{"podcast":{"title":"Private Life: A New York Review Podcast","slug":"private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958","podcast_index_feed_id":7689958,"rss_url":"https://feeds.transistor.fm/private-life","website_url":"https://www.nybooks.com","image_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/gnQ-tYKkQUrf9KBbX-Lv2CitGexgv0Aij1cs3L5VRhY/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:1400/h:1400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8wODA5/ZGRiYmU0NTg3OTY0/Y2RkNDQzMTJhZjU3/NWUyZS5wbmc.jpg","author":"New York Review Podcasts","episode_count":22,"summary":"Private Life is a podcast from The New York Review, hosted by contributor Jarrett Earnest. Each episode offers intimate, in-depth conversations with distinguished voices from across the literary landscape—about their lives, their work, and the ideas that shape both. Along the way, they revisit pieces from the The New York Review of Books's robust sixty-year archive (some episodes of the podcast will feature newly recorded readings of these classic essays) to situate arguments within contemporary culture. The show also includes discussions of titles from our book publishing arm, New York Review Books, featuring talks with translator Mark Polizzotti on Andre Breton's surrealist masterpiece Nadja and musician Richard Hell on the re-issue of his novel Godlike. Other early episodes find Joyce Carol Oates ruminating on true crime, while Darryl Pinckney opens up about the perils of memoir and his formative friendship with essayist Elizabeth Hardwick. Private Life is a personable, expansive invitation for longtime subscribers and a new generation of readers alike to connect with the past, present and future of The New York Review.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-09T00:19:47.670598+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958"},"episode":{"title":"Matthew Aucoin on Opera, Music Criticism, and Poetry","slug":"matthew-aucoin-on-opera-music-criticism-and-poetry","published_at":"2026-06-10T20:44:12+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958/matthew-aucoin-on-opera-music-criticism-and-poetry","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958","url":"https://share.transistor.fm/s/551ddc85","audio_url":"https://media.transistor.fm/551ddc85/4339b04c.mp3","summary":"In this episode of Private Life , Matthew Aucoin joins Jarrett Earnest to discuss the state of music criticism, the work of music composition, and the life and writing of Aucoin’s former professor and mentor, the poetry critic Helen Vendler. The two also talk about “ Inside the Music ,” Aucoin’s essay from the Review ’s November 6, 2025, issue about the decline of music reviews in mainstream media, as well as “ Chronicles of Love and Loss ,” Vendler’s review, from our May 11, 1995, issue, of o James Merill’s final book of poetry, A Scattering of Salts .(1995). Aucoin is a composer, conductor, and writer. His operatic song cycle Music for New Bodies, inspired by the poetry of Jorie Graham, premiered in 2024 and was staged at the Lincoln Center in the summer of 2025. He is the author of the book The Impossible Art: Adventures in Opera (2021), and he has been a contributor to The New York Review of Books since 2018. Also in 2018 he was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. Vendler was an academic and literary critic, known most for writing about contemporary poetry. Over a six-decade career she taught English and poetics at Cornell, Boston University, and Harvard, where she retired as the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor Emerita in the Department of English. Vendler was also a longtime contributor to the Review, beginning in 1975 with an essay on William Carlos Willaims. Read the essays discussed in this episode with a subscription to The New York Review of Books , which, in addition to twenty issues a year, gives you access to our full archive since 1963, searchable on our website.","meta_description":"In this episode of Private Life , Matthew Aucoin joins Jarrett Earnest to discuss the state of music criticism, the work of music composition, and the lif…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":4111,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958/episodes/matthew-aucoin-on-opera-music-criticism-and-poetry/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958/matthew-aucoin-on-opera-music-criticism-and-poetry.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}