PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS In 1974, an imagined contemporary journalist interviewed an imagined Neanderthal on Italian state radio as part of its Impossible Interviews series. This contribution to public dis- course was scripted by Italo Calvino, modern Italian prose’s most famous writer (before Elena Ferrante). The interview’s finale featured the Neanderthal’s striking assertion that his con- temporaries’ playful exploration of combinations generated not only new stone tools, but also all future language and culture. Cultures since antiquity have used “dialogue” forms to explore topics of public importance. Calvino’s obviously impossi- ble, fictive interview sets the stage for this chapter’s examples of what GPT-4 seems consistently (and appropriately) to call possible interviews between pairs of widely honored public intellectuals. Some of them may be unfamiliar to some of you, but in any case, please don’t construe the GPT-4-generated possible inter- views below as centering in importance or value the handful of authors, themes, or perspectives that comprise them. They are a starting point for further discussion. Anyone reading these words is familiar with technologies for the mechanical reproduction and distribution of public intellectuals’ words. From the days of scribes and sopherim 165