A plethora of podcasts
And more!
The August doldrums are upon us, and this year, for me, they brought along a cold. (Remember not getting colds? That was pretty nice, even if the rest of it wasn’t.) So as much as I hoped my newfound commitment to intention would allow me to bring you the best of the internet this week, sick day scrolling kept me focused on the shallowest, most banal, and largely meaningless content—but this time with a purpose, which was keeping my brain as empty as possible. I have no (ok, few) regrets.
I do have more APOCALYPSE content to offer, which is, ojalá, a sentence I’ll keep being able to write for a long time. First, here’s an interview that’s close to my heart, with my friend Mark Slutsky for his newsletter Something Good (subscribe here, it’s one of my favorites!). We talked about Mexico City, “a palimpsest of apocalypses,” and the role it’s played in my life, ideas, and book. Mark writes in his introduction:
I found Apocalypse to be a revelation, pun very much intended. Lizzie explores the terminal convulsions of civilizations as distant in human history as the Old Kingdom of Egypt and as recent as COVID and the ongoing climate crisis. But she doesn’t stop at the moment of collapse. She patiently examines the outcomes and repercussions of each “apocalypse,” showing definitively that they’re not almost never final, and sometimes even opportunities to re-create society in ways that are more equitable, but unimaginable before the crisis. Somehow, she manages to take the term “apocalypse,” with its utter, dire finality, and denature it. There’s no one, terminal apocalypse; there are many, they’ve always been part of human civilization, and the question is how to live with them.
The new book tour is podcasts, and I’ve gone on a lot of them in the past few months. Here’s a selection of conversations I’ve had, and I’ll be continuing to share upcoming episodes as they drop. You can always find an updated list on my website.
Instant Genius, BBC
Intelligence Squared, interviewed by Caroline Dodds Pennock
A Novel Idea, Northern California Public Media
The Next Big Idea Book Club Book Bite (read or listen)
About the Authors TV (excerpt)
Plus several more still to come! And here’s that Amanpour and Company interview again, for those of you seeking video content for your own August doldrums.
