DiscoverOpen Source with Christopher Lydon
Open Source with Christopher Lydon
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Open Source with Christopher Lydon

Author: Christopher Lydon

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Open Source is the world’s longest-running podcast. Christopher Lydon circles the big ideas in culture, the arts and politics with the smartest people in the world. It’s the kind of curious, critical, high-energy conversation we’re all missing nowadays.



Be part of the action: leave a voice message to be played on the air; get in touch over Facebook or Twitter; or email us – info@radioopensource.org with show ideas, advice, requests and high-quality criticism.
238 Episodes
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A New World

A New World

2025-03-1324:14

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 ...
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, ...
Muskology

Muskology

2025-02-1447:27

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 ...
Trump Part II

Trump Part II

2025-01-3135:58

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. ...
Aflame

Aflame

2025-01-2337:56

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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Blyth is Back

Blyth is Back

2024-12-1241:09

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 ...
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 ...
The Roy Haynes Century

The Roy Haynes Century

2024-11-2638:171

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, ...
Joshua Cohen’s Camp

Joshua Cohen’s Camp

2024-11-1537:21

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, ...
United States of Fear

United States of Fear

2024-11-0724:51

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 ...
In the long weekend of solemn suspense before our presidential election in 2024, our guest is Amber. I met Amber on a call-in radio show almost 30 years ago, and we’ve been talking ever since. ...
Playground

Playground

2024-10-2442:56

Richard Powers may just be the bravest big novelist out there. His new book is titled Playground, in which AI plays with the natural world. The question is whether and how the digital transformation might ...
A Jerusalem Tragedy

A Jerusalem Tragedy

2024-10-1050:56

For our shattering Age of October 7, Nathan Thrall has written a double masterpiece, in my reading. Already a Pulitzer Prize-winner for non-fiction, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is a searching work ...
We’re in Climate Week 2024, with the indispensable, independent activist and authority Bill McKibben. We catch him packing, in Vermont, for what’s far from his first climate rodeo in New York.
Bear-Baiting Debating

Bear-Baiting Debating

2024-09-1242:001

We’re in our very own post-debate spin room, taking the measure of Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and of ourselves, as the voters they were pitching. Did we get what we expected? Did we get what ...
The Harris Machine

The Harris Machine

2024-08-2935:111

There’s a puzzle in this podcast, and it comes with our prize sociologist, Tressie McMillan Cottom. It’s roughly this: How does Kamala Harris, after the Democratic convention in Chicago and for the rest of this ...
In It to the Finish

In It to the Finish

2024-08-1539:311

Cornel West is our guest, the preacher-teacher in a tradition of black prophetic fire, as he puts it, the line of holy anger in American history, and this time on the presidential ballot in a ...
American Believer

American Believer

2024-08-0138:041

The novelist Marilynne Robinson has a nearly constitutional role in our heads, our culture by now. She’s the artist we trust to observe the damaged heart of America, and to tell us what we’re going ...
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Comments (6)

rmeier 2009

Buckey told us 60 years ago that government debt is of no consequense.

Oct 24th
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rmeier 2009

This sounds lame, but. Does anyone remember in the hippie days the astrologist oriented people predicted this change at about this time. Strange but ?

Oct 24th
Reply

J You

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.

Jun 17th
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iTunes User

Socrates said: "Knowledge begins in wonder." Radio Open Source is full of wonder - wonder-ful.

Aug 30th
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iTunes User

"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.

Aug 30th
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iTunes User

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

Aug 30th
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