<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674271289">Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope</a> is Brandon Terry&#8217;s long-awaited personal and philosophical case for struggle and optimism in the long civil rights movement in our country. It’s a map of our minds and our memories, a catalog of our judgments and feelings around an epic era in American history that isn&#8217;t over. I take it as a brave and deeply thoughtful response to the charge leveled by the great W.E.B. Du Bois that the real plot of the civil rights story got lost or suppressed long ago.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="819" height="1024" src="https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Brandon-Terry-819x1024.png" alt="" class="wp-image-36902" style="width:566px;height:auto" srcset="https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Brandon-Terry-819x1024.png 819w, https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Brandon-Terry-240x300.png 240w, https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Brandon-Terry-768x960.png 768w, https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Brandon-Terry.png 960w" sizes="(max-width: 819px) 100vw, 819px" /></figure></div>


Brandon Terry.




The post <a href="https://radioopensource.org/shattered-dreams-infinite-hope/">Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope</a> appeared first on <a href="https://radioopensource.org">Open Source with Christopher Lydon</a>.

<description>&lt;p&gt;Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope is Brandon Terry&amp;#8217;s long-awaited personal and philosophical case for struggle and optimism in the long civil rights movement in our country. It’s a map of our minds and our memories, a ... &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The post &lt;a href="https://radioopensource.org/shattered-dreams-infinite-hope/"&gt;Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope&lt;/a&gt; appeared first on &lt;a href="https://radioopensource.org"&gt;Open Source with Christopher Lydon&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>

Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope is Brandon Terry’s long-awaited personal and philosophical case for struggle and optimism in the long civil rights movement in our country. It’s a map of our minds and our memories, a ...

Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope

What is breaking down or what&#8217;s broken when the governor of Illinois says he&#8217;s being invaded by the National Guard of Texas under President Trump&#8217;s orders, or when the president is dueling with Oregon and California over policing a public safety crisis that mostly disappeared five years ago in Portland, Oregon? What does it tell us that a senior federal judge in Boston declared in a formal opinion last week that the Trump team is bent on crushing free speech by wayward prosecutions, if only for their power to chill and intimidate? 


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full is-resized"><img decoding="async" width="435" height="548" src="https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/gertner.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-36850" style="width:340px;height:auto" srcset="https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/gertner.jpg 435w, https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/gertner-238x300.jpg 238w" sizes="(max-width: 435px) 100vw, 435px" /></figure></div>


Nancy Gertner.



The questions keep coming. Nancy Gertner is our guest to consider them. She&#8217;s overqualified by a celebrated career as a trial lawyer, then as a federal judge, and now retired from the court as a private practitioner again, independent and outspoken about a world that she knows intimately.
The post <a href="https://radioopensource.org/stress-testing-the-rule-of-law/">Stress-Testing the Rule of Law</a> appeared first on <a href="https://radioopensource.org">Open Source with Christopher Lydon</a>.

<description>&lt;p&gt;What is breaking down or what&amp;#8217;s broken when the governor of Illinois says he&amp;#8217;s being invaded by the National Guard of Texas under President Trump&amp;#8217;s orders, or when the president is dueling with Oregon and ... &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The post &lt;a href="https://radioopensource.org/stress-testing-the-rule-of-law/"&gt;Stress-Testing the Rule of Law&lt;/a&gt; appeared first on &lt;a href="https://radioopensource.org"&gt;Open Source with Christopher Lydon&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>

What is breaking down or what’s broken when the governor of Illinois says he’s being invaded by the National Guard of Texas under President Trump’s orders, or when the president is dueling with Oregon and ...

Stress-Testing the Rule of Law

Call this Mrs. Dalloway&#8217;s podcast. We&#8217;re reading classic fiction from a century ago for light on the strangeness of the world in our day, or maybe just for relief reading a great old book. The dazzling young critic Merve Emre is our guest and our guide to Virginia Woolf&#8217;s modernist masterpiece, Mrs.Dalloway, from 1925. The novel is a day in the life, or a slideshow in the mind, of a rich, ruling class lady in London, volubly in love with life, out shopping for flowers on Bond Street on a morning in June for a party she&#8217;ll be giving at home that evening. 


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" width="826" height="1024" src="https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Merve-826x1024.webp" alt="" class="wp-image-36818" style="width:334px;height:auto" srcset="https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Merve-826x1024.webp 826w, https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Merve-242x300.webp 242w, https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Merve-768x952.webp 768w, https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Merve.webp 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 826px) 100vw, 826px" /></figure></div>


Merve Emre.



But Mrs. Dalloway is also a novel of ruin alongside rapture. A second major character, Septimus Smith, is a veteran of World War I. Broken by combat and shell shock, considering suicide because, in his madness, he supposes that only killing himself would allow him to honor life as it should be lived. 
The post <a href="https://radioopensource.org/mrs-dalloway-at-100/">Mrs. Dalloway at 100</a> appeared first on <a href="https://radioopensource.org">Open Source with Christopher Lydon</a>.

<description>&lt;p&gt;Call this Mrs. Dalloway&amp;#8217;s podcast. We&amp;#8217;re reading classic fiction from a century ago for light on the strangeness of the world in our day, or maybe just for relief reading a great old book. The ... &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The post &lt;a href="https://radioopensource.org/mrs-dalloway-at-100/"&gt;Mrs. Dalloway at 100&lt;/a&gt; appeared first on &lt;a href="https://radioopensource.org"&gt;Open Source with Christopher Lydon&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>

Call this Mrs. Dalloway’s podcast. We’re reading classic fiction from a century ago for light on the strangeness of the world in our day, or maybe just for relief reading a great old book. The ...

Mrs. Dalloway at 100

We&#8217;re with the cultural historian Robin D.G. Kelly at UCLA, who has the nerve to ask: where have our thinkers gone in Trump time? Not the experts or the influencers, but the grander minds who might tell us where our country went.



<figure class="wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex">
<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="864" height="485" data-id="29107" src="https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/BaldwinnoBorders.png" alt="" class="wp-image-29107" srcset="https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/BaldwinnoBorders.png 864w, https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/BaldwinnoBorders-300x168.png 300w, https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/BaldwinnoBorders-768x431.png 768w, https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/BaldwinnoBorders-60x34.png 60w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="864" height="485" data-id="35996" src="https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Noam-OS-Dimensions.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-35996" srcset="https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Noam-OS-Dimensions.jpg 864w, https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Noam-OS-Dimensions-300x168.jpg 300w, https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Noam-OS-Dimensions-768x431.jpg 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" /></figure>
</figure>



 James Baldwin and Noam Chomsky (by Susan Coyne).



Robin hooked us with his piece in the <a href="https://www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-responsibility-of-intellectuals-in-the-age-of-fascism-and-genocide/">Boston Review </a>on &#8220;The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Fascism and Genocide.&#8221; Whose job is it to tell us the truth in what can feel like a sort of waking nightmare or a revolution going backward? Will we ever see Benjamin Franklin&#8217;s common-sense republic again? Or put it another way: where&#8217;s Noam Chomsky, or James Baldwin for that matter? Will we ever again meet an unflinching truth-teller about our real condition in this autumn of 2025?
The post <a href="https://radioopensource.org/where-are-the-intellectuals/">Where Are the Intellectuals?</a> appeared first on <a href="https://radioopensource.org">Open Source with Christopher Lydon</a>.

<description>&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#8217;re with the cultural historian Robin D.G. Kelly at UCLA, who has the nerve to ask: where have our thinkers gone in Trump time? Not the experts or the influencers, but the grander minds who ... &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The post &lt;a href="https://radioopensource.org/where-are-the-intellectuals/"&gt;Where Are the Intellectuals?&lt;/a&gt; appeared first on &lt;a href="https://radioopensource.org"&gt;Open Source with Christopher Lydon&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>

We’re with the cultural historian Robin D.G. Kelly at UCLA, who has the nerve to ask: where have our thinkers gone in Trump time? Not the experts or the influencers, but the grander minds who ...

Where Are the Intellectuals?

We&#8217;re in the fourth summer of hot warfare between Russia and Ukraine. It&#8217;s a cruel and deadly war that doesn&#8217;t know how to stop. 


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="768" height="768" src="https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AL.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-36782" srcset="https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AL.jpg 768w, https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AL-300x300.jpg 300w, https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AL-150x150.jpg 150w, https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AL-120x120.jpg 120w, https://radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/AL-65x65.jpg 65w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" /></figure></div>


Anatol Lieven.



Our guest to offer a helping hand is the journalist and analyst that I&#8217;ve leaned on heavily, Anatol Lievin, an esteemed correspondent for the Financial Times in London, now at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington, with his eyes on Eurasia in general.
The post <a href="https://radioopensource.org/russia-and-ukraine-in-2025/">Russia and Ukraine in 2025</a> appeared first on <a href="https://radioopensource.org">Open Source with Christopher Lydon</a>.

<description>&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#8217;re in the fourth summer of hot warfare between Russia and Ukraine. It&amp;#8217;s a cruel and deadly war that doesn&amp;#8217;t know how to stop. Anatol Lieven. Our guest to offer a helping hand is the ... &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The post &lt;a href="https://radioopensource.org/russia-and-ukraine-in-2025/"&gt;Russia and Ukraine in 2025&lt;/a&gt; appeared first on &lt;a href="https://radioopensource.org"&gt;Open Source with Christopher Lydon&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>

We’re in the fourth summer of hot warfare between Russia and Ukraine. It’s a cruel and deadly war that doesn’t know how to stop. Anatol Lieven. Our guest to offer a helping hand is the ...

Russia and Ukraine in 2025

Christopher Lydon in conversation on arts, ideas and politics

Open Source with Christopher Lydon

Details

Recent Episodes