The Point Podcast

The Point Podcast

The Point is a magazine founded on the suspicion that modern life is worth examining. www.thepointmag.com

Episodes

July 3, 2025 42 mins

On this episode of Selected Novels, Jess and Zach talk to the novelist and English professor Bruce Holsinger about John Williams’s Stoner.

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On this episode of Selected Novels, Jess and Zach talk to the novelist and cultural critic Joanne McNeil about J.G. Ballard’s Concrete Island.

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On the fourth episode of Selected Novels, Jess and Zach talk to the novelist and short story writer (and Point contributor) Jessi Jezewska Stevens about Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain.

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On the third episode of Selected Novels, Jess and Zach talk to the novelist Adam Ehrlich Sachs about Flaubert’s final, unfinished novel, Bouvard and Pécuchet.

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On the second episode of Selected Novels, Jess and Zach talk to Clare Sestanovich, writer and managing editor of the Drift, about Marilynne Robinson’s first novel, Housekeeping.

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On this episode of The Point podcast, Zach Fine takes a break from Selected Essays and Selected Novels to discuss another important, if less literary, topic: American football. Zach is joined by Leif Weatherby, the author of an essay just published this week in The Point about the career of Aaron Rodgers against the backdrop of U.S. empire in decline, as well as Point editors James Duesterberg and Julia Aizuss, to discuss this year...

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On this episode—our very first!—of Selected Novels, Jess and Zach talk to novelist (and writer of our 2024 advice column, Higher Gossip) Lillian Fishman about Edith Wharton’s novel Age of Innocence

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On this bonus episode of Selected Essays, Jess and Zach talk to Dayna Tortorici and Mark Krotov about their new anthology of the best of n+1’s second decade, The Intellectual Situation.

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On this episode of Selected Essays, Jess and Zach talk to George Scialabba about Michael Walzer’s "In Defense of Equality," first published in Dissent in 1973.

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On this episode of Selected Essays, Jess and Zach talk to writer and literary critic Emily Ogden about Elizabeth Hardwick’s "Living in Italy: Reflections on Bernard Berenson," first published in Partisan Review in 1960.

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On this episode of Selected Essays, Jess and Zach talk to Julian Lucas about his essay “Welcome to Armageddon,” published in Cabinet in 2017, and Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Enigma of Edward FitzGerald,” which was written in 1951.

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On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Greg Jackson about
 his essay “Within the Pretense of No Pretense,” published in issue 31 of The Point, and Hannah Arendt’s “Truth and Politics,” first published in 1967 in the New Yorker.

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On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Michael Clune about
his essay “The Anatomy of Panic,” published in Harper's last May and  recently selected for Best American Essays, and Thomas Nagel’s “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?” first published in 1974 in the Philosophical Review.

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On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Jennifer Wilson about
her New York Times Book Review essay, “The Love Letters That Spoke of Everything but Love,” and Viktor Shklovsky’s “Art as Device,” first published in 1917.

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On this bonus episode of Selected Essays, Jess and Zach talk to Point editors, Jon Baskin and Rachel Wiseman about two of their favorite essays—Charles Comey's “Against Honeymoons,” and Moeko Fujii’s “Let Them Misunderstand”—and what makes them quintessential Point pieces.

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On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Apoorva Tadepalli about Maeve Brennan’s “Lost Overtures” and her Electric Lit essay “It’s Okay to Talk to Me When I’m Trying to Read.

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On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Sumana Roy about Joseph Brodsky’s “Less Than One” and her Caravan essay “We Are All Mamata Now.”

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On the new episode of Selected Essays, Jess and Zach speak with Clare Bucknell about Charles Lamb’s “The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers”—surprisingly the first essay a guest has chosen that was written before 1900. In histories of the essay form, from Montaigne forward, you’ll often see Lamb’s name appear as one of the great “familiar” essayists, but he’s read relatively little today. Listen to hear Clare’s  reading of Lamb’s essay and...

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On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Suzy Hansen about her essay, “A Cold War Mind: American and the World,” a chapter from Suzy's book Notes on a Foreign Country, and Octavio Paz’s “The Pachucho and Other Extremes,”  the first part of his 1950 book The Labyrinth of Solitude.

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December 21, 2023 22 mins

Jess and Zach go over their favorite moments from the first season of “Selected Essays”—listen in for the highlights and then catch up in time for Season 2.

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