This week, as an installment in our end-of-year retrospective series of episodes, we’re going to hear from Jonny Thakkar as well as from Cate Zaloom, co-founding editor of Public Books. I talked with Jonny and Cate at the beginning of the year.

Each of them co-founded publications that exist somewhere between the academy and the world of cultural criticism. Both of their publications are young: Jonny co-founded his in 2008, Cate hers in 2012. Both The Point and Public Books, then, have risen to prominence in what seems like, what feels like, a new renaissance in little magazines. We’re going to hear from Jonny and Cate about what they’ve hoped their publications could contribute to this moment. We’ll also hear about how their publications stand out, what they do that other magazines and publications don’t do. From Jonny, we’ll hear about the importance he and his fellow editors place on bringing a kind of humanistic thinking, a kind of broadly philosophical approach, to cultural criticism. From Cate, we’ll hear about the way in which her publication has sought to bring more academics, more scholars, into cultural criticism, in order to bring to bear many recent advances in scholarships on public debate.