''Open Source'' is an American public radio show hosted by

Christopher Lydon Christopher Lydon (born 1940 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American media personality and author. He was the original host of '' The Connection'', produced by WBUR and syndicated to other NPR stations, and created ''Open Source'', a weekly rad ...

, former

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

journalist and original host of '' The Connection''. The show focuses on the arts, literature, and foreign affairs.

History

In May 2005, Christopher Lydon and his longtime producer Mary McGrath partnered with

University of Massachusetts Lowell The University of Massachusetts Lowell (UMass Lowell and UML) is a public research university in Lowell, Massachusetts, with a satellite campus in Haverhill, Massachusetts. It is the northernmost member of the University of Massachusetts public u ...

's radio station

WUML WUML (91.5 MHz) is a non-commercial FM college radio station licensed to Lowell, Massachusetts, United States. The station is owned by the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The transmitter is atop Fox Hall on Pawtucket Street in Lowell. Histo ...

WGBH (FM) WGBH (89.7 MHz; branded as GBH without the " W" since August 31, 2020) is a public radio station located in Boston, Massachusetts. WGBH is a member station of National Public Radio (NPR) and affiliate of Public Radio Exchange (PRX), which me ...

, and

Public Radio International Public Radio International (PRI) was an American public radio organization. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, PRI provided programming to over 850 public radio stations in the United States. PRI was one of the main providers of programm ...

to produce ''Open Source'' as a daily call-in radio program. The show was syndicated by 32 NPR stations, before it was canceled on October 16, 2006. In 2007, Lydon moved to Brown University's

Watson Institute for International Studies The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs is an interdisciplinary research center at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Its mission is to promote a just and peaceful world through research, teaching, and public engagement ...

to podcast hourlong conversations under the name ''Open Source''. In 2013, Lydon and McGrath returned to WBUR to produce ''Open Source'' as a weekly show. In 2014, Conor Gillies joined the team as audio producer.

Schedule

''Open Source'' airs twice a week on

WBUR WBUR-FM (90.9 FM) is a public radio station located in Boston, Massachusetts, owned by Boston University. It is the largest of three NPR member stations in Boston, along with WGBH and WUMB-FM and produces several nationally distributed program ...

, Thursday at 9pm and Sunday at 2pm. The ''Open Source'' podcast reaches listeners in over 150 countries each week. ''Open Source'' also produces ongoing series on its website, including "Reading Chekhov," a reading of

Anton Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; 29 January 1860 Old Style date 17 January. – 15 July 1904 Old Style date 2 July.) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career ...

's short stories by Boston actors and academics, and "Parachute Radio," international conversations from Ghana, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Jamaica, Singapore and Cuba. ''Open Source'' is the world's oldest active podcast.

Notable guests

Previous guests in longform conversations have included

Philip Roth Philip Milton Roth (March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist and short story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophicall ...

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...

Jonathan Lethem Jonathan Allen Lethem (; born February 19, 1964) is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His first novel, ''Gun, with Occasional Music'', a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was publishe ...

Orhan Pamuk Ferit Orhan Pamuk (born 7 June 1952) is a Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic, and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. One of Turkey's most prominent novelists, his work has sold over thirteen million books in sixty-three lan ...

Cornel West Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953) is an American philosopher, political activist, social critic, actor, and public intellectual. The grandson of a Baptist minister, West focuses on the role of race, gender, and class in American society and ...

Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking wor ...

Matt Taibbi Matthew Colin Taibbi (; born March 2, 1970) is an American author, journalist, and podcaster. He has reported on finance, media, politics, and sports. A former contributing editor for ''Rolling Stone'', he is an author of several books, co-host o ...

Ha Jin Jin Xuefei (; born February 21, 1956) is a Chinese-American poet and novelist using the pen name Ha Jin (). ''Ha'' comes from his favorite city, Harbin. His poetry is associated with the Misty Poetry movement. Early life Ha Jin was born in L ...

Paul Krugman Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was th ...

, Gordon Wood,

Joan Didion Joan Didion (; December 5, 1934 – December 23, 2021) was an American writer. Along with Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson and Gay Talese, she is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism. Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won an ...

Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a Professorial Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a profess ...

Gore Vidal Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (; born Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, erudition, and patrician manner. Vidal was bisexual, and in his novels and ...

Megan Marshall Megan Marshall (born June 8, 1954) is an American scholar, writer, and biographer. Her first biography ''The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism'' (2005) earned her a place as a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for B ...

V. S. Naipaul Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (; 17 August 1932 – 11 August 2018) was a Trinidadian-born British writer of works of fiction and nonfiction in English. He is known for his comic early novels set in Trinidad, his bleaker novels of alienati ...

David Bromwich David Bromwich is Sterling Professor of English at Yale University. Career After graduating from Yale with a B.A. in 1973 and a Ph.D. four years later, Bromwich became an instructor at Princeton University, where he was promoted to Mellon Prof ...

John Mearsheimer John Joseph Mearsheimer (; born December 14, 1947) is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the Univers ...

Edwidge Danticat Edwidge Danticat (; born January 19, 1969) is a Haitian-American novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, ''Breath, Eyes, Memory'', was published in 1994 and went on to become an Oprah's Book Club selection. Danticat has since written or ...

Jeffrey Sachs Jeffrey David Sachs () (born 5 November 1954) is an American economist, academic, public policy analyst, and former director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, where he holds the title of University Professor. He is known for his work ...

Ralph Nader Ralph Nader (; born February 27, 1934) is an American political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes. The son of Lebanese immigrants to the Un ...

Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth Ann Warren ( née Herring; born June 22, 1949) is an American politician and former law professor who is the senior United States senator from Massachusetts, serving since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party and regarded as a ...

Amartya Sen Amartya Kumar Sen (; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher, who since 1972 has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States. Sen has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, econom ...

Norman Mailer Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, activist, filmmaker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Mailer ...

David Foster Wallace David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and university professor of English and creative writing. Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel '' Infinite Jest'', whi ...

and

Edward Said Edward Wadie Said (; , ; 1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies.Robert Young, ''White ...

References

External links

Radio Open Source

Open Source with Christopher Lydon
at PRX
Christopher Lydon Interviews...
* {{cite web , url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/style/2013/11/20/radio-talk-host-christopher-lydon-returns-wbur-after-year-absence/jLC042johF7aRALtnvWlNK/story.html , title= After messy split from WBUR, Christopher Lydon returns , author=Joseph P. Kahn , date=2013-10-20 , publisher=

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

Mass media in Boston American talk radio programs 2005 radio programme debuts