Open Source with Christopher Lydon

Age of Hemispheric Empires

We’re getting our heads around the invasion of Venezuela and what feels like a rough new rule book for the so-called world order. Cue Greg Grandin, the hemispheric historian who wrote that big book America, América just in time last summer. Greg Grandin. The big theme in Grandin’s book is the very dicey business of sovereignty historically between North and South America. And Donald Trump has been teasing at that instability of borders and labels ever since he renamed the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf Of America.” He’s teasing us again this week when he says Cuba could be next, even Colombia on the list for invasion or regime change. The post Age of Hemispheric Empires appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

A Thousand Years of Capitalism

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 or mere politics. It’s a thoroughly human and ever-changing arrangement of affairs that can produce rapid and vast expansion of wealth in private hands. Sven Beckert. And Capitalism is the title of our guest Sven Beckert’s new thousand-page history of the whole thing. A thousand pages covering a thousand years. The opening line in his book is, “We live in a world created by capitalism.” How did it happen? Is it still happening, for better or worse? Did it have to happen? The post A Thousand Years of Capitalism appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

John Updike’s Vocation

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 his editors. We’re turning to his kids for a fresh measure of the artist who cracked open the sexual revolution of the 1960s and lived it his own way. Miranda Updike, Michael Updike, Elizabeth Updike Cobblah, and David Updike. Photograph by Jameson Sempey, Reading Eagle, courtesy of A.A. Knopf. Couples was his breakthrough novel and bestseller in 1968. His second son, Michael, and his second daughter, Miranda, were adolescent witnesses to the story. We’re gathered in Michael’s house on the North Shore of Boston, the heart of Updike Country, to resurface the glow in John Updike’s prose and the pleasure in his company. The post John Updike’s Vocation appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope

We’re with Brandon Terry and his tragic vision of the civil rights movement: Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope is the title of his new book. It’s a map of our minds and our memories, a catalog of our judgments and feelings around an epic era in American history. And it’s not quite over. I take it as a response finally to the charge leveled by the great W.E.B. Du Bois that the real plot of the civil rights story got lost or suppressed long ago. Brandon Terry. The post Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Stress-Testing the Rule of Law

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 California over policing a public safety crisis that mostly disappeared five years ago in Portland, Oregon? What does it tell us that a senior federal judge in Boston declared in a formal opinion last week that the Trump team is bent on crushing free speech by wayward prosecutions, if only for their power to chill and intimidate? Nancy Gertner. The questions keep coming. Nancy Gertner is our guest to consider them. She’s overqualified by a celebrated career as a trial lawyer, then as a federal judge, and now retired from the court as a private practitioner again, independent and outspoken about a world that she knows intimately. The post Stress-Testing the Rule of Law appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.