Library Talks

About Library Talks

Join The New York Public Library and your favorite writers, artists, and thinkers for smart talks and provocative conversations from the nation's cultural capital.

Publisher

The New York Public Library

Category

education · news

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

22 Jan 2014

Latest episode

22 Apr 2026

Latest episodes

90 of 387 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   22 Apr 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Fintan O'Toole: The Idiocy of Greatness

   In this episode of Library Talks, the acclaimed Irish writer, Fintan O'Toole, delivers the annual Robert B. Silvers lecture. The idea of greatness has infused politics across much of the globe in the last decade, from Brexit to Donald Trump's MAGA movement. In this lecture, Fintan O'Toole suggests why greatness is, after all, not so great: it is in thrall to an imagined past, it generates a constant state of disappointment, and it drains energy away from the achievement of ordinary decency.

2. 

   15 Apr 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Maile Chapman with Larissa MacFarquhar: The Spoil

   In this episode of Library Talks, acclaimed author Maile Chapman joins the podcast to discuss her first novel in fifteen years from acclaimed, The Spoil. As a young girl growing up on the outskirts of Tacoma in the 1970s, Mandy is preoccupied by the paranormal phenomena she reads about in magazines: alien visitations, ESP, the Bermuda Triangle. What follows is a gripping and often terrifying story of familial grief in which the past is both elusive and paralyzing. Maile Chapman worked on The Spoil during her 2010-2011 Fellowship at the Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. She is joined in discussion by fellow writer Larissa MacFarquhar.

3. 

   8 Apr 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Bob Crawford with Alexis Coe: America's Founding Son

   In this episode of Library Talks, The historian and bass player for The Avett Brothers, Bob Crawford revisits the life of John Quincy Adams in his book America's Founding Son. Adams was born nine years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and he died as the United States was sliding irrevocably toward Civil War. In between he was a foreign ambassador, secretary of state, sitting president, and finally ex-president and sitting congressperson. Crawford talks to presidential historian Alexis Coe about John Quincy Adams's unlikely second act that reshaped not just his legacy but the country's.

Inside a recent episode

Fintan O'Toole: The Idiocy of Greatness

Published 22 Apr 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] The irony of greatness for those who occupied its lower rungs, and of course, most white people occupied the lower rungs of greatness, they were still in comparison, part of the system of greatness and inferiority. But the irony for them was that while it did not demand their utter subjection, it did demand their deference The imperial state gives those who belong to it a sense of superiority, but it demands in return a surrender to grandeur. What the liberation movements and the civil rights movements and the feminist movements and the LGBTQ movements and the labor movements taught us, not just their own members, but democracies as a whole, is that the opposite of greatness is not, in fact, abjection. […]

Who has been a guest on Library Talks

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Jeanne Theoharis
• Robyn C Spencer-Antoine
• Emily Yellin
• John Lawson
• Michelle Miller

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

6,694,395

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.4 / 5

321 ratings

Spotify

4.7 / 5

10 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 86 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

96

Social presence

0

YouTube

93

Engagement

97

Contact Library Talks

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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