Claim OwnershipOpen Source with Christopher Lydon
Subscribed: 2,332Played: 54,109
Subscribe
Description
Christopher Lydon in conversation on arts, ideas and politics
267 Episodes
Reverse
It’s Jackie Robinson Day, 2026, when every player in Major League Baseball wears the immortal Dodger’s number 42. Listeners, if you think you know the Jackie Robinson story, think again with us around the most ...
The post Kings and Pawns appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
In 1854, when the escaped slave Anthony Burns was captured in Boston and returned in chains to slave-owners in Virginia, despite riotous resistance on the dock in Boston, Henry David Thoreau himself was shattered. Lewis ...
The post Thoreau Meets ICE appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
Who remembers Bernie Goetz? Who remembers his victims? Or was Bernie Goetz the victim—the subway shooter who, back in 1984, fired at four black teenagers in a crowded subway car in Manhattan because he felt ...
The post Fear and Fury appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
How should we see the Israeli-American War on Iran? How should we understand it, or maybe even escape it? The writer and historian Daniel Immerwahr is our guest, with the essential qualifications, starting with his ...
The post Hit-and-Run Belligerence appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
I must say, among all the wise people commenting on this world’s situation, I honor Jeffrey Sachs especially for being relentless on the dangers out there, going back to the Biden years. Jeffrey Sachs. He ...
The post Sleepwalking into World War III appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
1We’re sorting puzzle pieces from the opening rounds of war with Iran. The U.S. and Israel started it. The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic in Iran was among the first to die in it, ...
The post War with Iran appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
We’re tracking the Bernie Sanders story from a Brooklyn boyhood to the Green Mountain socialism that he implanted in Vermont, and then to his two offbeat campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination: in 2016, and ...
The post Bernie’s Journey appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
We’re going off script out here in the afterlife, in the imagination of the triple-threat novelist George Saunders. He’s eminent as a writer of stories and novels, as a critical reader, and as a teacher ...
The post George Saunders on Life and the Afterlife appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
Pico Iyer is the global citizen and now, inadvertently, the movie star—in the winter’s hot movie, Marty Supreme. Across a hundred conversations over the years, we thought we knew everything about him, the transcendentalist Buddhist ...
The post Pico Supreme appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
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, ...
The post Age of Hemispheric Empires appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
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.
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States
Here we go with the anti-semitic bs. Most of this podcast's takes are full of s*** from people who are perfectly comfortable with the way things are
rubbish
Buckey told us 60 years ago that government debt is of no consequense.
This sounds lame, but. Does anyone remember in the hippie days the astrologist oriented people predicted this change at about this time. Strange but ?
This episode was impossible to listen to and I was really looking forward to it. It’s supposed to be an interview, not a 50-minute campaign speech. Get off the podium and answer the questions.
Socrates said: "Knowledge begins in wonder." Radio Open Source is full of wonder - wonder-ful.
"Open Source" is one of the very best of the discussion/call-in shows. Guests are tops in their field; host Christopher Lydon knows how to ask the right questions, and he plays fair. Topics are relevant and always fascinating -- a nice mix of politics, the arts and pop culture. I've appreciated the post-Katrina series on race relations, in particular.
Chris Lydon is the consummate intellectual, able to uncover fascinating Connections from a variety of guests about a range of topics. This is no mundane "talk show." In contrast to most "talk" shows, this is not about getting people to argue their cases but about finding common ground. For example, a discussion of Muslim-Christian relationships (very timely) is based on an examination of 10th century Al-Andalus Spain. The guests included an author, a classical music composer, and an examination of how peaceful coexistence flourished 1000 years ago. He must have the best Rolodex in the business. The website format is the most interactive, with audience able to suggest topics and comment through very thoughtful blogging. With all of the conflict on radio shows (even the current version of NPR’s The Connection, which he founded before he was forced out!) this is an intellectual oasis for those of us who are fascinated by the world and wish we could have just stayed in our college classes