Josephine Livingstone's guest appearances

Josephine Livingstone

The Hauenstein Center Collection

Be Reel

Tom Hanks

Emily Dickinson

David Brooks

Saul Austerlitz

James Joyce

John Singleton

Christy Coleman

Caitlin Zaloom

Ron White

Lynn Shelton

Barbra Streisand

Yorgos Lanthimos

Nick White

Ronald Reagan

Gordon Parks

OwlTail

This week we hear from Jo Livingstone, the culture staff writer at The New Republic and a recent PhD in English at New York University. I mention Jo Livingstone’s PhD because that’s a major topic of our conversation. Livingstone’s writing at The New Republic has the kind of agile, supple thinking and prose you’d want from a critic who has her thumb on the pulse of culture, but she blends that style of criticism with the erudition, the specialized knowledge, of a scholar. You can spot this blend in Livingstone’s recent writing on white nationalists, whose attempt to reach back into a kind of imagined and popularized medieval past Livingstone is eager and more than able to critique. Throughout our conversation, Jo and I discuss what it took for her to make the jump from the academy to the world of cultural criticism and magazine writing. We talk a lot about what makes a good academic writer and a good cultural critic. We talk, as well, about the plight of adjunct faculty and the ways in which the distinction between scholarship and cultural criticism seems to be blurring.

This week we hear from Jo Livingstone, the culture staff writer at The New Republic and a recent PhD in English at New York University. I mention Jo Livingstone’s PhD because that’s a major topic of our conversation. Livingstone’s writing at The New Republic has the kind of agile, supple thinking and prose you’d want from a critic who has her thumb on the pulse of culture, but she blends that style of criticism with the erudition, the specialized knowledge, of a scholar. You can spot this blend in Livingstone’s recent writing on white nationalists, whose attempt to reach back into a kind of imagined and popularized medieval past Livingstone is eager and more than able to critique. Throughout our conversation, Jo and I discuss what it took for her to make the jump from the academy to the world of cultural criticism and magazine writing. We talk a lot about what makes a good academic writer and a good cultural critic. We talk, as well, about the plight of adjunct faculty and the ways in which the distinction between scholarship and cultural criticism seems to be blurring.

#72: Josephine Livingstone on Cultural Criticism and Leaving the Academy

Kevin Lincoln

The Alien franchise’s five-decade journey has crossed genres, intersected the careers of preeminent filmmakers and wavered wildly from classic to culty to catastrophic. With the recent release of the disturbing and philosophical “Alien: Covenant,” we set out to reappraise all the chest-bursting and face-hugging in Part One of our franchise retrospective: 2:02 - Noah and Chance give some franchise background, and Noah wonders why “Covenant” is two movies. 14:15 - Vulture’s Kevin Lincoln joins the show to discuss what contemporary franchises can learn from the villainous android David.29:10 - Chance stands up for the headiness of “Covenant” and Noah makes a superb “Frasier” comparison.38:00 - The New Republic’s Josephine Livingstone stops by to assess the role of androids in the franchise and their centrality to the new film.54:10 - Your hosts try to identify if there’s anything wrong at all with 1979’s “Alien.”1:04:20 - A disagreement ensues about whether “Aliens” deserves classic status like its predecessor.

The Alien franchise’s five-decade journey has crossed genres, intersected the careers of preeminent filmmakers and wavered wildly from classic to culty to catastrophic. With the recent release of the disturbing and philosophical “Alien: Covenant,” we set out to reappraise all the chest-bursting and face-hugging in Part One of our franchise retrospective: 2:02 - Noah and Chance give some franchise background, and Noah wonders why “Covenant” is two movies. 14:15 - Vulture’s Kevin Lincoln joins the show to discuss what contemporary franchises can learn from the villainous android David. 29:10 - Chance stands up for the headiness of “Covenant” and Noah makes a superb “Frasier” comparison. 38:00 - The New Republic’s Josephine Livingstone stops by to assess the role of androids in the franchise and their centrality to the new film. 54:10 - Your hosts try to identify if there’s anything wrong at all with 1979’s “Alien.” 1:04:20 - A disagreement ensues about whether “Aliens” deserves classic status like its predecessor.

The Alien Franchise: Part One (feat. Kevin Lincoln & Josephine Livingstone) | Episode 62