Infinite Jest is a novel for 2026

Thirty years ago, David Foster Wallace published Infinite Jest - a novel so sprawling, so formally strange, and so unnervingly prescient that it has never quite stopped happening.

Set in a near-future North America obsessed with pleasure, entertainment, and escape, the book asked a question that feels even sharper today than it did in 1996: what happens when a culture confuses happiness with anaesthesia?

Tanjil Rashid is joined by DT Max and Jonathan Derbyshire to discuss why the novel still matters, and what it can tell us about the world we’ve built since.

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