You Might Also Like: Fair Game by Vanity Fair

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From the studio that brought you WandaVision.

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I was an Avenger, but I'm not a hero anymore.

The Vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy. That family wasn't real.

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You sure about that? I had a father called Vision.

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How is this possible?

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Don't miss the two-episode premiere of Marvel Television's Vision Quest.

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Nothing bonds a family together quite like mortal jeopardy.

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Now streaming at HomeYard Disney Plus.

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The best part of waking up? A full cup of Folger's Coffee and music on full blast.

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Mark Guiducci (2:01)

From Vanity Fair, this is Fair Game. I'm Mark Guiducci. My guest today is someone who has spent his whole career asking questions of himself and about how power operates in the world. Vanity Fair's senior staff writer, Ta-Nehisi Coates. Ta-Nehisi is the author of multiple books, including We Were Eight Years in Power and Between the World and Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015 Working with Ta-Nehisi honestly is one of the great privileges of my job, and we look forward to getting his next column in the office the way that some people look forward to Christmas. In Ta-Nehisi's latest for Vanity Fair, he turns his attention to President Trump, referring to him as a, quote, visionary politician, someone who has seen and wielded his power to fundamentally alter the public perception of what an American president or indeed any elected official can do. We talked not only about why Trump's two presidencies are consequential, but also about the growing momentum around the Democratic Socialists of America just ahead of the midterms, why the way that Kamala Harris lost in 2024 matters, and how we begin to fix the damage that has been done.

All right. It's all fair game.

Ta-Nehisi, hello.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (3:15)

Hi.

Mark Guiducci (3:15)

Thank you for coming. We're here to talk about your new column that's in the issue that's just dropped. But I wanted to start with a question about yourself, which is that you're sometimes referred to as a public intellectual. And I wanted to ask you about that term.

Yeah, I thought you might. But tell me why. Just because it's pretentious or is there more to what?

Ta-Nehisi Coates (3:41)

Yeah, it's pretentious.

What do you do? Public intellectual, what is your actual work? What do you do? I'm a writer. I'm a writer in the journals. It's really easy to describe what I actually do. I like being identified with the actual work. I do not think of myself who spends most of his working time just pontificating. Probably the thing that I love most about the job, even though it seems like I have these really strong opinions, is actually having the question before, putting the pieces together, talking to people, and trying to figure out what is actually going on.

I'm rarely absolutely certain when I start anything. If I am absolutely certain, it's because I asked some questions a long time ago. So that kind of interrogation, that kind of asking questions of the world, asking questions of yourself, quite frankly, is such an important part of the job, and rightly or wrongly, when I hear public intellectual, I think some dude with a snifter and elbow patches kind of just sitting there, just dispensing his or her thoughts out into the world, and I don't feel like that's what I do.