67 episodes
Manifesto! Manifesto! A Podcast
-
- Society & Culture
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.
-
Episode 67: Wallace Stegner's Crossing to Safety
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
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."
The manifesto:
https://ieas-szeged.hu/downtherabbithole/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Tolkien-On-Fairy-Stories.pdf
The Art:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market
Tara's new novel, Here In Avalon:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Here-in-Avalon/Tara-Isabella-Burton/9781982170097 -
Episode 65: Orwell and Ukraine
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"
The Manifesto:
George Orwell, "Looking Back on the Spanish War"
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/looking-back-on-the-spanish-war/
The Art:
Benjamin Busch, "Nine Dialogues: Conflict in Context"
https://www.wlajournal.com/copy-of-busch-gallery
Ben's hair:
https://lthumb.lisimg.com/939/13342939.jpg?width=280&sharpen=true -
Episode 64: Power of the Powerless and the Velvet Underground
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
The Manifesto:
https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/wp-content/uploads/1979/01/the-power-of-the-powerless.pdf
The Art:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJy0LP8iYPg&list=PLaVHibd49QFIsKywss9Jh0rati5skWEYD
Jared's essay, The Metaphysician-in-Chief, in Liberties
https://libertiesjournal.com/articles/the-metaphysician-in-chief/ -
Episode 63: How Money Culture Hurts the American Family and Girls
Jake and Phil discuss "How Money Culture Hurts the American Family," by Ian Marcus Corbin, and episode seven of the first season of Girls
The Manifesto:
Ian Marcus Corbin, "How Money Culture Hurts the American Family"
https://www.capita.org/money-culture
Girls, Welcome to Bushwick a.k.a. The Crackcident
https://www.hbo.com/girls/season-1/7-welcome-to-bushwick-a-k-a-the-crackcident -
Episode 62: Last Men and Women: George Scialabba and the Challenge of Modernity
Jake and Phil are joined live at Fairfield University by the great critic and essayist George Scialabba to discuss Last Men and Women
At a time of war, impending ecological disaster, and partisan rage, our commitments to the modern, liberal order are being questioned like never before. Do we understand ourselves best as individuals or as members of a community? Must we renew our absolute commitment to political freedoms, or accept greater state control to deal with the dangers and allures of new technologies? Should the future be post-liberal, neo-liberal, or some other, perhaps more frightening and electrifying possibility? For the past forty-four years the critic George Scialabba has been engaging in arguments with both the critics and proponents of modernity, staking out a commitment to liberty and mass democracy even in light of powerful challenges.
On December 4th at 4:30pm George Scialabba will join Phil Klay and Jacob Siegel for a live recording of Manifesto! A Podcast. The three will discuss the price we pay for modern liberalism, and George’s commitment to it nonetheless (the essay “Last Men and Women,” originally for Commonweal Magazine and included in his latest book, Only A Voice, published by Verso Books, outlines the basics of his argument)
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/last-men-and-women
George Scialabba is the quintessential critic’s critic, an outrageously learned and subtle thinker whose stylish, witty and elegantly argued reviews have served as guides to the modern age for generations of writers and intellectuals. Christopher Hitchens, Norman Rush, James Wood, and Vivian Gornick have all declared themselves devotees—while Richard Rorty declared his essays “models of moral inquiry.” An award-winning essayist and critic, his writing has appeared in the Nation, Dissent, bookforum, Riritan, n+1, and the Boston Review among many others. He is a Contributing Editor at the Baffler and the author of six essay collections and a memoir, How to Be Depressed.