Open Source with Christopher Lydon

George Saunders on Life and the Afterlife

Posted February 5, 2026 • 00:31:54

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...

Pico Supreme

Posted January 22, 2026 • 00:45:50

Pico Iyer is the global citizen and now, inadvertently, the movie star—in the winter’s hot movie, Marty Supreme. Across a hundred conversations...

Age of Hemispheric Empires

Posted January 8, 2026 • 00:35:12

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,...

A Thousand Years of Capitalism

Posted November 26, 2025 • 00:37:19

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...

John Updike’s Vocation

Posted November 14, 2025 • 00:38:30

We’re rediscovering John Updike in the afterlife of a great writer.