The Harper’s Podcast By cover art

The Harper’s Podcast

By: Harper’s Magazine
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  • Summary

  • Since 1850, Harper’s Magazine has provided its readers with a unique perspective on the issues that drive our national conversation, featuring writing from some of the most promising to most distinguished names in literature—from Barbara Ehrenreich to Rachel Kushner. Every week, host Violet Lucca joins her colleagues and contributing writers to provide listeners with a deep dive into these topics and the craft of long-form narrative journalism.
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Episodes
  • Pulp Fiction

    Pulp Fiction
    Oct 30 2023
    Inspired by the pulp collectors Gary Lovisi and Lucille Cali, Harper’s Magazine senior editor Joe Kloc embarked on a freewheeling search for a magazine lost to time: the inaugural issue of Golden Fleece Historical Adventure. In this week’s episode, Kloc joins Violet Lucca to discuss his adventures exploring the world of pulp magazines, the act of collecting, and Lost at Sea, a book based on a previous feature Kloc wrote for Harper’s, slated for release in 2025. Subscribe to Harper’s for only $16.97: harpers.org/save “The Golden Fleece”: https://harpers.org/archive/2023/10/the-golden-fleece-kloc/ “Empathy, My Dear Sherlock”: https://harpers.org/archive/2020/09/empathy-my-dear-watson-netflix/ “Lost at Sea”: https://harpers.org/archive/2019/05/lost-at-sea-richardson-bay/ 3:55 “What appealed to me about Gary and pulp collecting in general is, this is really for the love of the game.” 4:06 “I was interested in the idea that people would be so passionate about those objects when it didn’t have that same monetary incentive.” 16:20 “Pulps technically mean only the magazines, not the paperbacks.” 19:00 “These pulp writers became those comic book writers. Those comic books become comic book movies, and these comic book movies are constantly competing for your attention.” 25:52 “It gives you a feeling of being a child and remembering a time when all was before you and anything could happen.” 27:28 “These objects carry a deeper meaning, even if they’ve been destroyed or lost.” 37:18 “It’s hard to describe the power of Sherlock Holmes in the pulp collecting world.” 41:02 “I’m not going to let go of my imagination. It always has been fun to think like this and it always will be fun to think like this.” 44:40 “It’s a form of vernacular creativity.”
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    1 hr and 3 mins
  • Party Fouls

    Party Fouls
    Oct 2 2023
    With Trump as the forerunning Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential election, the Democratic Party appears to be falling back on the same familiar logic: better than the alternative. But certain progressive candidates are still looking to disrupt the status quo, however unlikely support from the establishment left may be. In this week’s episode, Harper’s Magazine’s Washington editor, Andrew Cockburn, joins senior editor Elena Saavedra Buckley to survey the landscape of the 2024 election with a focus on three insurgent candidates: Marianne Williamson, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Cornel West. Subscribe to Harper’s for only $16.97: harpers.org/save Andrew Cockburn’s article “Against the Current”: https://harpers.org/archive/2023/10/against-the-current 3:03: “Popping up on the picket line is actually a very hard turn for him as a president.” 4:08: “It’s Trump all over, fake populism as usual.” 5:40: “It’s only when the DNC decided to throw its full weight behind him … then Biden was popular for a while.” 7:42: “He’s really not that old.” 12:10: “I can’t think of any example where a president nominates a strong alternative. Instinctively no leader wants to be encouraging a potential rival.” 14:39: “You don’t get anywhere by promising to make people’s lives better. The only thing you can do is convince people the alternative is worse, which is an infinitely depressing point of view.” 17:30: “Obviously the candidate who has gotten the most attention has been Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and he has evoked a hysterical response.” 19:14: “Marianne Williamson, who has gotten much less attention, has detailed proposals on everything.” 19:53: “Cornel West has the most straightforwardly progressive agenda.” 26:58: “She said the Republicans were like the dog who caught the car, and it was a car full of angry women.” 28:44: “When people are asked why they don’t support Biden, they always cite the economy. The economy seems to be doing well, and yet, people are hurting.” 31:38: “It’s getting late now for any kind of insurgency.” 39:40: “The other fear is that people who would never vote for Trump can’t be bothered to vote for Biden or stay home.”
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    41 mins
  • From the Audio Archive: Rachel Kushner

    From the Audio Archive: Rachel Kushner
    Sep 18 2023
    Today we’re rerunning an episode from 2018 featuring two interviews with Harper’s Magazine’s former New Books columnist, Lidija Haas, and with our current Easy Chair columnist Rachel Kushner. Listen in advance of our event tonight at the Center for Fiction, “What Happened to Gen X?,” which will see Harper’s editor Christopher Beha in conversation with his generational peers Rachel Kushner and Ethan Hawke as they explore the question at the center of our September issue. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee—and Brett Kavanaugh’s irate response—was an excruciating bit of political theater, complete with righteous speeches from both sides of the aisle. (It also proved to be not much more than spectacle, as Kavanaugh was sworn in as an associate justice earlier this week.) Nevertheless, the event illustrated how we are socialized to perform and understand gender, race, and class. In this episode, New Books columnist Lidija Haas joined Harper’s web editor Violet Lucca to discuss a handful of recent publications that deal with these issues: Lacy M. Johnson’s The Reckonings, Rebecca Traister’s Good and Mad, and Kristen M. Ghoddsee’s Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism. In the second segment, Rachel Kushner, the author of The Mars Room and Telex From Cuba joined Lucca to discuss an essay she wrote that was included in the October 2018 issue’s Readings section, pulled from her memories of the late Nineties New York art world. Subscribe to Harper’s for only $16.97: harpers.org/save “Learning to Wait,” Rachel Kushner’s latest column for the October issue of Harper’s: https://harpers.org/archive/2023/10/learning-to-wait/ Rachel Kushner’s latest book, The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000–2020: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Hard-Crowd/Rachel-Kushner/9781982157708 Lidija Haas in the Harper’s archive: https://harpers.org/author/lidijahaas/ Lidija Haas’s review of Rebecca Traister’s Good and Mad for Bookforum: https://www.bookforum.com/print/2503/rebecca-traister-s-case-for-feminist-rage-20155 “Red Letter Days,” Rachel Kushner’s 2018 essay on the late Nineties New York art world: https://harpers.org/archive/2018/10/red-letter-days/ “What Happened to Gen X?”, our event tonight at the Center for Fiction: https://centerforfiction.org/event/the-center-for-fiction-and-harpers-magazine-present-what-happened-to-gen-x/
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    57 mins
Politics & Government
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