Best Ellen Wayland Smith Podcasts (2025)

1
Selected Essays | Ellen Wayland-Smith on Siddhartha Mukherjee 36:24

2d ago36:24

36:24

On this episode of the podcast, Jess and Zach return to Selected Essays to talk to Ellen Wayland-Smith about Siddhartha Mukherjee’s “My Father’s Body, at Rest and in Motion,” published in the New Yorker in 2018. Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here at 50% off the normal rate.By The Point Magazine

1
Selected Novels | Bruce Holsinger on Stoner 42:36

1M ago42:36

42:36

On this episode of Selected Novels, Jess and Zach talk to the novelist and English professor Bruce Holsinger about John Williams’s Stoner. Want more from The Point? Subscribe here at 50% off the normal rate.By The Point Magazine

1
Selected Novels | Joanne McNeil on J.G. Ballard 46:51

2M ago46:51

46:51

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. Want more from The Point? Subscribe here at 50% off the normal rate.By The Point Magazine

1
Selected Novels | Jessi Jezewska Stevens on Thomas Mann 44:28

3M ago44:28

44:28

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. Want more from The Point? Subscribe here at 50% off the normal rate.By The Point Magazine

1
Selected Novels | Adam Ehrlich Sachs on Gustave Flaubert 49:42

5M ago49:42

49:42

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. Want more from The Point? Subscribe here at 50% off the normal rate.By The Point Magazine

1
Selected Novels | Clare Sestanovich on Marilynne Robinson 47:17

5M ago47:17

47:17

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. Want more from The Point? Subscribe here at 50% off the normal rate.By The Point Magazine

1
The decline of Aaron Rodgers (with Leif Weatherby) 1:02:40

6M ago1:02:40

1:02:40

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 decli…

1
Selected Novels | Lillian Fishman on Edith Wharton 1:00:24

6M ago1:00:24

1:00:24

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. Want more from The Point? Subscribe here at 50% off the normal rate.By The Point Magazine

1
EP12: Ellen Wayland-Smith: The Science of Last Things 1:03:00

7M ago1:03:00

1:03:00

Ellen Wayland-Smith, Professor (Teaching) of Writing at USC, author of Oneida: From Free Love Utopia to the Well-Set Table (Picador, 2016) and The Angel in the Marketplace: Adwoman Jean Wade Rindlaub and the Selling of America (University of Chicago Press, 2020), discusses her latest book, The Science of Last Things: Essays on Deep Time and the Bou…

1
Selected Essays | The n+1 Editors on the Intellectual Situation 52:54

10M ago52:54

52:54

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. Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here at 50% off the normal rate.By The Point Magazine

1
Selected Essays | George Scialabba on Michael Walzer 36:53

1y ago36:53

36:53

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. Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here at 50% off the normal rate.By The Point Magazine

1
Selected Essays | Emily Ogden on Elizabeth Hardwick 45:44

1y ago45:44

45:44

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. Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here at 50% off the normal rate.By The Point Magazine

1
Selected Essays | Julian Lucas on Jorge Luis Borges 51:26

1y ago51:26

51:26

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. Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here at 50% off the normal rate.…

1
Selected Essays | Greg Jackson on Hannah Arendt 45:22

1y ago45:22

45:22

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. Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here at 50% off the normal rate.…

1
Selected Essays | Michael Clune on Thomas Nagel 47:28

1+ y ago47:28

47:28

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. Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here and…

1
Selected Essays | Jennifer Wilson on Viktor Shklovsky 36:22

1+ y ago36:22

36:22

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. Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here and use the coupon code 7POD50 at checkout for 50% off.…

1
Selected Essays | Bonus Episode with Jon Baskin and Rachel Wiseman 52:48

1+ y ago52:48

52:48

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.By The Point Magazine

1
Selected Essays | Apoorva Tadepalli on Maeve Brennan 35:42

1+ y ago35:42

35:42

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.”By The Point Magazine

1
Selected Essays | Sumana Roy on Joseph Brodsky 42:50

1+ y ago42:50

42:50

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.” Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here and use the coupon code 7POD50 at checkout for 50% off.By The Point Magazine

1
Selected Essays | Clare Bucknell on Charles Lamb 40:58

1+ y ago40:58

40:58

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 h…

1
Selected Essays | Suzy Hansen on Octavio Paz 42:14

1+ y ago42:14

42:14

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. Craving more essays? Subscribe to The Point here …

1
Selected Essays | Top 5 of Season 1 22:41

1+ y ago22:41

22:41

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.By The Point Magazine

1
Selected Essays | Garth Greenwell on Martha Nussbaum 52:46

2y ago52:46

52:46

On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Garth Greenwell about his essay “A Moral Education: In Praise of Filth,” which was published in The Yale Review in 2023 and Martha Nussbaum’s "Flawed Crystals: James's The Golden Bowl and Literature as Moral Philosophy," which originally appeared in the journal New Literary History in 19…

1
EP11: USC Writing Program: Chatting about ChatGPT 1:02:05

2y ago1:02:05

1:02:05

Our Writing Program colleagues discuss AI, ChatGPT, and emerging Large Language Models, including their potentials and pitfalls for the doing and teaching writing and rhetoric, as well as the relation to writing program administration. This episode, like Episode 8 last year with Jonathan Alexander, is part of the 4th annual “The Big Rhetorical Podc…

1
Selected Essays | Lauren Oyler on Elif Batuman 51:12

2y ago51:12

51:12

On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Jess and Zach talk with Lauren Oyler about her essay “Desperately Seeking Sebald,” which was published in Harper’s in 2021 and Elif Batuman’s “The Murder of Leo Tolstoy,” which was also published in Harper's in 2009 and then later collected in her book The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People…

1
Selected Essays | Ryan Ruby on Susan Sontag 37:40

2y ago37:40

37:40

On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Ryan Ruby joins us to discuss Susan Sontag’s “Approaching Artaud” and his own essay “Dig It Up Again,” which was written for the 100th anniversary of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and published last year by Poetry magazine.By The Point Magazine

1
Selected Essays | Siri Hustvedt on Simone Weil 1:00:41

2y ago1:00:41

1:00:41

On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Siri Hustvedt joins us to discuss Simone Weil’s “Human Personality” and her own essay “Scapegoat,” which appears in her recent collection Mothers, Fathers, and Others (2021).By The Point Magazine

1
Selected Essays | Carina del Valle Schorske on Samuel Delany 52:27

2y ago52:27

52:27

On this episode of “Selected Essays,” Carina del Valle Schorske joins us to discuss Samuel Delany's 1996 essay “Times Square Blue” and her 2019 essay “The Ladder Up: A Restless History of Washington Heights,” which was published in the Virginia Quarterly Review. (For more on Delany, check out this recent profile in the New Yorker by Julian Lucas.)…

1
Selected Essays | Leo Robson & Rosa Lyster on Martin Amis 57:57

2y ago57:57

57:57

On this episode of The Point podcast series “Selected Essays,” Leo Robson and Rosa Lyster join us to discuss two essays by Martin Amis: “In Praise of Pritchett,” which appeared in the London Review of Books in 1980, and “The American Eagle,” an essay about Saul Bellow published in The Atlantic in 1995.…

1
Selected Essays | Leslie Jamison on Charles D’Ambrosio 1:02:50

2y ago1:02:50

1:02:50

On this episode of The Point podcast series “Selected Essays,” Leslie Jamison joins us to discuss Charles D’Ambrosio’s 2002 essay “Documents” and her essay “The Empathy Exams,” which appeared in The Believer in 2014 and was the title of her first collection.By The Point Magazine

1
Selected Essays | Adam Shatz on James Baldwin 53:39

2y ago53:39

53:39

On this episode of The Point podcast series “Selected Essays,” Jess Swoboda and Zach Fine talk to the writer Adam Shatz about James Baldwin's essay “Alas, Poor Richard” (1961), a eulogy of sorts for Richard Wright, and Adam's new book, Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical Imagination (Verso 2023), which gathers a series of intellectual p…

1
Selected Essays | Merve Emre & Tobi Haslett on Susan Sontag (Bonus Episode!) 41:31

2y ago41:31

41:31

On this bonus episode of “Selected Essays,” Merve Emre and Tobi Haslett discuss the great American essayists Elizabeth Hardwick and Susan Sontag. Merve and Tobi revisit their own essays about Hardwick and Sontag—published in The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker—and consider why it’s hard to imagine critics like them …

1
Selected Essays | Anne Fadiman on Virginia Woolf 54:42

2+ y ago54:42

54:42

On this episode of The Point podcast series “Selected Essays,” Jess Swoboda and Zach Fine talk to the writer Anne Fadiman about Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth” (1942) and Anne’s essay from the April 2023 issue of Harper’s, “Frog”—a eulogy of sorts for the family frog, Bunky, which was partially inspired by Woolf’s meditation on a moth flut…

1
EP10: Margherita Long: A Flow Connecting Everything 55:29

2+ y ago55:29

55:29

Margherita Long, Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of California, Irvine, where she teaches courses on Japanese feminism, the modern novel, war narratives and peace activism, and eco-semiotics, discusses the introduction to her manuscript Care, Kin, Crackup: Fukushima and the Intrusion of Gaia. In 2018 sh…

1
Why everything is hyperpolitical now (with Anton Jäger) 1:08:19

2+ y ago1:08:19

1:08:19

On this episode of The Point Podcast, Jonny Thakkar talks to our resident anatomist of the global political zeitgeist: Anton Jäger, a historian of political thought at the Catholic University of Leuven. Anton joins us to discuss his essay for issue 29, “Everything Is Hyperpolitical,” an ambitious attempt at historicizing our hyperpolitical present,…

1
Selected Essays | Christian Lorentzen on George Trow 59:17

2+ y ago59:17

59:17

On this episode of The Point podcast, we’re introducing a new series called “Selected Essays”—about essays you should read but probably haven’t. Jess Swoboda and Zach Fine talk to the critic Christian Lorentzen about George Trow’s “Within the Context of No Context,” an essay that took up almost an entire issue of the New Yorker in 1980, and they re…

1
Stanley Cavell's style (with Lola Seaton) 1:07:15

2+ y ago1:07:15

1:07:15

On this episode of The Point podcast, Jon Baskin talks to a fellow long-suffering Cavellian: the writer and New Left Review editor Lola Seaton. Lola joins us to discuss her essay for issue 28 of The Point, “The Sound Makes All the Difference,” on her relationship to Stanley Cavell’s unmistakable and infectious—if sometimes infuriating—writing style…

1
National conservatism after the midterms (with James Pogue and Joey Keegin) 1:10:47

2+ y ago1:10:47

1:10:47

The Point podcast is back after a long hiatus with an episode about the 2022 midterms. Point editors Jon Baskin and Joey Keegin are joined by the journalist and native Ohioan James Pogue to debrief two key elections—JD Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona. What will Vance's victory—and Master's defeat—mean for the National Conservative moveme…

1
EP9: Nathan Stormer: Rhetoric by Accident 59:46

3y ago59:46

59:46

Nathan Stormer, Professor of Rhetoric in the Communication and Journalism Department at the University of Maine, discusses with us his article “Rhetoric by Accident,” published in Volume 53.4 of the journal Philosophy & Rhetoric. Here, he articulates a view of accidents that shape rhetorical work, but which themselves are not purposive, motive-driv…

1
EP8: Jonathan Alexander: Writing and Desire 1:00:05

3y ago1:00:05

1:00:05

Jonathan Alexander, Chancellor's Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, director of the Humanities Core Program, and author, co-author, or co-editor of 22 books, discusses his new book, Writing and Desire: Queer Ways of Composing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023). In this episode we discuss both the introduction to his b…

1
EP7: Susan Jarratt: A Discussion On Writing and Editing 56:12

3+ y ago56:12

56:12

Susan Jarratt, Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature at UC Irvine, shares her rich experience as a writer and scholar, and also as an editor of Rhetoric Society Quarterly, the official journal of the "Rhetoric Society of America," which will be of great value to those of us working in rhetoric, composition, and related fields, whether in retu…

1
EP6: Daniel M. Gross: Being-Moved: Rhetoric as the Art of Listening 59:47

3+ y ago59:47

59:47

Daniel M. Gross, Professor of English at UC Irvine, Campus Writing and Communication Coordinator, and Director of the Center for Excellence in Writing and Communication, joins us to discuss his newest book, Being-Moved: Rhetoric as the Art of Listening (University of California Press, 2020). If rhetoric is the art of speaking, who is listening? In …

1
Afterthoughts - Issue 25: Moralism, Memory and the Political Novel, with Ryan Ruby and Becca Rothfeld 1:33:14

4y ago1:33:14

1:33:14

Afterthoughts is a discussion series from The Point where our editors talk to writers and readers about new issues of the magazine. On this episode, a recording of a Zoom event held on November 1st, Jon and Rachel talk to literary critic Ryan Ruby (author of “Resisting Oblivion” in issue 25) and critic and Point editor Becca Rothfeld (author of “Sa…

1
EP5: Lynne Huffer: Foucault’s Strange Eros and Deleuzian Desire 1:21:30

4y ago1:21:30

1:21:30

In this episode Lynne Huffer, Professor of WGSS at Emory University, discusses Foucault’s Strange Eros (2020), the third book in her trilogy on Foucault. Reading Foucault as a Sapphic poet who makes “cuts” in the archive, Huffer argues that in the West “eros is to sexuality as unreason is to madness,” or, in other words, that eros forms an elusive …

1
Afterthoughts - Issue 24 1:08:29

4+ y ago1:08:29

1:08:29

Afterthoughts is a discussion series from The Point where our editors talk to writers and readers about new issues of the magazine. On this episode, Rachel, Jon and Joey are joined by Michelle Taylor and Daniel Silver to discuss their essays in issue 24.Essays discussed in this episode:“The Logic of the Like” by Daniel Silver: https://thepointmag.c…

1
EP4: Stuart Murray: In Hearkening the Dead: A Rhetorical Disaffirmation of Biopolitics 1:37:33

4+ y ago1:37:33

1:37:33

Stuart Murray, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Rhetoric and Ethics in the Department of English Language and Literature at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, shares his talk with us, “In Hearkening the Dead: A Rhetorical Disaffirmation of Biopolitics,” which he describes as follows: Foucault defines biopolitics as the differential state …

1
EP3: Movement, Affect, Sensation: Discussing Brian Massumi’s Experimental Writing 1:04:03

4+ y ago1:04:03

1:04:03

In this episode we discuss Brian Massumi’s “Concrete Is as Concrete Doesn’t,” the introduction to his book Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (2005). Among the (un)timely topics we explore are the nature of embodied movement as it affects and effects our subject positions, and how those positions can seem “gridlocked” when we ret…

1
EP2: Vorris Nunley: Incivility, AOC, and the Limits of Persuasion (?) 53:41

4+ y ago53:41

53:41

Vorris Nunley, Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside, discusses with USC and UCI faculty a talk entitled “Re-Doing Rhetoric: Incivility, AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and the Limits of Persuasion (?).” Here, he discusses AOC’s response to Representative Ted Yoho referring to her as a b***h to think with and thro…

1
EP1: Abraham Weil: The Mattering of Black Trans* Political Life 1:06:47

4+ y ago1:06:47

1:06:47

Abraham Weil, Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at California State University, Long Beach, discusses with USC faculty his article "Trans*versal Animacies and the Mattering of Black Trans* Political Life," published in Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities (Volume 22, 2017), and its applications for the teachin…

1
Rather Be Reading, Episode 3: Bad Desires 45:13

7y ago45:13

45:13

On Episode 3 of Rather Be Reading, Anastasia Berg interviews Andrea Long Chu about her debut essay in n+1 “On Liking Women” and the problem with trying to get our desires to conform to our political principles (1:03). Then Rachel Rosenfelt, the founding editor of the New Inquiry and new publisher of the New Republic, joins us to talk about the hist…

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