Best Christopher Lydon Podcasts (2025)

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Russia and Ukraine in 2025 48:37

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7d ago48:37

48:37

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 journalist and analyst that I’ve leaned on heavily, Anatol Lievin, an esteemed correspondent for the Financial Times in London, now at the Quincy Institute for Respo…

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America, América 42:09

24d ago42:09

42:09

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 his main point: that the story of global USA today has Latin America woven all through it. Greg Grandin. It’s a history of brutal conquest, so…

1
The Hard Work of Organizing 47:56

1M ago47:56

47:56

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 of many losses and his own big mistakes that come back, 50 years later, as lessons and blight. Michael Ansara. The post The Hard Work of Organizing appeared first…

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Occupied America 40:03

2M ago40:03

40:03

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 country—our own troubled hearts. She’s been a voice of encouragement—somebody said: a voice that has been overheard by more readers…

1
Trump at War 46:55

2M ago46:55

46:55

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 for peace.” Huss Banai. Our guest to watch a mystery unfolding is the Iranian-American scholar at Indiana University in Bloomington, Hussein …

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Divided, Defensive Democracy 48:29

3M ago48:29

48:29

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 feels to me shaken, defensive, divided, embarrassed—as I don’t remember ever before—around questions that go to our character as a cou…

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The Last Supper 41:24

3M ago41:24

41:24

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 marker for what Paul Elie calls crypto-religion. Let’s call it the artistic underground where unlabeled church themes took root in our lifetimes. It’s where…

1
Capitalism and Its Critics 43:56

4M ago43:56

43:56

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 New Yorker magazine has written a sprightly catalog of capitalism’s critics over the centuries: who got it right, for example, about today’s inequality c…

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Trade, Trumped 38:18

4M ago38:18

38:18

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 to tell all of us what the powers that be are up to. Penguins on an uninhabited island that’s been hit with a 10% tariff. We’ve been bracing for a universal tra…

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Gatsby at 100: Fitzgerald’s Warning about Trumpism 47:32

4M ago47:32

47:32

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 stands for by now is a sort of MAGA question: can Donald Trump make America Gatsby’s again? As in: The Great Gatsby, published in 1925. Sarah Churchwell. The book mak…

1
Miracles and Wonder 44:31

5M ago44:31

44:31

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 title is Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus. Elaine Pagels. By the way, we’re in history class, not Su…

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Trump vs. Harvard 48:56

5M ago48:56

48:56

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 in federal funding. Then Princeton said, “No way, we’ll fight your flimsy charges to the end.” And then Harvard, with $9 billion at stake, tried …

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From Social to Spiritual Media 43:18

5M ago43:18

43:18

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 Twitter joke, but also of the mysticism of St. Teresa. She’s on a field-trip to Harvard this week from her home base in Savannah, Georgia, and …

1
A New World 24:14

6M ago24:14

24:14

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 interests of nations, not their egos or their dreams. And they look beyond the headlines to the long-term effects of policy, to the results. S…

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Angus King’s Civics Lesson 32:14

6M ago32:14

32:14

Angus King is the anti-partisan, independent United States Senator from the cranky Yankee state of Maine. He is giving us a conversational civics lesson in the tradition of James Madison and also of Schoolhouse Rock, the kids’ TV explainer. James Madison. Senator King has been in the thick of the frenzy in Donald Trump’s Washington, with a certain …

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Muskology 47:28

7M ago47:28

47:28

In the fog of Trump Two, we’re asking: what’s new? The co-presidency with Elon Musk is surely new, also the raging battle of exotic ideas among techno-optimists and libertarian anarcho-capitalists at war with the very idea of popular democracy and republican government. Further question: do citizens have to follow the action? Matt Taibbi’s headline…

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Trump Part II 35:58

7M ago35:58

35:58

We’re picking up the pieces of our country in the age of Trump, Part II. Is the USA still here? Is it still us? Kurt Andersen. Cue Kurt Andersen, with his finger in the wind. We want him on a mission to track the spirit of the age, because he’s been a cool, creative, wide-angle eye on events since the ’80s, when he founded Spy magazine, and then St…

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Aflame 37:56

8M ago37:56

37:56

We’re with writer-world’s exotic traveller and truth-teller Pico Iyer. He’s been the Dalai Lama’s friend from boyhood, and our friend, too, in years now of reading and talk. In his new book, Aflame, subtitled Learning from Silence, we catch him at a turn in his thinking. His fresh question, for all of us, might just be: how do we surface our spirit…

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From Boston to Bethlehem 19:48

8M ago19:48

19:48

We’re here with a capsule of memory from late last year. It was a spark of generosity in Liz Walker’s story that lit up the Christmas season for lots of us, and maybe the path ahead. She’s been a pathfinder—for decades—in television newscasting in Boston; then as an ordained minister, leading the Roxbury Presbyterian Church in town; and then in the…

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A Geopolitical Check-Up 48:28

8M ago48:28

48:28

We’re with the one-off diplomat, strategist, and historian Chas Freeman. Chas Freeman. Call this “Curious Citizen Meets the Most Knowledgeable Straight-Talker Anywhere Near the U.S. Government.” At a turn in the calendar, a transition in American politics, and a global crisis that can feel like a rolling nightmare even after the quick, almost blood…

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Blyth is Back 41:09

9M ago41:09

41:09

We’re with the celebrated Scots-accented people’s economist—celebrated above all when he’s home with the locals in his own old pub in Dundee, settling all the arguments there are around money and power, and populism on the way to plutocracy in the comeback reign of Donald Trump. Mark Blyth. Before we get to Trump 2, we speak of the lingering Biden …

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Not Your Standard Book Chat 35:38

9M ago35:38

35:38

We’re with the Nobel Prize novelist from Turkey, Orhan Pamuk. It’s not your standard book chat: closer to head-butting than conversation, as you’ll hear. But it’s polite enough and nobody gets hurt. Chris and Orhan Pamuk. Orhan Pamuk wanted to talk about his hard-cover collection of notebook drawings and diary entries in recent years; I wanted to h…

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The Roy Haynes Century 38:17

9M ago38:17

38:17

We’re saluting one man’s century in American music. Roy Haynes was the jazz drummer from Boston who shaped the bebop sound in Harlem 80 years ago. He got nicknamed Snap Crackle for his own crisp, lyrical, almost melodic touch. Over the decades, he accompanied and energized scores of jazz stars: Thelonious Monk, Sarah Vaughan, Bud Powell, Pat Methen…

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Joshua Cohen’s Camp 37:22

10M ago37:22

37:22

We’re with the writer’s writer Joshua Cohen—beyond category, but ever ahead of the game. He’s a realist, a fantasist, a satirist, New Jersey-born and at home in Israel. Joshua Cohen. It’s his imagination we need, just to peer through his vision of a changed world and, in particular, two force fields in motion: Donald Trump’s USA and Bibi Netanyahu’…

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United States of Fear 24:51

10M ago24:51

24:51

Fintan O’Toole has made a brilliant career watching Ireland (his home country) transform itself—its Catholic culture, its vanishing population, its frail economy—into something very modern and profoundly different. And he’s covered our country so well this year. Does he see something of a transformation that’s comparable in the United States? The p…

Christopher Lydon Podcasts

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Open Source with Christopher Lydon

Christopher Lydon

1
Postcards from China

Christopher Lydon

1
Another Pakistan

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1
Darker Projects: The Falcon Banner

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1
Russia and Ukraine in 2025 48:37

1
America, América 42:09

1
The Hard Work of Organizing 47:56

1
Occupied America 40:03

1
Trump at War 46:55

1
Divided, Defensive Democracy 48:29

1
The Last Supper 41:24

1
Capitalism and Its Critics 43:56

1
Trade, Trumped 38:18

1
Gatsby at 100: Fitzgerald’s Warning about Trumpism 47:32

1
Miracles and Wonder 44:31

1
Trump vs. Harvard 48:56

1
From Social to Spiritual Media 43:18

1
A New World 24:14

1
Angus King’s Civics Lesson 32:14

1
Muskology 47:28

1
Trump Part II 35:58

1
Aflame 37:56

1
From Boston to Bethlehem 19:48

1
A Geopolitical Check-Up 48:28

1
Blyth is Back 41:09

1
Not Your Standard Book Chat 35:38

1
The Roy Haynes Century 38:17

1
Joshua Cohen’s Camp 37:22

1
United States of Fear 24:51