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Think About It
Think About It May 20, 2023

Cleo McNelly Kearns on Mark Twain’s "Huckleberry Finn"

Book Talk 60

Cleo McNelly Kearns

Hosted by Uli Baer
Celebrated, censored, canceled: Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn cannot be avoided. William Faulkner called Twain “the father of American literature.” Toni Morrison explained that “the brilliance of Adventures of …

Think About It

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A podcast featuring interviews with authors and thought leaders conduced by Uli Baer.

Uli Baer teaches literature and photography as University Professor at New York University. A recipient of Guggenheim, Getty and Humboldt awards, in addition to hosting "Think About It” he hosts (with Caroline Weber) the podcast "The Proust Questionnaire” and is Editorial Director at Warbler Press. Email ucb1@nyu.edu; Twitter @UliBaer.

Think About It May 2, 2023

Campus Misinformation with Bradford Vivian

Free Speech 69

Bradford Vivian

Hosted by Uli Baer
State censorship and cancel culture, trigger warnings and safe spaces, pseudoscience, First Amendment hardball, as well as orthodoxy and groupthink: universities remain a site for important battles in the culture …
Think About It May 1, 2023

Reading the Classics with Louis Petrich

Book Talk 59

Louis Petrich

Hosted by Uli Baer
Why read the Classics, and how to do it best? Louis Petrich teaches at St. John’s College, the third-oldest college and “the nation's most contrarian college” (according to the New …
Think About It March 17, 2023

Vivian Gornick on Emma Goldman

Book Talk 58

Vivian Gornick

Hosted by Uli Baer
What Is to Be Done? In her luminous biography Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life (Yale UP, 2011), Vivian Gornick brings us back to this question, originally made …
Think About It January 30, 2023

Anne Fernald and Rajgopal Saikumar on Virginia Woolf's "Three Guineas" (1938)

Book Talk 57

Anne Fernald and Rajgopal Saikumar

Hosted by Uli Baer
Virginia Woolf’s 1938 provocative and polemical essay Three Guineas presents the iconic writer’s views on war, women, and the way the patriarchy at home oppresses women in ways that resemble …
Think About It January 6, 2023

What is a "Great Book?": A Discussion with Roosevelt Montás

Book Talk 56

Roosevelt Montás

Hosted by Uli Baer
Roosevelt Montás is Senior Lecturer in American Studies and English at Columbia University. A specialist in Antebellum American literature and culture and in American citizenship, he focuses mainly on the …
Think About It September 12, 2022

Courtney B. Hodrick and Amir Eshel on Hannah Arendt's "Rachel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman"

Book Talk 55

Courtney Blair Hodrick and Amir Eshel

Hosted by Uli Baer
Hannah Arendt said that she had one life-long “best friend.” That was Rachel Varnhagen, a Jewish woman who lived in Enlightenment-era Berlin around 1800 and died 73 years before Arendt …
Think About It August 2, 2022

Anne Fernald on Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway"

Book Talk 54

Anne Fernald

Hosted by Uli Baer
Halfway through Mrs Dalloway, Septimus Smith mutters to himself: "Communication is health; communication is happiness, communication.” It’s easy to write off his message that communication is vital for human existence …
Think About It June 30, 2022

Paul Edwards on Toni Morrison's "Playing in the Dark"

Book Talk 53

Paul Edwards

Hosted by Uli Baer
Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination is a must-read for anyone interested in American literature and in the formation of American identity in general. In …
Think About It May 16, 2022

Linda Patterson Miller on Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises"

Book Talk 52

Linda Patterson Miller

Hosted by Uli Baer
When first published in 1926, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises changed American literature forever. Hemingway follows a disillusioned group of expats in post-World War I Europe whose relationships unravel …
Think About It April 18, 2022

Ardythe Ashley on Oscar Wilde

Book Talk 51

Ardythe Ashley

Hosted by Uli Baer
Secretly his unconscious body, still flickering with life, is spirited away by to an island monastery in the Venetian lagoon where he recovers his health and joie de vivre. From …
Think About It January 11, 2022

John Waters on James Joyce's "Dubliners"

John Waters

Hosted by Uli Baer
James Joyce’s 1914 collection of fifteen short stories, Dubliners, is righty considered one of the greatest literary achievements of Western modernity. But what is so original about these stories that …
Think About It December 6, 2021

“The Good Life” with Dora Zhang

Book Talk 49

Dora Zhang

Hosted by Uli Baer
“The good life” and “the American Dream “remain powerful animating principles in popular culture, politics, and also our individual psyches. I spoke with Professor Dora Zhang at the University of …
Think About It November 19, 2021

Charlie Louth on Rainer Maria Rilke

Charlie Louth

Hosted by Uli Baer
Charlie Louth’s illuminating recent book, Rilke: The Life of the Work (Oxford University Press, 2021) examines why Rilke’s poems have exercised such preternatural attraction for now several generations of readers …
Think About It September 1, 2021

Wendy Lee on Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice"

Great Books Series

Wendy Lee

Hosted by Uli Baer
Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice delights, charms and entrances reader since its anonymous publication in 1813. The Bennett sisters need to marry rich, for otherwise they'll fall into poverty …
Think About It May 27, 2021

Marlene Daut on the Haitian Revolution in Literature

Great Books Series

Marlene Daut

Hosted by Uli Baer
To learn more about the Haitian Revolution in fiction, I spoke with Professor Marlene Daut specialized in pre-20th-century Caribbean, African American, and French colonial literary and historical studies. Her first …
Think About It May 3, 2021

Paul Mendes-Flohr on Martin Buber's "I and Thou"

Great Books Series

Paul Mendes-Flohr

Hosted by Uli Baer
Today we talk a lot about a need for genuine dialogue, and for conversations across partisan divides and differences. What is a true, authentic, and meaningful conversation? Martin Buber's landmark …
Think About It March 18, 2021

Samantha Hill on Hannah Arendt

Great Books Series

Samantha Hill

Hosted by Uli Baer
Hannah Arendt's 1967 essay on "Truth and Politics" centers on the uneasy relation between truth-telling and politics. Lying has always been part of politics, Arendt says, but something shifts with …
Think About It February 19, 2021

Mark Wunderlich on Rainer Maria Rilke

Great Books Series

Mark Wunderlich

Hosted by Uli Baer
"Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the order of angels?" This angsty cry opens poet Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies -- one of the greatest poetic masterpieces …
Think About It January 29, 2021

Rafael Walker on Kate Chopin's "The Awakening"

Great Books Series

Rafael Walker

Hosted by Uli Baer
Kate Chopin's absorbing 1899 novel The Awakening tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a married woman in New Orleans who questions her life choices, and seeks something else. What does …