Associations. He is Director of Neuropsychology at the Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cape Town. He is an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists. He has received numerous honors and awards, including the Sigourney Prize. He has published 350 scientific papers, and eight books, the latest being The Hidden Spring (Norton, 2021). He is the authorized editor and translator of the Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (24 volumes) and the forthcoming Complete Neuroscientific Works of Sigmund Freud (4 volumes).

Recommended Reading:

Solms, M. (2015) Psychoanalysis in Pursuit of Truth and Reconciliation on a South African Farm: Commentary on Gobodo-Madikizela. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 63:1147-1158

What is the future of the film industry? In Mobile Hollywood Labor and the Geography of Production (U California Press, 2024), Kevin Sanson, Professor of Media Studies and Head of the School of Communication at Queensland University of Technology, examines the way Hollywood film production has become a global industry. The book theorises Hollywood as a distinct spatial assemblage, and examines the consequences of the rise of global, mobile film production for places and for workers. Offering a unique perspective on the challenges of this new mode of production, alongside insights on how ‘good work’ can be defended and preserved in media industries, the book is essential reading across the humanities and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in media today. The book is also available open access here.

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This podcast describes a short history of a man who did something we’ve lost in America. That man was James Baldwin who insisted on telling the truth. He confronted the harsh realities of racism, believing that exposing its ugliness was necessary for progress. He rejected simplistic solutions, arguing that racism was deeply rooted in American consciousness and imagination, beyond just political and economic inequalities. Instead, Baldwin called for a fundamental transformation of American society and identity. He critiqued white America, urging white Americans to confront their own behavior and complicity in racist systems.

Controversially, Baldwin advocated for Black Americans to approach white countrymen with love, while still insisting on unconditional freedom, seeing this as necessary for true transformation. He ultimately wanted to build a nation that moved beyond racial categorization, focusing instead on individual humanity. Baldwin viewed racism as stemming from a deeper spiritual problem in America, where individuals and the nation lacked a true sense of identity. While he did not offer simple solutions to racism, Baldwin's penetrating analysis and powerful writing exposed the complexities of racism in our country, challenged both white and Black Americans to confront difficult truths, and provided a framework for understanding racism beyond just political reforms. His work continues to influence discussions on race in America today, aiming not to ameliorate racism in a superficial sense, but to push for a profound reckoning with and transformation of American society and identity in relation to race.

Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone is a powerful novel that explores the complexities of race, sexuality, and identity in America through the life of its protagonist, Leo Proud/hammer. As the story begins, Leo, a successful African-American actor, suffers from a heart attack. As he recovers he reflects on his life and relationships.

It is also of interest to note how James Baldwin’s novel relates to Dr. Matin Luther King Jr.’s non-fiction book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?

Both books are discussed in terms of the major contributions they made to racism in America as well as how they illustrate psychoanalytic mechanism of defense.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

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