The Point Podcast
The Point is a magazine founded on the suspicion that modern life is worth examining. www.thepointmag.com
Episodes
31 episodes
Selected Essays | George Scialabba on Michael Walzer
On this episode of Selected Essays, Jess and Zach talk to George Scialabba about Michael Walzer’s "In Defense of Equality," first published in Dissent in 1973.Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point <...
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Season 2
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Episode 11
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36:53
Selected Essays | Emily Ogden on Elizabeth Hardwick
On this episode of Selected Essays, Jess and Zach talk to writer and literary critic Emily Ogden about Elizabeth Hardwick’s "Living in Italy: Reflections on Bernard Berenson," first published in Partisan Review in 1960.
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Season 2
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Episode 10
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45:44
Selected Essays | Julian Lucas on Jorge Luis Borges
On this episode of Selected Essays, Jess and Zach talk to Julian Lucas about his essay “Welcome to Armageddon,” published in Cabinet in 2017, and Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Enigma of Edward FitzGerald,” which was written in 1951...
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Season 2
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Episode 9
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51:26
Selected Essays | Greg Jackson on Hannah Arendt
On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Greg Jackson about his essay “Within the Pretense of No Pretense,” published in issue 31 o...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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45:22
Selected Essays | Michael Clune on Thomas Nagel
On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Michael Clune abouthis essay “The Anatomy of Panic,” published in Harper's last May and rec...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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47:28
Selected Essays | Jennifer Wilson on Viktor Shklovsky
On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Jennifer Wilson abouther New York Times Book Review essay, “
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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36:22
Selected Essays | Bonus Episode with Jon Baskin and Rachel Wiseman
On this bonus episode of Selected Essays, Jess and Zach talk to Point editors, Jon Baskin and Rachel Wiseman about two of their favorite essays—Charles Comey's “Agains...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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52:48
Selected Essays | Apoorva Tadepalli on Maeve Brennan
On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Apoorva Tadepalli about Maeve Brennan’s “Lost Overtures” and her Electric Lit essay “...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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35:42
Selected Essays | Sumana Roy on Joseph Brodsky
On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Sumana Roy about Joseph Brodsky’s “Less Than One” and her Caravan essay “We Are All Mamata Now.”
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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42:50
Selected Essays | Clare Bucknell on Charles Lamb
On the new episode of Selected Essays, Jess and Zach speak with Clare Bucknell about Charles Lamb’s “The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers”—surprisingly the first essay a guest has chosen that was written before 1900. In histories of the essay form, f...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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40:58
Selected Essays | Suzy Hansen on Octavio Paz
On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Suzy Hansen about her essay, “A Cold War Mind: American and the World,” a chapter from Suzy's book Notes on a Foreign Country, and Octavio Paz’s “The Pachucho and Other Extr...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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42:14
Selected Essays | Top 5 of Season 1
Jess and Zach go over their favorite moments from the first season of “Selected Essays”—listen in for the highlights and then catch up in time for Season 2.
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Season 1
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Episode 15
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22:41
Selected Essays | Garth Greenwell on Martha Nussbaum
On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Garth Greenwell about his essay “A Moral Education: In Praise of Filth,” which was published in The Yale ...
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Season 1
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Episode 14
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52:46
Selected Essays | Lauren Oyler on Elif Batuman
On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Lauren Oyler about her essay “Desperately Seeking Sebald,” whic...
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Season 1
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Episode 13
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51:12
Selected Essays | Ryan Ruby on Susan Sontag
On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Ryan Ruby joins us to discuss Susan Sontag’s “Approaching Artaud” and his own essay “Dig It Up Again,” which was written for the 100th anniversary of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and published last ...
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Season 1
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Episode 12
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37:40
Selected Essays | Siri Hustvedt on Simone Weil
On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Siri Hustvedt joins us to discuss Simone Weil’s “Human Personality” and her own essay “Scapegoat,” which appears in her recent collection Mothers, Fathers, and Others (2021).
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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1:00:41
Selected Essays | Carina del Valle Schorske on Samuel Delany
On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Carina del Valle Schorske joins us to discuss Samuel Delany's 1996 essay “Times Square Blue” and her 2019 essay “The Ladder Up: A Restless ...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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52:27
Selected Essays | Leo Robson & Rosa Lyster on Martin Amis
On this episode of The Point podcast series “Selected Essays,” Leo Robson and Rosa Lyster join us to discuss two essays by Martin Amis: “In Praise of Pritchett,” which appeared in the London Review of Books in 1980, and “The A...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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57:57
Selected Essays | Leslie Jamison on Charles D’Ambrosio
On this episode of The Point podcast series “Selected Essays,” Leslie Jamison joins us to discuss Charles D’Ambrosio’s 2002 essay “Documents” and her essay “The Empathy Exams,” which appeared in The Believer in 2014 and was th...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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1:02:50
Selected Essays | Adam Shatz on James Baldwin
On this episode of The Point podcast series “Selected Essays,” Jess Swoboda and Zach Fine talk to the writer Adam Shatz about James Baldwin's essay “Alas, Poor Richard” (1961), a eulogy of sorts for Richard Wright, and Adam's new book,...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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53:39
Selected Essays | Merve Emre & Tobi Haslett on Susan Sontag (Bonus Episode!)
On this bonus episode of “Selected Essays,” Merve Emre and Tobi Haslett discuss the great American essayists Elizabeth Hardwick and Susan Sontag. Merve and Tobi revisit their own essays about Hardwick and Sontag—published in
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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41:31
Selected Essays | Anne Fadiman on Virginia Woolf
On this episode of The Point podcast series “Selected Essays,” Jess Swoboda and Zach Fine talk to the writer Anne Fadiman about Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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54:42
Why everything is hyperpolitical now (with Anton Jäger)
On this episode of The Point Podcast, Jonny Thakkar talks to our resident anatomist of the global political zeitgeist: Anton Jäger, a historian of political thought at the Catholic University of Leuven. Anton joins us to discuss his essay for i...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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1:08:19
Selected Essays | Christian Lorentzen on George Trow
On this episode of The Point podcast, we’re introducing a new series called “Selected Essays”—about essays you should read but probably haven’t. Jess Swoboda and Zach Fine talk to the critic Christian Lorentzen about George Trow’s “
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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59:17