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69 episodes
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Manifesto! Manifesto! A Podcast
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- Society & Culture
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4.9 • 115 Ratings
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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.
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Episode 69: Should We Bring Children Into Existence?
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.
The Manifesto:
David Benatar - "Why It Is Better Never to Come into Existence"
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20009904
The Art:
Paul Schrader - First Reformed
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6053438/
Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman - What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250276131/whatarechildrenfor
For more of Anastasia's work
https://www.anastasiaberg.com/
Rachel's work at The Point
https://thepointmag.com/author/rwiseman/ -
Episode 68: The Serious Artist
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
The Manifesto:
Ezra Pound, The Serious Artist
https://archive.org/details/literaryessaysof00poun/page/n5/mode/2up
The Art:
Eliot Weinberger, The Life of Tu Fu
https://www.ndbooks.com/book/the-life-of-tu-fu/
For more of Alice's writing:
https://www.alicegribbin.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=substack_profile -
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.
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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/
Customer Reviews
Essential
Thank you Jake and Phil for taking the time to record this latest episode.
Probably the best podcast
Not a lot of media out there as curious, challenging, and mind expanding as this, in any form.
Very good
A lot of intellectual and informative media these days is overly nihilistic, depressing, and politically extremist. This is none of those.