Best Bruce Snyder Podcasts (2025)

1
Liberation & the Literature of the Women’s Movement with Bess Wohl and Honor Moore 56:18

1d ago56:18

56:18

Wednesday, December 17—“The best play I’ve seen this season,” says New York Magazine’s Sara Holdren about Liberation, Bess Wohl’s moving exploration of the women’s movement through the story of an Ohio consciousness-raising group in the early 1970s and a daughter who yearns to understand her mother’s life and her own. To discuss this timely play an…

1
Helen Vendler’s Sixth Sense 1:01:41

21d ago1:01:41

1:01:41

December 2—Groundbreaking critic and revered scholar Helen Vendler could “second-guess the sixth sense of the poem,” wrote Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney. For Vendler, who died last year, the language and form of a poem can reveal its writer’s deepest thoughts and feelings—an empathic approach that found full expression in her last essays, collected …

1
The Radical Imagination of Octavia E. Butler 58:38

29d ago58:38

58:38

Monday, November 24—Like a signal from a distant star, Octavia E. Butler’s luminous fiction jumps galactic distances to relay searing, often surprising revelations about the universe we inhabit and the planet we call home. In Lilith’s Brood: The Xenogenesis Trilogy, just published by Library of America, three classics of Afrofuturist speculative fi…

1
Mindfix Radio Episode #1 - WELCOME! 14:26

1M ago14:26

14:26

WELCOME TO MINDFIX RADIO — Episode #1 In this short opening episode (14 minutes), Bruce Snyder introduces Mindfix Radio — a new audio-only extension of MindfixTV designed for people who want to listen while they work, drive, or unwind. You’ll hear the heart and vision behind MindfixTV and why this platform exists: • Truth over narrative • Perspecti…

1
Reading Democracy in America Now 1:00:54

3M ago1:00:54

1:00:54

Wednesday, September 10—Two centuries on, Alexis de Tocqueville’s brilliant Democracy in America remains the most prescient account of the virtues, and potential dangers, of our politics and culture. How do Tocqueville’s insights illuminate current events and political trends, both at home and abroad? Join four distinguished scholars for a lively d…

1
Remembering Victory: World War II Memoirs of the European Theater 59:37

8M ago59:37

59:37

Thursday, May 8—Eighty years ago the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany closed the curtain on six years of total war in Europe, a conflict that tested the courage and forever changed the lives of five young Americans who survived to write astonishing personal narratives of their experiences, from the frontlines of the Battle of the Bulge to th…

1
The Greatness of Sylvia Plath 59:11

8M ago59:11

59:11

Thursday, April 17—Sylvia Plath’s bold and incandescent poems have struck a deep chord with generations of readers. A visionary writer who scaled astonishing literary heights in her short life, Plath may best be understood, says acclaimed classicist and Plath devotee Sarah Ruden, as a modern mythmaker: an artist who, at the peak of her powers, tran…

1
What Is Totalitarianism? Understanding Hannah Arendt Now 1:01:54

10M ago1:01:54

1:01:54

Tuesday, March 11—“The rise of totalitarian governments,” Hannah Arendt wrote, “is the central event of our world.” In her masterpiece, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt linked the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism, seeing them as twin manifestations of a terrifying new political system that sought absolute control over all aspects of life. How …

1
“A Place None of Us Know”: Writing, Loss, and Joan Didion’s Late Memoirs 1:04:21

1y ago1:04:21

1:04:21

Thursday, November 14—Grief, Joan Didion wrote, “turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” In two luminous memoirs, The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights, collected in the capstone volume of Library of America’s Didion edition, she relates the twin tragedies of her husband and daughter’s deaths with stunning precision, poig…

1
Faith, Fiction, and Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer 1:01:20

1+ y ago1:01:20

1:01:20

Tuesday, May 21—Published in 1961, Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer announced a major new voice in American fiction. In this lush, New Orleans–based novel, the forty-four-year-old doctor-turned-writer set out to explore what he called “the strange spiritual malady of the modern age.” What he gave us, says writer Paul Elie, editor of a new LOA edition o…

1
Robert Frost: Our Poet for All Seasons 1:02:55

1+ y ago1:02:55

1:02:55

Monday, April 15—Why does the poet Robert Frost continue to beguile and intrigue readers 150 years after his birth? What is it about the four-time Pulitzer winner’s poems—deceptively simple evocations of landscape, work, village life, and love suffused with remarkable power, subtlety, and complexity—that makes them so quintessentially American? Joi…

1
Deadline Artist: The Genius of Jimmy Breslin 58:49

2y ago58:49

58:49

Wednesday, March 6—Brash, opinionated, funny, and an indefatigable champion of the vulnerable over the rich and well-connected, Jimmy Breslin brought heart and knockout prose to every column and book he wrote. From peerless coverage of the assassinations of JFK and Malcolm X to the plight of immigrants, the Mafia, and the AIDS crisis, Breslin’s ins…

1
Black Writers of the Founding Era 1:01:12

2y ago1:01:12

1:01:12

Tuesday, February 6—The story told and retold about America’s founding often excludes the Black communities that existed during the Revolution and the early republic. Black Writers of the Founding Era, a new volume from Library of America, changes that. Inspired by the struggle for independence, Black Americans made bold, insightful contributions t…

1
Why Don DeLillo Deserves the Nobel 1:02:18

2y ago1:02:18

1:02:18

Wednesday, January 17, 2024—Don DeLillo is “our most necessary writer,” says his longtime editor Gerald Howard, one whose “intuitions and sentences have led him deeper into previously uncharted regions of our psyche than any other contemporary novelist.” Isn’t it time the Swedish Academy took notice? To kick off a new year of LOA LIVE, Howard joins…

1
I’m Dreaming of a Noir Christmas: Classic Crime Thrillers of the 1960s 1:00:00

2y ago1:00:00

1:00:00

Tuesday, December 5, 2023—To cap LOA LIVE’s fall season, a killer lineup of panelists explores classic crime fiction of the 1960s, from Donald Westlake-writing-as-Richard Stark’s taut smash-and-grab heist novel The Score to Patricia Highsmith’s eerie meta-thriller The Tremor of Forgery. Join Geoffrey O’Brien, editor of Crime Novels of the 1960s, al…

1
Black Writers in Paris, the FBI, and a Lost 1960s Classic: Rediscovering The Man Who Cried I Am 1:01:52

2y ago1:01:52

1:01:52

Wednesday, November 8—The expatriate literary scene in Paris that flourished around Richard Wright and James Baldwin produced brilliant writing, intellectual ferment, and bitter rivalries—all of it, and much else from that turbulent time, thrillingly explored in John A. Williams’s explosive 1967 novel, The Man Who Cried I Am, a lost classic newly p…

1
The Startling Theater of Adrienne Kennedy 1:00:08

2y ago1:00:08

1:00:08

Wednesday, October 25—For more than sixty years, in such works as Funnyhouse of a Negro and Ohio State Murders, Adrienne Kennedy has bewitched audiences with plays that transform stages into dreamscapes, actors into ghosts, and personal history into myth. One of only five living writers in the Library of America series, Kennedy “never [takes] a str…

1
The Mysterious Greatness of Gatsby 1:06:26

2y ago1:06:26

1:06:26

Thursday, September 21—In the hundred years since The Great Gatsby was published, American society and culture have been utterly transformed. Why then do readers and writers continue to turn to this luminous novel of money, class, 1920s glamour, and reckless love to find the elusive key to the meaning of America? What is the secret of its astonishi…

1
A Celebration of Ray Bradbury 58:58

2+ y ago58:58

58:58

Wednesday, July 19—In The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451, and other visionary works melding science fiction, horror, fantasy, and high literature, Ray Bradbury electrified readers and inspired generations of genre-bending younger writers. Acclaimed authors Connie Willis and Kelly Link join LOA Bradbury editor Jonathan R. El…

1
Rediscovering the Pathbreaking Fiction of Nancy Hale 52:32

2+ y ago52:32

52:32

Wednesday, June 21—Best-selling author Kate Bolick joins LOA LIVE to discuss one of the most gifted American writers of the mid–twentieth century. Nancy Hale, winner of ten O. Henry Awards and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, explored women and children’s inner lives in luminous and deeply felt work far ahead of its time. Two new LOA paper…

1
‘The Best American Writer You’ve Never Heard Of’: A Tribute to Charles Portis 52:50

2+ y ago52:50

52:50

Wednesday, May 17—Charles Portis’s novels and stories, with their deadpan style, unforgettable characters, and rollicking plots of pursuit, obsession, absurdity, and intrigue, have a passionate following among readers and fellow writers. “His fiction,” Roy Blount, Jr., has said, “is the funniest I know.” To celebrate publication of LOA’s long-await…

1
Small Miracles: The Stories of Bernard Malamud 57:59

2+ y ago57:59

57:59

Thursday, April 20—An unparalleled master of the short story, Bernard Malamud ranks among America’s greatest mythmakers and illuminators of the human heart, blending humor and truth in works that, to quote Saul Bellow, “discovered a sort of communicative genius in the impoverished, harsh jargon of immigrant New York.” To mark publication of the thi…

1
Back to the Future Is Female! 59:04

2+ y ago59:04

59:04

Wednesday, March 15, 2023—From Pulp Era pioneers to the radical innovators of the 1960s and ’70s, visionary women writers have been a transformative force in American science fiction. For Women’s History Month, acclaimed SF authors Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Pamela Sargent, and Sheree Renée Thomas join Lisa Yaszek, editor of LOA’s The Future Is Female!,…

1
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom with David W. Blight 1:06:12

2+ y ago1:06:12

1:06:12

Wednesday, February 15, 2023—Frederick Douglass’s first recorded speech, “I Have Come to Tell You Something About Slavery,” inaugurated a five-decade career as the fiery, eloquent champion of abolition and emancipation, equal rights and human dignity. Join David W. Blight, Douglass’s Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer and editor of a revelatory new …

1
Ordinary Heroes: Bruce Catton’s Civil War Masterpiece 1:04:36

2+ y ago1:04:36

1:04:36

Wednesday, January 18, 2023—One of the most popular works ever written about the Civil War, Bruce Catton’s Army of the Potomac Trilogy is a masterpiece of historical storytelling and a groundbreaking work of scholarship. Join distinguished historians Gary W. Gallagher, editor of LOA’s new one-volume edition, and Harold Holzer for a conversation abo…

1
The Unknown Kerouac 1:00:04

2+ y ago1:00:04

1:00:04

November 14, 2022—Is the all-American Jack Kerouac best understood as an immigrant writer? Join LOA Kerouac editor Todd Tietchen (University of Massachusetts, Lowell) and Kerouac scholar and translator Jean-Christophe Cloutier (University of Pennsylvania) for a centenary conversation about Kerouac’s French-Canadian roots and their connections with …

1
Lying and Politics: The Relevance of Hannah Arendt 1:00:01

2+ y ago1:00:01

1:00:01

October 20, 2022—Fifty years ago, the 20th-century’s foremost political philosopher wrote two seminal essays on questions that have new urgency today: Why do politicians lie? What is the relationship between political lies and self-delusion? And how much organized deceit can a democracy endure before it ceases to function? Seyla Benhabib, Eugene Me…

1
A Celebration of Oscar Hijuelos 49:03

2+ y ago49:03

49:03

September 14, 2022—Oscar Hijuelos’s rich and radiant novels bring the Cuban American immigrant experience into the heart of American literature. To celebrate Library of America’s publication of The Mambo Kings & Other Novels, LOA Live convened a starry array of writers and musicians, many of them the Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s personal friends…

1
A Tribute to Gary Snyder 1:20:48

2+ y ago1:20:48

1:20:48

July 20, 2022—A starry tribute to Pulitzer Prize-winning poet laureate of deep ecology Gary Snyder commemorates the publication of his Collected Poems in the Library of America series. Governor Jerry Brown, actor Peter Coyote, novelist Kim Stanley Robinson, poets Wang Ping and Robert Hass, and other guests join Library of America for nearly ninety …

1
Fiddler on the Roof on Stage and Screen 1:01:49

2+ y ago1:01:49

1:01:49

June 29, 2022 — Since 1964 Fiddler on the Roof, one of the most popular Broadway musicals of all time, has also captivated audiences in new forms: in Norman Jewison’s brilliant film adaptation, “the most powerful movie musical ever made” (Pauline Kael); and, most recently, in an acclaimed Yiddish translation paradoxically hailed as “authentic” and …

1
The Heart of American Poetry, with Edward Hirsch 1:00:21

2+ y ago1:00:21

1:00:21

June 1, 2022—In The Heart of American Poetry, his revelatory new book from Library of America, Edward Hirsch offers deeply personal readings of forty essential American poems we thought we knew. Hirsch joins LOA Live to discuss how these poems have sustained his own life and how they might uplift our diverse but divided nation. We thank our promoti…

1
Maxine Hong Kingston and Viet Thanh Nguyen 1:00:36

2+ y ago1:00:36

1:00:36

May 18, 2022—Beginning with her stunning 1976 memoir The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston has forged a profound, richly imagined, and genre-defying narrative of the American experience from her vantage point as the daughter of Chinese immigrants. To mark publication of the new Library of America edition, Kingston joins Pulitzer Prize-winning wri…

1
Our Town for Our Time 56:52

2+ y ago56:52

56:52

May 3, 2022—Thornton Wilder’s 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about the town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, is one of the most-produced classics in the American repertory. How is it that this quintessentially American masterpiece continues to resonate so profoundly in places where both “our” and “town” mean radically different things? We join…

1
World War II Memoirs: The Pacific Theater 56:50

2+ y ago56:50

56:50

March 16, 2022 — A new Library of America volume presents three powerful firsthand accounts of WWII by veterans of the Pacific War who lived to tell their stories: E. B. Sledge, Samuel Hynes, and Alvin Kernan. Volume editor Elizabeth D. Samet, professor of English at West Point, joins historian Richard B. Frank to discuss what makes these memoirs c…

1
Filming Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred, with Branden Jacobs-Jenkins 59:42

2+ y ago59:42

59:42

February 24, 2022—Octavia E. Butler’s 1979 novel Kindred, a time-travel thriller that transports its heroine from Southern California in the 1970s to a plantation in antebellum Maryland, is widely acknowledged as a visionary masterwork. Obie-winning playwright and screenwriter Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (An Octoroon, HBO’s Watchmen) discusses the proce…

1
Kurt Vonnegut at 100, with Robert Weide 1:04:31

2+ y ago1:04:31

1:04:31

January 25, 2022—Producer and director Robert Weide (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth) became obsessed with Kurt Vonnegut’s books in high school and began a correspondence with the author that stretched into a twenty-five-year friendship. Weide joins LOA Live to discuss his new documentary Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time, w…

1
American Christmas Stories 1:05:20

2+ y ago1:05:20

1:05:20

December 15, 2021—Acclaimed bestselling SF and fantasy writer Connie Willis, editor of the just-released Library of America anthology American Christmas Stories, joins LOA Live for a merrily unconventional yuletide conversation about the uniquely American literature inspired by this most magical time of the year. With Jamaican-born speculative nove…

1
Rediscovering Rachel Carson: The Oceans, the Climate Crisis, and the “Poet of the Sea” 1:05:55

2+ y ago1:05:55

1:05:55

November 22, 2021—Before her landmark book Silent Spring catalyzed the modern environmental movement, Rachel Carson was internationally celebrated as a “poet of the sea” for a trilogy of prescient books about the world’s oceans—their beauty, fragility, and immense consequence for life on earth. Writer, biologist, and activist Sandra Steingraber, ed…

1
Burning Boy: Paul Auster on the Extraordinary Life and Work of Stephen Crane 1:13:42

2+ y ago1:13:42

1:13:42

October 28, 2021—In a remarkable ten-year career cut short by death from tuberculosis at twenty-eight, Stephen Crane ushered American literature into the twentieth century. Novelist, poet, and screenwriter Paul Auster, author of the riveting new Crane biography Burning Boy, joins Library of America for a conversation about the singular life story a…

1
Virginia Hamilton and the Transformation of American Children’s Literature 58:16

2+ y ago58:16

58:16

October 6, 2021 — Winner of the National Book Award, the Newbery Medal, and a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, Virginia Hamilton (1934–2002) wove Black folktales and narratives of African American life and history into a body of work that forever changed American children’s writing and made her its most honored writer. Librarian of Congress Car…

1
The Light in the Piazza: From Page to Stage 59:32

2+ y ago59:32

59:32

July 14, 2021—Elizabeth Spencer’s The Light in the Piazza is an exceptionally beautiful and memorable work in the literature of Americans abroad — in this case in Florence, aglow in summer light, shadowed by a family secret. Her 1960 novella inspired in turn a great twenty-first century American musical, the Tony Award-winning adaptation by acclaim…

1
On Extended Wings: American Birds and American Writing 59:28

2+ y ago59:28

59:28

June 17, 2021—Like their counterparts in English Romantic poetry and elsewhere, American poets and writers have been fascinated by birds, compelled by their beauty, their strangeness, their mysterious, fleeting presence. From the colonial period to the present they have sought to evoke the ways birds enchant us, connect us with nature’s wonder, fra…

1
Joan Didion: The Art of Storytelling 59:05

2+ y ago59:05

59:05

May 19, 2021 — An iconic voice in contemporary American writing, Joan Didion through her novels and literary nonfiction reimagined the way stories are told. In the process, this “articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time,” in Joyce Carol Oates’ words, has become an inescapable influence on writers who have followed …

1
E. O. Wilson: An Earth Day Tribute 58:40

2+ y ago58:40

58:40

April 22, 2021—Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward O. Wilson has transformed our sense of the natural world and humanity’s place in it. In a time of climate crisis and shrinking biodiversity, his lyrical, thought-provoking, and increasingly prophetic work inspires wonder and reverence for our fragile natural world. Renowned nature and science wri…

1
Richard Wright’s The Man Who Lived Underground 1:06:40

2+ y ago1:06:40

1:06:40

April 15, 2021—Richard Wright’s daughter Julia Wright and grandson Malcolm Wright join bestselling author Kiese Laymon for a special program to mark Library of America’s release of a previously unpublished novel about race and police violence by a great American writer at the height of his powers. Richard Wright wrote The Man Who Lived Underground …

1
The Great American Western on Page and Screen 1:04:05

2+ y ago1:04:05

1:04:05

March 30, 2021—The Western, with its tales of adventure, honor, and violence set against the magnificent landscapes of the frontier, has had an enduring hold on the American imagination. In this freewheeling conversation inspired by LOA series volumes The Western: Four Classic Novels of the 1940s & 50s and Elmore Leonard: Westerns, four film critic…

1
Women’s Liberation! Feminist Writings That Inspired a Revolution and Still Can 57:02

2+ y ago57:02

57:02

March 18, 2021—Feminist writer-activists of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s sparked a diverse, visionary, and revolutionary movement for freedom and social justice that fifty years later is as relevant and urgent as it’s ever been. Alix Kates Shulman and Honor Moore, editors of Library of America’s revelatory new Women’s Liberation! anthology, lead an in…

1
Reading James Baldwin Now: Gabrielle Bellot on If Beale Street Could Talk 58:49

2+ y ago58:49

58:49

March 3, 2021 — Published to a mixed reception in 1974, James Baldwin’s novel If Beale Street Could Talk has undergone a marked critical reappraisal in recent years, aided in part by its inclusion in the 2015 Library of America volume James Baldwin: Later Novels and by the Barry Jenkins film adaptation in 2018. In the latest installment of the LOA …

1
Poet of the People: The Greatness of Langston Hughes 58:21

2+ y ago58:21

58:21

February 18, 2021 — One hundred years ago Langston Hughes published his now-famous first poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” In the decades that followed, as both a longtime resident of Harlem and a cosmopolitan world traveler, Hughes wrote of Black life in masterful, deceptively simple poems and prose that made him one of the most popular and infl…

1
American Democracy: The Task Before Us 1:01:00

2+ y ago1:01:00

1:01:00

January 27, 2021 — The past year has been a historic stress test for American democracy. Where do we stand now? What can our tradition of political writings tell us about what lies ahead? New Yorker writer and Columbia University Professor of Journalism Nicholas Lemann, editor of Library of America’s new anthology American Democracy: 21 Historic An…

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