“I’m an essayist, not a podcaster,” says Lapham’s Quarterly acting editor Donovan Hohn, “but then the same could be said of Lewis, who took the form and the medium of the podcast and did with it what he’d done all of his adulthood: have conversations with people whose voices he wished to hear. Seasoned listeners to The World in Time may rest assured that similar conversations will resume shortly. This episode, my first behind the microphone, won’t be a conversation, but it will be a duet. I’ll be sharing the microphone some with Lewis Lapham.” This week on the podcast Donovan Hohn hosts two episodes devoted to the life, career, and memory of our founding editor, Lewis H. Lapham. In this first episode, Hohn announces the Quarterly’s plans for Summer 2025, shares excerpts from a keynote address Lapham delivered at Bard College’s Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities in 2011, pays tribute to Lapham the essayist, and gives an account of the months preceding and following Lewis’ death in July 2024.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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