New Books in Politics and Polemics
1,180 episodes - English - Latest episode: 7 months ago - ★★★★★ - 4 ratingsInterviews with Authors of Politics and Polemics about their New Books
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Episodes
Julia Serano, "Sexed Up: How Society Sexualizes Us, and How We Can Fight Back" (Seal Press, 2022)
May 20, 2023 08:00 - 59 minutesToday I interview Julia Serano about her new book, Sexed Up: How Society Sexualizes Us and How We Can Fight Back (Seal, 2022). Serano is an activist, performer, and acclaimed author of Whipping Girl, Excluded, and other books. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Guardian, TIME, Salon, and Ms. In Sexed Up, Serano argues that sexualization is a far more pervasive problem that we might recognize. She explores such questions as: Why do we perceive men as sexual predators and women...
Where Did Conservatism Go? A Conversation with Yoram Hazony
May 20, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourIsraeli political philosopher Yoram Hazony ('86) discusses the Enlightenment, the American Founding, his latest book: Conservatism: A Rediscovery, and Conservatism's past and future. Dr. Hazony is the President of the Herzl Institute, based in Jerusalem, and the chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, a public affairs institute based in Washington D.C., which recently hosted the popular National Conservatism Conference in Miami, FL. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoi...
American Conservatism, Natural Law, and the Good Life: A Conversation with Robert P. George
May 19, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourWhat are American conservatives trying to conserve? What is Natural Law, and how can we know it? Is there a single "good life"? Robert P. George, Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, joins the show to answer these questions and others in the Season One finale. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics
Mark Paul, "The Ends of Freedom: Reclaiming America's Lost Promise of Economic Rights" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
May 18, 2023 08:00 - 53 minutesSince the Founding, Americans have debated the true meaning of freedom. For some, freedom meant the provision of life's necessities, those basic conditions for the "pursuit of happiness." For others, freedom meant the civil and political rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights and unfettered access to the marketplace--nothing more. As Mark Paul explains, the latter interpretation--thanks in large part to a particularly influential cadre of economists--has all but won out among policymakers, w...
Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein, "The Incommunicados" (Center for Study of Responsive Law, 2023)
May 18, 2023 08:00 - 26 minutesIncommunicados is a collection of unanswered letters to public officials and other notable figures from iconoclasts Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein. The project was edited by Francesco Desantis, Outreach Coordinator at the Center for Study of Responsive Law. This booklet and Ralph Nader’s introduction meticulously document the self-ruinous disdain by Congress and the executive branch for thoughtful citizen input into government policies and practices. Citizen petitions, letters, memoranda, and art...
Claire Provost and Matt Kennard, "Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
May 17, 2023 08:00 - 44 minutesAs European empires crumbled in the 20th century, the power structures that had dominated the world for centuries were up for renegotiation. Yet instead of a rebirth for democracy, what emerged was a silent coup – namely, the unstoppable rise of global corporate power. Exposing the origins of this epic power grab as well as its present-day consequences, Silent Coup: How Corporations Overthrew Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Claire Provost & Matt Kennard is the result of two investigative jour...
COVID-19 and the Biosecurity Surveillance Regime: A Conversation with Dr. Aaron Kheriaty
May 16, 2023 22:43 - 56 minutesWhat's wrong with vaccine mandates? What is the "biosecurity surveillance regime"? Is trust in our public health institutions damaged beyond repair? Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, who was fired by the UC Irvine School of Medicine for refusing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, joins Madison's Notes to answer these questions and more. Dr. Kheriaty's Substack is here. Dr. Kheriaty's Senate Testimony is here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premi...
Kody W. Cooper and Justin Buckley Dyer, "The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics: Political Theology, Natural Law, and the American Founding" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
May 16, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourAmerica’s religious and political public forum is no longer confined to debates between liberals (be they Catholics or Protestants) and socially conservative evangelicals and traditional Catholics—with atheists condemning all of the above. There is now among some Catholic intellectuals and academics a movement called integralism that calls for the United States to move towards an integration of church (the Catholic Church) and state. This movement in turn, is opposed by other conservative Cat...
Victoria Bateman, "Naked Feminism: Breaking the Cult of Female Modesty" (Polity Press, 2023)
May 16, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourIs it right that, despite the promises of feminism, women’s bodies remain at the mercy of state, society and religion? Should a scantily clad woman, or a promiscuous one, be worth less than a fully covered woman, or a chaste one? Are being sexy and being smart really mutually exclusive? Can a woman be both body and brain? Dr. Victoria Bateman has confronted these questions with actions as well as words. She has appeared naked on national television, on stage, in art and at protests – using he...
Recovering the American Idea with Robert P. George, Ryan Anderson, Alexandra DeSanctis, and Antonin Scalia
May 12, 2023 17:34 - 1 hourOn September 23, 2021, the James Madison Program and the Ethics and Public Policy Center hosted a discussion of Robert P. George and Ryan T. Anderson's 2019 National Affairs essay, "The Baby and the Bathwater." George and Anderson delivered remarks and then spoke with Alexandra DeSanctis and Antonin Scalia about the central themes of the essay, and how the philosophical framework they set out applies to America. Watch "The Baby and the Bathwater: Toward a Recovery of the American Idea" here....
Saturation: Race, Art, and the Circulation of Value
May 12, 2023 08:00 - 25 minutesC. Riley Snorton and Hentyle Yapp read from Saturation, a book that offers an analysis of racial representation and controversy in the art world. Controversies involving race and the art world are often discussed in terms of diversity and representation—as if having the right representative from a group or a larger plurality of embodied difference would absolve art institutions from historic forms of exclusion. This book offers another approach, taking into account not only questions of racia...
The Primal Screams of Identity Politics: A Conversation with Mary Eberstadt
May 11, 2023 08:00 - 50 minutesDid the sexual revolution create identity politics? Why are young men and women so unhappy? Mary Eberstadt, Panula Chair in Christian Culture at the Catholic Information Center and Senior Research Fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute, joins the show to answer these questions and others and discuss her new book, Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! h...
Jacqueline Mondros and Joan Minieri, "Organizing for Power and Empowerment: The Fight for Democracy" (Columbia UP, 2023)
May 11, 2023 08:00 - 35 minutesJacqueline Mondros and Joan Minieri's book Organizing for Power and Empowerment: The Fight for Democracy (Columbia UP, 2023) draws on extensive research to portray how social-action organizations have evolved over the past twenty-five years, building power in the struggle for social and economic justice. It explores how organizers increasingly target corporate influence and attacks on democracy. Their strategies and theories of change confront racial, gender, and economic inequity and fight p...
The Politicization of Science: A Conversation with Dorian Abbot, Anna Krylov, David Romps, and Bernhardt Trout
May 10, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourHow are hiring and admissions decisions made in the hard sciences if not by merit? What are the risks of allowing science to be politicized? Professors Dorian Abbot (University of Chicago), Anna Krylov (University of Southern California), David Romps (University of California, Berkeley), and Bernhardt Trout (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), join the show to answer these questions and others. Resources: Dorian Abbot "The Views That Made Me Persona Non Grata at MIT" Yascha Mounk "Why...
Gregory Harms, "No Politics, No Religion?: How America's Code of Conduct Conceals Our Unity" (Political Animal Press, 2022)
May 09, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourAmericans are told that they are divided and polarized, but is it true? No Politics, No Religion?: How America's Code of Conduct Conceals Our Unity (Political Animal Press, 2022) put this proposition to the test - with surprising results. "No Politics, No Religion" is a common saying that discussions of politics and religion should be avoided at the dinner table or social gatherings due to their tendency to divide people. In No Politics, No Religion? Gregory Harms argues that this is absolut...
Masterpiece Cakeshop and the Cost of My Faith: A Conversation with Jack Phillips and Jake Warner
May 08, 2023 08:00 - 29 minutesJack Phillips is the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado. In 2012, Jack Phillips declined to create a custom wedding cake celebrating a so-called same-sex marriage. The men who requested the cake filed a charge with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, beginning a legal battle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Jack Phillips joins the show to discuss his new book, The Cost of My Faith: How a Decision in My Cake Shop Took Me to the Supreme Court. Joining Jack is Jake Warner,...
Ewelina U. Ochab and David Alton, "State Responses to Crimes of Genocide: What Went Wrong and How to Change It" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
May 08, 2023 08:00 - 49 minutesIn State Responses to Crimes of Genocide: What Went Wrong and How to Change it (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) Dr Ewelina U. Ochab and Lord Alton of Liverpool bring together ongoing situations of genocide around the globe. Foregrounding the testimonies of victims, the authors' multiple visits to the aftermath of atrocities, and the countless actions taken by Lord Alton in British Parliament over his 40 year political career, this book is a chilling but essential read which compels a response. Atro...
Sita Balani, "Deadly and Slick: Sexual Modernity and the Making of Race" (Verso, 2023)
May 07, 2023 09:00 - 48 minutesIf race is increasingly understood to be socially constructed, why does it continue to seem like a physiological reality? In Deadly and Slick: Sexual Modernity and the Making of Race (Verso, 2023), Sita Balani argues that the trickery of race comes down to how it is embedded in everyday life through the domain we take to be most intimate and essential: sexuality. Modernity inaugurates a new political subject made legible as an individual through the nuclear family, sexual adventure and the pu...
Eva Haifa Giraud, "What Comes After Entanglement?: Activism, Anthropocentrism, and an Ethics of Exclusion" (Duke UP, 2019)
May 06, 2023 08:00 - 38 minutesBy foregrounding the ways that human existence is bound together with the lives of other entities, contemporary cultural theorists have sought to move beyond an anthropocentric worldview. Yet as Eva Haifa Giraud contends in What Comes After Entanglement?: Activism, Anthropocentrism, and an Ethics of Exclusion (Duke UP, 2019), for all their conceptual power in implicating humans in ecologically damaging practices, these theories can undermine scope for political action. Drawing inspiration fro...
The Capitulation of MIT: A Conversation with Dorian Abbot
May 06, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutesDorian Abbot is an Associate Professor of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had invited Abbot to deliver their prestigious Carlson Lecture, but rescinded the invitation after receiving complaints about an article Abbot had written for Newsweek, titled "The Diversity Problem on Campus." In response, Princeton University's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions invited Abbot to speak at the James Madison Program...
Carceral Capitalism
May 05, 2023 14:13 - 24 minutesConor Rose reads from Jackie Wang's Carceral Capitalism. This extract, taken from the opening of the book, offers insight into the Black Lives Matter movement as well as new forms of predatory policing, informed by the 2008 financial crash. In this collection of essays in Semiotext(e)'s Intervention series, Jackie Wang examines the contemporary incarceration techniques that have emerged since the 1990s. The essays illustrate various aspects of the carceral continuum, including the biopolitics...
Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, "Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity" (PublicAffairs, 2023)
May 05, 2023 08:00 - 46 minutesPower and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (PublicAffairs, 2023) is a groundbreaking work by bestselling authors Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, in which they challenge conventional wisdom about the role of technology in driving prosperity. The authors argue that technology is not a neutral force working in the public interest but is shaped by the interests and beliefs of the powerful. Those who control technology are the ones who benefit from it, leaving ...
Cedric Johnson, "After Black Lives Matter: Policing and Anti-Capitalist Struggle" (Verso, 2023)
May 04, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourThe historic uprising in the wake of the murder of George Floyd transformed the way Americans and the world think about race and policing. Why did it achieve so little in the way of substantive reforms? After Black Lives Matter: Policing and Anti-Capitalist Struggle (Verso, 2023) argues that the failure to leave an institutional residue was not simply due to the mercurial and reactive character of the protests. Rather, the core of the movement itself failed to locate the central racial injust...
Andrew Small, "No Limits: The Inside Story of China's War with the West" (Melville House, 2022)
May 04, 2023 08:00 - 27 minutesToday I talked to Andrew Small about his book No Limits: The Inside Story of China's War with the West (Melville House, 2022). Winston Churchill famously described Russia in 1939 as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” But as Andrew Small correctly argues here, China’s path forward has often been laid out quite explicitly by its authoritarian leader Xi Jinping in speeches to the Community Party and elsewhere. The totality of those proclamations is that a real battle lies ahead,...
Philip Ewell, "On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone" (U Michigan Press, 2023)
May 03, 2023 08:00 - 59 minutesOn Music Theory and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone (University of Michigan Press, 2023) by Philip Ewell is an unflinching look at white supremacy and the academy, specifically in the discipline of music theory, although Ewell’s insights and arguments can apply just as well to all music studies and most, if not all, other academic fields. Using meticulous research and his own experiences, Ewell documents the results of music theory’s white racial frame. He shows how the power traditi...
Susan Hartman, "City of Refugees: The Story of Three Newcomers Who Breathed Life into a Dying American Town" (Beacon Press, 2022)
May 02, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutesHow can scholars employ the practices and techniques of investigative journalism? Susan Hartman provides an answer in her intimate look at refugee experience in the United States. In City of Refugees: The Story of Three Newcomers Who Breathed Life Into A Dying American Town (Beacon Press 2022), Hartman introduces readers to Utica, a small Rust Belt city located in upstate New York, just 250 miles north of Manhattan. The city provides the backdrop as Hartman examines the lives of three refugee...
Free Speech 69: Campus Misinformation with Bradford Vivian
May 02, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourState censorship and cancel culture, trigger warnings and safe spaces, pseudoscience, First Amendment hardball, as well as orthodoxy and groupthink: universities remain a site for important battles in the culture wars. What is the larger meaning of these debates? Are American universities at risk of conceding to mobs and cuddled “snowflake” students and sacrifice the hallowed values of free speech and academic inquiry? Bradford Vivian examines the heated debates over campus misinformation as ...
The Unbroken Thread: A Conversation with Sohrab Ahmari
May 02, 2023 08:00 - 36 minutesDoes God need politics? What does it mean to be free? Why should we care about tradition? Sohrab Ahmari, op-ed editor of the New York Post, joins Madison's Notes to discuss his new book, The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics
Defending Academic Freedom: A Conversation with Keith Whittington
May 01, 2023 08:00 - 54 minutesWhat is academic freedom for? What are the greatest threats to academic freedom today? Should Critical Race Theory be taught on college campuses? What about in K-12 classrooms? Keith Whittington, Chairman of the Academic Freedom Alliance's Academic Committee and the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics at Princeton University, joins the show to answer these questions and discuss the work of the Academic Freedom Alliance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices ...
Jo Littler, "Left Feminisms: Conversations on the Personal and Political" (Lawrence Wishart, 2023)
May 01, 2023 08:00 - 34 minutesWhat is the history and future of feminism? In Left Feminisms: Conversations on the Personal and Political (Lawrence Wishart, 2023), Jo Littler, Professor of Social Analysis and Cultural Politics at City, University of London, collects almost a decade of interviews with key thinkers in contemporary feminism. United by a shared left feminist perspective, interviewees including Nancy Fraser, Akwugo Emejulu, Sheila Rowbotham, Hilary Wainwright, Wendy Brown and Angela McRobbie, reflect on their w...
Craig Leonard, "Uncommon Sense: Aesthetics after Marcuse" (MIT Press, 2022)
April 29, 2023 08:00 - 54 minutesIn Uncommon Sense: Aesthetics after Marcuse (MIT Press, 2022), Craig Leonard argues for the contemporary relevance of the aesthetic theory of Herbert Marcuse, an original member of the Frankfurt School and icon of the New Left, while also acknowledging his philosophical limits. This account reinvigorates Marcuse for contemporary readers, putting his aesthetic theory into dialogue with anti-capitalist activism. Craig Leonard speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about anti-art, habit, the practice of ...
Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights: A Conversation with Ayaan Hirsi Ali
April 28, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourBorn in Somalia, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a women’s rights activist, free speech advocate, and New York Times bestselling author. She joins the show to discuss her new book, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights. [Note: This conversation includes discussion of sensitive topics related to sexual violence.] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics
Andrew Walker, "Social Conservatism for the Common Good: A Protestant Engagement with Robert P. George" (Crossway, 2023)
April 28, 2023 08:00 - 49 minutesRobert P. George is the indispensable man of American social conservatism. The Princeton professor is a scholar of such intellectual power that he almost single-handedly rescued the anti-abortion movement from the fringes of the American sociopolitical and legal landscape in the 1990s when the secular left assumed that the reign of abortion on demand for any reason was a done deal. George (born 1955) reset the debate and provided the intellectual framework that enabled a generation of pro-lif...
Brett Christophers, "Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World" (Verso, 2023)
April 25, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourBanks have taken a backseat since the global financial crisis over a decade ago. Today, our new financial masters are asset managers, like Blackstone and BlackRock. And they don't just own financial assets. The roads we drive on; the pipes that supply our drinking water; the farmland that provides our food; energy systems for electricity and heat; hospitals, schools, and even the homes in which many of us live-all now swell asset managers' bulging investment portfolios. As the owners of more ...
Why do we Still Need Statesmanship?
April 24, 2023 08:00 - 40 minutesIn an era of broad disappointment in the integrity of political figures, Dr. Daniel J. Mahoney, author of The Statesman as Thinker: Portraits of Greatness, Courage, and Moderation (Encounter Books, 2022) revives the idea of statesmanship, dwelling on figures ranging from Alexis de Tocqueville to Vaclav Havel, all of whom sought to preserve freedom in times of crisis. Professor Mahoney, a 2020-21 Garwood Visiting Fellow here at the Madison Program, is a professor emeritus at Assumption Univers...
Cynical Theories: A Conversation with James Lindsay
April 24, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourWhat is postmodernism? Does the Biden Administration support Critical Race Theory? How might a recommitment to classical liberal principles help fight "Woke-ism"? James Lindsay joins the show to answer these questions and more and discuss his book (co-written with Helen Pluckrose), Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody. About the "Grievance Studies Affair," here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megapho...
Boomers: A Conversation with Helen Andrews
April 22, 2023 23:04 - 54 minutesHelen Andrews, senior editor at The American Conservative, joins Madison's Notes to discuss her new book, Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics
Unalienable Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy: A Conversation with Secretary Pompeo and Ambassador Glendon
April 21, 2023 08:00 - 19 minutesWhat is the relationship between America's Founding principles and her foreign policy? What are unalienable rights and how do we know they exist? How have other nations responded to the final report of the U.S. Department of State's Commission on Unalienable Rights? Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo and Mary Ann Glendon, Chair of the Commission on Unalienable Rights, join Madison's Notes to answer these questions and others. The Final Report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights is here...
The Future of the Republican Party: A Conversation with Congressman Mike Gallagher '06
April 19, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutesWhat does the future hold for the Republican Party? What are the greatest challenges facing America today? How many pull-ups should a young man be able to do? Congressman Mike Gallagher joins Madison's Notes to answer these questions and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics
Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln: A Conversation with John Cribb
April 17, 2023 08:00 - 46 minutesJohn Cribb is the author of Old Abe, an historical novel which former Vice President Mike Pence says is the "best book on President Lincoln" he has ever read. John joins to show to discuss the book, the importance of heroes, the "great man" approach to history, Facebook's attempts to "cancel" his book, and more! You can find Cribb's essay "Facebook Cancels Abe Lincoln" here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://...
Modern Crises, Ancient Wisdom
April 16, 2023 08:00 - 53 minutes"The narrative that old books are worthless is designed to keep you from discovering that they are not." Spencer Klavan, author of How to Save the West: Ancient Wisdom for Five Modern Crises discusses the West: why it's so important to preserve it, how its greatest ideas can still help us today, and the limits of science in addressing modern problems. Spencer Klavan received his PhD in Classics from Oxford and is Associate Editor of the Claremont Review of Books and Features Editor at the Ame...
A Warning to the West: A Conversation with Sergiu Klainerman
April 15, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourSergiu Klainerman is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University. Born in communist Romania, he sees disturbing parallels between life in the Soviet Bloc and the "soft totalitarianism" or "pre-totalitarianism" taking root in America. He joins the show to discuss these parallels and reflect on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 1978 speech, "A World Split Apart." Klainerman's essay "Reflections on Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Address" is here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit me...
The Recovery of Family Life: A Conversation with Scott Yenor
April 14, 2023 08:00 - 51 minutesAre transgenderism and feminism at odds? Are we living through another sexual revolution? Why have conservatives been so unsuccessful in fighting the "culture wars"? Scott Yenor, Professor of Political Science at Boise State University, joins Madison's Notes to answer these questions and discuss his new book, The Recovery of Family Life: Exposing the Limits of Modern Ideologies. Yanor's essay "The False Science of Feminism" is here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoic...
Simon(e) van Saarloos, "Against Ageism: A Queer Manifesto" (Emily Carr UP, 2023)
April 13, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourAgainst Ageism: A Queer Manifesto starts with what it is not: it is not a socio-economic argument against ageism, celebrating “the elderly” as economically viable. Author Simon(e) van Saarloos is not interested in natural arguments about age, which portray different age groups as valuable because of assumed inherent qualities. Instead, this manifesto starts with an experience of childhood sexual abuse, and moves on to dissect the ways in which constructions of “age” and “youth” function to su...
Hearts of Men: How Should Progressives React to Masculinity Influencers like Andrew Tate?
April 12, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourOnline masculinity is getting weirder and weirder. We’re way past mere misogyny and sexual predation (though, that’s still certainly there). Now, we’ve also got bro science, ball tanning, ball eatin,’ piss drinkin,’ and who knows what's next. However, perhaps these mockable male influencers are onto something, in a roundabout way. There is just something broken in the hearts of men, as Barbara Ehrenreich once put it. If there wasn't, male influencers wouldn't be as popular as they are. This n...
Brian Kateman, "Meat Me Halfway" (Prometheus Books, 2022)
April 12, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourWe know that eating animals is bad for the planet and bad for our health, and yet we do it anyway. Ask anyone in the plant-based movement and the solution seems obvious: Stop eating meat. But, for many people, that stark solution is neither appealing nor practical. In Meat Me Halfway: How Changing the Way We Eat Can Improve Our Lives and Save Our Planet (Prometheus Books, 2022), author and founder of the reducetarian movement Brian Kateman puts forth a realistic and balanced goal: mindfully r...
Todd McGowan, "Enjoyment Right & Left" (Sublation Media, 2022)
April 11, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourToday I talked to Todd McGowan about his book Enjoyment Right & Left (Sublation Media, 2022). While understanding the psychic structure of pleasure and desire might seem to be unrelated to grasping our current political crisis, Todd McGowan argues that the intrinsically excessive nature of enjoyment is critically important to this effort. In a world that appears completely divided between right and left, McGowan calls for a universal form of enjoyment that unites people in an egalitarian proj...
Live Not by Lies: A Conversation with Rod Dreher
April 10, 2023 08:00 - 58 minutesCould totalitarianism take root in America? What does it mean to "live not by lies"? Rod Dreher is a senior editor at The American Conservative and the author of several books, including The Benedict Option. He joins the show to answer these questions and discuss his new book, Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents. Solzhenitsyn's 1974 essay is here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetw...
America at the Point of No Return? A Conversation with Michael Anton
April 08, 2023 08:00 - 50 minutesIs America still a democracy? What is at stake in the 2020 presidential election? Michael Anton, Lecturer at Hillsdale College and Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute, joins the show to answer these questions and discuss his new book, The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics
Helen Small, "The Function of Cynicism at the Present Time" (Oxford UP, 2020)
April 07, 2023 08:00 - 58 minutesCynicism is usually seen as a provocative mode of dissent from conventional moral thought, casting doubt on the motives that guide right conduct. When critics today complain that it is ubiquitous but lacks the serious bite of classical Cynicism, they express concern that it can now only be corrosively negative. The Function of Cynicism at the Present Time (Oxford UP, 2020) takes a more balanced view. Re-evaluating the role of cynicism in literature, cultural criticism, and philosophy from 184...