Stop Ruminating (Or Don’t)

In the fourth and final episode of season one, host Shelley Lee sits down with Amanda Anderson, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and English and outgoing Director of the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University. Their conversation ranges across the definition and defense of the humanities, the concept of “value clarification” as the distinct work of humanistic inquiry, and the challenges posed by AI and shrinking attention spans to the conditions necessary for deep thinking. They also take up Amanda’s forthcoming book on rumination, the politics of viewpoint diversity, and the interconnected fates of the humanities, the university, and democracy. Gregory Kimbrell, Communications Manager at the Cogut Institute and producer of “The Confluence,” joins Shelley for the episode introduction and outro.