Show Notes
Kate Wolf is joined by two of today's finest film critics to discuss the current state of Hollywood—including the sale of Warner Brothers Discovery—the art of writing about movies, and some of the year's best films. Up first is critic A.S. Hamrah, author of two new books: Last Week In End Times Cinema, which compiles the relentless follies of the film industry from March of 2024 to 2025 in an annals of ever-winnowing corporate conglomeration and AI speculation, and Algorithm of the Night: Film Writing 2019-2025. Next, Melissa Anderson discusses her latest book, The Hunger: Film Writing 2012-2024. A self-proclaimed "acteurist" whose attention often centers on a film's star rather than its plot, Anderson's criticism engages with movies on an affective level, charting her own pleasure, desire, and occasional disgust. Here she talks about grounding her writing in queer and feminist politics and how her ardent cinephilia is born of a sense of open-minded curiosity, hopefulness, and the willingness to be transported.
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Kate Wolf and Eric Newman are joined by the director and cinematographer, David Greaves, and his daughter, producer Liani Greaves, to speak about their new documentary, Once Upon a Time in Harlem. Originally conceived by David's father, the filmmaker William Greaves, Once Upon a Time in Harlem was shot in 1972 at a party that Willian engineered with the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance. During the span of a long afternoon, this extraordinary group reflected on – and argued about – their politics, aesthetics, ambitions, and history. Greaves captured a crucial moment when the Renaissance's cultural contributions were at risk of being overshadowed. But through interviews with the artists Romare Bearden and Aaron Douglas, the writers Arna Bontemps and Richard Bruce Nugent, and the activist Regina Andrews, among many others, he offered an intimate, firsthand account of the generation that transformed American art and literature at the beginning of the twentieth century. Unfinished at the time of Greaves death in 2014, David and Liani have since completed the film and recovered a vital chapter of American cultural history, which illuminates both the struggles and questions of the Harlem Renaissance and the way they continue to resonate today.
Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher are joined by Palestinian American poet, translator and physician Fady Joudah to discuss his latest book, Exhibit G. The collection, a nominee for the National Book Award in Poetry, brings together poetry, prose, and photographs on the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In this bold and illuminating work, Joudah wrestles with language, perspective, as well as the innate tensions within the writing itself: How to document a genocide in English, the language of the oppressor? How to resist what Joudah calls the "museumification" of the Palestinian people? And how can we challenge ourselves to confront immense suffering for what it is? Joudah discusses his work as a writer and a doctor, how he wants the book to be read, and the persistence of Palestinian poetry.
In this special chat episode, Medaya Ocher, Eric Newman, and Kate Wolf use Catherine Liu's new book Traumatized to dive into the political uses and pitfalls of trauma. Liu argues that the elite professional class has fully absorbed the trauma narrative; the story of an individual's suffering and recovery courses through the culture on social and mass media not as a tool for liberation, but as a means of keeping the status quo. In turning our gaze away from class struggle, the discourse of trauma on the mainstream left has largely remained deaf to questions of economic equality. Medaya, Eric, and Kate walk through Liu's argument, debating everything from the sins of Betty Frieidan and Oprah Winfrey to true crime and celebrity documentaries. Have we all become too traumatized to effectively resist in the present?
The writer and housing policy advocate Samuel Stein joins Kate Wolf to speak about his new book, A Right to Housing? It lays out how housing could indeed become a human right, accessible to all, through things like the decommodification of the real estate market, the construction of—and conversion to—more social housing, federal regulation, and continued tenant organizing. The second half of the book, meanwhile, contends with just how distant many of these steps seem in the present, and even throughout history. Stein talks about the oversimplification of YIMBY versus NIMBY, the fix against public housing from its inception, how cities are contending (or not) with climate change, and the small victories that keep activists going in the face of an uncertain future.
Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher speak to Astra Taylor and Naomi Klein about their new book, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World. A remarkably up to date analysis of our present moment of "messianic" wars in the Middle East and Silicon Valley's go-for broke investment in AI and space travel, the book looks at the shared narrative that unites a coalition of evangelical Christians, tech bros, the Trump administration and right-wing governments across the world. In all of these factions, Klein and Taylor identify a core belief: the apocalypse is actually desirable. Rather than try to solve the very real threats of our time, fallout would be beneficial for the powerful, who could take shelter in their bunkers, or on their islands, or on Mars. Taylor and Klein, however, find hope in the already growing movement against AI data centers, the weakening support of Trump's base, and the mayoral run of Zohran Mamadani, whose joyful campaign they call the antithesis of fascism.