Airlift from Berlin Review

Audio 41

Recorded live at the Volksbühne in Berlin, the first event in Berlin Review’s new talk series there. Tobias Haberkorn is joined by Catherine Liu, professor of film and media studies at UC Irvine and author of Traumatized: The New Politics of Public Suffering; the writer and political theorist Sarah Stein Lubrano, author of Don’t Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds; and Lea Ypi, professor of political theory at the London School of Economics and author of Free and Indignity.

They discuss how Oprah, Yale’s trauma studies and social media turned personal suffering into a brand, and why Lea’s readers in former socialist countries wanted to talk about agency, not trauma. They also get into why social movements run on people asking each other for things, what Zohran Mamdani’s campaign got right, and the role of intellectuals on the left.

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Airlift is hosted by Lauren Oyler and Tobias Haberkorn.

Audio 40

Lily Hu is a philosopher at Yale University. She holds a PhD in applied mathematics and philosophy from Harvard, and her work is on causal inference, race, and how we move from data to claims about the social world. This summer she wrote “Un-Doing Philosophy” for Berlin Review, an essay about why she refuses to use AI in her philosophy and her teaching.

In this conversation, Lily and Tobias Haberkorn talk about what happens when you ban AI from a philosophy course, why AI is so good at the “bread and butter” skills of philosophy and so bad for the people who use it, and the split between philosophers who embrace it and those who refuse.

Read Lily Hu, “Un-Doing Philosophy”: https://blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/2026-08/als-ob-philosophieren-lily-hu

Special offer for Airlift listeners: get a Berlin Review print subscription with your first month free at https://blnreview.de/en/airlift

Berlin Review is an independent magazine, funded by its readers and listeners. Subscribe at blnreview.de/abo.

Airlift is hosted by Lauren Oyler and Tobias Haberkorn.

Audio 39

Anne Carson won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.” Born in Canada in 1950, Carson is a classicist, translator and poet. Her works have been translated around the world, and she has won numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Genius grant.

In this conversation Lauren Oyler and Tobias Haberkorn talk about what Carson does to the Greek myth, how easy it is to lose track of what’s real while reading her, how she was inspired by the Brontës and her recent essay on writing with Parkinson’s.

Special offer for Airlift listeners: get a Berlin Review print subscription with your first month free at https://blnreview.de/en/airlift

Berlin Review is an independent magazine, funded by its readers and listeners. Subscribe at blnreview.de/abo.

Airlift is hosted by Lauren Oyler and Tobias Haberkorn.

Audio 38

Recorded live in front of an audience in Berlin, Emily Greenhouse, editor of The New York Review of Books, and Merve Emre, critic and staff writer at The New Yorker, talk with Berlin Review editor Tobias Haberkorn about how magazines get made and who they're made for.

They discuss what an editor owes a writer, why the ideal edit dissolves both egos, and what happens when a piece goes viral online but barely registers on the magazine's own site. Along the way: Omer Bartov on the Eastern Front, Pankaj Mishra on Germany in 1933, Aryeh Neier's essay on genocide in Gaza, and the endless something-maxing headlines.

Berlin Review is an independent magazine, funded by its readers and listeners. Subscribe at blnreview.de/abo.

Airlift is hosted by Lauren Oyler and Tobias Haberkorn.

Audio 37

Recorded live in front of an audience, the writer, translator, and artist Miriam Stoney reads from her new essay and talks with Berlin Review editor Hana Szabo about characters: in fiction, in film, and in the self.

They get into how a literary character is built backwards while a self is built forwards; the difference between being disliked and being hated; and who is granted the nuance to be unlikable without collapsing into a stereotype. Along the way: Marguerite Duras, Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights and its whitewashing of Heathcliff, Tony Tulathimutte's Rejection, and the critic Andrea Long Chu on criticism and cruelty.

Berlin Review is an independent magazine, funded by its readers and listeners. Subscribe at blnreview.de/abo.

Audio 36

In this episode Hannah Szabó speaks with the historian Faith Hillis about the Jewish Labor Bund and the renewed interest in the history of Jewish radicalism, including two books Faith reviewed or Berlin Review: Molly Crabapple’s “Here Where We Live is Our Country” and “The Radical Jewish Tradition" by Donny Gluckstein and Janey Stone.

They discuss the scattered archives and memoirs where Faith has researched the history of this radical movement, what anti-Zionism meant before the war and how it differs from definitions today and how the tradition of Bundism might be carried forward today.

Faith’s essay “Radical Jewish Traditions: Then and Now” in Reader 7 of Berlin Review: https://blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/2026-06/geschichte-juedischer-radikalitaet-faith-hillis

You can also find all our reviews, essays and podcasts at blnreview.de.

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Audio 35

In diesem Interview spricht Samir Sellami mit der Philosophin und Autorin Eva von Redecker über ihr Buch «Dieser Drang nach Härte. Über den neuen Faschismus».

Wenn Sie weiterlesen möchten, erscheint in diesen Tagen eine Besprechung von Eva von Redeckers Buch von Jan Werner Müller auf unserer Website blnreview.de

Eva von Redeckers Essay «Vom Riss zum Abyss» finden Sie auf blnreview.de.

Berlin Review ist eine unabhängige Zeitschrift, die auch über Ihre Leser:innen und Hörer:innen finanziert. Ein Abo gibt es unter blnreview.de/abo.

Audio 34

In diesem Gespräch vor Live-Publikum in Wien spricht Tobias Haberkorn mit Raphaela Edelbauer über die Longevity-Bewegung, die katholische Gebets-App Hallow und darüber, wie der Wunsch nach einem ewigen Leben im Diesseits zu einer Bedrohung für die Demokratie wird.

Raphaela Edelbauers Essay erscheint im Reader 7 der Berlin Review und auf blnreview.de.

Berlin Review ist eine unabhängige Zeitschrift, die auch über Ihre Leser:innen und Hörer:innen finanziert. Ein Abo gibt es unter blnreview.de/abo.

Audio 33

Claudia Durastanti was born in Brooklyn in the eighties and grew up between the US and rural southern Italy. Her novel La Straniera was a finalist for the Premio Strega. The English translation Strangers I Know received a PEN award. She now lives in Rome, where she writes and translates, including the latest Italian edition of The Great Gatsby.

For Berlin Review, Claudia wrote about transfuge de classe narratives, the genre of literature where writers from poor backgrounds escape their circumstances and look back on their upbringings with a mix of shame, guilt and pride. You can read about why Claudia says this genre began booming just as the reality of upward mobility for working class people became out-of-reach.

Read her essay, “A Literature for the Downwardly Mobile,” at https://blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/2026-06/durastanti-literature-for-the-downwardly-mobile

Subscribe to Berlin Review — essays, criticism, and fiction from around the world. From €5/month: https://blnreview.de/en/subscribe

Airlift is produced in the Studio of Jacobin Germany. Hosted by Lauren Oyler and Tobias Haberkorn.

Audio 32

Lauren Oyler talks with anthropologist Biao Xiang, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. His concepts of “suspension,” “involution,” and “the disappearance of the nearby” have gone mainstream with a whole generation of young people in China.

Lauren and Biao Xiang discuss how loneliness, a condition once considered a luxury problem for artists or philosophers, has now become widespread, reaching even those who are surrounded by others, like young people and members of the working class.

They also discuss the role of AI and neo-liberalism in loneliness, the loss of pride in the working class and why gossip is important to the social fabric. They close with Hannah Arendt’s distinction between loneliness and solitude and a conversation on lonely deaths in Germany and Japan.

Read “Dying Alone,” the essay on lonely deaths at https://blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/2026-05/dying-alone-lonely-deaths-germany-japan

Subscribe to Berlin Review — essays, criticism, and fiction from around the world. From €5/month: https://blnreview.de/en/subscribe

Airlift is produced in the Studio of Jacobin Germany. Hosted by Lauren Oyler and Tobias Haberkorn.

Audio 31

In this episode, Lauren and Tobias discuss a literary scandal in the English-speaking and what writers get wrong about AI.

Tobias recommends Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom. Lauren recommends Empire of AI by Karen Hao, on the companies building these systems and what they are really after.

For more on culture in the age of AI, the current issue of Berlin Review includes "AI UGLIES," an essay by the writer and researcher Enis Maci on AI, image manipulation, and propaganda.

You can find it, along with all our reviews and episodes, at blnreview.de.

Airlift is recorded in the studio of Jacobin Germany.

The podcast is hosted by Tobias Haberkorn and Lauren Oyler. Produced and edited by Kaitlin Roberts with Najla Said.

Audio 30

Florian Meinel ist Professor für Staatstheorie und Vergleichendes Staatsrecht an der Universität Göttingen. Für Berlin Review hat er das Buch „Meinungsfreiheit" von Ronen Steinke besprochen.

In diesem Gespräch erklärt Meinel, wie das strafrechtliche Regime der Bundesrepublik aus dem Nachkriegskompromiss entstanden ist, was der Streit um „From the River to the Sea" über den Zustand der deutschen Demokratie verrät, und warum Rechtsunsicherheit Menschen mit unsicherem Aufenthaltsstatus zur Zwangsdepolitisierung zwingt.

Florains Essay „Meinungsfreiheit heute oder Vom Sinn der unklaren Rechtslage" ist auf blnreview.de zu lesen.

Die 7. Druckausgabe der Berlin Review, in der der Text ebenfalls erscheint, kommt Ende Juni 2026 heraus. Ein Print-Abo für 9 Euro gibt es unter blnreview.de/abo.

Audio 29

Novelist Maaza Mengiste joins Berlin Review for a live conversation at Chapters Bookshop in Berlin, recorded as part of her time in the city as a fellow at the American Academy.

Mengiste is the author of Beneath the Lion's Gaze and The Shadow King, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020. In conversation with editor Meret Weber, she discusses the question that runs through all her work: how ordinary do decent people come to do indecent things?

They also talk about the role photography plays both in her writing process and in the world of her characters, from female soldier Hirut to the Italian-Jewish soldier Ettore to the wartime albums of smiling soldiers she found in Italian flea markets. .

Maaza Mengiste also discusses her new novel-in-progress, set among the Black Germans, Africans, and other communities living in Berlin in the 1920s and 30s, as the Nuremberg laws took hold. She reflects on bearing witness, small acts of resistance, and writing history for the future rather than the present.

Our thanks to Chapters Bookshop in Moabit for hosting the evening.

Read more at blnreview.de: our recent issue includes a reflection by the Gazan poet Alaa Al-Qaisi on her time at Wannsee, and an essay on William Gardner Smith's 1963 novel The Stone Face.

Airlift is hosted by Tobias Haberkorn and Lauren Oyler. Produced and edited by Kaitlin Roberts.

Audio 28

Two new films released this spring approach modern relationships from radically different angles. The Drama, directed by Kristoffer Borgli, is an American romantic comedy about a couple approaching their wedding when one partner reveals a secret that threatens to break them up. Allegro Pastel, directed by Anna Roller and adapted from Leif Randt’s bestselling 2020 novel, follows a Berlin couple in an open relationship who can neither fully commit to each other nor fully let go.

In this episode of Airlift, Lauren Oyler and Tobias Haberkorn discuss what these films reveal about intimacy, indecision, and the emotional conditions of contemporary life.

Read Jana Antonissen’s essay “My Very Personal Drama” on Berlin Review: https://blnreview.de

Subscribe to Berlin Review — essays, criticism, and fiction from around the world. Subscriptions start at €5/month: https://blnreview.de/en/subscribe

Airlift is produced in the Studio of Jacobin Germany. Hosted by Tobias Haberkorn, Editor of Berlin Review. Produced by Kaitlin Roberts with Najla Said.

Audio 27

In September 2025, Palestinian writer Alaa Al-Qaisi was able to leave Gaza on a student visa. In January 2026 she arrived in Berlin for a residency in Wannsee, part of a program for writers in exile. At the end of the residency, a public reading was scheduled. It did not take place as planned. The event was cancelled and moved to a smaller, private venue, and the exile program that had invited her was defunded.

While this was happening, Alaa was writing a Berlin diary that absorbed the cancellation and the atmosphere around it. The essay became a record of what it means to write when the possibility of being heard is no longer certain.

In this episode of Writers Read, Alaa reads the essay in her own voice.

Read “Better Than Berlin” on Berlin Review: https://blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/2026-04/alaa-alqaisi-besser-als-berlin

Subscribe to Berlin Review — essays, criticism, and fiction from around the world. From €5/month: https://blnreview.de/en/subscribe

Airlift is produced in the Studio of Jacobin Germany. Hosted by Tobias Haberkorn, Editor of Berlin Review. Audio production by Kaitlin Roberts.

Audio 26

Tobias Haberkorn and Lauren Oyler discuss the scandal that has consumed the German media: comedian Christian Ulmen stands accused by his ex-wife, TV presenter Collien Fernandes, of stealing her identity, creating fake social media accounts, and engaging in sexually charged conversations with men in her name — what she calls digital sexual violence. They discuss what Ulmen's brand of misogynist humor reveals about German comedy culture, why the reckoning arrived later here than elsewhere, what the case says about the blurry line between autofiction and real life, and what Collien's defiant public response signals about how women are expected to perform victimhood. They also talk about the political fallout, the push for new legislation on digital abuse, and what it means that these alleged crimes were hidden in plain sight.

Read Lauren Oyler's novel Fake Accounts: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374600433/fakeaccounts

Subscribe to Berlin Review for essays, criticism, and fiction from around the world. From €5/month: https://blnreview.de/en/subscribe

Airlift is produced in the Studio of Jacobin Germany. Hosted by Tobias Haberkorn, Editor of Berlin Review.

Audio 23

Tobias Haberkorn spricht mit Deborah Feldman und Nora Haddada live vor Publikum auf der Leipziger Buchmesse über Minderheiten, Vergleiche und die Tücken der Solidarität. Noras Essay für die Berlin Review untersucht William Gardner Smiths Roman The Stone Face von 1963 — über einen schwarzen Amerikaner, der in Paris dem Rassismus zu entkommen glaubt, bis er sieht, wie die Algerier um ihn herum behandelt werden. Deborahs Essay For the Love of Jews handelt von ihren Jahren in Deutschland und der schleichenden Erkenntnis, nicht geschätzt, sondern konsumiert zu werden. Zusammen fragen sie: Was bedeutet es, wenn die Zuneigung einer Gesellschaft zu einer Minderheit eine andere verdeckt?

Lesen: Nora Hadadas Essay Don't Hate the Muster, Hate the Vergleich in der Berlin Review: https://blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/2026-02/nora-haddada-stone-face-william-gardner-smith

Lesen: Deborah Feldmans Essay For the Love of Jews in der Berlin Review: https://blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/2026-04/feldman-deborah-for-the-love-of-jews

Berlin Review abonnieren — Essays, Kritik und Literatur aus aller Welt. Ab 5 € im Monat: https://blnreview.de/abo

Airlift wird im Studio von Jacobin Deutschland produziert.

Moderiert von Tobias Haberkorn, Herausgeber der Berlin Review.

Audio 19

In this episode of Berlin Review Audio, writer Lianna Mark reads her essay "Better Living Through Self-Curation," originally published in the winter online edition of Berlin Review. The piece responds to Vincenzo Latronico’s widely discussed novel Perfection, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize after the publication of its English translation.

In her essay, Mark looks beyond the polarized reactions to the novel and examines the cultural economy behind authenticity. What does it mean to perform sincerity in a literary marketplace that rewards stories that are easily packaged and exported? And how does self-curation shape not only our lives but also the narratives that circulate globally?

You can read Lianna Mark's essay "Better Living Through Self-Curation" at blnreview.de

If you enjoyed this episode, consider supporting our work with a subscription.

Subscriptions start at 5 euros per month and give you access to: • our full archive of essays and reviews • audio versions of selected texts • new writing published regularly at blnreview.de

Audio 18

Yevgenias Essay _Vom Aushalten des Krieges _blickt auf Kiew im bald vierten Jahr des russischen Angriffskrieges und erzählt vom Leben unter Beschuss, von Zwangsmobilisierung und problematischen Dynamiken innerhalb der ukrainischen Gesellschaft.

Das Gespräch wurde im Dezember 2025 aufgezeichnet und ist Teil des Berlin Review Reader 5.

Finden Sie Yevgenias Essay auf blnreview.de

Audio 17

One of the first essays published in Berlin Review was Logan February's "Sans Souci"

In this episode the Nigerian poet and essayist reads an excerpt from the piece, written while living in Berlin on a DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Fellowship. The essay begins with a walk through Sanssouci Park in Potsdam and continues into a meditation on exile, colonial inheritance, loneliness as a luxury and what it means to stand inside and outside a place at once.

After reading an excerpt of the essay, Logan is joined by the writer and translator Miriam Stoney for a conversation about translation, ghosts, poetic license and the tension around what language can and cannot express.

You can read the rest of Logan February's essay "Sans Souci" at blnreview.de

Logan February is a Nigerian poet essayist and songwriter. Their book include_ The Nude Imperative_ and Mental Voodoo. February was a 2023-2024 DAAD Artist-in-Berlin Fellow and a recipient of the Future Awards Africa Prize for Literature.

Miriam Stoney is a writer, translator and contributor to Berlin Review.

Audio 16

Samanta Schweblin is from Argentina and has been twice-nominated for the International Booker Prize and Brazilian poet and essayist Ricardo Domeneck, who was awarded the National Library Prize in Rio de Janeiro and the Premio Jabuti.

Their conversation looks at how their writing has changed since leaving their home countries, the role of satire in a strange world and why Berlin is still a worthwhile place to make a home as a writer.

Audio 15

Lauren Oyler's triptych On Not Going Home, published in Berlin Review Reader 5, moves between late-night bars, missed connections, temporary attachments and the melancholy of staying awake too long.

In conversation with Berlin Review editor Tobias Haberkorn, Lauren reflects on why she turned to poetry, after years of writing prose and what it means to remain suspended between homes, relationships and other places.

This conversation was recorded in December before a live audience at the daadgalerie in Berlin.

You can read more of Lauren Oyler’s poetry in Review Reader 5 (http://blnreview.de/reader/5-winter-2026)) and online at blnreview.de (https://blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/2026-01/on-not-going-home-lauren-oyler))

Subscribe to our newsletter and check out our subscription options on blnreview.de/abo. You can find us on instagram under @blnreview.

Audio 14

«‹Die kalten Nächte der Kindheit› von 1980 blickt zurück, in Form eines inneren Monologs über Kindheit, Krankheit, Sprache und Überleben, während ‹Suche nach den Spuren eines Selbstmordes› diese Bewegung nach außen verlagert, auf eine Reise durch Europa, ‹zu den Gräbern meiner Schriftsteller›, die zugleich eine Bewegung ins Innere ist. In beiden Werken wird die Schwelle zwischen Leben und Tod zum Gegenstand. Zusammen gelesen antwortet die eine Lektüre auf die Aporien der anderen» — das schreibt die Literaturwissenschaftlerin Esra Akkaya in unserem Reader 5 über die großartige türkische Schriftstellerin Tezer Özlü.

Warum Özlü gerade wiederentdeckt wird und welche Bedeutung ihr suchendes Schreiben zwischen Istanbul und Mitteleuropa für literarische und nomadische Existenzen heute hat, bespricht Esra Akkaya im Dialog mit dem Kulturwissenschaftler Onur Erdur.

Das Gespräch wurde im Dezember 2025 vor Livepublikum in der daadgalerie Berlin aufgezeichnet.

Esras Akkayas Essay «Schreiben ist der grössere Wahn – über Tezer Özlüs Weltliteratur» findet ihr im Berlin Review Reader 5 und auf blnreview.de.

Audio 13

“The license that Israel, the land of the victims, has long enjoyed and abused may be expiring. The sons and daughters of the next generation will be free to rethink their own lives and future, beyond the memory of the Holocaust; they will also have to pay for the sins of their parents and bear the burden of the genocide perpetrated in their name,” wrote the Israeli-American Holocaust and genocide scholar Omer Bartov in April 2025, during the genocidal starvation campaign that Israel enacted against the Palestinian people in Gaza. In conversation with Berlin Review editor Tobias Haberkorn, Bartov discusses the extraordinary consequences of October 7 and the destruction of Gaza for the world’s moral order.

Topics covered: 00:03:55 – Ceasefire in Gaza and bad faith actors 00:11:36 – How does one assess genocide and what is the role of historians? 00:18:00 – The history of “genocide” vs. war crimes and crimes against humanity, The Nuremberg Trials 00:26:26 – Post-war impunity for Nazi crimes in Germany vs. impunity today 00:33:50 – The Holocaust, other Genocides and Gaza—useful analogies and false equivalences 00:48:20 – The Nakba, Zionism—and the Gaza Genocide 00:59:55 – Audience Questions

Read Omer’s writing at Berlin Review: “Infinite Licence” (No 12) and “A State of Denial” (No 15) Support & Subscribe to Berlin Review at blnreview.de/en/abo

Audio 12

Bei Fragen, die mit Israel und Palästina zu tun haben, wandelt Deutschland stets am Rande des Nervenzusammenbruchs. Warum eigentlich? Auf der Frankfurter Buchmesse 2025 sprach Berlin-Review-Editor Tobias Haberkorn mit dem Politikwissenschaftler Daniel Marwecki und dem Herausgeber der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung Jürgen Kaube darüber, wie die Staatsräson das akademische und kulturelle Leben in Deutschland auf den Kopf gestellt hat.

Daniel Marwecki ist ein Experte für Geopolitik und die deutsch-israelischen Beziehungen (einen Auszug aus seinem neuen Buch «Die Welt nach dem Westen» gibt es auf blnreview.de). Jürgen Kaube besetzt als einer von vier Herausgeber der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung den prominentesten Platz im deutschen Feuilleton und hat eine klare Linie gegen BDS, Postkolonialismus und alles gezogen, was die rutschige Schwelle zum «israelbezogenen Antisemitismus» zu überschreiten droht.

Im Gespräch erkunden wir, ob es einen Minimalkonsens gibt, um das deutsche Kultur- und Wissenschaftsleben aus einer Spirale von Defunding, Repression und (Selbst-)Zensur herauszuholen.

03:10 — Deutschlands Israelpolitik als «erkaufte Identitätspolitik» 08:05 — Deutscher vs. internationaler Diskurs 10:25 — Die transaktionale Geschichte der Staatsräson 15:00 — Anerkennung Palästinas 21:58 — Die «Scheinheiligkeit» Adenauers und Ben Gurions 26:42 — Deutschlands Abstieg im Academic Freedom Index 31:00 — «Universitäter» und Kampagnenjournalismus 35:05 — Wie Zensur funktioniert (mit Vergleich zu Hong Kong) 39:50 — Affekte gegen Linke und ihr «Ersatzproletariat» 41:45 — Genozid in Gaza? 47:48 — Konkrete Verantwortung Deutschlands

Leseempfehlungen: Daniel Marwecki, «Kalkül der Versöhnung», Berlin Review No. 4, Juni 2024. Tobias Haberkorn, «Im Land der falschen Äquivalenzen», Berlin Review No. 8, Januar 2025.

Mehr auf blnreview.de/audio