DISCUSSION: Run the Song

Among music critics, Ben Ratliff is unusually attentive to the questions of how we listen. His 2017 book Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty traded conventional notions of genre for qualities like slowness or repetition. In his 2025 book Run the Song, nominated for that year’s National Book Award for nonfiction, he turned his focus to the practice of listening as it intersects with the practice of running, musing on questions of intention, discipline, and chance. Fellow critic Jeremy Larson will speak with Ratliff about his history as a listener and writer, and what we can learn from making the act of listening a truly active one.