Person-shaped vacancy and moral degradation

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Becca Rothfeld is a staff writer at The New Yorker, an editor at The Point, and the former nonfiction book critic at The Washington Post, where she wrote until the paper eliminated its books section amid sweeping layoffs.

She explains why book reviews matter and how criticism can introduce readers to ideas they didn’t know interested them. Rothfeld also discusses the role of negative reviews, what it means for a book to be “instructively bad,” and why criticism should challenge rather than flatter its audience. She also argues that the growing use of AI risks degrading human thought, and reflects on beauty, “looksmaxing,” and the kind of intellectual and cultural life worth preserving.

📚 Becca's New Yorker Articles: https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/becca-rothfeld

📚 Becca's Website: https://www.beccarothfeld.com/

📚 Becca's Book: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250849915/allthingsaretoosmall/

0:00–5:41 What Happened to the Washington Post

5:41–13:08 Why Review Books

13:08–22:02 Reviewing “Bad” Books

22:02–39:20 AI and the Death of Thinking

39:20–45:46 Looksmaxing and Beauty

45:46–50:58 Favorite Book Reviews

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🦩THE MYTH OF AMERICAN IDEALISM: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738224/the-myth-of-american-idealism-by-noam-chomsky-and-nathan-j-robinson/