Momus: The Podcast

Lucy Sante – Season 8, Episode 8

Lucy Sante joins us for the finale of Season 8. The Belgian-born American critic, writer, and artist talks about her lifelong textual engagement with an extraordinary miscellany of culture and history. Sante shares the figures that have shaped her work, from a grade-school report on Nostradamus to Barbara Epstein, her editor at the New York Review of Books, to her various writing students across twenty years of teaching at Columbia and Bard. For her “meaningful text,” Sante focuses on Manny Farber, an early inspiration whose writing "infected me from the word go." She reads from his essay “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art” (Film Culture, No. 27, Winter 1962/63), an electric ode to "termite tapeworm-fungus-moss art ... that goes always forward eating its own boundaries." Momus: The Podcast is edited by Jacob Irish, with production assistance from Chris Andrews. Thanks to this episode’s sponsors, Rabkin Foundation [https://rabkinfoundation.substack.com/s/the-rabkin-interviews], PHI [https://phi.ca/en/], and Esker Foundation [https://eskerfoundation.com/], for supporting our work. Thanks to Lucy Sante for her contribution to this season.

Andrii Ushytskyi – Season 8, Episode 7

In the season’s penultimate episode, we feature Andrii Ushytskyi, a Kyiv-based writer, dancer, and co-editor of Solomiya [https://solomiyamag.com/], an independent magazine founded in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Ushytskyi begins by reading a short essay by Natalia Ginzburg, “The Son of Man” (Unita, 1946), and then speaks with Sky Goodden about his editorial arc and the responsiveness and faith that stewarding a publication—and writing—through a war has required. He also speaks to how the invasion has changed the nature of his writing, and how, for Ushytskyi, dance has emerged as a form of kinesthetic expression and release. Thanks to this episode’s sponsors, Rabkin Foundation [https://www.rabkinfoundation.org/] and Art Toronto [https://arttoronto.ca/home/], for supporting our work. Thanks to Andrii Ushytskyi for his contribution to this season. And our many thanks to Jacob Irish, our editor, and Chris Andrews, for production assistance.

Re’al Christian, JJJJJerome Ellis, and Diana SeoHyung – Season 8, Episode 6

This special summer episode includes a live recording of the Spring issue of Post/doc, co-published by Momus and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. The collaborative issue of the VLC’s biannual publishing series for discursive, speculative, experimental writing, and artistic practices features a new sound work by artist JJJJJerome Ellis and a new text by writer Diana SeoHyung, both reflecting on the theme of intervals—on languaging, language breaks, aphasia, riffing, and repeating. This recording of the launch, which took place in early May at Storm Books & Candy, in Brooklyn, includes SeoHyung's reading of her text 가는 길: Decision to Leave / On Leaving / Leaving [https://momus.ca/%EA%B0%80%EB%8A%94-%EA%B8%B8-decision-to-leave-on-leaving-leaving/], and Ellis's performance of Havensong [https://momus.ca/havensong-after-and-for-heidi-andrea-restrepo-rhodes-and-diana-seohyung/]. The episode is introduced by Lauren Wetmore in conversation with Re'al Christian, Assistant Director of Editorial Initiatives at the VLC, about originating Post/doc, and her own writing and editorial practice. Thanks to this episode’s sponsors, Marian Goodman Gallery [https://www.mariangoodman.com/] and The Blue Building [https://www.thebluebuilding.ca/], for supporting our work. Thanks to JJJJJerome Ellis, Diana SeoHyung, and Re'al Christian for their contributions to this season. And as always, many thanks to Jacob Irish, our editor, and Chris Andrews, for production assistance.

Paul Chan – Season 8, Episode 5

Paul Chan is an artist, writer, and former publisher. For this episode of Momus: The Podcast, Chan’s self-made automated doppelganger reads “Sade Today (after Judith Butler) [https://evergreenreview.com/read/sade-today/],” a piece he wrote for Evergreen (Spring/Summer 2025). He speaks to Sky Goodden about the implications of AI on writers (though they agree that criticism could present a special resistance) and his recent efforts to increase accessibility to his writing through audio recordings, while “hemlocking” its content against AI co-option. Chan also discusses the challenges of independent publishing, how he perceives writing as a form of daring, and how writing informs making. But in either case, he says, “ Choices are real choices when they're neither given nor self-evident. That, to me, is the core of what it means to think creatively.”  Thanks to this episode’s sponsor, Plug In ICA [https://plugin.org/], for supporting our work. Thanks to Paul Chan for his contribution to this season. And thanks to Jacob Irish, our editor, and Chris Andrews, for production assistance.

Meghan O'Rourke – Season 8, Episode 4

In this episode, Meghan O'Rourke [https://meghanorourke.com/], poet, author and editor of The Yale Review [https://yalereview.org/], speaks frankly about pursuing a creative and professional life with chronic illness. Joining Lauren Wetmore in conversation, and following a reading from Susan Sontag's pivotal text "Illness as a Metaphor" (The New York Review of Books, 1979), which O'Rourke updated for the 21st century with her medical memoir The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness (Riverhead Books, 2022), O’Rourke speaks to how "The way you make work might not look as consistent as a kind of late-capitalist notion of productivity insists." She also touches on her experiences as a critic and editor of criticism, insisting that both require one to be "capable of generosity and describing love." Thanks to this episode’s sponsor, the Illingworth Kerr Gallery [https://www.auarts.ca/our-campus/galleries-on-campus/illingworth-kerr-gallery], Alberta University of the Arts (AUArts), for their support of our work. Thanks to Meghan O'Rourke for her contribution to this season. And thank you to Jacob Irish, our editor, and Chris Andrews, for production assistance.