The Freeing of the American Mind
Free minds. Freedom fries. Free speech. The Freedom Caucus. Freedom from. Freedom to. What do Americans really mean when they talk about freedom?\n\nLouis Menand\u2019s \u201cThe Free World\u201d is a 700-plus-page intellectual history of the Cold War period that traces the opening of the American mind to new ideas in art, literature, politics, music, foreign policy, criticism, higher education and campus activism. John Cage was making silent music, Jackson Pollock was throwing paint on canvases, Pauline Kael was giving us permission to actually enjoy movies. Thinkers like James Baldwin, Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt were arguing over what it meant to be free. Liberatory movements were trying to actually make Americans free. But what did it all get us? Out of all this ferment and conflict, what forms of freedom did Americans secure, and which did we lose?\n\nIt\u2019s hard to think of a writer better suited to explain the art and intellectual culture of the Cold War than Louis Menand. In his writing for The New Yorker and his Pulitzer Prize-winning book \u201cThe Metaphysical Club,\u201d Menand has shown how ideas are born out of interactions between individuals and larger historical forces, and how philosophical traditions like pragmatism, Transcendentalism and abolitionism continue to profoundly shape our world.\n\nIn this conversation, we talk about the opening of the American mind, the rise of the American market and the narrowing of American politics. We discuss the avant-garde artists of the age and why Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s vision for equity has been lost. Oh, and how today\u2019s elite universities are built atop the legacy of 1960s campus radicalism, whether the Beat writers were actually the rebels they\u2019re remembered as, why John Cena is apologizing to China for calling Taiwan a country and more.\n\nMentioned in this episode:\n\n\u201cThe Free World\u201d by Louis Menand\n\nRecommendations:\n\n\u201cTristes Tropiques\u201d by Claude L\xe9vi-Strauss\n\n\u201cPostwar: A History of Europe Since 1945\u201d by Tony Judt\n\n\u201cChance and Circumstance: Twenty Years With Cage and Cunningham\u201d by Carolyn Brown\n\nYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.\n\nThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.\n\n\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\u201d is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rog\xe9 Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.