Manifesto!

A Podcast

About the show

Your regular visit to the archives of vanity, where men and women who stopped making myths turned to issuing commandments.

Your guides for this journey are the writers Phil Klay and Jacob Siegel, along with their trusty engineer, Jacqui Rigazio

May you continue to be a person.

Manifesto! Is now sponsored by Fairfield University, a Jesuit University in Fairfield Connecticut. Fairfield’s mission is to develop the creative intellectual potential of students and to foster in them ethical and religious values and a sense of social responsibility. Phil also teaches at Fairfield, in both their undergraduate English department and in their Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. We’re very pleased to be associated with Fairfield, and thank them for their sponsorship.

Episodes

  • Episode 40: Flannery O'Connor versus Andre Dubus II

    February 4th, 2022  |  1 hr 28 mins

    Jake and Phil (finally) discuss Flannery O'Connor's Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction, alongside Andre Dubus II's short story Killings

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    Episode 39: What Jazz Is and Isn't

    January 6th, 2022  |  1 hr 32 mins

    Jake and Phil are joined by jazz pianist and composer Ethan Iverson to discuss Wynton Marsalis' "What Jazz Is—and Isn't", as well as Marsalis' 1985 album J Mood.

  • Episode 38: My Quarrel with Authentic Reactionaries

    November 10th, 2021  |  1 hr 44 mins

    Jake and Phil are joined by Joseph Keegin to discuss Nicolás Gómez Dávila‘s “The Authentic Reactionary,” and Chaim Grade’s classic of Yiddish literature: “My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner”

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    Episode 37: Humane War

    October 7th, 2021  |  1 hr 5 mins

    Phil is joined by Samuel Moyn to discuss his new book, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, alongside Kathe Kollwitz's The Survivors

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    Episode 36: The Simple Art of Murder

    September 15th, 2021  |  1 hr 12 mins

    Jake and Phil discuss Raymond Chandler's The Simple Art of Murder, alongside Ross MacDonald's novel Black Money.

  • Episode 35: Did You Kill Anyone?

    July 17th, 2021  |  1 hr 22 mins

    Jake and Phil are joined by Scott Beauchamp to discuss his new book, Did You Kill Anyone? Reunderstanding My Military Experience as a Critique of Modern Culture, and Alistair Macleod's "The Closing Down of Summer"

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    Episode 34: Fratelli Tutti and Fairview

    May 19th, 2021  |  1 hr 17 mins

    A special live episode of Manifesto! A Podcast courtesy of Fairfield University's Inspired Writers Series. Jake and Phil are joined by Vinson Cunningham, a theater critic and staff writer at the New Yorker, to discuss Pope Francis' Fratelli Tutti and Jackie Sibblies Drury's Fairview.

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    Episode 33: The Dream of Meritocracy Produces Monsters

    April 13th, 2021  |  1 hr 29 mins

    Phil is joined by Eugene McCarraher, Professor of the Humanities and History at Villanova University, to discuss his article "A Providentialism Without God: The Case Against Meritocracy" as well as Goya's "The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters"

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    Episode 32: Repressive Tolerance and The Judgement

    March 16th, 2021  |  2 hrs 7 mins

    Jake and Phil are joined by Geoff Shullenberg of Outsider Theory to discuss Herbert Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance" and Franz Kafka's "The Judgement".

  • Episode 31: Everything is Broken

    February 12th, 2021  |  1 hr 53 mins

    Jake and Phil are joined by Alana Newhouse to discuss her essay “Everything Is Broken” and the Ani DiFranco live album “Living in Clip.”

  • Episode 30: King Lear or Endgame or Psalm

    January 4th, 2021  |  1 hr 14 mins

    Jake and Phil discuss Jan Kott's "King Lear or Endgame" and George Oppen's "Psalm."

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    Episode 29: What Were We Thinking

    December 3rd, 2020  |  2 hrs 2 mins

    Jake and Phil are joined by Carlos Lozada to discuss his new book, What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era, and the chapter "Decent People" from Garth Greenwell's Cleanness.

  • Episode 28: They Will Eat the CIA Men First

    September 29th, 2020  |  1 hr 40 mins

    This week Jake and Phil are joined by special guest Jesse Walker of Reason Magazine to discuss William S. Burroughs The Revised Boy Scout Manual and Charles Ridley's short anti-Nazi propaganda film,  Schichlegruber Doing the Lambeth Walk (assisted by the Gestapo 'Hep-Cats')    

    The Manifesto: William S. Burroughs, The Revised Boy Scout Manual
    https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814254899.html

    The Art: Charles Ridley, 1941, Schichlegruber Doing the Lambeth Walk (assisted by the Gestapo 'Hep-Cats')  
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYdmk3GP3iM

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    Episode 27: The Owl of Minerva Trots at Dusk

    August 13th, 2020  |  2 hrs 1 min

    Phil and Jake are joined by Ian Marcus Corbin to discuss Joseph Conrad's Preface and Saul Bellow's "Mosby's Memoirs"

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    Episode 26: On Pain and on Fallujah Revisited

    July 6th, 2020  |  1 hr 32 mins

    Jake and Phil are joined by Elliot Ackerman to discuss Ernst Junger’s 1934 essay On Pain, alongside Elliot’s A Battle in Fallujah, Revisited, an excerpt of his memoir, Places and Names.

  • Episode 25: The Plague

    June 6th, 2020  |  1 hr 40 mins

    Jake and Phil are joined by Paul Berman to discuss The Plague, by Albert Camus