In August, West Virginia University announced that it would be dissolving its Department of World Languages, Literature and Linguistics. And a couple months after that, my school Middlebury College, chose to eliminate a faculty position in its creative writing department. As someone studying English Literature, and who cares deeply about the future of humanities education, I was curious to talk to someone who has been thinking about what the study of the humanities looks like in today's world. Merve Emre is the Shapiro-Silverberg University Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University and a contributing writer at The New Yorker. She was also a judge for The 2022 International Booker Prize. I’ve read her essays on various literary topics at The New Yorker, and other publications and it’s obvious that her criticism strives to innovate literary study for a changing world. I’ve been talking a lot about criticism on this show this year. I spoke to Christian Lorentzen over the summer about the future of literary criticism, an art that’s been required to reinvent and revitalize itself over the past few years. And my conversations with Jerome Lowenthal and Ethan Iverson focused on how classical music and jazz are received. I think studying the way we approach and talk about art and culture is crucial to the function of the humanities and this conversation gets to the heart of that.  Merve and I start by talking about the school and the trends that literature departments are seeing, but then we progress to a larger discussion about access to the humanities. Merve is a strong advocate for treating aesthetic experience as a social good, and this takes us to the end of our conversation where we try to articulate how the academy and public media, and social media can simultaneously further the reach and scope of humanities education and dissemination in their own ways. This was another work of audio criticism. Regardless of whether you’re interested in literature or culture, the topics we discussed are ubiquitous in today’s society, and if there’s one throughline in all the episodes of Cultural Mixtapes, it’s the importance of art in our world. New Yorker Page Recommendations Middlemarch - George Eliot Inland - Gerald Murnane R.P. Blackmur F. O. Matthiessen Elizabeth Hardwick Renata Adler Rebecca West

I read Barack Obama’s memoir A Promised Land when it first came out in November of 2020. That time was filled with rampant polarization, multiple quaratines, alternative realities, an insurrection, and politics that was so messy it was near impossible to find any hope and see America as this Promised Land that Obama wrote about.  Thinking about the American Project is quite difficult in today’s contested landscape. Zooming out to find moments that define the beauties of American Democracy, amidst the onslaught of political punditry, and a seemingly catatonic congress, is a constant struggle. But sometimes the key is to look for moments of GRACE, within the chaos; little signs that reaffirm that America is indeed A Promised Land.  Cody Keenan’s new book does just that. Cody was a Speechwriter in the Obama White House, and joined the campaign in 2007. He was later promoted to Director of Speechwriting, and held the position through the end of Obama’s second term. Cody is now working as a Partner at Fenway Strategies, a speechwriting and communications firm, and also teaches at Northwestern University.  His book GRACE: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America, which is out in paperback today, details 10 days in 2015 that give us a vivid picture of America: the wonderful highs, the horrific lows, and all the beautiful strangeness in between. The ten days begin with a racist massacre on June 17th at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, which led to 9 dead, including the church’s pastor.  The central question in the book is whether or not Barack Obama should speak at the Pastor’s Funeral.  However the ten days also included decisions from the Supreme Court, which decided the fates of Marriage Equality and the Affordable Care Act. Everything changed in the White House when a few days after the shooting, the families of the victims, decided to forgive the killer in open court, which was broadcast on live TV. These ten days tested the strength of the American Project, and Keenan’s book explores the ways in which they found grace amidst the chaos and the ways in which we can continue to find grace in politics.  Our conversation started with Keenan’s beginnings in politics, working in the mailroom for Senator Ted Kennedy. But we jump between the past and the present, the events of the book and issues still plaguing us today such as gun control and climate change, in an attempt to find moments of Grace in our politics today and reaffirm America as The Promised Land that it can be.  Cody's Website Recommendations Surrender by Bono The Bear The Diplomat

Last November, I had Alexander Chee on the show. And in preparation for his interview, I read The Best American Essays 2022. I came across an essay titled “Ghosts.” This essay stood out from the rest of the anthology because it seemed to have 9 iterations. When I read further, I was baffled at the idea that a writer had used Artificial Intelligence to produce prose. Even more intriguing was the fact that AI had helped this writer create a beautiful meditation on grief. After reading it a bit more closely, I realized that it wasn’t necessarily the AI that was the driving factor of this piece, but rather that the author was pushing back against the response that the AI was giving her and using that as a catalyst for poetic reflection. After reading this, I knew I had to read everything she’d written. In addition to the essay Ghosts, Vauhini Vara is the author of the novel THE IMMORTAL KING RAO. This novel was recently listed as the finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, amongst many other accolades.  Vauhini also has a book coming out on September 26th titled THIS IS SALVAGED. And in addition to her creative work, she has been a tech reporter, writing in The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, NYT Magazine, and WIRED.  I wanted to speak to Vauhini because while AI is all the rage right now, it seems that many of us don’t really know how to talk about it. AI’s ubiquity, brought on by the launch of CHAT GPT at the end of last year, has clear implications, economically, and culturally, but what are those implications? And how strongly will they influence the future. THE IMMORTAL KING RAO tells a generational story of a family coconut grove in India, and the subsequent founding of a multinational tech corporation that goes on to rule the world. As someone who’s covered almost two decades of technological development and also spent 13 years imagining a technocratic future and all its ramifications, Vauhini is the perfect person to give us a read about the intersection of art and technology. We sat down in Early August to speak about her novel, as well as recent developments in Artificial Intelligence, and finally her moving collection of stories.  From an artist attempting to bring the Bible to life, to telemarketers discovering intimacy, THIS IS SALVAGED truly packs a punch and is out today.  Vauhini's Website The Immortal King Rao This is Salvaged Recommendations The Night Parade - Jami Nakamura Lin

About 6 months into my first year of college, I found myself soliloquizing to some friends about the beauties of suburban life. It struck me immediately that I was longing for a world that I found profoundly boring for 18 years, and had swore to never replicate. I was going to live my big life in cities. Yet the pleasures of driving around open roads amidst constant pockets of civilization and seeing the formation of an unspoken, and distant community that was fostered through nothing more than proximity, still appealed to me in a way my city-dwelling friends couldn’t understand. My suburban life in Ohio was quiet and comfortable, and for all it lacked, it also guaranteed a great deal. This has been a bit of an obsession of mine since I moved away from the suburbs. Through college in a cold rural town, to the Atlantic metropolis of London, England, something about suburban America still baffled me.  I’d read my fair share of suburban writers, but when I came across a book that strived to understand the weird yet alluring quality that American suburbia presents, I knew I had to read it, with the hope that maybe this would scratch this never-ending itch.  Jason Diamond is the author of the 2020 book THE SPRAWL as well a memoir from 2016 called SEARCHING FOR JOHN HUGHES. In addition to his books, he also writes for various publications including NEW YORK MAGAZINE, and GQ, and has a Substack called THE MELT.  THE SPRAWL is a new kind of book because it attempts to detail a history of America with the suburb at the center. Diamond is of the suburbs. And his upbringing in a suburb of Chicago, is central to the book itself. THE SPRAWL combines personal anecdotes with heavily researched demographic and geographic data to try to answer the same question that was on my mind. What exactly is special about the American suburb?  So this is where we start our conversation. Jason and I speak about his book, the exorbitant amount of driving he did to research it, as well as some of the cultural references that feature in its pages. This conversation about suburbia morphs into a larger one about America. And this is especially evident when we start talking about all the exclusion and racism that is a part of the suburban and American story.   Diamond’s writing is special because he uses common structures and cultural objects that have made it into the vernacular, to ask questions about the culture he lives in. This is why later in the conversation, when I ask him about his critical process, I call him a chronicler of vibes.  So that’s what this conversation is. It starts with the suburbs, but then progresses into the two of us simply tryna gauge where the vibes are at. The Melt Substack THE SPRAWL References American Pastoral - Philip Roth John Cheever Bowling Alone - Robert D. Putnam Recommendations Grace Paley Short Stories Sag Harbor - Colson Whitehead Crook Manifesto - Colson Whitehead The Righteous Gemstones I Could Not Believe It - Sean DeLear @tejassrin on Twitter

As part of this mini series on the past and future of the music industry, I wanted to speak to another person who’s been a force in the industry for years. I came across an article in The Nation that was called The End of the Music Business. This piece presented the history of a century in recorded music that began with pre-war 78-rpm gramophone records, and ended with the onset of streaming websites. The thesis of the piece was that the most notable development in these hundred years was the LP, which marked the apex of commercial music making and album sales. The piece was written by Jazz Pianist Ethan Iverson. Ethan has been in the industry for over 20 years, and is now a mainstay of jazz clubs in New York and all over the country.  He was a founding member of the avant-garde jazz trio The Bad Plus in the year 2000 and he stayed with the group for 17 years. In addition to being a jazz pianist, Ethan also has written prolifically about music, and culture for years on his blog DO THE MATH, and now his Substack TRANSITIONAL TECHNOLOGY.  Ethan and I began with this piece in The Nation. And he talked through his experience in the music industry, and his predictions for where things may go. But from there we started exploring his intricate career in Jazz. Ethan has traversed through the genre, from The Bad Plus, which served as a bridge between contemporary jazz and popular music, to his current compositions, such as a piano sonata, which strive to place Jazz in conversation with classical music. As you know, I’m fascinated by work that asks complicated questions about the genre it originates from. So this last idea is where we ended our conversation. and as someone who’s studied both styles and performed in both traditions, Ethan may be an apt person to think about the future of American music. This was a wonderful conversation that covered over a hundred years of American music, had a lovely Tony Bennett cameo, and forced me to think about pushing the boundaries and changing the terms we use to define genres of music. Ethan’s Substack Ethan's Blog (Archive) Every Note is True - Blue Note Records The End of the Music Business - The Nation Recommendations Barbie Movie Henning Mankell’s Crime Fiction Other Artists Mentioned Tony Bennett Billy Hart Thelonious Monks Ron Carter Duke Ellington Ornette Coleman McCoy Tyner Miles Davis John Coltrane Charlie Parker Charles Ives Conlan Nancarrow

In 2019, I went to New York City for 24 hours. I told my high school teachers I was sick, postponed two tests, and asked for an extension on a project; all because Jerome Lowenthal had agreed to give me a piano lesson at the Juilliard School. On a cold New York Winter Night, I went to his studio and he heard me play Bach and Beethoven. We went on for an hour as he corrected my interpretations and offered me ideas that wouldn’t have occurred in my wildest dreams. A little after 9:15 PM he admitted that he needed to go eat dinner and left me to explore the world of these two composers.  Since that day, and from the beginning of Cultural Mixtapes, I knew I wanted to speak to Jerome Lowenthal. At 91, he is entering his 33rd year on the Piano Faculty at the renowned Juilliard School, and maintains a busy performance and touring schedule, as you’ll see from the interview. The premise of the interview was very simple: After listening to his recordings and performances online, as well as videos of him teaching students, I wanted to hear him speak at length about his artistic philosophies. The question of interpretation, whether that’s novels, poetry, or music, has been central to this podcast. Classical music interpretation is a behemoth of art. And if you’re not too familiar, it’s simultaneously historical and ephemeral. An interpretation of a great composer’s music is built upon history and musical theory, but it’s also a semi-instinctual shaping of sound to match taste. Interpretations vary and can change over time, and because of the nuance with which one can speak about it, I think classical music provides a beautiful window to study art-making at its highest levels.  And this conversation proved to be exactly that. We dive into Mr. Lowenthal’s musical upbringing, as well as instances that shaped his artistic opinions, but for the majority of the episode, you’ll hear him talk about the act of interpreting music and art and interpret specific questions from the classical repertoire in real time. He draws upon history and memory and decades of experience to service the composer but most importantly, service the music itself.  This conversation is a bit esoteric if you’re not a musician. We mention many composers and pieces, as well specific intricacies of piano playing. But I encourage you to keep listening even if you’re lost amidst the names and terms. Because while Mr. Lowenthal is reflecting on his life in music, we start to see other ideas emerging, about the purpose of artmaking, and the meaning that can be derived from synthesizing different art forms. This interview is a love letter to music and a statement of artistic ideas that transcend time, genre and history. A quick note: there were many instances when Mr. Lowenthal played the piano, but unfortunately due to zoom audio and internet issues, they were not audible. I have inserted a couple of recordings of his performances, in between the interview, but all the music that we discuss is listed in the show notes.  Juilliard Faculty Bio Selected Recitals New York 2022 (Chopin) 90th Birthday Recital (Hammerklavier) 91st Birthday Recital 1968 Rachmaninov Rehearsal Composers, Performers and Pieces Mentioned Johann Sebastian Bach - French Overture Ludwig van Beethoven - Hammerklavier Sonata Op. 106 Fryderyk Chopin - Bb Minor Sonata Op. 35 Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck - 6 Variations on "Mein Junges Leben hat ein End" Alexander Scriabin - Sonata No. 6 Op. 62 Sergei Rachmaninov Sergei Prokofiev Béla Bartók Camille Saint-Saëns Olga Samaroff William Kapell Eduard Steuermann Alfred Cortot Ursula Oppens Other Miscellaneous References Howards End by E.M. Forster Marcel Proust

If you keep up with academic chatter in English literature, there’s a debate going around about the versatility of English degrees, and of the fairly insular nature of literary criticism that comes out of academia. A piece in the New Yorker earlier this year, titled The End of the English Major, prompted me to do some thinking about the world of literature itself and the people in it. I wanted to speak to someone who has been immersed in the literary world for years, and has done a great deal of thinking about trends in contemporary literature.  Christian Lorentzen is a freelance literary critic whose work appears in several publications including Harpers, New York Magazine, The New York Times Book Review and The London Review of Books. In addition to writing book reviews, he’s published extensively about the state of the industry. From pieces about taste-making in popular culture, to covering underground art and dramatic movements in New York City, it’s easy to see that Christian he cares deeply for the project of literary criticism.  We started off talking about a journalistic assignment Christian had last year. He covered the merger trial between the two publishing houses Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House. His piece titled “At Random” dissected the true motivations behind these companies as arguments were made for and against merging. The Harpers piece also offered a broad view on corporate motivations behind the publication of both popular and literary fiction.  After speaking about the trial, Christian and I launched into a discussion of American literature of the past 50 years or so. Using writers such as Philip Roth, Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon as benchmarks, we attempted to understand the dialectical nature of trends in art and criticism, and create a healthy literary discourse that is often unseen outside of the written word.  In a way, this conversation was a work of literary criticism in the audio form, and Christian simultaneously offered a bird’s eye view, and a heavily specific read of where his field is going.  Christian's MUCKRACK & ⁠Substack⁠ (On the merger trial) "The Vying Animal" (On Philip Roth) "Like Rain on Your Wedding Day" (On literary style and American Politics) "Like This or Die" (On contemporary tastemaking) BOOKFORUM Profile Authors Mentioned Philip Roth Don DeLillo Thomas Pynchon W.G. Sebald Elizabeth Hardwick Ryan Ruby Recommendations Dead Babies - Martin Amis The Names - Don DeLillo High And Low & Stray Dog - Akira Kurosawa

Imagine writing a history of the world from the perspective of a small California town that spans less than 30 sq. miles. That’s exactly what Malcolm Harris did.  His new book Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and The World was published earlier this year by Little Brown and Company. This is a sweeping historical account of the founding of the suburb of Palo Alto; the creation of Silicon Valley; and the intermingling of Stanford University, some of the world’s richest people and companies, and a military industrial complex that fought multiple wars on many fronts. If that sounds vast, that’s because it is.  From a historical perspective, Harris’ book focuses on a relatively small amount of time, about 170 years, between 1850 and 2020. But in that time, he tracks the formation of this technological and capitalistic center of the world; this tiny suburb that now controls a large chunk of public and private interests.  Malcolm is less interested in exploring the technological and entrepreneurial innovations that have occurred here, but rather sees the entire project of Palo Alto as a symptom of capitalism that’s inextricable from the culture of the area. He’s focused on highlighting the most important resource of Palo Alto, which is the land itself. The land that Native American tribes were forced out of, and the land that became the center for the unrelenting waves of capitalism.  Eduardo Galeano wrote his famed book OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA to describe the economic, colonial, and imperial pillaging of an entire continent. To use his metaphor Harris’ goals are set on exposing the veins of Palo Alto; and showcasing how institutions that were fundamentally created without a mandate, on stolen land, now have a level of wealth and influence that escapes control. It felt increasingly necessary to have this conversation with Malcolm as the efforts—and often conquests—of Silicon valley figures seem to increasingly pervade our consciousness in every way.  We could only cover the highlights of this book in 40 mins, but a link to his Book and his recommendations are in the show notes.  Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris Recommendation "Smog" by Italo Calvino

I’ve been interested in this genre of “abstract hip hop” for a while now. The classification has existed for many years, usually referring to rappers and artists who make perhaps more esoteric music than mainstream hip-hop artists. Kenny Segal has been a consistent presence over the past decade or so, and received several accolades for his production. He’s worked with acclaimed rappers such as billy woods, RAP Ferreira, and Serengeti. He's a member of the LA-based group: The Jefferson Park Boys. His latest project, MAPS with New York Rapper billy woods was rated as one of Pitchfork’s best new albums, put on The Loved List by Anthony Fantano at The Needle Drop—a critic who I follow almost religiously—and aggregated to universal acclaim on MetaCritic. Kenny’s production, like most of my favorite musicians, escapes easy description. He has an affinity for jazzy melodies and acoustic drum-based rhythms, but even those change drastically from album to album. It’s almost as if he’s entirely changing his palette from one album to the next and reinventing himself with each project.  MAPS by billy woods & Kenny Segal Kenny's Projects Kenny's Spotify Purple Moonlight Pages Recommendations Mandy Indiana Tyler, The Creator

Indian politics has always been a beast I’ve been afraid of broaching both on the show and in my personal conversations. There are countless nuances that are often difficult for listeners outside the country—including myself—to understand. And the debate is so fluid and rampant that it’s easy for opinions to be misconstrued and cast-aside. A conversation about Indian Politics cannot simply be restricted to that, instead the far-reaching issues extend into culture, art, and many other aspects of daily life and require a somewhat holistic view. In the same way that the writer Gore Vidal believed that his criticism of the United States was sharper when he was observing from abroad, I think the best perspectives of the political scene in India contain simultaneous analysis from the ground and from afar. There is no better guest to have this conversation with than journalist Samanth Subramanian.  His work has appeared in several publications including The New Yorker, The Guardian, and New York Times Magazine. He is also Global News Editor at Quartz. Samanth wrote a piece in October in The New Yorker titled “When The Hindu Right Came for Bollywood.” This study of a cultural conflict in India highlights some key agitating issues entrenched in today’s political system. We use that piece as a starting point and move on to discuss some of the concerning trends emerging from the current regime. Samanth grew up in India and worked there for many years; but is now based in London. This gives his coverage the unique duality that I think enhances his discerning analysis of his home-country. But Samanth’s beat doesn’t just cover politics. A quick look at his output leads to pieces about finance, cricket, travel,  so on and so forth. The magazine pieces that he writes are deep dives into intriguing human stories in places we’d not think to look. So our conversation today reflects this, and as we move from India to several other stories, he paints a portrait of a rigorous journalism that is required to tell authentic stories in today’s world.  A few notes: There are two specific pieces that we mention that could benefit from some prefacing. one titled “How Hindu supremacists are tearing India apart” which was published in The Guardian, focuses on protests and riots that took place at universities in Delhi. An another piece in New York Times Magazine titled “Two Wealthy Sri Lankan Brothers Became Suicide Bombers. But Why?” requires little inference, but essentially focuses on Samanth’s survey of a community from which two brothers became radicalized terrorists. Websites ⁠samanth.in⁠ ⁠Muckrack⁠ Articles Mentioned "When the Hindu Right Came for Bollywood" - "How Hindu supremacists are tearing India apart" - "Two Wealthy Sri Lankan Brothers Became Suicide Bombers. But Why?" - "Hand dryers v paper towels: the surprisingly dirty fight for the right to dry your hands" - " The lost Jews of Nigeria" Recommendations Breaking Bad The Novels of Yasunari Kawabata