Open Source with Christopher Lydon

Open Source with Christopher Lydon


Latest Episodes

Trump at War
June 26, 2025

Were in the Orwellian aftermath of what President Trump has called his 12-day war in the Middle East. Its over, he proclaimed on Monday. Congratulations world, he said on his Truth Social site, i

Divided, Defensive Democracy
June 19, 2025

This week, its a conversation on the democracy question and the embattled fate of our own, beset as it is from within. Philosopher-historian Danielle Allen is our guest examiner of the cranky America

The Last Supper
June 05, 2025

Were with the writer Paul Elie, recalling the moment when popular culture came to sound like public prayer. There was Madonna in 1989, singing her number one hit Like a Prayer. The song is a ...

Capitalism and Its Critics
May 15, 2025

Were staring down the several crises in our economyand recalling the grand old joke that its easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. John Cassidy. John Cassidy of The ...

Trade, Trumped
May 08, 2025

Were staring down the global trade war with Mark Blyth at Brown University. He is the Peoples Economist from Scotland, who takes us home to his village pub in Dundee every once in a while ...

Gatsby at 100: Fitzgerald’s Warning about Trumpism
May 01, 2025

We have a key, finally, to the mystery of Donald Trump and where he came from. He was born almost exactly 100 years ago in the imagination of the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. What he ...

Miracles and Wonder
April 17, 2025

Were considering the Jesus story with the historian Elaine Pagels. Her new book is a marvel, crowning a lifetime of bestselling scholarship, sifting the sources and retuning the narrative in and arou

Trump vs. Harvard
April 10, 2025

Were tracking President Trumps squeeze on higher education, and the argument in the Ivy League: whether or not to make a fight of it. First, Columbia surrendered under a Trump threat to cut $400 mil

From Social to Spiritual Media
March 27, 2025

Were reading our way out of a ruined time with the model reader, Patricia Lockwood. Shes the poet laureate of the internet, for starters. Shes a big-league literary critic, master of social media a

A New World
March 13, 2025

Were looking for our American place in what can feel like a new world order, with Stephen Walt, our first and favorite so-called realist in the foreign policy gamerealists being the people who steer