Is America anti-intellectual? Not according to Pulitzer Prize finalist Carlin Romano, author of America the Philosophical, which presents an America defined by its engagement with ideas and skepticism of platitudes.

Surveying the most notable American thinkers of the 21st century, both high and low, Romano gives us Stanley Cavell, Betty Friedan, Susan Sontag, Cornel West, Will Durant, Hugh Hefner and Barack Obama (our “philosopher-in-chief”) as examples of America’s dedication to big ideas.

Romano will be in conversation with the British continental philosopher Simon Critchley, author of The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology.