Best Of: Zadie Smith on Populists, Frauds and Flip Phones

This is one of my favorite conversations in recent memory — with the writer Zadie Smith. Smith is the author of novels, including “White Teeth,” “On Beauty” and “NW,” as well as many essays and short stories. Her ability to give language to the kinds of quiet battles that live inside of ourselves is part of why she’s been one of my favorite writers for years. “We absolutely need to gather in our identity groups sometimes for our freedoms, for our civil rights. There’s absolutely no doubt about that. But for that role to be the thing that is you existentially all the way down — that is something that I personally believe all human beings revolt from at some level,” she told me when we spoke last September, shortly before Trump’s re-election. It’s ideas like these that I found interesting to revisit now, in a starkly different political climate. In this conversation, we discuss Smith’s novel, “ The Fraud ,” which Smith wrote with Trump and populism front of mind; what populism is really channeling; why Smith refuses the “bait” of wokeness; how people have been “modified” by smartphones and social media; and more. This episode contains strong language. Mentioned: Feel Free by Zadie Sm…