Every house is haunted. In each episode of Family Ghosts, we investigate the true story behind a mysterious figure whose legend has followed a family for generations. Grandmothers who were secretly jewel smugglers, uncles who led double lives, siblings who vanished without a trace, and other ghostly characters who cast shadows over our lives in ways that might not be immediately obvious. We are all formed in part by our familial collections of secrets, intrigues, and myths. By engaging with ...
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On this episode of The Point podcast series “Selected Essays,” Jess Swoboda and Zach Fine talk to the writer Adam Shatz about James Baldwin's essay “Alas, Poor Richard” (1961), a eulogy of sorts for Richard Wright, and Adam's new book, Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical Imagination (Verso 2023), which gathers a series of intellectual portraits of great thinkers and writers such as Wright, Claude-Levi Strauss, Chester Himes, Jacques Derrida, Fouad Ajami and Edward Said.
Chapters
1. Selected Essays | Adam Shatz on James Baldwin (00:00:00)
2. What is "Alas, Poor Richard" about? (00:01:53)
3. Adam reads a passage from "Alas, Poor Richard" (00:08:13)
4. Is success a curse? (00:09:55)
5. The foundation for the essay (00:13:10)
6. Who is the imagined audience? (00:16:23)
7. God or father figure? (00:20:32)
8. Wright and Baldwin's interpersonal conflict (00:29:30)
9. Resurgence of interest in Wright? (00:35:57)
10. Dissecting the title (00:39:40)
11. A riveting portrait (00:43:58)
12. Why Adam likes the essay form (00:46:24)
13. Aesthetics and politics (00:49:09)
41 episodes