Best David Heti Podcasts (2024)

1
130* Racism as Power Relation: A Discussion with Adaner Usmani (EF, JP) 33:59

6d ago33:59

33:59

Do we understand racism as the primary driving engine of American inequality? Or do we focus instead on the indirect ways that frequently hard-to-discern class inequality and inegalitarian power relations can produce racially differentiated outcomes? Adaner Usmani, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Studies at Harvard and on the editorial …

1
Claire Kilroy on Parenting under the Patriarchy 54:57

6d ago54:57

54:57

A woman tells her son about his early life. About the months and years that he will by now have forgotten. When he was a baby, then a toddler, and when she was going into battle every day. For him first, and only then for herself. It’s a battle fought on many fronts. Against exhaustion, against time, against the loss of selfhood, against an increas…

1
Rachel Cusk on Art, Violence and Freedom through Destruction 1:00:16

22d ago1:00:16

1:00:16

The biographies of several artists, all named G, form a kind of exoskeleton to Rachel Cusk’s latest novel Parade, encasing the book’s other captivating strands—the story of an unprovoked attack on a Parisian street, the story of a couple on a remote island, the story of a suicide at a museum, the story of the death of a mother. Elements which thems…

1
129* Vince Brown, Caribbean Vectors (EF, JP) 45:51

1M ago45:51

45:51

The largest slave uprising in the 18th century British Caribbean was also a node of the global conflict called the Seven Year’s War, though it isn’t usually thought of that way. In the first few days of the quarantine and our current geopolitical and epidemiological shitshow, John and Elizabeth spoke with Vincent Brown, who recently published Tacky…

1
When Radical Art meets Obscene Wealth, with Hari Kunzru 56:55

1M ago56:55

56:55

Last week we were joined in the bookshop by Hari Kunzru, whose new novel Blue Ruin is a deeply unsettling, and intensely thought provoking reflection on the impact capital has on people, but also on art, and those who create it. It is the perfect final instalment—alongside White Tears and Red Pill—in Hari Kunzru’s own trois couleurs —a loose trilog…

1
Sheila Heti on Alphabetical Diaries 50:07

2M ago50:07

50:07

Last week we were joined by the wonderful Sheila Heti to celebrate the launch of her Alphabetical Diaries. In taking a decade of her journals, sorting the sentences alphabetically, then paring them down to about a tenth of their original length, Sheila Heti has freed a slice of her life from the shackles of time and in doing so has extracted some o…

1
BONUS: Celebrating Dylan Thomas with Cerys Matthews…with exclusive live music from Flora Hibberd! 57:26

2M ago57:26

57:26

To celebrate Dylan Thomas Day 2024 we’re delighted to share this recording of our recent event with award-winning songwriter, author and broadcaster Cerys Matthews. The evening also featured live music from Flora Hibberd and her band, including a brand new song composed for this evening. Enjoy! More from Cerys Matthews: Out of Chaos Comes Bliss: ht…

1
128 Steve McCauley excavates John Cheever's "The Five-Forty-Eight" (JP) 1:13:47

2M ago1:13:47

1:13:47

We debut a new feature: Recall This Story, in which a contemporary writer picks out a bygone story to read and to analyze. Surely there is no better novelist to begin with than RTB' shouse sage, Steve McCauley. And not just because he's got the pipes to power through a whole fantabulous John Cheever story. "The Five-Forty-Eight" (published in The N…

1
Viet Thanh Nguyen on Memory, Migration and Model Minorities 1:03:03

2M ago1:03:03

1:03:03

A few weeks ago, we welcomed Pulitzer Prizewinner Viet Thanh Nguyen to Shakespeare and Company to discuss his engrossing new work A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial, a book about family, and memory, and storytelling, and history, on all the levels that it impacts upon a life. Buy A Man of Two Faces here: https://www.shakespeareandc…

1
Ottessa Moshfegh on bringing Eileen to the screen 1:02:16

3M ago1:02:16

1:02:16

A few weeks ago we welcomed Ottessa Moshfegh to Shakespeare and Company. That night we’re headed almost back to where it all began by revisiting Moshfegh’s second book Eileen, the small town noir that propelled this experimental writer into the bestseller charts and onto the Booker shortlist. Eileen has just been adapted into a Hollywood film—direc…

1
127* Helena De Bres on Life-Writing (JP, EF) 41:00

3M ago41:00

41:00

How does the past live on within our experience of the present? And how does our decision to speak about or write down our recollections of how things were change our understanding of those memories--how does it change us in the present? Asking those questions back in 2019 brought RTB into the company of memory-obsessed writers like Virginia Woolf …

1
Percival Everett on James, his subversive reimagining of Huckleberry Finn 34:56

3M ago34:56

34:56

James—the new novel by Percival Everett—retells, reframes, and reimagines Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, the black man whose flight from slavery quickly entangles with the journey of Huck, on the run after faking his own death to escape his violent father. James gives us the events of Twain’s picaresque…

1
126 E. G. Condé / Steve Gonzalez on Hurricanes, Fiction, and Speculative Ethnography (EF) 37:34

3M ago37:34

37:34

In this episode, Elizabeth talks with Steven Gonzalez, anthropologist and author of speculative fiction under the pen name E.G. Condé. They discuss the entanglement of politics, Taíno animism, and weather events in the form of a hurricane named Teddy. Steve describes the suffusion of sound he has experienced in Puerto Rico and the soundlessness at …

1
On Allen Ginsberg: His life, his work and his archives, with Pat Thomas and Peter Hale 40:13

4M ago40:13

40:13

We were joined by countercultural historian Pat Thomas, and Peter Hale, manager of the Ginsberg estate, and discover their new collaboration Material Wealth Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg. * A prolific poet, raconteur, activist, and thinker, Allen Ginsberg was also a prolific collector, meticulously saving letters, postcards, draft n…

1
125* David Ferry, Roger Reeves, and the Underworld 45:26

4M ago45:26

45:26

In Memoriam: David Ferry (1924-2023) In this Recall This Book conversation from 2021, poets David Ferry and Roger Reeves talk about lyric, epic, and the underworld. The underworld, that repository of the Shades of the Dead, gets a lot of traffic from heroes (Gilgamesh, Theseus, Odysseus, Aeneas) and poets (Orpheus, Virgil, Dante). Some come down fo…

1
Bidding adieu to Freeman’s literary journal, with Jakuta Alikavazovic, Deborah Landau, Juan Gabriel Vazquez, and John Freeman 54:16

4M ago54:16

54:16

On this very special January night, editor extraordinaire John Freeman was joined by three of his star contributors, Jakuta Alikavazovic, Juan Gabriel Vasquez and Deborah Landau to bid farewell to his literary journal. Buy Freeman’s Conclusions: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/freemans-conclusions * Jakuta Alikavazovic (b.1979) is a Fre…

1
124 The Reeducation of Race with Sonali Thakkar (JP) 48:04

4M ago48:04

48:04

NYU professor Sonali Thakkar’s brilliant first book, The Reeducation of Race: Jewishness and the Politics of Antiracism in Postcolonial Thought (Stanford UP, 2023), begins as a mystery of sorts. When and why did the word “equality” get swapped out of the 1950 UNESCO Statement on Race, to be replaced by “educability, plasticity”? She and John sit do…

1
On Friendship, with Hollie McNish and Michael Pedersen 57:08

4M ago57:08

57:08

In early February, we hosted a riotous, tender, enchanting and uplifting evening of poetry and prose with the irrepressible Hollie McNish and Michael Pedersen. After their readings they sat down with Adam Biles for a chat about friendship, a theme that unites their work. Buy Hollie McNish’s Lobster here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/…

1
123* Sheila Heti Speaks About Awe with Sunny Yudkoff (JP) 43:08

5M ago43:08

43:08

In this fantastic recent episode from our colleagues at Novel Dialogue, Sheila Heti sits down with Sunny Yudkoff and John to discuss her incredibly varied oeuvre. She does it all: stories, novels, alphabetized diary entries as well as a series of dialogues in the New Yorker with an AI named Alice. Drawing on her background in Jewish Studies, Sunny …

1
Love in the Time of Creative-Writing Classes, with Brandon Taylor 51:11

5M ago51:11

51:11

Our guest this week is Brandon Taylor, whose new book The Late Americans is a stark retooling of the campus novel for the 21st century. Taking a university town in Iowa as his canvas, Taylor depicts the lives of a loose group of friends and associates: Seamus, Fyodor, Ivan, Noah and Fatima—students of writing and dance—as time barrels them towards …

1
122 The Culture Trap, with Sociologist Derron Wallace (EF, JP) 47:30

5M ago47:30

47:30

In this episode, Elizabeth and John talk with Derron Wallace, sociologist of education and Brandeis colleague, about his new book The Culture Trap, which explores "ethnic expectations" for Caribbean schoolchildren in New York and London. His work starts with the basic puzzle that while black Caribbean schoolchildren in New York are often considered…

1
Annabelle Hirsch, A History of Women in 101 Objects 52:30

5M ago52:30

52:30

Last week, we were joined in the bookshop by Annabelle Hirsch whose new book A History of Women in 101 Objects not only gives us an untold and innovative history of the world— a history takes us from the dawn of civilisation to the present day, through ancient Egypt, medieval Venice, revolutionary France and the roaring twenties—but also launches a…

1
121* Ajantha Subramanian on "The Caste of Merit" ((EF,JP)) 51:37

6M ago51:37

51:37

Before she became the host and star of Violent Majorities, the RTB series on Israeli and Indian ethnonationalism, Ajantha Subramanian sat down with Elizabeth and John to discuss The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India (Harvard UP, 2019). It is much more than simply an historical and ethnographic study of the elite Indian Institutes of Te…

1
☕Proust Questionnaire: Holly McNish & Michael Pedersen☕ 1:23:37

6M ago1:23:37

1:23:37

In advance of their event at Shakespeare and Company this February 8th, poets Hollie McNish and Michael Pedersen answer our café’s Proust Questionnaire. Be warned, this gets saucy quickly… Find out more about their event here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/events/hollie-mcnish-michael-pedersen * Hollie McNish is an award-winning poet, write…

Podcasts Worth a Listen

David Heti Podcasts

Podcasts Worth a Listen

1
I Have a Problem, With David Heti

David Heti

1
Recall This Book

Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz

1
The Shakespeare and Company Interview

Shakespeare and Company

1
130* Racism as Power Relation: A Discussion with Adaner Usmani (EF, JP) 33:59

1
Claire Kilroy on Parenting under the Patriarchy 54:57

1
Rachel Cusk on Art, Violence and Freedom through Destruction 1:00:16

1
129* Vince Brown, Caribbean Vectors (EF, JP) 45:51

1
When Radical Art meets Obscene Wealth, with Hari Kunzru 56:55

1
Sheila Heti on Alphabetical Diaries 50:07

1
BONUS: Celebrating Dylan Thomas with Cerys Matthews…with exclusive live music from Flora Hibberd! 57:26

1
128 Steve McCauley excavates John Cheever's "The Five-Forty-Eight" (JP) 1:13:47

1
Viet Thanh Nguyen on Memory, Migration and Model Minorities 1:03:03

1
Ottessa Moshfegh on bringing Eileen to the screen 1:02:16

1
127* Helena De Bres on Life-Writing (JP, EF) 41:00

1
Percival Everett on James, his subversive reimagining of Huckleberry Finn 34:56

1
126 E. G. Condé / Steve Gonzalez on Hurricanes, Fiction, and Speculative Ethnography (EF) 37:34

1
On Allen Ginsberg: His life, his work and his archives, with Pat Thomas and Peter Hale 40:13

1
125* David Ferry, Roger Reeves, and the Underworld 45:26

1
Bidding adieu to Freeman’s literary journal, with Jakuta Alikavazovic, Deborah Landau, Juan Gabriel Vazquez, and John Freeman 54:16

1
124 The Reeducation of Race with Sonali Thakkar (JP) 48:04

1
On Friendship, with Hollie McNish and Michael Pedersen 57:08

1
123* Sheila Heti Speaks About Awe with Sunny Yudkoff (JP) 43:08

1
Love in the Time of Creative-Writing Classes, with Brandon Taylor 51:11

1
122 The Culture Trap, with Sociologist Derron Wallace (EF, JP) 47:30

1
Annabelle Hirsch, A History of Women in 101 Objects 52:30

1
121* Ajantha Subramanian on "The Caste of Merit" ((EF,JP)) 51:37

1
☕Proust Questionnaire: Holly McNish & Michael Pedersen☕ 1:23:37

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