Bright Minds: from the John Adams Institute
Episodes
Tiya Miles: The remarkable history of Ashley’s Sack
11 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In South Carolina in the 1850s, an enslaved woman named Rose gives a simple cotton bag to her daughter Ashley. Ashley is about to be separated from he...
Yaël Eisenstat: Democracy’s Cyber Defendant
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2018, the tech and democracy activist Yaël Eisenstat joined Facebook as the head of Global Elections Integrity for political ads. Six months later...
Toni Morrison: A Mercy (re-release)
16 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A gem rescued from the archives! We are re-releasing the Toni Morrison episode after cleaning up the audio.Toni Morrison writes about history, slavery...
Ivo Daalder: The Future of NATO
12 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ivo Daalder is a Dutch born American citizen, who became the U.S. representative to NATO from 2009 to 2013 under President Barack Obama and was a fo...
Kim Wehle: What to Make of the U.S. Constitution?
12 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Super Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020. Professor of law, a constitutional scholar, commentator and author Kim Wehle joined the John Adams to lay out exactly ...
Karen Joy Fowler: The Family Saga of John Wilkes Booth
15 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It’s April 14th, 1865. The actor John Wilkes Booth pulls a gun and assassinates President Lincoln who is sitting in a balcony of the Ford Theatre in...
Francis Fukuyama: The Future of Liberalism
11 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
History is entering a new phase, where old forms and ideas clash with present realities. The John Adams Institute was excited to welcome Francis Fukuy...
Bret Easton Ellis: At the Edge of Fact and Fiction - The Shards
13 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bret Easton Ellis took 13 years to write The Shards. It’s a horror novel. Or maybe it’s an autobiography. In fact, it’s both. The Shards is a ...
2024 U.S. Election Special (part 3) with Kim Wehle
16 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the third and final episode of the election specials of our podcast Bright Minds, America expert and podcaster Laila Frank talks to law professor, ...
2024 U.S. Election Special (part 2) with Mark Leibovich
02 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The current episodes of our podcast Bright Minds are all about the U.S. presidential elections. America journalist Laila Frank, specialized in politic...
2024 U.S. Election Special (part 1) with Carol Anderson
18 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The next three episodes of Bright Minds are all about the U.S. presidential elections. America journalist Laila Frank, specialized in politics and cha...
FUTURE 400: Wolves and Kings
03 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This fourth episode of the Future 400 podcast is all about theater and dance. Battery Dance, New York City's longest running public dance festiva...
FUTURE 400: Finding Family in Fashion
19 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Design your look, design your life. Rambler Studios is a creative platform for raw talent. It offers young people a safe space where they can discover...
FUTURE 400: From the Streets to the Heart
05 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This second episode of the Future 400 podcast looks at work by Dutch and American photographers who are part of the annual international photo festiva...
FUTURE 400: New York Before New York
22 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Future 400 is a bi-weekly four-part podcast series from the Dutch Consulate in New York. It is part of the two-year cultural program of the same name,...
Andrea Elliott: Family Homelessness in the US
10 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Andrea Elliot’s 2022 Pulitzer winning book, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City, follows eight dramatic years in the l...
George Packer: America in Crisis and Renewal
13 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
2024 is an election year. And in his book Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal', George Packer makes the case for why this may be the m...
Nikole Hannah-Jones: A New American Origin Story
14 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones’s 1619 project has inspired both throngs of like-minded people as well as a severe backlash. T...
Mark Leibovich: Thank You for Your Servitude
17 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
2024 is an election year and Donald Trump is running again. This makes journalist and political commentator Mark Leibovich’s second nonfiction block...
Jane Fonda: Living the Life
06 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From Hollywood to Hanoi, Jane Fonda has endeared and enraged Americans for decades with her sparkling performances and outspoken views. Following an e...
Paul Theroux: On Missionaries, China and Dickens
08 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From Hemingway to Dickens, from Nabokov to Twain, from Isak Dinesen to Graham Greene, many of the world’s great writers were also great travel write...
Robert Reich: The Flipside of Capitalism
11 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
President Bill Clinton’s former Secretary of Labor argues in his important book that in the last thirty years capitalism has flourished at the expen...
Teju Cole: NYC, Open City
13 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Teju Cole is rapidly becoming a new literary sensation in America. His novel Open City – which won the 2012 Pen/Hemingway Award and the New York Cit...
Mark Godsey and Rickey Jackson: Surviving Injustice
05 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rickey Jackson was sentenced to 39 years in prison for crimes he didn’t commit. Innocent, and unjustly convicted of murder and robbery, his is the l...
Jill Lepore: New York Burning
07 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore came to the John Adams in April of 2023 to talk about her keenly crafted and sourced histori...
Bill Browder: Freezing Order
10 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The latest massacres in Bucha and Mariupol have shown that Vladimir Putin has no regard for human life – he only cares about power and money. In Put...
Cecilia Kang: The Dark Side of Facebook
12 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For years, fringe ideologues were able to use Facebook undisturbed to promote their extreme ideologies and conspiracies. In An Ugly Truth, New York Ti...
Carol Anderson: A Fatally Unequal America
15 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On paper, every American has the right to vote and – thanks to the Second Amendment – to bear arms. But in reality, says Carol Anderson, both thes...
Spike Lee: Doing the Right Thing
15 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In December of 2010, The John Adams Institute hosted an evening with the great film director, Spike Lee. Among many things, Spike talked about how New...
David Sedaris: On Fire
18 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On September 23, 2008, The John Adams Institute hosted an evening with David Sedaris. The humorist and author of 'Me Talk Pretty One Day' an...
The Quincy Club: California Dreamin'
28 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For 20 years, the John Adams Institute has organized a lecture program called The Quincy Club at schools all through the Netherlands to help young aud...
Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Notorious
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On February 04, 1999, in celebration of 150 years of Dutch constitutional law, the John Adams Institute welcomed Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justic...
Ruby Wax: Call Me Crazy
30 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Anthony Doerr: Tinkering with Writing
16 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
David Frum: National Fragmentation
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
David Frum is a Canadian-American political commentator who is currently a senior editor at The Atlantic as well as an MSNBC contributor' and aut...
Elizabeth Kolbert: Engineering the Anthropocene
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Gore Vidal: The Correctionist
05 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Gore Vidal was an American writer known for his essays, novels, screenplays, and Broadway plays. A lifelong Democrat, Gore ran for political office tw...
Hanya Yanagihara: Creating Paradise
21 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On March 11, 2022, Hanya Yanagihara returned to the John Adams for a conversation about 'To Paradise', her three-part story across three cen...
Christopher Hitchens: God is Not Great
07 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The late, great Christopher Hitchens came to Amsterdam in 2008 touring his book: God is Not Great. Hitchens excelled at polemics. He considered hims...
Donna Tartt: A Secret History
24 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ma...
Daniel Ziblatt: How Democracies Die
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How do democracies die? Not at the hands of generals, but of elected leaders – presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that broug...
Jonathan Franzen: The Corrections
18 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The John Adams Institute, in co-operation with Prometheus Publishing House, proudly presented an evening with Jonathan Franzen, winner of the National...
Patrick Radden Keefe: Drugs, Death and Money
04 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The great American author and investigative journalist, Patrick Radden Keefe, knows irony when he hears it. Such as when the patriarch of what would b...
Christiane Amanpour: Reporting while Female
20 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Forbes magazine called Christiane Amanpour of the “100 Most Powerful Women.” On January 25th 2019, CNN’s chief international anchor and host of ...
Francis Fukuyama: Demand for Dignity
06 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 o...
Megan Twohey: The #MeToo Story
23 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 i...
Garry Kasparov: Winter is Coming
09 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Seven years ago, Garry Kasparov came to Amsterdam and predicted the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He also described Vladimir Putin’s psychology and m...
Joseph Stiglitz: A New Social Contract
23 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Russell Shorto: From New Amsterdam to New York
09 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 M...
Dr. Anthony Fauci: Challenging Corona
26 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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, ...
Timothy Snyder: The Politics of Eternity
12 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Democracy and the rule of law in Western societies are under threat, according to Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University, due to Vlad...
Michael Pollan: The Trip Sitter
12 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Madeleine Albright: Respect for Truth
12 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talks with former Dutch foreign minister and Vice President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans,...
Trailer: Bright Minds
22 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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