impersonator of philip roth who's running around jerusalem promoting diaspora ism right in israel at the demjanjuk trial, using that as his backdrop and, you know, where did that come from? he invented it roth invented it. he said, like, you know, i never went around advocating that should return to poland. i'm not insane but i also but is some part of him that was very intrigued by this idea of like concentrating -- in a state as a security proposition. it's not a good one, right. like that. and it's it's a very american like you have to have a certain of security in the diaspora to even think the idea that having your own homeland isn't a sort of security guarantee for those left in the diaspora, and it isn't necessarily security guarantee for the survival. the people in that highly targetable small space and were the kinds of things he did think about that way and i think that like that added to his sense of himself really being from here, you know, he'd gone out into the world that mattered to him. he'd gone to eastern europe, he'd met the eastern european jewish writers that he

last winter in princeton, sean served, as something of a personal historian for roth suggesting what to read when philip had questions or ideas discussing those books with him, offering his thoughts on how roth then expressed those ideas and events in his later novels. what struck me most was a remark sean made about roth's historical consciousness. and i left that lunch fixated on the question of what it actually meant to historically, as a writer. i think that question is really at the heart of this conversation, which will certainly nod to the american american pastoral and married communists and the human stain. and of course, the plot against america. but we'll also explore more broadly something about roth's concern for, the fragility of our democracy with, freedom writ large and of history itself as it forms and unfold in the moments we all actually and have it, whether we see it or not. and by the late books, it becomes more more clear that this american story was, one roth had been telling all along, whether lindbergh, nixon or trump, it was something perhaps born being a --, an american --, th

impersonator of philip roth who's running around jerusalem promoting diaspora ism right in israel at the demjanjuk trial, using that as his backdrop and, you know, where did that come from? he invented it roth invented it. he said, like, you know, i never went around advocating that should return to poland. i'm not insane but i also but is some part of him that was very intrigued by this idea of like concentrating -- in a state as a security proposition. it's not a good one, right. like that. and it's it's a very american like you have to have a certain of security in the diaspora to even think the idea that having your own homeland isn't a sort of security guarantee for those left in the diaspora, and it isn't necessarily security guarantee for the survival. the people in that highly targetable small space and were the kinds of things he did think about that way and i think that like that added to his sense of himself really being from here, you know, he'd gone out into the world that mattered to him. he'd gone to eastern europe, he'd met the eastern european jewish writers that he