Open Source with Christopher Lydon
Christopher Lydon in conversation on arts, ideas and politics
Episodes
We’re talking about capitalism this time, trying to reckon the power of big money to shape—even rule—the human species. Capitalism is the one-word name given to a thousand-year-old force. It’s not a science or doctrine ...
The post A Thousand Years of Capitalism appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
We’re rediscovering John Updike in the afterlife of a great writer. The Selected Letters of John Updike, just published, come to 800 pages of unguarded messages to his wives and lovers, to his mother and ...
The post John Updike’s Vocation appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope is Brandon Terry’s long-awaited personal and philosophical case for struggle and optimism in the long civil rights movement in our country. It’s a map of our minds and our memories, a ...
The post Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
What is breaking down or what’s broken when the governor of Illinois says he’s being invaded by the National Guard of Texas under President Trump’s orders, or when the president is dueling with Oregon and ...
The post Stress-Testing the Rule of Law appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
Call this Mrs. Dalloway’s podcast. We’re reading classic fiction from a century ago for light on the strangeness of the world in our day, or maybe just for relief reading a great old book. The ...
The post Mrs. Dalloway at 100 appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
We’re with the cultural historian Robin D.G. Kelley at UCLA, who has the nerve to ask: where have our thinkers gone in Trump time? Not the experts or the influencers, but the grander minds who ...
The post Where Are the Intellectuals? appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
We’re in the fourth summer of hot warfare between Russia and Ukraine. It’s a cruel and deadly war that doesn’t know how to stop. Anatol Lieven. Our guest to offer a helping hand is the ...
The post Russia and Ukraine in 2025 appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
We’re grappling with the prize historian Greg Grandin’s take on the making of the modern world. There’s a 600-page version in hard covers, but also a two-word version in his title, America, América, code for ...
The post America, América appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
We’re retracing our steps out of the last bad-dream era in American life. Michael Ansara was in the thick of that struggle too, around war and justice. The Hard Work of Hope is his memoir ...
The post The Hard Work of Organizing appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
We’re in Saratoga, New York, with the soulful American believer Marilynne Robinson, prize novelist and teacher of novelists. She’s known over the decades as the storyteller we trust to observe the troubled heart of our ...
The post Occupied America appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
We’re in the Orwellian aftermath of what President Trump has called his 12-day war in the Middle East. It’s over, he proclaimed on Monday. “Congratulations world,” he said on his Truth Social site, “it’s time ...
The post Trump at War appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
This week, it’s a conversation on the democracy question and the embattled fate of our own, beset as it is from within. Philosopher-historian Danielle Allen is our guest examiner of the cranky American condition. It ...
The post Divided, Defensive Democracy appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
We’re with the writer Paul Elie, recalling the moment when popular culture came to sound like public prayer. There was Madonna in 1989, singing her number one hit “Like a Prayer.” The song is a ...
The post The Last Supper appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
We’re staring down the several crises in our economy—and recalling the grand old joke that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. John Cassidy. John Cassidy of The ...
The post Capitalism and Its Critics appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
We’re staring down the global trade war with Mark Blyth at Brown University. He is the People’s Economist from Scotland, who takes us home to his village pub in Dundee every once in a while ...
The post Trade, Trumped appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
We have a key, finally, to the mystery of Donald Trump and where he came from. He was born almost exactly 100 years ago in the imagination of the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. What he ...
The post Gatsby at 100: Fitzgerald’s Warning about Trumpism appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
We’re considering the Jesus story with the historian Elaine Pagels. Her new book is a marvel, crowning a lifetime of bestselling scholarship, sifting the sources and retuning the narrative in and around the Christian Gospels. ...
The post Miracles and Wonder appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
We’re tracking President Trump’s squeeze on higher education, and the argument in the Ivy League: whether or not to make a fight of it. First, Columbia surrendered under a Trump threat to cut $400 million ...
The post Trump vs. Harvard appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
We’re reading our way out of a ruined time with the model reader, Patricia Lockwood. She’s the poet laureate of the internet, for starters. She’s a big-league literary critic, master of social media and the ...
The post From Social to Spiritual Media appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
We’re looking for our American place in what can feel like a new world order, with Stephen Walt, our first and favorite so-called realist in the foreign policy game—realists being the people who steer by ...
The post A New World appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
Popular Podcasts
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.
"SmartLess" with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, & Will Arnett is a podcast that connects and unites people from all walks of life to learn about shared experiences through thoughtful dialogue and organic hilarity. A nice surprise: in each episode of SmartLess, one of the hosts reveals his mystery guest to the other two. What ensues is a genuinely improvised and authentic conversation filled with laughter and newfound knowledge to feed the SmartLess mind. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of SmartLess ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!