{"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":"“The Banality of Empathy“ by Namwali Serpell","slug":"the-banality-of-empathy-by-namwali-serpell","published_at":"2026-04-15T12:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958/the-banality-of-empathy-by-namwali-serpell","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/private-life-a-new-york-review-podcast-7689958","url":"https://share.transistor.fm/s/f8ee277e","audio_url":"https://media.transistor.fm/f8ee277e/abe01432.mp3","summary":"In March 2019 Namwali Serpell wrote for the NYR Online about a choose-your-own-adventure-style episode of the television show Black Mirror , Karl Ove Knausgaard, Hannah Arendt, and Violet Allen’s story “The Venus Effect,” among other subjects, in an expansive essay on about narrative empathy . In this episode of Private Life , “The Banality of Empathy” is read by the writer Lovia Gyarkye, whose work has appeared in The Nation , The New York Times , The Washington Post , Dissent , and Aperture . Gyarkye is also an editor at Hammer & Hope magazine and was previously a critic for The Hollywood Reporter . This reading accompanies the Private Life episode featuring a conversation with Serpell . Read “ The Banality of Empathy ” and other essays with a subscription to The New York Review of Books , which, in addition to twenty print issues a year, provides online access to our full archive going back to 1963.","meta_description":"In March 2019 Namwali Serpell wrote for the NYR Online about a choose-your-own-adventure-style episode of the television show Black Mirror , Karl Ove Knau…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":1699,"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/the-banality-of-empathy-by-namwali-serpell/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/the-banality-of-empathy-by-namwali-serpell.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}