Open Source with Christopher Lydon

Latest Episodes
Trump at War
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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