Philip Roth in the #MeToo Era

Summary

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The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode: Philip Roth in the #MeToo Era

Date: July 23, 2018
Host: David Remnick (with Judith Thurman, Claudia Roth Pierpont, Lisa Halliday, Dorothy Wickenden)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the literary legacy and personal complexity of Philip Roth—one of America’s preeminent novelists—through the perspectives of three women who knew him intimately: writers Judith Thurman, Claudia Roth Pierpont, and Lisa Halliday. In the wake of Roth’s 2018 death, the conversation turns to how his work is scrutinized in light of the #MeToo movement, especially regarding charges of misogyny and the depiction of women. The panel reflects on his writing, the evolution of critical opinion about his novels, his anxieties about biography, and his final days.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Remembering Philip Roth

• Judith Thurman opens the discussion by framing Roth as an audacious and original voice in American fiction, noting that posthumous discussion must reckon with criticism of how he wrote about women.
  "Almost all critics praised him...but about the way he wrote about women. This was a criticism he often had to answer to in his lifetime, and in the era of MeToo, even some of the material from the distant past, like Portnoy's Complaint, was now being re-evaluated." (02:47)

Early Connections & Roth’s Relationship to Biography

• Claudia Roth Pierpont recounts how Roth first reached out to her after reading her biography of Isaac Dinesen, establishing himself as a writer who, contrary to popular belief, cared deeply about fellow writers.
  "It was a fan letter from Philip Roth...I thought it was my crazy friend Max imitating Philip Roth." (03:46)
• Roth deeply feared the idea of biography, with Claudia calling biography, along with death, one of two things he feared most.
  "He said there are two things to fear in life, death and biography." – Dorothy Wickenden (04:57)

Navigating Roth’s Persona and Fame

• Lisa Halliday reflects on Roth’s defensiveness about his personal life and how people projected narratives onto him, seeing every interaction as filled with anecdotal weight.
  "I think he just became used to people taking away impressions that surprised him." (05:32)

• Halliday’s own fiction, partly based on her relationship with Roth, balanced honoring him while departing from strict autobiography.
  "I really did want to share with the reader some of what I loved about Philip, what I loved most about him. But all of that said, it is a novel. It's not a faithful account of our own story." (06:39)

Generational Perspectives & First Encounters

• Halliday first heard Roth’s name in college from her Jewish boyfriend’s mother, who recommended Portnoy’s Complaint. This anecdote highlights how Roth’s reputation filtered through various generational and gendered perspectives.
  "The very first time I heard Philip's name was not until I was in college and my Jewish boyfriend's mother told me that I had to read Portnoy's Complaint." (07:48)

• On women's reaction to reading Portnoy’s Complaint:
  "Reading Portnoy as a young woman...scared the hell out of her. Meaning this is what men think. This is what's running through their mind all the time." – Judith Thurman (08:05)

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The Myth and Impact of ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’

• Roth regretted Portnoy’s Complaint due to its making him a public joke and its effect on his privacy.
  "He deeply regretted Portnoy. We talked about it a lot. It made him into a joke on late night television...Completely lost his privacy." – Claudia Roth Pierpont (10:06)

• Roth attempted amends through later works like "The Plot Against America," transforming aspects seen as flaws into virtues under different historical circumstances.
  "He creates a situation to elevate them while not changing who they were at all." – Dorothy Wickenden (09:59)

• Roth admired Flaubert’s principle:
  "The task at hand is not to change humanity, but to know it. You could apply that to every book of Philip's." – Lisa Halliday (10:38)

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The #MeToo Lens and Critique of Misogyny

• The panel addresses the major critique leveled at Roth: he is misogynistic in his depiction of female characters.

  • Vivian Gornick once wrote: "For Philip Roth, women are monstrous." – Judith Thurman referencing Harper's (11:30)

• Dorothy Wickenden counters that Roth’s work contains many complex and compelling female characters, even if rarely protagonists, and that his narrative "lighthouse" necessarily draws from his own point of view.
  "I think there are as many fascinating and interesting female characters in his work as in anybody's work. They may not be the person who is presenting the story, but they are taken in and they are alive." (12:03)

• Claudia Roth Pierpont distinguishes between sexual voraciousness and misogyny, noting critics’ confusion of lust with woman-hating. "It's a confusion of lust with misogyny. There's a certain kind of rampaging, voracious sexual appetite...that's not misogyny." (13:25)

• Lisa Halliday expresses puzzlement at the misogyny label, emphasizing Roth’s awe—and even fear—of women rather than hate. "Philip was in awe of so many women, and I think that comes through in the books as well." (14:17)

• Analogy to earlier Jewish criticism: Roth’s willingness to portray flawed characters, whether Jewish or female, often made him a target for accusations that he was arming the enemy or being hateful, but it stemmed from his fidelity to literary truth. "It wouldn't be literature to present a world of perfect Jews with no character...He was writing a book about people, and people have flaws and his women have flaws." – Dorothy Wickenden (15:00)

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Roth’s Prose and Political Evolution

• Roth compared himself to Updike:
  "I don't have the gush of prose, which he felt Updike absolutely did. I have the gush of invention, dialogue, event, but not of prose." – Judith Thurman (16:19)

• His literary achievement is described as a range and continual reinvention over decades, moving from intimate work to politically infused novels. "His achievement? Book after book after book. In my mind, we haven't had anybody like that." – Dorothy Wickenden (16:50)

Disillusionment and America

• Roth died deeply disillusioned by contemporary America, particularly the rise of Donald Trump, the degradation of public language, and the prevalence of "Orwellian newspeak." "He said he had never been more terrified in his entire life...The degradation of language that Donald Trump represents was one of the most personally excruciating aspects." – Claudia Roth Pierpont (17:25)

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Reflections on Death, Vitality, and Legacy

• Roth's obsession with mortality played out in his fiction and personal life.
  "Death is all through these books...so many graveyard scenes. It's much more than in Shakespeare." – Judith Thurman (19:12)

• At the end of his life, Roth was not fearful but resolute about death.

  • He told Lisa Halliday he planned to live as long as John Adams, and she notes:
    "I'm a little angry with him for not keeping that promise." (19:12)

• Roth "pulled the plug on himself," equating the process of dying to his lifelong discipline as a writer. "He said, I want to live or I want to die, but I'm not going to stay in the middle...He saw dying as the same kind of work that he had saw writing." – Claudia Roth Pierpont (20:24)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "There are two things to fear in life, death and biography."
  – Roth (via Dorothy Wickenden, 04:57)

• "The task at hand is not to change humanity, but to know it."
  – Flaubert, quoted by Roth (via Lisa Halliday, 10:38)

• "It's a confusion of lust with misogyny."
  – Claudia Roth Pierpont (13:25)

• "He said he had never been more terrified in his entire life...the degradation of language that Donald Trump represents was one of the most personally excruciating aspects."
  – Claudia Roth Pierpont (17:25)

• "He saw dying as the same kind of work that he had saw writing...I have work to do. And by that he meant, I have the work of dying."
  – Claudia Roth Pierpont (20:24)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:47] Judith Thurman introduces the topic: Roth’s praise and criticisms.
• [03:46] Claudia Roth Pierpont tells how Roth wrote her a fan letter.
• [04:57] Roth’s fear of biography (“two things to fear in life, death and biography”).
• [06:39] Lisa Halliday discusses turning her relationship with Roth into fiction.
• [07:48] Halliday describes first hearing about Roth and Portnoy’s Complaint.
• [10:06] Claudia Roth Pierpont on Roth’s regret over Portnoy’s Complaint.
• [11:30] Judith Thurman on the enduring critique of misogyny in Roth’s work.
• [13:25] Claudia Roth Pierpont unpacks the confusion between lust and misogyny.
• [17:25] Claudia Roth Pierpont on Roth’s terror at the Trump era.
• [19:12] Reflections on mortality and Roth’s relationship with death.
• [20:24] Roth’s end-of-life decisions and philosophy.

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Summary

This episode provides a nuanced exploration of Philip Roth: his complexity, the controversial elements of his writing, the grudges and regrets that lingered through his career, and the ways his life and work persistently intersected with American questions about gender, identity, and mortality. The insight, candor, and affection the panelists bring result in a portrait that is at once critical and affectionate, highlighting Roth’s immense literary gifts as well as the vexing, and still unresolved, cultural conversations he continues to spark.

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Transcript

[David Remnick]

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[Dorothy Wickenden]

I'm Dorothy Wickenden.

[David Remnick]

On today's Politics and More podcast, David Remnick talks to the writers Judith Thurman.

[Judith Thurman]

Claudia Roth Pierpont, and Lisa Halliday.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

All three were close with the late Philip Roth and will discuss viewing Roth's.

[David Remnick]

Work through the lens of the MeToo era.

[Judith Thurman]

Today, we're paying tribute to Philip Roth, and here's Liev Schreiber reading a passage from the 2006 novella Everyman.

[Liev Schreiber]

Religion was a lie that he had recognized early in life, and he found all religions offensive, considered their superstitious folderol meaningless, childish, couldn't stand the complete unadultness, the baby talk and the righteousness and the sheep, the avid believers. No hocus pocus about death and God or obsolete fantasies of heaven. For him there was only our bodies, born to live and die on terms decided by the bodies that had lived and died before us. If he could be said to have located a philosophical niche for himself, that was it. He'd come upon it early and intuitively, and however elemental that was, the whole of it should he Ever write an autobiography? He'd call it the Life and Death of a Male Body.

[Judith Thurman]

After Roth died in May, many critics praised him. Almost all critics praised him as one of the most audacious and original voices in the history of American fiction. But there were some detractors too. Not so much about the quality of his writing, but about the way he wrote about women. This was a criticism he often had to answer to in his lifetime and in the era of MeToo, even some of the material from the distant past, like Portnoy's complaint, was now being re evaluated. I asked the writers, Judith Thurman, Lisa Halliday and Claudia Roth Pierpont, no relation to the novelist, to weigh in on the issue. Judith, I want to begin with you meeting Philip Roth. And I think you met through the mail, right? I mean, we have this picture of Philip as a writer who lived his life largely, almost in a kind of soldierly discipline in the country alone much of the time, writing all the time, doesn't really care much about other writers. And yet what happened, he cared very.

[Claudia Roth Pierpont]

Much, passionately, really, about other writers. I was a young biographer. I was in my early 30s, and my first book had just been published, biography of Isaac Dinesen. And one day I opened. There was no, of course, email. And I went to the mail and there was a letter, handwritten letter in it, and it was a fan letter from Philip Roth. And I thought it was my crazy friend Max imitating Philip Roth, imitating Philip Roth and telling me how great my work was. And I actually called Max, and he disavowed any knowledge of the letter. So I wrote back, still suspiciously. If you were Philip Roth the writer, not the candlestick maker, I'm very grateful for this. Let I said something more than really grateful. I was floored and elated to receive it. And so he said, let's meet. And so we met. That was 1983.

[Judith Thurman]

Claudia, you wrote a kind of critical biography. It's a mixed genre book, I would say it's both biographical and critical. And my understanding is Philip Roth, like any number of other writers, was not exactly inviting to the biographical enterprise.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

He was terrified of it.

[Judith Thurman]

Yeah.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

He said there are two things to fear in life, death and biography.

[Judith Thurman]

Why did he fear biographies so much?

[Dorothy Wickenden]

I think because he read some of them and some of them about his friends.

[Claudia Roth Pierpont]

In the 80s and the 90s there were a series of sort of gotcha biographies of great writers. And he had a particular revulsion and fear of someone treating him as a case or. Or rather than going out to understand him, going out to get him.

[Judith Thurman]

Lisa, what do you think that Philip Roth felt were his weak points? That somebody would go at him, as it were. What was he defensive of?

[Lisa Halliday]

Well, listening to Judith and Claudia, I've been thinking about how Philip really was about as famous as a writer could be. And I think a lot of people, when they meet someone like Philip, they want so badly to take away from it a story, an anecdote. And so everything he says, everything he does, every expression he makes, means so much to someone who's meeting him for the first time, or even the second or third or fourth or tenth time. And I think he just became used to people taking away impressions that surprised him.

[Judith Thurman]

You've just published a novel, a remarkable novel, in which I think it's pretty apparent you had a relationship with and a friendship with Philip Roth. And when I read the sections about that novelist, about that relationship, I can hear Philip Roth talking. The jokes, the sentences, the spring in the personality. So in a sense, you brought him into fiction. How did he react to that?

[Lisa Halliday]

Well, he knew I was working on something for a long time, and maybe he was a little nervous, but he was also wonderful about it. I mean, no one knows better than Philip, no one knew better than Philip what it's like to write fiction. You use whatever you can. You do it however you can. I really did want to share with the reader some of what I loved about Philip, what I loved most about him. But all of that said, it is a novel. It's not a faithful account of our own story. Things that happened to me and to Philip do not happen in the book, and vice versa.

[Judith Thurman]

Lisa and I can ask this question to all of you, but you're, as it were, the youngest person in the room. Philip Roth is my birthright. I grew up in New Jersey. A Jewish boy, a male of a certain age. I almost imagined if my father had not become a dentist, but rather had been a literary genius, he'd be Philip Roth. So there was no question that this was going to enter my bloodstream and shape my so much of me. I wonder how you, as somebody considerably younger, came to those books. Which books? And what effect they had on you?

[Lisa Halliday]

Well, the very first time I heard Philip's name was not until I was in college and my Jewish boyfriend's mother told me that I had to read Portnoy's Complaint.

[Judith Thurman]

Let's pause over that for a moment. The boyfriend's mother wanted you to read Portnoy?

[Lisa Halliday]

Yes.

[Judith Thurman]

There's a young woman who works here Named Carla Blumenkrantz, who wrote about reading Portnoy as a young woman, as a 14 or 15 year old. And she was thrilled by. But it also scared the hell out of her. Meaning this is what men think. This is what's running through their mind all the time. It was a scary book to them.

[Claudia Roth Pierpont]

Judith, that's actually sort of touching to me because I always assumed that was what men thought. Maybe that's a generational divide.

[Judith Thurman]

And you think differently now?

[Claudia Roth Pierpont]

No, no, I don't. But my mother also. My mother was obsessed with Mrs. Roth. I think she was afraid that I. I was a writer from a very young age, that I would do a Portnoy which was not in the stars for my family.

[Judith Thurman]

But Philip was very self aware of this. He always quote. I forget who the quote is from Milos.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.

[Judith Thurman]

There goes the family. Did Philip feel a sense of. Even though his mother was hardly Sophie Portnoy and did he feel that he was consuming or even violating the people he knew and loved or even came to hate?

[Dorothy Wickenden]

I think the Mrs. Portnoy thing haunted him for a long time. And I think he made amends, if you will, and in a very reverential way. In the Plot Against America. The extreme over cautiousness that drives Portnoy crazy. When you get to plot against America, it becomes heroism because they are actually in a situation that these American Jews back in the 40s might have imagined themselves to be, in which their son thought was absurd because he was an American and nobody was coming after him. Now plot against America. When you bring fascism to the United States, they are confronted with a situation where their cautiousness is a virtue. He creates a situation to elevate them while not changing who they were at all.

[Claudia Roth Pierpont]

It should also be said that Philip really regretted Portnoy.

[Judith Thurman]

Regretted it?

[Claudia Roth Pierpont]

Yes.

[Judith Thurman]

Even though it's the breakthrough.

[Claudia Roth Pierpont]

He deeply regretted Portnoy. We talked about it a lot. It made him into a joke on late night television. The famous endlessly repeated Jacqueline Suzanne remark. It made it. Jacqueline Suzanne said something about.

[Judith Thurman]

It's on Johnny Carson.

[Claudia Roth Pierpont]

On Johnny Carson. I wouldn't want to shake his hand.

[Judith Thurman]

And people would see him on the streets.

[Claudia Roth Pierpont]

People would see him on the streets, make jokes about liver observation in liver.

[Judith Thurman]

And after the first 5,000 times it was funny.

[Claudia Roth Pierpont]

Right. Completely lost his privacy. That's when he sort of fled to the country.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

He tried to imagine what his life would have been like had he not written it.

[Claudia Roth Pierpont]

Yes.

[Lisa Halliday]

Often our talking about all of this has Reminded me of how not so long ago, Philip had recommended to me rereading Madame Bovary and also gave me a copy of a book that someone had recently sent to him, which is called the Perpetual Orgy. After he gave it to me, and in fact, after I brought it back to Milan, I noticed in the book that he had written on the back of the letter something that Flaubert once said, which is the task at hand is not to change humanity, but to know it. And I just. When I saw that, I thought you could apply that to every book of Phillips. Every complaint that anyone has ever made tends to be, well, he's a misogynist or he's got it out for the Jews and this is just not what he was doing. He wanted to know humanity and to reflect it, not to change it or make it into a moral project.

[Judith Thurman]

You raised the misogyny question and I guess it's inevitable in Harper's. Vivian Gornick wrote in 2008, in Portnoy's complaint, probably for the first time in Jewish American literature, by the way, a phrase that Philip would use, it was horrible, right? Woman hating is openly associated with a consuming anger at what it has meant to be pushed to the margin, generation after generation, humiliated time and again into second class lives. I think it's fair to say Vivian Gordon was not a fan. Now she, at one point, she said, for Philip Roth, women are monstrous.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

His work is full of female characters who mean something to me, to whom I am deeply attached, from Dranka to Amy Billet. I mean, one could name them and name them and name them. What he doesn't do. And some more subtle or younger critics have blamed him for not having major female protagonists, for seeing the world through the eyes of a male figure who somewhat resembles Philip Roth, usually born in 1933. And I would say this about that, that all talents come with conditions. And I think his condition was to present the world through the eyes of someone who is not himself at all, but someone who took a stand somewhere similar on ground that he understood. And I see it as a kind of lighthouse in a way. If that's a bad simile, you set up your building, but on the top of that building is a flashing, radiating light. And that light, those eyes of that protagonist, whoever that protagonist might be, took in the world. Men, women, children. I think there are as many fascinating and interesting female characters in his work as in anybody's work. They may not be the person who is presenting the story, but they are taken in and they are alive. The first book I ever fell in love with was the Ghostwriter, and there are two male characters and two female characters. And I think you'd be hard put to say who's the most fascinating in that book.

[Judith Thurman]

Then where does this critique come from?

[Claudia Roth Pierpont]

It comes from the perception of sexual predation. I think. I think it comes from on the page. On the page, which is a confusion. Well, this is a very, very thorny subject in me two times. It's, in my view, it's a confusion of lust with misogyny. There's a certain kind of rampaging, voracious sexual appetite. And I don't think anybody can den that Philip had that as a man. His characters certainly have that on the page. And that's not misogyny. There's a certain kind of a very intense desire.

[Judith Thurman]

Lisa, are there any books that you read of Phillips that you do pause over and think, hmm, this bit is making me uncomfortable, and not in a good way?

[Lisa Halliday]

No, no, no. I don't know. You asked where the issue comes from, and I've never really understood it myself. I think it comes from lust, but also awe. I mean, Philip was in awe of so many women, and I think that comes through in the books as well. His narrators are in awe of many of the female characters. And maybe occasionally that translates into a slight sense of fear on the part of the male character, the narrator. But I don't know how we get from there to misogyny. I don't understand it.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

I think that there's something to be said about making an analogy between the early criticism that the Jews had of him and the criticism that some women have of him now. And that criticism was about presenting characters who are less than perfect. In the late 50s, his Jewish readers who became so irate said, how dare you present a Jewish adulterer? In other words, how dare you give them ammunition? And he came to understand that although it didn't change his writing because he felt literature was about presenting what is. It wouldn't be literature to present a world of perfect Jews with no character. He'd have nothing to write about. He was writing a book about people, and people have flaws and his women have flaws. And somehow I think we're in a little bit of a position regarding him where it's considered wrong or hateful for him, maybe because he already has acquired the reputation he has to look at women who are flawed. But everybody in his books is flawed.

[Claudia Roth Pierpont]

I sometimes have a pause. It's a personal one, because so many. Philip himself had a weakness for the fragile woman, the waifish woman, the woman who needed to be saved. And there are so many women. Their characters are fascinating and interesting, but they are a little broken or very broken or. I think that's something that gives someone like Vivian a pause.

[Judith Thurman]

But.

[Claudia Roth Pierpont]

But it's not the only thing.

[Judith Thurman]

I want to talk about his prose. He was actually quite interesting when comparing himself to his people he thought were his peers. Talking about Updike, he said, I don't have the gush of prose, which he felt that Updike absolutely did. I have the gush of invention, dialogue, event, but not of prosecution. Is he right about himself? What's the shape of the achievement of Philip Roth's book?

[Dorothy Wickenden]

His achievement? Book after book after book. In my mind, we haven't had anybody like that. I mean, that covers such a range over 50 years, continually reinventing himself. When people say, what should I read? You have to say, well, who are you? Where do you want to start?

[Judith Thurman]

And although the later novels remain hyper intimate, they've become large in a sense, and they become political. And Claudia, you've written that America and Philip Roth grew up together, and then along comes Donald Trump. Did Philip Roth die disappointed in America?

[Claudia Roth Pierpont]

Yes, he did. He said he had never been more terrified in his entire life. Having lived through everything. He lived through Lindbergh, including Lindbergh, the Depression, the war, the 50s, the McCarthy hearings, Nixon war, Watergate all the way. He was, I don't want to say despairing, but I don't think that that is horrifying. He was beyond horrified. He. And in some ways, the degradation of language that Donald Trump represents was one of the most personally excruciating aspects of the Trump presidency. The Orwellian newspeak that we wake up every morning and tune into.

[Judith Thurman]

Lisa, Claudia, and Judith, we were all at Philip Roth's funeral, which was quite a small funeral in a small cemetery at Bard College. And what happened was people read passages from Philip's book. There was no Kaddish, there was no prayer at all. It was the most secular funeral I ever attended. I think all of you were much closer friends. But I always got the sense that Philip never, never expected to live even as long as he did. He died with 16 stents in his heart. Any number of spinal problems, depression, all kinds of things that happened over the course of his middle age and older age. Death is all through these books. There's so many graveyard scenes. It's much more than in Shakespeare. How did he think about death toward the end? Lisa?

[Lisa Halliday]

Well, actually, I think it was A couple of years ago, I was visiting him out in Connecticut, and he and another friend and I were watching a miniseries about John Adams. And at the end, John Adams dies. And the next morning I was leaving, and of course, I was very sad. And he said, don't worry. I decided last night that I'm going to live a very long time. He said, if John Adams can make it to 91, then so can I. And I'm a little angry with him for not keeping that promise.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

I think that all this emphasis on death in the books shows exactly what he didn't want. I think he was very attached to life up until the end. I think he was ready to go on. I don't think he was happily resigned to this until maybe the last couple of days when there was no other way out.

[Judith Thurman]

Was he scared?

[Dorothy Wickenden]

I didn't see fear. I saw eventually a resignation. I saw a lot of tenderness for the people around him, telling us, you have to let me go. Knowing that, I think he was afraid it was causing us more pain than it was him.

[Claudia Roth Pierpont]

He lived in terms of health, an almost monkish life. To prolong it as long as it could be prolonged. And when it couldn't be prolonged in such a way as to give him what he considered a real life. Being able to swim, being able to walk, being able to move, being able to enjoy things. He was adamant about not going on. He chose. He pulled the plug on himself. He said, I want to live or I want to die, but I'm not going to stay in the middle. And after that, he saw dying as the same kind of work that he had saw writing. And he said at a certain point he didn't want people around the bed anymore. He said, I have work to do. And by that he meant, I have the work of dying.

[Liev Schreiber]

He was from the shore. There was sand and ocean, horizon and sky, daytime and nighttime. The light, the dark, the tide, the stars, the boats, the sun, the mists, the gulls. There were the jetties, the piers, the boardwalk, the booming, silent, limitless sea. Where he grew up, they had the Atlantic. You could touch your toes. Where America began. They lived in a stucco bungalow two short streets from the edge of America. The house, the porch, the screens, the icebox, the tub, the linoleum, the broom, the pantry, the ants, the sofa, the radio, the garage, the outside shower with the slatted wooden floor Morty had built and the drain that always clogged in summer, the salty sea breeze and the dazzling light in September, the hurricanes. In January, the storms they had January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December and then January and then again January. No end to the stockpile of January's, of Mays, of marches, August, December, April. Name a month and they had it in spades. They'd had endlessness. He'd grown up on endlessness and his mother. In the beginning, they were the same thing.

[David Remnick]

That was Judith Thurman, Claudia Roth Pierpont.

[Claudia Roth Pierpont]

And Lisa Halliday talking with David Remnick.

[David Remnick]

America is changing and so is the world.

[Judith Thurman]

But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.

[David Remnick]

I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.

[Judith Thurman]

Tristan Redman in London and this is the Global story.

[Lisa Halliday]

Every weekday we'll bring you a story.

[David Remnick]

From this intersection where the world and America meet.

[Judith Thurman]

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Lisa Halliday]

From.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

PRX.