[teaser] The End of History and the Last Man: The Old Age of Mankind

August 15th, 2022  |  1 hr 41 mins

Matt Kelly rejoins the boys to talk about Fukuyama's weird liberalism, econ theory, the triumphalism of the 90s, Fukuyama as an OG anti-Islamic type, and more!

[teaser] The End of History and the Last Man: Our Pessimism

July 28th, 2022  |  16 mins 13 secs

Emmet and John begin their series on Fukuyama's seminal The End of History and the Last Man. They talk through its context, Fukuyama's background, trouble some of his assumptions, and kick the tires of his liberal triumphalism in the opening 50 pages.

[teaser] The Boys Are Back In Town Bull Sesh

July 1st, 2022  |  22 mins 11 secs

We're back!

This one opens with some housekeeping, then we move on to talk about the energy crisis, regionalism, localism, PMC intermediation, American political tradition, and more!

[teaser] Futures Past: On the Relation of Past and Future in Modern History p. I

March 6th, 2022  |  15 mins 36 secs

apocalypse, carl schmitt, christianity, heidegger, history, leo strauss, philosophy, politics, religion

Emmet and John began their reading of Koselleck's Futures Past. They situate his context, layout his questions and method, and then open the first essay. They discuss the transition into modernity, the nature of historical time, the waning of eschaton, the secularization of the political and thus the future, and medieval eschatological tradition, and way more.

The True And Only Heaven 11: Right-Wing Populism and the Revolt Against Liberalism

February 20th, 2022  |  9 mins 21 secs

Emmet and John finish Lasch's book and reflect on it as a whole. They considered some Roman historians at the top, summarize this final chapter, and weigh Lasch's contribution. What does it mean for us? What has he left us to endeavor that he did or could not?

Episode 75: The Shock of the New pt. 1: The Mechanical Paradise

January 25th, 2022  |  51 mins 10 secs

art, art history, cezanne, cubism, duchamp, modern art, modernism, painting, picasso, screens, ww1, wwi

Emmet and John begin their new series on Robert Hughes's documentary series The Shock of the New. This first installment takes on early modernism. The lads contemplate the impact of WWI, think on what really separates the modern experience from previous eras, and what makes our era different from early modernism.

[teaser] The True and Only Heaven 9: The Spiritual Discipline Against Resentment

January 16th, 2022  |  9 mins 45 secs

american history, blm, christianity, civil rights, history, mlk, spirituality, whiteness, woke, wokeness

Emmet and John take on the ideas of Reinhold Niebuhr and his impact on neocons and MLK. Then they look at Lasch's interpretation of MLK's intellectual life and political career. They compare the Southern and Northern Civil Rights campaigns and contemplate the deadlock, in part created by King himself, left in his wake. They close by discussing resentment and its politics.

Episode 72: The Art of Forgetting

January 5th, 2022  |  59 mins 5 secs

agrippa, amnesia, aquinas, christianity, forgetting, history, islam, medieval, memory, middle ages, modernity, scholasticism, science

Emmet and Mike discuss medieval techniques of memory and forgetting. They discuss Cornelius Agrippa's assault on those techniques as an assault on the corrupted scholastic world. In Agrippa's thought we see the germs of modernity. The discuss opens up into a contemplation of ancient science and tech, the propaganda of the Enlightenment, the disciplining of the mind and the gaze, recovering tradition, and more.

[teaser] The True and Only Heaven 8: Work and Loyalty

January 2nd, 2022  |  13 mins 18 secs

Emmet and John work through questions of the democratization of work and culture in the era of mass production and mass culture. They also trace the relationship between cultural bohemians and elites with the workers' movement, including the forgotten legacy of Mabel Dodge Luhan. The close by talking about national loyalty, the repeat of debates from 100 years ago, another look at property as a political concern, and more!

[teaser] The True and Only Heaven 7: The Syndicalist Moment

December 19th, 2021  |  9 mins 43 secs

We return to our Lasch series and talk about Georges Sorel and the syndicalist moment in the late 19th and early 20th century. Property, proprietorship, and centralization are the major themes of the chapter. We brought some of these issues into the present by discussing control over one's data, discretion as empowerment, and selective quietude as rebellion.

[teaser] The True and Only Heaven 6: "No Answer But An Echo"

November 21st, 2021  |  13 mins 28 secs

Emmet and John forge ahead through the longest and most difficult chapter in Lasch's The True And Only Heaven. They question his use of Thomas Carlyle, delve into the Calvinism in both Carlyle and Emerson, what it means for America to have an anti-progressive tradition, Boethius's Wheel of Fortune, appreciating fate, and more!

[teaser] The True and Only Heaven 5: The Populist Campaign Against "Improvement"

November 7th, 2021  |  15 mins 14 secs

american history, lasch, liberal, liberalism, politics, populism, progressive

Emmet and John dive into Lasch's overview of populism. They start to get glimpses of Lasch's commitments here. Touring classical conceptions of republicanism to people like Paine, Cobbett, and Brownson, Emmet and John track how they frustrate our contemporary interpretations of republicanism and liberalism can't or don't apply to them. Thinking with Lasch on historiography, they close the chapter discussing 19th-century artisans, populism, the New Deal, and the triumph of Taylorism.

Episode 61: Two Piece: Resigning from Being Superfluous

October 19th, 2021  |  1 hr 5 mins

incels, obama, peak oil, strike wave, the great resignation

Emmet, John, and Canada Mike talk through two pieces: one on superfluous men by Alex Gendler and another about bullshit jobs and people quitting the workforce by John Michael Greer. They talk about the Great Resignation, the strivewave, why many men have been historically superfluous, incels, and ponder if we need new ways to think of being modern.

[teaser] The True and Only Heaven 4: The Sociological Tradition and the Idea of Community

October 17th, 2021  |  6 mins 43 secs

Emmet and John forge ahead in the Lasch reading. This time they watch Lasch take on Burke, Marx, Weber, Tonnies, and more. They discuss development theory, the systematic view of history's progress, what they think Lasch is up to, what Schopenhauer did for them, and more.

Episode 58: American Canon: John Milius

September 28th, 2021  |  1 hr 26 mins

america, american culture, cold war, film, john milius, milius, movies

Emmet and John discuss the life and times of writer and director John Milius, looking specifically at his movies The Wind and the Lion and Conan the Barbarian.

[teaser] The True and Only Heaven 2: The Idea of Progress Reconsidered

September 19th, 2021  |  2 mins 46 secs

In this one, we embark on the second chapter of Lasch's The True and Only Heaven to talk about his historical understanding of progress and his underlying critique. We talk about millenarianism, what progressivism isn't, the family as a buttress against the market, Adam Smith's fatalism, the challenge of republican ideals, and more.