Podopticon

In this episode, I discuss "The Myth of Left and Right:  How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America" with its authors, Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis.

Christopher Hallenbrook and I discuss what he calls the "Hobbesian psychology" of the US gun debate.

A conversation about Montaigne and his work with Douglass I. Thompson, author of "Montaigne and the Tolerance of Politics."

Joshua Cherniss and I discuss his book, "Liberalism in Dark Times:  The Liberal Ethos in the Twentieth Century."

David Lay Williams and I discuss his forthcoming book, "The Greatest of All Plagues: Economic Inequality in Western Political Thought."

A discussion with Elizabeth Cohen about her book, "The Political Value of Time:  Citizenship, Duration, and Democratic Justice."

Ian Saxine and I discuss his book, "Properties of Empire:  Indians, Colonists, and Land Speculators on the New England Frontier."

Robinson Woodward-Burns and I discuss his book, "Hidden Laws:  How State Constitutions Stabilize American Politics."

A conversation with Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli as the "founder of modernity."

A conversation with Nomi Claire Lazar about her book, "Out of Joint: Power, Crisis, and the Rhetoric of Time."

A discussion with Ross Carroll, author of "Uncivil Mirth:  Ridicule in Enlightenment Britain."

A discussion with Joshua Greenberg, author of "Banknotes and Shinplasters: The Rage for Paper Money in the Early Republic."

A chat with Stephen F. Knott, author of "The Lost Soul of the American Presidency:  The Decline into Demagoguery and the Prospects for Renewal."

Warner and I conclude our long discussion of "Persian Letters."

Warner and I dig into Letter 141.

Warner and I continue to dig in. Good stuff in this one, including a prison break using a file that was hidden in a cuckoo clock. 

Stuart Warner, who's responsible for an excellent translation of the "Persian Letters," and I discuss Montesquieu's style.

A discussion with Ross Benes, author of "Rural Rebellion: How Nebraska Became a Republican Stronghold."

A conversation with Max Skjönsberg, author of "The Persistence of Party:  Ideas of Harmonious Discord in Eighteenth-Century Britain."

A conversation with Zena Hitz, author of "Lost in Thought: the Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life."

A conversation with Samuel Goldman, author of "After Nationalism:  Being American in an Age of Division." 

A discussion with Kyle Riismandel about his book, "Neighborhood of Fear: The Suburban Crisis in American Culture, 1975-2001." The book is a tight monograph of cultural history and critique, and it should have broad appeal across disciplines and outside of academia. Our conversation is wide-ranging: on the possibilities of punk rock history, "productive victimization," the mall, the use and abuse of fear in the suburbs, the distinction between urban and suburban spaces in matters like policing, and more!Riismandel has compiled playlists relevant to the book on YouTube and Spotify, linked here and here. Good stuff.

A discussion of the new book, "African American Political Thought: A Collected History."  I'm joined by Melvin Rogers and Jack Turner, the editors of this magnificent volume.  The conversation is wide ranging. We discuss the obstacles to the emergence of this field, the neglect of African American thinkers in American Political Thought, what it means to recenter the latter around Black political thought, and how this book fits within the Socratic tradition.  

This episode is about the state of nature, which turns out to be a lot of things, as will any concept that’s about 6,000 years old. But following my guest, Mark Somos, we've narrowed it down to about fifteen years in 18th century America. We discuss Somos's "American States of Nature: The Origins of Independence, 1761-1775." 

Dimitris Vardoulakis and I discuss his  book, Spinoza, the Epicurean: Authority and Utility in Materialism.

Last time, we discussed Rousseau’s "Confessions," an autobiographical work that’s meant to encourage some thinking around various questions common to life and living.This time, we turn to another thinker who made his own life central in various ways, James Baldwin. As we’ll see, Baldwin personalized his thinking–not just by being autobiographical but by addressing his audience directly. “YOU” must this and that. “YOU.” A jarring sort of second person personal.Now, in the spirit of autobiography, even a touch of confession, I don’t know James Baldwin well at all. I come to him very late. But it’s particularly exciting to come to a thinker so deep and deeply interesting when you feel like you might already have a foot in the grave; makes you want to pull the foot out and keep reading. I recommend it.On the other hand, I haven’t simply stumbled around in the dark, I’ve had the help of Nicholas Buccola, a Baldwin expert and author of “The Fire is Upon Us:  James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate Over Race in America.” Nick was PODOPTICON’s first guest. And it was there that I got a taste for Baldwin.So don’t worry, people. This won’t just be some bro who thinks he’s discovered something. I come with an expert, who’ll keep me in check. Or who will try.I come, then, as an amateur, which in an older and simpler sense suggests a kind of lover. So it’s appropriate that we’re going to talk about James Baldwin on love.It’s not so romantic, though, unless by "romance" you mean to suggest a touch of the Sturm und Drang.Baldwin’s love is tough love, and you’ll hear from him terms like a “lovers’ war”. Baldwin applies such love to his own country. It’s not a warm hug. But it’s hard to say it’s not necessary. He applies it, too, to his father, as in his novel, “Go Tell it on the Mountain,” and to Norman Mailer in the essay “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy.” Distinct works, but two scathing critiques later described by the author himself as love letters.In the same light, we’ll touch on Baldwin’s engagement, his grappling, with the western tradition. There, too, is a kind of Baldwinian love in action. Particularly interesting in this regard, maybe, is the discussion around his essay, “Why I stopped Hating Shakespeare.”Like Rousseau, with whom I opened, Baldwin found himself a stranger in his own land. While Rousseau’s researches made him feel like a barbarian for not being understood, Baldwin’s digging around the tradition made him feel like what he called “a bastard of the west.” Such individuals might be destined for a kind of loneliness.Indeed, in the various personal works discussed in this episode, we’ll see Baldwin talk about the life and business of the artist. And it’s there, I think, that it all comes together. Baldwin doesn’t shy from the big questions, and he doesn’t want you to, either. It’s Baldwin in the Socratic tradition.Let’s get to the episode, then. I do hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I enjoyed having it.

In December of 1770, Jean-Jacques Rousseau completed his Confessions and gave his first reading of the book to a group of seven or so gathered at a Parisian home for the occasion. Rousseau started at 9am and for the next 14 to 18 hours, he let it all hang out.Those who first heard the Confessions read were equally stunned but variously effected, you could say. From “how beautiful and profound that an individual could be so nobly forthright” to “what’s wrong with this whimpering psycho?” Those are paraphrases. But why would someone, especially someone so well-known, want us to know even more? Why so openly admit his most embarrassing and personal flaws and acts, as he did in this book? The spankings, the exposures, the courtesans; the five children out of wedlock, each dumped at a foundling home; the betrayal of innocent people and friends; the paranoia and conspiracy; all that laid bare by the subject himself!So I wanted to talk to Laura Field about these and other things, and she didn’t disappoint. I say that even after she laughed at me for asking “what’s wrong with modern society?”Laura is a political theorist who’s lately been on the fascism and authoritarianism beat, where she’s among the most penetrating analysts. She’s worked on everything from Xenophon to Nietzsche and contemporary politics. Her work on the Confessions, especially, has shown me a lot, and I’m so glad she took the time to have a chat with me about it and the wily and elusive Jean-Jacques.Her work on the "Confessions" is “Rousseau’s Confessions: A Pattern for Living," which you can find in this volume.

It turns out that working and reworking American identity is as old as the creation of the republic itself. As we’ll see in this episode, the thing called “American History” is not a static set of truths to be uncovered, but a story that has had numerous versions told by individuals with their own motivations.This and much more is uncovered in this discussion with Michael Hattem, author of "Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution."In this episode, we’ll discuss, among other things, how the American Revolution stands out from the Russian and the French; we’ll hear how colonists understood the past in relation to the present and how that understanding underwent its own transformation after the Revolution; we’ll talk about the creation of what Hattem calls an “American antiquity;” we’ll trace this and various other American efforts at cultural independence from Britain, including the creation of Columbus as the discoverer of America and the establishment of natural history museums and historical societies–all of which was the work of a network of individuals Hattem calls “cultural nationalists.”Stick around for a conversation with a thoughtful author who helps us better understand the American Revolution, “American History,” and the interplay of the two.

Politics relates to imagery in ways that I was able to understand anew, thanks to this conversation with Aaron Tugendhaft. He’s the author of the "Idols of ISIS: from Assyria to the Internet." We quickly enough see how the book is not so much a book about ISIS as it is an allegory for political and apolitical tendencies closer to home. Tugendhaft manages to blend his background in art history, ancient and Near East studies, and political theory in a remarkably readable and enlightening way. The book should have broad appeal.Get it here.

We recorded this episode on Jan 12, just six days since a mob, whipped up by the president, breached the capitol. The first such breach since the war of 1812. So we’ve had to restart the clock, so to speak.It’s the insurrection equivalent of a workplace injuries counter: “6 days without a breach!”So we recorded six days after a mob stormed the capitol and one day before the House voted to impeach for a second time. Nancy Pelosi wore the same dress for both impeachments, which is just cool, if you ask me. A sartorial power move.My guests are Connor Ewing and Jeffrey Tulis, two political scientists. I didn’t get to ask them about Pelosi’s dress, but I did get to ask them about impeachment, the pardon power, presidential power generally, and more. Be warned that we might get into the weeds a bit, but there are some interesting things that emerge from the conversation. I point out a few in the intro to the podcast...

In this episode, we discuss two things: constitutionalism and the Republican Party, which are these days opposing forces. My guests, George Thomas and Ben Kleinerman, are trying to recapture a kind of constitutionalism that goes back to the American founding thought in some ways. They don’t make that turn worshipfully, so they can be engaged reasonably.

I like the classical authors. They’re fun. So many of them speak in earthy remarks, like, you can’t know you’re happy until you’re dead. Stuff like that. Whatever’s the opposite of a cheerful nonsense slogan. But another reason to turn to the classics, even especially one Herodotus, is right here in this episode, which turns out to be timely–in so far as the humanities seem always now to be in a crisis.Joel Alden Schlosser is my guest, and the crisis he addresses in his book, Herodotus in the Anthropocene, is not the humanities but climate. And yet, he shows us exactly why we need authors like Herodotus, and by extension the humanities.Among the things Joel and I discuss are: types of equality and freedom, the notion of the known-world, collective action, despotism, the interplay of human freedom and earthly flourishing, Herodotus’s uniqueness, his use to us in the Anthropocence, and more–essentially what storytelling might do that shouting facts does not.

Good books will make you think of things they don’t raise explicitly, and what Ariel Ron’s book does for me is it makes me think about the stories we tell ourselves–and what work those stories do. His book, Grassroots Leviathan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North in the Slaveholding Republic uncovers what turns out to be a social movement of northern farmers who put their stamp on American democracy and American self-image in lasting ways.The book runs from the lead up of the American Revolution through the Civil War, which I think most readers will find most interesting. Most of us, that is, understand the Civil War as one that pitted the industrial north against the agrarian south; the city against the country. But this wasn’t the case, as Ron shows. And that’s just one way this book got me to thinking about the things we tell ourselves and the work those stories must be doing…

In this episode, I talk to Annelien de Dijn about her new book Freedom: an Unruly History. The book is a fascinating read, and the pod is a great conversation. This one will be especially interesting to those interested in politics and political thought, as de Dijn dwells on the anti-democratic character of liberal conceptions of freedom and the government best set to attain it.

So an ordinary guy stumbles into a conversation with two presidency scholars…. That’s essentially what happens in this episode. Jeremy Bailey, Benjamin Kleinerman, and I got together without a plan, just to discuss the argument advanced in Bailey’s book, “The Idea of Presidential Representation: An Intellectual and Political History.” Good stuff comes of it, I think. And much territory is covered.

Never Trumpers. Who are they? Who cares? Masters of the political universe? Conservative elites who had power till a minute ago and now have little to offer beyond what talking heads can do? Great chat with one of the guys who wrote the book on the matter, Rob Saldin, co-author of "Never Trump: the Revolt of the Conservative Elites."

This one's fun. Let it be a break from the noise. A leaf peeping drive around the history of color with historian, and my pal, Carolyn Purnell. That she’s my pal explains the joy in my voice–joy where there’s more often doom.

In this episode, we discuss the strangely expanding institution of slavery in the United States from the time of the Revolution to the 19th century. Helped along this time by historian Richard Bell, author of "Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home." He describes for us the wrenching story of what he calls the "reverse underground railroad."

In this episode, we reflect on the American Dream in light of a 1965 debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, Jr. I'm joined by political theorist Nicholas Buccola, author of "The Fire is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America."

It’s a politics, history, & culture podcast. Join me, Randal Hendrickson, and my guests as we take on questions from interesting to urgent. These are smart folk kind enough to have a chat with a suspect host. It’s a good time. Subscribe to PODOPTICON and join in on the fun.PODOPTICON launches Fall 2020, but you can (won't you, please?) subscribe now!