New episode out, Candide!

Wonderful time talking with Zach Davis about the enduring relevance of this great book. A short listen. Enjoy!

New episode!

New Ministry of Ideas episode on the changing nature of national borders and the moral tragedy of America's arbitrary implementation of international refugee laws. Featuring interviews with Deborah Anker, bordering on madness, and Chowra Makaremi. ministryofideas.org/episodes/borde…

Don Quixote is the funniest book you will ever read. 400 years old and it still busts a gut! But as Timothy Hampton discusses in our new Writ Large episode, it's also a brilliant exploration of the seductive and transformative power of fiction. writlarge.fm/episodes/quixo…

Sarah Cole's book INVENTING TOMORROW: H. G. Wells and the Twentieth Century, was short-listed for the 2021 Modernist Studies Association Book Prize. Cole discussed Wells and The Time Machine on the Writ Large podcast. writlarge.fm/episodes/the-t…

Writ Large released its 100th episode today! A centennial episode has to be special, and it was an easy choice at the end: Hamlet. (Harold Bloom would've haunted me otherwise) I'm joined by the great Michael Dobson of the Shakespeare Institute. writlarge.fm/episodes/hamlet

I'm happy to announce a new podcast series I've been working on the last couple of years: Making Meaning Like many people, the pandemic made asking the big questions of existence feel newly urgent. Especially the big question: what is life for? How can my life be meaningful?

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Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is famous as a play about nothing, but it has endured because it is in fact a play about life. For what is life but a sequential collection of waitings? New Writ Large episode featuring the wonderful Peter Connor. writlarge.fm/episodes/godot

Making Meaning Episode 3: The Weight of the World The ideology of capitalism breaks our hearts and blinds us to the source of our most abundant meaning—relationships and solidarity with other people. Feat. Kathryn Lofton, Dean of Humanities at Yale University. ministryofideas.org/episodes/kathr…

A crisis of meaning can be painful and wrenching, but as Mark Vernon beautifully describes, these encounters with the abyss can also be moments of rebirth and expansion, where we give up our smaller selves and become something more. ministryofideas.org/episodes/mark-…

@PhDhurtBrain Ok, I have really loved Better Read than Dead Podcast and then also Writ Large! I think they do a really good job of getting into questions of texts and their significance

On Oct 24th, Ministry of Ideas is launching Illuminations, a new podcast series about the untold friendship of religion and science. For those in the New England area, please join us for a launch party at Harvard Divinity 10/24 5:30pm. More info here 👇 ministryofideas.org/illuminations

A podcast from New Books Network 📚 and Writ Large on Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis's classic novel Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas, with historian Sidney Chalhoub and translator Flora Thomson-DeVeaux. newbooksnetwork.com/on-joaquim-mar…

Illuminations, a new Ministry of Ideas series, is now live! Episode 1 is about the first scientific bestseller, how the fall of Adam led to the scientific revolution, and how the original meanings of science and religion can guide us to a better future. ministryofideas.org/illuminations/…

Great overview on Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth from Zachary Davis' Writ Large New Books Network 📚 #podcast in conversation with Manan Ahmed Manan Ahmed Glosses of decolonization, violence, thingification, Césaire, Gandhi, & the Algerian revolution newbooksnetwork.com/on-frantz-fano…

Quantum mechanics is an unsettling set of discoveries about the nature of reality. But for the Dalai Lama, quantum mechanics is much closer to the Buddhist understanding of the world, where appearance and reality never quite converge. ministryofideas.org/illuminations/…

I've been absolutely LEVELED with illness for a week. Infinite tea, a fleet of cough drops, and even antibiotics have not been near as effective as lifting the spirit as this WAYFARE essay on pilgrimage by Zachary Davis. (1/4) wayfaremagazine.org/p/journeys-of-…