Open Source with Christopher Lydon
Podcasts
Christopher Lydon in conversation on arts, ideas and politics
Location:
Cambridge, MA
Description:
Christopher Lydon in conversation on arts, ideas and politics
Twitter:
@radioopensource
Language:
English
Contact:
(617) 353-0692
Website:
http://www.radioopensource.org/
Email:
info@radioopensource.org
Episodes
Kings and Pawns
4/15/2026
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.
Duration:00:47:07
Thoreau Meets ICE
4/2/2026
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.
Duration:00:40:52
Fear and Fury
3/26/2026
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.
Duration:00:38:15
Hit-and-Run Belligerence
3/19/2026
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 ...
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Duration:00:35:15
Sleepwalking into World War III
3/10/2026
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.
Duration:00:37:28
War with Iran
3/6/2026
We’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.
Duration:00:31:51
Bernie’s Journey
2/19/2026
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.
Duration:00:51:28
George Saunders on Life and the Afterlife
2/5/2026
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.
Duration:00:31:54
Pico Supreme
1/22/2026
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.
Duration:00:45:51
Age of Hemispheric Empires
1/8/2026
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, ...
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Duration:00:35:12
A Thousand Years of Capitalism
11/26/2025
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 ...
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Duration:00:37:19
John Updike’s Vocation
11/14/2025
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.
Duration:00:38:30
Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope
10/27/2025
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 ...
The post Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.
Duration:00:53:02
Stress-Testing the Rule of Law
10/9/2025
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 ...
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Duration:00:36:38
Mrs. Dalloway at 100
9/25/2025
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.
Duration:00:47:15
Where Are the Intellectuals?
9/11/2025
We’re with the cultural historian Robin D.G. Kelly 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.
Duration:00:42:24
Russia and Ukraine in 2025
8/28/2025
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 ...
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Duration:00:48:37
America, América
8/14/2025
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.
Duration:00:42:09
The Hard Work of Organizing
7/24/2025
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.
Duration:00:47:56
Occupied America
7/10/2025
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 ...
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Duration:00:40:03