Manifesto!

Episode Archive

Episode Archive

72 episodes of Manifesto! since the first episode, which aired on April 28th, 2018.

  • Episode 72: Revolutionary Art and Coat-Snatching Ghosts

    October 28th, 2024  |  1 hr 13 mins

    Jake and Phil discuss Leon Trotsky's "Communist Policy Toward Art" and Gogol's "The Overcoat"

  • Episode 71: Politics and Merciless Nature

    September 27th, 2024  |  49 mins 14 secs

    Phil and Jake discuss Joan Didion's "Politics in the New Normal America" and Robinson Jeffers "Fire on the Hills"

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    Episode 70: Punk and Metal

    August 30th, 2024  |  1 hr 31 mins

    Jake and Phil are joined by Nate DiMeo, podcaster and author of the forthcoming The Memory Palace, to discuss the Riot Grrrl Manifesto, Steve Albini's The Problem with Music, and The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years

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    Episode 69: Should We Bring Children Into Existence?

    July 25th, 2024  |  2 hrs 4 mins

    Phil and Jake are joined by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman, the authors of What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice, to discuss David Benatar's 1997 paper "Why It Is Better Never to Come into Existence," alongside Paul Schrader's 2017 film First Reformed.

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    Episode 68: The Serious Artist

    June 28th, 2024  |  1 hr 48 mins

    Jake and Phil are joined by the poet and critic Alice Gribbin to discuss Ezra Pound's The Serious Artist and Eliot Weinberger's The Life of Tu Fu

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    Episode 67: Wallace Stegner's Crossing to Safety

    May 30th, 2024  |  59 mins 17 secs

    Jake and Phil are joined by Sam Kimbriel, director of the Aspen Institute's Philosophy and Society Initiative, to discuss Wallace Stegner's 1987 novel Crossing to Safety.

  • Episode 66: Hobbits, Goblins and the Very Adult World of Fairy-Stories

    April 29th, 2024  |  1 hr 23 mins

    Jake and Phil are joined by the novelist and chronicler of post-secular religious movements, Tara Isabella Burton, to discuss J.R.R. Tolkien's 1939 essay “On Fairy-Stories” and Christina Rossetti's 1862 poem, "Goblin Market."

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    Episode 65: Orwell and Ukraine

    March 30th, 2024  |  1 hr 11 mins

    Phil and Jake are joined by the Matt Gallagher, author of Daybreak, to discuss George Orwell's "Looking Back on the Spanish War, and Benjamin Busch's photographs from Ukraine, "Nine Dialogues: Conflict in Context"

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    Episode 64: Power of the Powerless and the Velvet Underground

    February 27th, 2024  |  1 hr 22 mins

    Jake and Phil are joined by the novelist and essayist Jared Marcel Pollen to discuss Vaclav Havel’s “The Power of the Powerless” and The Velvet Underground’s second album, White Light/White Heat

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    Episode 63: How Money Culture Hurts the American Family and Girls

    January 26th, 2024  |  1 hr 12 mins

    Jake and Phil discuss "How Money Culture Hurts the American Family," by Ian Marcus Corbin, and episode seven of the first season of Girls

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    Episode 62: Last Men and Women: George Scialabba and the Challenge of Modernity

    December 7th, 2023  |  1 hr 20 mins

    Jake and Phil are joined live at Fairfield University by the great critic and essayist George Scialabba to discuss Last Men and Women

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    Episode 61: Red Music and Mal Waldron

    November 27th, 2023  |  1 hr 8 mins

    Jake and Phil discuss Josef Skvorecky's "Red Music," an account of playing jazz under Nazism and Communism, alongside Mal Waldron's "Mal Waldron Plays Erik Satie"

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    Episode 60: The Palestinian People and the Western Observer

    October 30th, 2023  |  1 hr 1 min

    Phil talks with poet and translator Philip Metres about the current conflict, his poem "Remorse for Temperate Speech," as well as his book "Returning to Jaffa."

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    Episode 59: Israel and Hamas

    October 28th, 2023  |  1 hr 53 mins

    Phil asks Jake about the recent conflict in Israel, and they take listener questions.

  • Episode 58: The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu

    September 27th, 2023  |  31 mins 24 secs

    Phil is joined by Sam Kimbriel, director of the Aspen Institute's Philosophy and Society Initiative, and Jennifer Shyue, a Spanish language literary translator, to discuss her recently published translation of Augusto Higa Oshiro's The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu.

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    Episode 57: Some Lying and Some BS

    September 10th, 2023  |  1 hr 34 mins

    Jake and Phil are joined by Walter Kirn to discuss Kirn's essay "The Bullshit" alongside Mark Twain's "My First Lie and How I Got Out of It"