If you don’t know Ruby Wax’s name, that’s because, even though she’s American, her career has been largely in the UK. But you may be aware of a little show called Absolutely Fabulous in which she both acted and served as the script editor. Despite her success, she’s been open about her struggles with depression. She even dropped comedy for a while to get a degree from Oxford on mindfulness through cognitive behavioral therapy. Her book, Sane New World , based on personal experience, achieves the...
Nov 30, 2022•38 min•Season 2Ep. 22
People are passionate about Anthony Doerr. And why not, he’s one of America’s great novelists and storytellers. He was in Amsterdam 2015 on the back of his book, All the Light We Cannot See , a masterful and moving novel about two young people during World War II, which rapidly became a New York Times #1 bestseller. Support the show
Nov 16, 2022•34 min•Season 2Ep. 21
David Frum is a Canadian-American political commentator who is currently a senior editor at The Atlantic as well as an MSNBC contributor' and author, of Trumpocalypse . In Trumpocalypse , Frum digs deep into the causes of America’s tragic national fragmentation. And he urges the GOP to rethink its future, saying that “no two-party system can remain a democracy unless both parties adhere to democratic values, not just one”. His talk at the John Adams is also a testament to how quickly circum...
Nov 02, 2022•46 min•Season 2Ep. 20
If we can just get through the 21st century, humanity might have a chance, says Elizabeth Kolbert. We have already intervened in the earth’s system to the extent that we are now living in the ‘Anthropocene’. Maybe we can buy time by intervening even more, with so-called geo-engineering: turning carbon emissions to stone, for example, genetically modifying trees or even dimming the sun by shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere. After having done so much damage, can we change nature again, t...
Oct 19, 2022•29 min•Season 2Ep. 19
Gore Vidal was an American writer known for his essays, novels, screenplays, and Broadway plays. A lifelong Democrat, Gore ran for political office twice and was a seasoned political commentator. As well known for his essays as his novels, Vidal wrote for The Nation, New Statesman, The New York Review of Books and Esquire. Vidal’s major subject was America, and through his essays and media appearances he was a longtime critic of American foreign policy. He died in 2012 from pneumonia. In his obi...
Oct 05, 2022•30 min•Season 2Ep. 18
On March 11, 2022, Hanya Yanagihara returned to the John Adams for a conversation about 'To Paradise', her three-part story across three centuries, centered around New York City. To Paradise is a revisionist American history – not identical to the America as we know it but a ‘what if’ narrative, invested in raising concerns about America as a nation: what it has been, what it might have been and what it could be. An epic tale told across multiple timelines and characters, separate from...
Sep 21, 2022•42 min•Season 2Ep. 17
The late, great Christopher Hitchens came to Amsterdam in 2008 touring his book: God is Not Great . Hitchens excelled at polemics. He considered himself to be politically liberal and yet expressed his full-throated support for the war in Iraq and called Hillary Clinton “an aging and resentful female”. And then there were the blistering attacks on religion and religious belief. He also details: how religion is a worse than any totalitarian regime, why science and religion are fundamentally incomp...
Sep 07, 2022•29 min•Season 2Ep. 16
A gem from our archive! Way back on March 14, 1993, the then fresh new Southern author, Donna Tartt , visited the John Adams hot on the heels of her massive bestseller 'The Secret History', currently translated into 24 languages and counting. 'The Secret History' takes place at a fictional college where a close-knit group of six students embark upon a secretive plan to stage a bacchanal, a plan that ultimately leads to a death. Tartt has subsequently written 'The Little ...
Aug 24, 2022•29 min•Season 2Ep. 15
How do democracies die? Not at the hands of generals, but of elected leaders – presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power. That is the unsettling conclusion of Harvard professor Daniel Ziblatt’s highly praised book How Democracies Die . Ziblatt and his co-author Steven Levitsky have analyzed the collapse of various democracies in recent history, and compare them to the state of the US government today. Is our democracy in danger? Yes, says Ziblatt. He w...
Jun 15, 2022•43 min•Season 1Ep. 14
The John Adams Institute, in co-operation with Prometheus Publishing House, proudly presented an evening with Jonathan Franzen, winner of the National Book Award 2001. Franzen discussed his novel The Corrections , which has been translated into Dutch under the title De Correcties . Michaël Zeeman, renowned literary critic for the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant , introduced Franzen and moderated questions from the audience. The Corrections is a novel about the American Family. You could interpret ...
May 18, 2022•42 min
The great American author and investigative journalist, Patrick Radden Keefe, knows irony when he hears it. Such as when the patriarch of what would become an infamous family, imparted these words to his sons: “I leave you my good name”. And that name is...Sackler: frequent visitors to some of the world’s great museums and educational institutions know that name. The Sackler family name adorns the walls of Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. The Sacklers are one of the r...
May 04, 2022•47 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Forbes magazine called Christiane Amanpour of the “100 Most Powerful Women.” On January 25th 2019, CNN’s chief international anchor and host of ‘Amanpour’, joined the Dutch journalist Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal, for what turned out to be a witty, revealing and slightly flirty conversation. Amanpour’s career began in 1990 as a correspondent for CNN, where she reported on international crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Palestinian territories, Iran and many more countries. She has interview...
Apr 20, 2022•28 min
From Amsterdam...this is the John Adams Podcast, a treasure trove of the best and the brightest of American thinking. This week’s guest is indeed one of the brightest: Francis Fukuyama, the writer, thinker and teacher. You may remember him from his book: "The End of History", where he proclaimed the triumph of liberal democracy as something of a societal finish line. Well, he does NOT think that anymore. What changed his mind? The election of Donald Trump, among others. Support the sho...
Apr 06, 2022•33 min•Season 1Ep. 9
This week’s guest is Megan Twohey, whose book about Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuse of women in Hollywood was also, as she put it, “an X-ray into the abuse of power”. The #metoo movement really got going after New York Times journalists Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor published their investigative articles about Harvey Weinstein. They followed with their book, “She Said”, which dives deep, not just into Harvey Weinstein’s decades long alleged sexual predation, but also the failures of the system th...
Mar 23, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Seven years ago, Garry Kasparov came to Amsterdam and predicted the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He also described Vladimir Putin’s psychology and motivations in a way that you hear in every current affairs program nowadays. Back in 2015, Obama was president, Russia was actively bombing targets in Syria, Syrian refugees were literally washing up on the shores of the Mediterannean and Garry Kasparov, living in exile in New York, was touring his book: ‘Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the ...
Mar 09, 2022•51 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Every week we point out that we get the likes of Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz to grace an Amsterdam stage and impart his wisdom to our audiences. Well, it’s time. In this episode, Joseph Stiglitz came to the DeLaMar Theater in the Dutch capital in November of 2019, to talk about his book, People, Power, and Profits . In People, Power, and Profits , Stiglitz states that the U.S. got three things wrong in the past several decades: economics (too much faith in markets), politics (influence of...
Feb 23, 2022•30 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Russell Shorto is an American historian, journalist and author. In 2004, he published The Island at the Center of the World: the Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America , for which he spent many hours in the New Netherland archives. It's an eye-opening book, and a marvelous historical retelling of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam before it became New York. Between 2008 and 2013, he lived in Amsterdam, where he was the director of the John Adams Institute....
Feb 09, 2022•28 min•Season 1Ep. 5
As John Adams was one of the great men of his era, we thought our next episode should be with one of the great people of our time: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Brooklyn born and raised, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical advisor to President Biden. This was an online interview conducted by Damiaan Denys , himself a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Amsterdam. You heard him earlier on the podcast interviewing Michael Pollan. This ...
Jan 26, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Democracy and the rule of law in Western societies are under threat, according to Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University, due to Vladimir Putin’s efforts to destabilize neighboring governments and to stir up dissent in countries from France to the United States. The John Adams, in a collaboration with De Balie, brought Professor Timothy Snyder to Amsterdam in 2018 to discuss his new book The Road to Unfreedom. Snyder examines how Western societies left themselves open to anti-de...
Jan 12, 2022•36 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Michael Pollan’s book, How To Change Your Mind, has moved on from his research on food to delve into the world of psychedelics and their medical use. In the past decade, there has been renewed interest in psychedelic research as a form of psychiatric therapy, and to Pollan’s mind this renaissance is long overdue. In this episode, Pollan makes a strong case for researching these drugs further and discusses it with professor and head of the psychiatry department at the Amsterdam Medical Center, Da...
Jan 12, 2022•33 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talks with former Dutch foreign minister and Vice President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, about how the current state of world leadership inspired her most recent book, the ominously titled: Fascism: a Warning . This was recorded in front of an audience in 2018 at the Muziekgebouw aan het IJ in cooperation with the European Commission. The evening was moderated by Juurd Eijsvoogel of the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. “Fascism: a War...
Jan 12, 2022•35 min•Season 1Ep. 1
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