Podcasts about allan bloom

We opened this episode of The Dr. Peter Breggin Hour acknowledging the weight of our times. For the past week, we've explored how to live meaningfully amid chaos, threats, and cultural unraveling. That conversation remains vital. But reality does not pause for comfort. This week, we returned to the difficult terrain with our friend J.J. Carroll — a man of uncommon courage, a former law enforcement officer with decades on the border and in fugitive operations, a truth-teller who was recently fired for daring to speak plainly on the very issues he lived. J.J.'s experiences are not abstract. They have been forged in daily encounters with violence in the six months he worked with ICE in 2025-2026 and the violence he faced for 24 years as a Border Patrol Officer, arresting drug cartel members on the Southern border. He describes a nation where the demographic transformation is not subtle policy but visible, measurable destruction. J.J. is a firsthand witness to the continued open borders, net increases in illegal immigration, and jobs going overwhelmingly to non-Americans while native-born citizens, especially White males, are sidelined. Government data he cites paints a stark picture: hundreds of arrests daily, yet a system so backlogged that true mass deportations feel like a distant promise rather than a current reality. We do not shy away from these realities on this show. America was built by a specific people with a specific culture — a White, Christian, European-rooted nation that achieved greatness through shared values, faith, rule of law, and high-trust communities. Pretending otherwise dishonors history and endangers the future. As J.J. powerfully states, demographics shape destiny. When you import millions from cultures with vastly different norms, lower average IQs, and incompatible worldviews — often without any expectation of assimilation — you do not enrich; you transform, and not for the better. Europe is learning this lesson in blood and social collapse. We ignore it at our peril. Even now, the mayhem is surging onto our shores. The rising tide of migrant violence and social breakdown is unmistakable across Europe and England, where no-go zones, knife crime, and gang rapes have become grim daily realities. Here in the United States, the pattern repeats in major cities like New York and beyond. The many stories of murders, rapes, and other violence by illegal immigrant populations are not isolated tragedies; they are the predictable consequence of policies that prioritize unassimilated foreign populations over the safety and future of our own children. We have a huge country to manage with almost 350 million souls living here from all parts of the world. There are issues with continued illegal border crossings, international drug trafficking into the US, and massive issues of fraud and theft on a level never before identified that threatens to demolish us and invites totalitarianism to come and take charge. The Judeo-Christian foundational culture that created America and those individuals who were all part of it are being shredded by our political and intellectual elite and other cultures coming from far different places in the world who want no part of what we have here in terms of civilization. A significant number of these people have no understanding of respect for human life, the rule of law, the US Constitution, basic rules of life, or rules of the road that we take for granted. How does that ignorance translate into the daily lives of citizens? No respect for human life translates into murder, including the deliberate attacks on people who are strangers by perpetrators using trucks, knives, guns, and other weapons. No understanding of, agreement with, and respect for the rule of law translates into fraud and theft on a massive basis, employing lying, subterfuge, and cunning to swindle, cheat, and steal from individuals and from American citizens through federal theft. In California, several massive, multi-million-dollar fraud rings involving illegal immigrants and transnational criminal organizations have recently been dismantled by federal authorities for stealing taxpayer-funded welfare, COVID-19 relief, and tax revenue. Similar large-scale fraud operations tied to Somali communities have also plagued Minnesota, further draining public resources intended for American citizens. This cultural incompatibility extends even to everyday infrastructure. Illegal immigrant commercial drivers, often poorly trained, unlicensed, or operating stolen or improperly maintained vehicles, are contributing to chaos on our highways. Serious accidents, deadly pile-ups, and overwhelmed emergency services have increased in areas with high concentrations of such drivers, adding yet another layer of preventable danger to American families who simply want to travel safely on roads built and maintained by prior generations. As Elizabeth Nickson has powerfully documented in her recent Substack column “White Boy's Summer,” the impact across Europe has been devastating. Decades of mass migration have been accompanied by a deliberate political project that has taught many newcomers to view the native populations — the very citizens who built and sustain these societies as producers, taxpayers, and keepers of the culture — with resentment and outright hatred. (See: White Boy's Summer) The Spiritual Dimension This is not merely political or economic. It is spiritual. We agreed that there is a degree of evil walking the world that we have not seen before. Both concepts of evil and love have been banished from intellectual discussion, laughed at as old-fashioned. Cultural relativism — the idea that all cultures and moral systems are equally valid with no objective standard by which to judge them — is the opposite of these terms. Allan Bloom's 1987 bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind, sounded the warning but was quickly buried in intellectual and media circles with a wave of multiculturalism, DEI, calls of racism to silence critics, and a focus on bending reality with transgenderism and other tales that have left devastation in their path. J.J. speaks as a believer who sees Satan as the source of evil roaming the earth, a force that delights in the slaughter of the innocent — 63 million abortions, the mutilation of children under transgender ideology, and the darkest allegations tied to elite networks like those surrounding Jeffrey Epstein. The failure to fully release the Epstein files, despite promises and power, is a profound betrayal. When those in authority protect the powerful at the expense of justice for children, the system stands condemned. Peter and I have long warned about the moral free fall — the erosion of the Ten Commandments in public and private life, the suppression of love and conscience, the celebration of evil in entertainment and elite circles. Occult influences, ritualistic abuses, and a rejection of God create a void that darkness eagerly fills. We see it in the boldness of anti-human spectacles at major events and in the quiet despair of families watching their children be targeted. We Refuse Despair We do not exempt leaders from scrutiny. While Donald Trump remains the strongest border president in modern memory, serious disappointments linger — continued promotion of mRNA technology, the absence of full accountability for past crimes, and an emperor-like tone in some foreign policy pronouncements. Real change requires more than one man. It demands people willing to reclaim their inheritance. Yet we refuse despair. Peter reminded us of the Black Robed Regiment — the ministers who fueled the American Revolution with Judeo-Christian conviction. The Black Robed Regiment was the courageous pastors and clergy of the Revolutionary era. They preached biblical principles of liberty, justice, and resistance to tyranny from their pulpits and from town to town in Colonial days, leading up to the American Revolution, while dressed in their distinctive black robes. These men were instrumental in shaping the fundamental, encompassing worldviews of individual freedom, liberty, and release from tyranny. These courageous and hardy pastors, ministers, and clerics rallied the American people, framing the fight for independence as a sacred duty and providing the moral and spiritual backbone of our nation's birth. We need a similar revival today: a return to the fundamentals of faith, family, and constitutional order. J.J. finds hope in his teenage son's generation and the friends he drives around — young people who are more politically engaged and spiritually aware than many in prior generations. They are turning away from the emptiness of the sexual revolution, materialism, and identity chaos, and they want none of it. Across the country, our youngest generations — Gen Z and Alpha — are showing signs of a quiet but powerful shift, returning to God, traditional churches, and core American values of family, self-reliance, and ordered liberty. Reports and surveys document rising interest in Christianity, declining support for extreme gender ideology, and a renewed appreciation for the Founding principles that made this nation exceptional. Young girls, too, are increasingly rejecting the glitter culture of hyper-sexualization and fluid identity in favor of something more grounded and enduring. Small Is Beautiful: Love in Action In the face of such overwhelming disorder, the answer begins at home. Make your home a sanctuary. Love your spouse fiercely. Raise your children in truth. Plant apple trees — literally, as Peter and I recently did in our backyard. Build a real community where you are. Civility, trust, and decency radiate outward from strong families. As Peter emphasized at the close, the world's evil fades by comparison to the love we put into it. God will measure us by that love. In a time when elites peddle division and death, we counter with creation, fidelity, and courage. This conversation with J.J. Carroll is raw, unflinching, and necessary. We invite you to listen to the full episode. Let it stir you — not to hopelessness, but to renewed commitment. Speak truth. Reject the lies about our nation's Founding and character. Protect the innocent. Cling to God. And never apologize for loving your people, your culture, and your children's future. We continue our series on living faithfully in dark days — see our recent “Small Is Beautiful” piece on Substack. Your presence here, your subscriptions, and your own acts of courage sustain our work. We love you, dear audience. Stay strong. The fight is generational, but good men and women — and a sovereign God — are not easily defeated.

„Szekspir wiedział wszystko" – to chyba Allan Bloom tak orzekł i sformułowanie weszło do potocznego języka. A co to jest, to wszystko? Między innymi to, w jaki sposób uniknąć tragedii – nie osobistej, a ogólnospołecznej. W ten sposób w swej najnowszej książce o Szekspirze pisze prof. Maciej Gdula, socjolog, były poseł i były wiceminister nauki, badając mechanizmy, wedle których społeczeństwa, w których umieszczona jest akcja „Ryszarda III” czy „Miarki za miarkę”, znajdują się o krok od rozpadu.Z Gdulą rozmawiam o Szekspirze i sztukach, które w „Jak uniknąć tragedii” analizuje, ale też o tych, o których milczy – przede wszystkim o „Hamlecie”, traktowanym tutaj jako opowieść o intelektualiście w świecie politycznym. Gdula też nim był, a występ w tym podcaście to pierwsza tak długa z nim rozmowa, od kiedy z Sejmem i ministerialnymi korytarzami się pożegnał. Czy każdy intelektualista, który do polityki wchodzi, jest skazany na taki los? Zapraszam do wysłuchania odcinka.Podcastu „Czas odzyskany” możesz posłuchać na platformach Spotify, Apple Podcasts oraz YouTube. This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp

In this episode I examine Allan Bloom's interpretative essay on Plato's Republic, focusing on Book 1 of the Republic and its attempt to define justice.

In this episode, Megan and Frank investigate dreams and dream interpretation. Are dreams random hallucinations? Hidden desires? Messages from the gods? What, if anything, can dreams tell us about ourselves, and how might media shape our dreaming experiences? Thinkers discussed include: Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Artemidorus of Daldianus, Rene Descartes, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Norman Malcom, Eric Schwitzgebel, and David Lynch.Hosts' Websites:Megan J Fritts (google.com)Frank J. Cabrera (google.com)Email: philosophyonthefringes@gmail.com-----------------------Bibliography:Genesis 41 ESV - Joseph Interprets Pharaoh's Dreams - Bible GatewayDaniel 2 NIV - Nebuchadnezzar's Dream - In the - Bible GatewaySirach 34 GNT - Dreams Mean Nothing - Foolish people - Bible GatewayArtemidorus' Oneirocritica - Daniel E. Harris-McCoy - Oxford University PressPeter Thonemann - An Ancient Dream Manual: Artemidorus' The Interpretation of DreamsThe Internet Classics Archive | On Dreams by AristotleThe Internet Classics Archive | On Prophesying by Dreams by AristotleLacusCurtius • Cicero — De Divinatione: Book IPlato's Republic Book 9 [Allan Bloom's translation]Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of DreamsWegner et al. - Dream ReboundDreaming | Norman Malcolm | Taylor & Francis eBooksScientists entered people's dreams and got them ‘talking' | Science | AAASHuman Behavior and Psychology | The Great Courses (Episode 14)Eric Schwitzgebel - Why did we think we dreamed in black and white?Dreaming, Philosophy of | Internet Encyclopedia of PhilosophyDescartes - Meditations on First Philosophy-----------------------Cover Artwork by Logan Fritts-------------------------Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):https://uppbeat.io/t/simon-folwar/neon-signsLicense code: C2OWCCQD2KK3ERKO

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education.  On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session, a local man stood up to the podium and read a sexually explicit passage from a book that he wanted removed from Denton's school libraries. But beguiled by the prospect of securing a political win, he had confused the title of the lurid psychological thriller he read aloud with a young adult fiction series about mermaids. While his attempt to ban a book that was never in Denton's school libraries in the first place received a few laughs, it also reflects a deeply serious and troubling culture of conflict that has taken over the politics of education and now divides people so completely as to make public education as a shared endeavor seem impossible.  In Willing Warriors, Mark Hlavacik shows how the culture wars have redefined the politics of US schooling from the 1970s to the present through vivid accounts of public controversies featuring Allan Bloom, Oprah Winfrey, Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Betsy DeVos, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others. Beginning in the 1970s, Hlavacik shows, efforts at innovation in schooling have increasingly been met by attempts to discredit them through exposé. As the culture wars have accelerated and exploded, this cycle of innovation and exposé has embroiled public schools in increasingly heated debates. He explains the dynamics that make curriculum controversies so intractable and confronts the delicate question of whether raucous public arguments are bad for education. With clarity and insight, Hlavacik reveals why bitter contests between educational ideologies not only add another burden for the schools, but also for the people—the willing warriors—who devote their lives to fighting for their betterment. Mark Hlavacik is assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Assigning Blame: The Rhetoric of Education Reform. Laura Beth Kelly is an associate professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education.  On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session, a local man stood up to the podium and read a sexually explicit passage from a book that he wanted removed from Denton's school libraries. But beguiled by the prospect of securing a political win, he had confused the title of the lurid psychological thriller he read aloud with a young adult fiction series about mermaids. While his attempt to ban a book that was never in Denton's school libraries in the first place received a few laughs, it also reflects a deeply serious and troubling culture of conflict that has taken over the politics of education and now divides people so completely as to make public education as a shared endeavor seem impossible.  In Willing Warriors, Mark Hlavacik shows how the culture wars have redefined the politics of US schooling from the 1970s to the present through vivid accounts of public controversies featuring Allan Bloom, Oprah Winfrey, Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Betsy DeVos, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others. Beginning in the 1970s, Hlavacik shows, efforts at innovation in schooling have increasingly been met by attempts to discredit them through exposé. As the culture wars have accelerated and exploded, this cycle of innovation and exposé has embroiled public schools in increasingly heated debates. He explains the dynamics that make curriculum controversies so intractable and confronts the delicate question of whether raucous public arguments are bad for education. With clarity and insight, Hlavacik reveals why bitter contests between educational ideologies not only add another burden for the schools, but also for the people—the willing warriors—who devote their lives to fighting for their betterment. Mark Hlavacik is assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Assigning Blame: The Rhetoric of Education Reform. Laura Beth Kelly is an associate professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education.  On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session, a local man stood up to the podium and read a sexually explicit passage from a book that he wanted removed from Denton's school libraries. But beguiled by the prospect of securing a political win, he had confused the title of the lurid psychological thriller he read aloud with a young adult fiction series about mermaids. While his attempt to ban a book that was never in Denton's school libraries in the first place received a few laughs, it also reflects a deeply serious and troubling culture of conflict that has taken over the politics of education and now divides people so completely as to make public education as a shared endeavor seem impossible.  In Willing Warriors, Mark Hlavacik shows how the culture wars have redefined the politics of US schooling from the 1970s to the present through vivid accounts of public controversies featuring Allan Bloom, Oprah Winfrey, Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Betsy DeVos, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others. Beginning in the 1970s, Hlavacik shows, efforts at innovation in schooling have increasingly been met by attempts to discredit them through exposé. As the culture wars have accelerated and exploded, this cycle of innovation and exposé has embroiled public schools in increasingly heated debates. He explains the dynamics that make curriculum controversies so intractable and confronts the delicate question of whether raucous public arguments are bad for education. With clarity and insight, Hlavacik reveals why bitter contests between educational ideologies not only add another burden for the schools, but also for the people—the willing warriors—who devote their lives to fighting for their betterment. Mark Hlavacik is assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Assigning Blame: The Rhetoric of Education Reform. Laura Beth Kelly is an associate professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education.  On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session, a local man stood up to the podium and read a sexually explicit passage from a book that he wanted removed from Denton's school libraries. But beguiled by the prospect of securing a political win, he had confused the title of the lurid psychological thriller he read aloud with a young adult fiction series about mermaids. While his attempt to ban a book that was never in Denton's school libraries in the first place received a few laughs, it also reflects a deeply serious and troubling culture of conflict that has taken over the politics of education and now divides people so completely as to make public education as a shared endeavor seem impossible.  In Willing Warriors, Mark Hlavacik shows how the culture wars have redefined the politics of US schooling from the 1970s to the present through vivid accounts of public controversies featuring Allan Bloom, Oprah Winfrey, Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Betsy DeVos, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others. Beginning in the 1970s, Hlavacik shows, efforts at innovation in schooling have increasingly been met by attempts to discredit them through exposé. As the culture wars have accelerated and exploded, this cycle of innovation and exposé has embroiled public schools in increasingly heated debates. He explains the dynamics that make curriculum controversies so intractable and confronts the delicate question of whether raucous public arguments are bad for education. With clarity and insight, Hlavacik reveals why bitter contests between educational ideologies not only add another burden for the schools, but also for the people—the willing warriors—who devote their lives to fighting for their betterment. Mark Hlavacik is assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Assigning Blame: The Rhetoric of Education Reform. Laura Beth Kelly is an associate professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education.  On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session, a local man stood up to the podium and read a sexually explicit passage from a book that he wanted removed from Denton's school libraries. But beguiled by the prospect of securing a political win, he had confused the title of the lurid psychological thriller he read aloud with a young adult fiction series about mermaids. While his attempt to ban a book that was never in Denton's school libraries in the first place received a few laughs, it also reflects a deeply serious and troubling culture of conflict that has taken over the politics of education and now divides people so completely as to make public education as a shared endeavor seem impossible.  In Willing Warriors, Mark Hlavacik shows how the culture wars have redefined the politics of US schooling from the 1970s to the present through vivid accounts of public controversies featuring Allan Bloom, Oprah Winfrey, Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Betsy DeVos, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others. Beginning in the 1970s, Hlavacik shows, efforts at innovation in schooling have increasingly been met by attempts to discredit them through exposé. As the culture wars have accelerated and exploded, this cycle of innovation and exposé has embroiled public schools in increasingly heated debates. He explains the dynamics that make curriculum controversies so intractable and confronts the delicate question of whether raucous public arguments are bad for education. With clarity and insight, Hlavacik reveals why bitter contests between educational ideologies not only add another burden for the schools, but also for the people—the willing warriors—who devote their lives to fighting for their betterment. Mark Hlavacik is assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Assigning Blame: The Rhetoric of Education Reform. Laura Beth Kelly is an associate professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education.  On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session, a local man stood up to the podium and read a sexually explicit passage from a book that he wanted removed from Denton's school libraries. But beguiled by the prospect of securing a political win, he had confused the title of the lurid psychological thriller he read aloud with a young adult fiction series about mermaids. While his attempt to ban a book that was never in Denton's school libraries in the first place received a few laughs, it also reflects a deeply serious and troubling culture of conflict that has taken over the politics of education and now divides people so completely as to make public education as a shared endeavor seem impossible.  In Willing Warriors, Mark Hlavacik shows how the culture wars have redefined the politics of US schooling from the 1970s to the present through vivid accounts of public controversies featuring Allan Bloom, Oprah Winfrey, Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Betsy DeVos, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others. Beginning in the 1970s, Hlavacik shows, efforts at innovation in schooling have increasingly been met by attempts to discredit them through exposé. As the culture wars have accelerated and exploded, this cycle of innovation and exposé has embroiled public schools in increasingly heated debates. He explains the dynamics that make curriculum controversies so intractable and confronts the delicate question of whether raucous public arguments are bad for education. With clarity and insight, Hlavacik reveals why bitter contests between educational ideologies not only add another burden for the schools, but also for the people—the willing warriors—who devote their lives to fighting for their betterment. Mark Hlavacik is assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Assigning Blame: The Rhetoric of Education Reform. Laura Beth Kelly is an associate professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education.  On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session, a local man stood up to the podium and read a sexually explicit passage from a book that he wanted removed from Denton's school libraries. But beguiled by the prospect of securing a political win, he had confused the title of the lurid psychological thriller he read aloud with a young adult fiction series about mermaids. While his attempt to ban a book that was never in Denton's school libraries in the first place received a few laughs, it also reflects a deeply serious and troubling culture of conflict that has taken over the politics of education and now divides people so completely as to make public education as a shared endeavor seem impossible.  In Willing Warriors, Mark Hlavacik shows how the culture wars have redefined the politics of US schooling from the 1970s to the present through vivid accounts of public controversies featuring Allan Bloom, Oprah Winfrey, Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Betsy DeVos, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others. Beginning in the 1970s, Hlavacik shows, efforts at innovation in schooling have increasingly been met by attempts to discredit them through exposé. As the culture wars have accelerated and exploded, this cycle of innovation and exposé has embroiled public schools in increasingly heated debates. He explains the dynamics that make curriculum controversies so intractable and confronts the delicate question of whether raucous public arguments are bad for education. With clarity and insight, Hlavacik reveals why bitter contests between educational ideologies not only add another burden for the schools, but also for the people—the willing warriors—who devote their lives to fighting for their betterment. Mark Hlavacik is assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Assigning Blame: The Rhetoric of Education Reform. Laura Beth Kelly is an associate professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education.  On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session, a local man stood up to the podium and read a sexually explicit passage from a book that he wanted removed from Denton's school libraries. But beguiled by the prospect of securing a political win, he had confused the title of the lurid psychological thriller he read aloud with a young adult fiction series about mermaids. While his attempt to ban a book that was never in Denton's school libraries in the first place received a few laughs, it also reflects a deeply serious and troubling culture of conflict that has taken over the politics of education and now divides people so completely as to make public education as a shared endeavor seem impossible.  In Willing Warriors, Mark Hlavacik shows how the culture wars have redefined the politics of US schooling from the 1970s to the present through vivid accounts of public controversies featuring Allan Bloom, Oprah Winfrey, Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Betsy DeVos, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others. Beginning in the 1970s, Hlavacik shows, efforts at innovation in schooling have increasingly been met by attempts to discredit them through exposé. As the culture wars have accelerated and exploded, this cycle of innovation and exposé has embroiled public schools in increasingly heated debates. He explains the dynamics that make curriculum controversies so intractable and confronts the delicate question of whether raucous public arguments are bad for education. With clarity and insight, Hlavacik reveals why bitter contests between educational ideologies not only add another burden for the schools, but also for the people—the willing warriors—who devote their lives to fighting for their betterment. Mark Hlavacik is assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Assigning Blame: The Rhetoric of Education Reform. Laura Beth Kelly is an associate professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. 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

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education.  On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session, a local man stood up to the podium and read a sexually explicit passage from a book that he wanted removed from Denton's school libraries. But beguiled by the prospect of securing a political win, he had confused the title of the lurid psychological thriller he read aloud with a young adult fiction series about mermaids. While his attempt to ban a book that was never in Denton's school libraries in the first place received a few laughs, it also reflects a deeply serious and troubling culture of conflict that has taken over the politics of education and now divides people so completely as to make public education as a shared endeavor seem impossible.  In Willing Warriors, Mark Hlavacik shows how the culture wars have redefined the politics of US schooling from the 1970s to the present through vivid accounts of public controversies featuring Allan Bloom, Oprah Winfrey, Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Betsy DeVos, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others. Beginning in the 1970s, Hlavacik shows, efforts at innovation in schooling have increasingly been met by attempts to discredit them through exposé. As the culture wars have accelerated and exploded, this cycle of innovation and exposé has embroiled public schools in increasingly heated debates. He explains the dynamics that make curriculum controversies so intractable and confronts the delicate question of whether raucous public arguments are bad for education. With clarity and insight, Hlavacik reveals why bitter contests between educational ideologies not only add another burden for the schools, but also for the people—the willing warriors—who devote their lives to fighting for their betterment. Mark Hlavacik is assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Assigning Blame: The Rhetoric of Education Reform. Laura Beth Kelly is an associate professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/journalism

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education.  On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session, a local man stood up to the podium and read a sexually explicit passage from a book that he wanted removed from Denton's school libraries. But beguiled by the prospect of securing a political win, he had confused the title of the lurid psychological thriller he read aloud with a young adult fiction series about mermaids. While his attempt to ban a book that was never in Denton's school libraries in the first place received a few laughs, it also reflects a deeply serious and troubling culture of conflict that has taken over the politics of education and now divides people so completely as to make public education as a shared endeavor seem impossible.  In Willing Warriors, Mark Hlavacik shows how the culture wars have redefined the politics of US schooling from the 1970s to the present through vivid accounts of public controversies featuring Allan Bloom, Oprah Winfrey, Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Betsy DeVos, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others. Beginning in the 1970s, Hlavacik shows, efforts at innovation in schooling have increasingly been met by attempts to discredit them through exposé. As the culture wars have accelerated and exploded, this cycle of innovation and exposé has embroiled public schools in increasingly heated debates. He explains the dynamics that make curriculum controversies so intractable and confronts the delicate question of whether raucous public arguments are bad for education. With clarity and insight, Hlavacik reveals why bitter contests between educational ideologies not only add another burden for the schools, but also for the people—the willing warriors—who devote their lives to fighting for their betterment. Mark Hlavacik is assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Assigning Blame: The Rhetoric of Education Reform. Laura Beth Kelly is an associate professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education.  On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session, a local man stood up to the podium and read a sexually explicit passage from a book that he wanted removed from Denton's school libraries. But beguiled by the prospect of securing a political win, he had confused the title of the lurid psychological thriller he read aloud with a young adult fiction series about mermaids. While his attempt to ban a book that was never in Denton's school libraries in the first place received a few laughs, it also reflects a deeply serious and troubling culture of conflict that has taken over the politics of education and now divides people so completely as to make public education as a shared endeavor seem impossible.  In Willing Warriors, Mark Hlavacik shows how the culture wars have redefined the politics of US schooling from the 1970s to the present through vivid accounts of public controversies featuring Allan Bloom, Oprah Winfrey, Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Betsy DeVos, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others. Beginning in the 1970s, Hlavacik shows, efforts at innovation in schooling have increasingly been met by attempts to discredit them through exposé. As the culture wars have accelerated and exploded, this cycle of innovation and exposé has embroiled public schools in increasingly heated debates. He explains the dynamics that make curriculum controversies so intractable and confronts the delicate question of whether raucous public arguments are bad for education. With clarity and insight, Hlavacik reveals why bitter contests between educational ideologies not only add another burden for the schools, but also for the people—the willing warriors—who devote their lives to fighting for their betterment. Mark Hlavacik is assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Assigning Blame: The Rhetoric of Education Reform. Laura Beth Kelly is an associate professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.We were excited to record and share this conversation with Matt Dinan, a professor who teaches in a Great Books program at St. Thomas University, a liberal arts college in New Brunswick, Canada. It brings together longtime preoccupations of the show — Saul Bellow's late novel, Ravelstein, Allan Bloom, Straussian political philosophy — with the fraught emergence of LLMs like ChatGPT. This past semester, Dinan took a fairly radical approach to confronting AI in the classroom, and it seemed to work. We consider the art of teaching, the qualities of great teachers, and what it all reveals about an insidious technology's effect on how we live and learn as citizens in, at least for now, a democratic republic.Listen again: "Unraveling Allan Bloom and Saul Bellow," June 21, 2021Sources:Saul Bellow, Ravelstein (2000)Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (1987)Matt Dinan, "Saul Bellow's Ravelstein," Hedgehog Review, Spring 2025— "Permission Structures," Prefaces, Dec 10, 2025— "It's Not Just a Calculator," Prefaces, Aug 28, 2024Jorge Luis Borges, "The Lottery in Babylon," Collected Fictions (1999)Jonathan Malesic, "ChatGPT Is a Gimmick: AI cannot save us from the effort of learning to live and die," Hedgehog Review, May 21, 2025— "Taming the Demon: How desert monks put work in its place," Commonweal, Feb 2, 2019

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comLaura Field is a writer and political theorist who specializes in far-right populist intellectualism in the US. She's currently a Scholar in Residence at American University, a Senior Advisor for the Illiberalism Studies Program at GW, and a nonresident fellow with Brookings. Her new book is Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right. We bonded over some of the right's wackier innovations, and differed over how far the left has also slid into illiberalism.An auto-transcript is available above (just click “Transcript” while logged into Substack). For two clips of our convo — on the New Right's “post-constitutional moment,” and the war on the civil service — head to our YouTube page.Other topics: growing up in Alberta; losing a parent at a very young age; Plato an early inspiration; growing tired of the Straussians; the decline of religion under liberalism; Locke; Rousseau; Nietzsche; Fukuyama; the resurgence of the illiberal left and illiberal right; the Claremont Institute and Harry Jaffa; Jaffa's extreme homophobia and hatred of divorce; Allan Bloom; Lincoln fulfilling the Founding; Hobbes; the role of virtue in a republic; Machiavelli; Michael Anton's “Flight 93 Election”; John Eastman and “Stop the Steal”; Curtis Yarvin and The Cathedral; Adrian Vermeule's Common Good Constitutionalism; Catholic conversion; Pope Leo; Obergefell, debating Harvey Mansfield over marriage; Woodrow Wilson's expansion of the state; Thatcher and Reagan slimming it down; the pros and cons of technocratic experts; DOGE vs federal workers; “queer” curricula and the 1619 Project; edge-lords; Bronze Age Pervert and pagan masculinity; Fuentes and Carlson; and debating the dangers of wokeness.Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Claire Berlinski on America's retreat from global hegemony, Jason Willick on trade and conservatism, and Vivek Ramaswamy on the right's future. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Listen to the rest of this premium episode by subscribing at patreon.com/knowyourenemy.Should you try to improve your friends or leave them be? Do friendship and politics mix? Is friendship about virtue or delight? In 2023, we were interviewed by Andrew Elrick, now a professor at Marist University, for a documentary podcast he was making about men and friendship. (Two of our favorite topics!) That podcast never came to fruition, but Andy was kind enough to share this audio with us, and now we're sharing it with you: a conversation about friendship — Matt and Sam's in particular — politics, and podcasting. Enjoy!Further Reading:Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, (350 BCE)  Michel de Montaigne , “On Friendship” from The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1580) Judith Shklar, “On Political Obligation,” (2019)Allan Bloom, Love and Friendship (1993)  Michael Oakeshott,  “On Being Conservative,” (1956)Dewey, Democracy and Education (1916)Andrew Elrick, "Friendship is a Dangerous Thing," Game Stories, Nov 9, 2025.

Join us as we begin our discussion of one of the most foundational texts in Western history: Plato's Republic! In this episode, we talk about our prior knowledge and opinions of Plato, the historical background leading up to the writing of the work, and what we hope to gain from reading it again. In this season, we are reading Sir Desmond Lee's Penguin Classics translation of the work, but will also be pulling insights from the original Greek and Paul Shorey's Loeb translation, as well as Allan Bloom's. We also discuss an opportunity to get a free 1 of 2000 limited edition official Unlimited Opinions matchbook!Follow us on X! Give us your opinions here!

In the end, what does Allan Bloom recommend in The Closing of the American Mind? Not much, as it turns out. After an excellent diagnosis of the problems facing American higher education, Bloom ends on a pessimistic note, stating that no reforms can fix the problems in the university. Is this true? Find out as we discuss our thoughts on Bloom's work and ideas on how to fix the university!Follow us on X!Give us your opinions here!

Where have Allan Bloom's descriptions of the modern university gotten us? Where have all of these philosophical trends ended up? Join us as we discuss the first half of the last chapter of The Closing of the American Mind, examining what the fight for the university looked like in 1987, and how that fight has changed (or larger remained the same) for us today.Follow us on X!Give us your opinions here!

Why did all university professors and administrators capitulate to the insane mobs of student radicals in the sixties? Find out as we continue discussing Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, discussing how the 1960s carried along the most damaging threads in prior educational history, ultimately ripping out the foundations of what education ought to be.Follow us on X!Give us your opinions here!

What does Gulliver's Travels have to do with the development of the modern education system? Why does classical scholarship see renewed interests in periods of philosophical interest? Why spend 70 pages on one chapter detailing various components of philosophic history before getting to your point on education? Find out as we continue discussing Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind!Follow us on X!Give us your opinions here!

Was Socrates really all that great? What does he have to say about education, anyway? Find out as we discuss Socrates' impact on the idea and purpose of philosophy, as well as the reasons for our modern society favoring nameless globalist scientists as the architects of civilization!Follow us on X!Give us your opinions here!

Can education actually exist without tradition? In the equalizing system of democracy, is education ever really valuable? Should we just give up on the whole idea of a university altogether? Join us for this and more as we continue discussing Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind!Follow us on X! Give us your opinions here!

How do we recover Western Civilization from its current state? How do we get people to recognize that there is more to our foundations than we realize, and that America is more than just the past century? Allan Bloom's answer: raising the important questions. Join us for this and more, as we discuss how to create a Turning Point in American history.Follow us on X!Give us your opinions here!

Marxism is boring now. So says Allan Bloom. Join us as we discuss the omnipresence of Marxism among the Left, and why the philosophy of the class struggle may not be exactly the crux of the Left, but a desecration of the dignity and depth of man.Follow us on X!Give us your opinions here!

What happens to a culture when rationalism takes precedence over belief in anything eternal? Exactly what we've seen over the past 70 years, of course! Join us as we discuss Allan Bloom's thoughts on values, the issues of cultural relativism, and what the future holds for societies with unstable foundations.Follow us on X!Give us your opinions here!

In this episode, Dinesh discusses why Democrats, very upset that homicides have gone to zero in Washington DC, are now afraid Trump might reduce homicides to zero in Chicago. Dinesh reviews a single exam administered by Allan Bloom at Cornell to show how much academic standards have plummeted in a single generation. Sarah McAbee, whose husband was a January 6 prisoner, joins Dinesh to talk about her organization “Stand in the Gap” which helps people targeted by the Biden regime with family support and reintegration into society. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What exactly is culture? Is it just the food, clothing, and habits of a people, or is it something more? Does human nature really exist, or should we just be studying the differences between cultures to investigate humanity? Is culture downstream of politics, and what does this mean for the Cracker Barrel rebrand? Find out as we continue discussing Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind! Follow us on X! Give us your opinions here!

What is man, really? Do we have a purpose, or should we just listen to our desires and shape the world the way we want it to be? Are the ends of things real, or just fictitious imaginations based on our desires? Find out as we continue to discuss Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind!Follow us on X! Give us your opinions here!

What differentiates America from France? Is it our value of life and stability in our Revolution, or is it a distinction between the bourgeois of America and the deeper thinkers of the Continent? Join us as we discuss this and more in this episode of Unlimited Opinions!Follow us on X! Give us your opinions here!

Where does modern American nihilism stem from? According to Allan Bloom, ultimately from Nietzsche! Join us as we discuss the impact of German thinking on modern American life, talking about the issues with value relativism and self-actualization, and many other such concepts. Follow us on X! Give us your opinions here!

Why has modern society failed to recognize the purpose of marriage? Or, for that matter, the purpose of love, life, and relationships as a whole? Find out as we discuss more of Allan Bloom's thoughts on relationships, examining the complete independence of the modern student, the increased prevalence of divorce, and the lack of love.Follow us on X! Give us your opinions here!

Does American society support the same kinds of relationships that it did in generations past? Find out in this episode, as we continue discussing Saul Bellow's The Closing of the American Mind, in which we examine the rise of self-centeredness, the doctrine of absolute equality, the deterioration of race relations, and the problems with modern ideas of sex.Follow us on X! Give us your opinions here!

Do young people even read anymore? What's up with their obsession with music? Such questions are not as boring as they sound, as Allan Bloom describes in the next chapters of The Closing of the American Mind! Join us as we discuss the importance of literature and good music on the formation of the soul and the coherence of political society! Follow us on X! Give us your opinions here!

Do Americans have a national book? What is America's defining ideology? Is it structured by the Constitution and the Bible, or something else entirely? Such are the questions that Allan Bloom raises in The Closing of the American Mind, and that we discuss in this episode of Unlimited Opinions! Follow us on X! Give us your opinions here!

What is the purpose of education? What is the truth? What is man? Find out in this season of Unlimited Opinions, as we read Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students. In this episode, we discuss Saul Bellow's Foreword, as well as Bloom's Preface and Introduction, as the authors lay out the "new virtues" of relativism, openness, and freedom as the basis of our failing education system.Follow us on X! Give us your opinions here!

Author David Shields returns to the show for a conversation about his new documentary, HOW WE GOT HERE, and the companion book, HOW WE GOT HERE: Melville plus Nietzsche divided by the square root of Allan Bloom times Žižek squared = Bannon (Sublation Media). We get into how the world moved from the death of God to the death of essence to the death of truth, and how deconstruction, once the province of left-wing academia, was weaponized by right-wing authoritarians for political aims. We talk about how much blame he bears for all this with his 2010 book Reality Hunger, how it feels to be a radical with deep skepticism of radicals' language, his affinity for Werner Herzog's notion of the ecstatic truth in documentary films, what he learned from interviewing nonfiction writers about the nature of truth, and how he feels about going to his first WWE event. We also discuss nonlinear warfare and the endless deconstruction of reality, how writing can "build a bridge across the abyss of human loneliness" (per DFW), what he's learned from the collaboration of making documentaries, his fixation on hamartia (the tragic flaw), Walter Benjamin's notion of pursuing the truth even if we'll never reach it, bringing the public, social and personal worlds together in his writing, and a lot more. More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

A Christmas party is where humanity's deepest truths can be revealed. It's a space where profound questions like "How much gravy is too much gravy?" “What is partridge doing in a pear tree?” mingle seamlessly with "What is the meaning of life?" The very act of gathering to celebrate is a tribute to our existential longing for connection, love, joy, and embarrassing drunken dance moves. Plato might have envisioned it as a quest for wisdom, but let's be honest, sometimes the real enlightenment happens while debating who gets the last Brussels sprout. Today, we're stepping into one of the most intriguing parties in philosophy — Plato's Symposium. A gathering of Ancient Athens' most brilliant minds, lounging on couches, wine flowing freely, engaging in an intense yet playful exchange about the nature of love. But make no mistake, this is no ordinary party. Hosted at the home of the tragic playwright Agathon, this gathering is filled with laughter, drama and impassioned speeches. A celebration of intellect and pleasure, a blend of wit, wisdom, and revelry. As the night goes on, the conversation turns from the playful to the profound. What insights do our guests discover? What, indeed, is love? So, grab a seat at the table—because in Plato's Symposium, the ideas are nearly as intoxicating … as the wine. Links Plato, The Symposium (pdf) Thomas Cooksey, Plato's Symposium: A Reader's Guide (book) Gregory D. Sadler, Plato's Symposium (YouTube lectures) Allan Bloom and Seth Benardete, Commentaries on Plato's Symposium (book) Pierre Destrée and Zina Giannopoulou, Plato's Symposium A Critical Guide (book) Note Please note that two of our microphones experienced technical difficulties. We appreciate your understanding and assure you that our usual high-quality audio will resume in the next episode.

This week, Alex and Greg meet up at UATX and are joined by Dr. Christopher Nadon, Associate Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College and teacher of Western Civilization and humanities at Emet Classical Academy in New York. The group touch on Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind before delving into Dr. Nadon's experience with just how far American students have fallen academically in recent decades. But not all hope is lost, as the group also discuss potential solutions to the rot infesting the American education system. Recommended reading: The Classical Cure for the Ivies

A Christmas party is where humanity's deepest truths can be revealed. It's a space where profound questions like "How much gravy is too much gravy?" “What is partridge doing in a pear tree?” mingle seamlessly with "What is the meaning of life?" The very act of gathering to celebrate is a tribute to our existential longing for connection, love, joy, and embarrassing drunken dance moves. Plato might have envisioned it as a quest for wisdom, but let's be honest, sometimes the real enlightenment happens while debating who gets the last Brussels sprout. Today, we're stepping into one of the most intriguing parties in philosophy — Plato's Symposium. A gathering of Ancient Athens' most brilliant minds, lounging on couches, wine flowing freely, engaging in an intense yet playful exchange about the nature of love. But make no mistake, this is no ordinary party. Hosted at the home of the tragic playwright Agathon, this gathering is filled with laughter, drama and impassioned speeches. A celebration of intellect and pleasure, a blend of wit, wisdom, and revelry. As the night goes on, the conversation turns from the playful to the profound. What insights do our guests discover? What, indeed, is love? So, grab a seat at the table—because in Plato's Symposium, the ideas are nearly as intoxicating … as the wine. Links Plato, The Symposium (pdf) Thomas Cooksey, Plato's Symposium: A Reader's Guide (book) Gregory D. Sadler, Plato's Symposium (YouTube lectures) Allan Bloom and Seth Benardete, Commentaries on Plato's Symposium (book) Pierre Destrée and Zina Giannopoulou, Plato's Symposium A Critical Guide (book) Note Please note that two of our microphones experienced technical difficulties. We appreciate your understanding and assure you that our usual high-quality audio will resume in the next episode.

A Christmas party is where humanity's deepest truths can be revealed. It's a space where profound questions like "How much gravy is too much gravy?" “What is partridge doing in a pear tree?” mingle seamlessly with "What is the meaning of life?" The very act of gathering to celebrate is a tribute to our existential longing for connection, love, joy, and embarrassing drunken dance moves. Plato might have envisioned it as a quest for wisdom, but let's be honest, sometimes the real enlightenment happens while debating who gets the last Brussels sprout. Today, we're stepping into one of the most intriguing parties in philosophy — Plato's Symposium. A gathering of Ancient Athens' most brilliant minds, lounging on couches, wine flowing freely, engaging in an intense yet playful exchange about the nature of love. But make no mistake, this is no ordinary party. Hosted at the home of the tragic playwright Agathon, this gathering is filled with laughter, drama and impassioned speeches. A celebration of intellect and pleasure, a blend of wit, wisdom, and revelry. As the night goes on, the conversation turns from the playful to the profound. What insights do our guests discover? What, indeed, is love? So, grab a seat at the table—because in Plato's Symposium, the ideas are nearly as intoxicating … as the wine. Note Please note that two of our microphones experienced technical difficulties. We appreciate your understanding and assure you that our usual high-quality audio will resume in the next episode. Links Plato, The Symposium (pdf) Thomas Cooksey, Plato's Symposium: A Reader's Guide (book) Gregory D. Sadler, Plato's Symposium (YouTube lectures) Allan Bloom and Seth Benardete, Commentaries on Plato's Symposium (book) Pierre Destrée and Zina Giannopoulou, Plato's Symposium A Critical Guide (book)

A new 'Craftwork' episode about the art of literary collage. My guest is David Shields, author of How We Got Here: Melville Plus Nietzsche Divided by the Square Root of (Allan) Bloom Times Zizek (Squared) Equals Bannon and A Christian Existentialist and a Psychoanalytic Atheist Walk Into a Trump Rally, both of which are available from Sublation Media. Shields also wrote and directed a documentary film called How We Got Here, based on his book and available now on Prime and other platforms. ***Note: Here is a list of some of David's favorite works of literary collage. Shields is the internationally bestselling author of twenty-five books, including Reality Hunger (which, in 2020, Lit Hub named one of the most important books of the past decade), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (New York Timesbestseller), Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN USA Award), Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity (PEN/Revson Award), and Other People: Takes & Mistakes (NYTBR Editors' Choice). The Very Last Interview was published by New York Review Books in 2022. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, two NEA fellowships, and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, Shields--a senior contributing editor of Conjunctions--has published essays and stories in New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Esquire, Yale Review, Salon, Slate, Tin House, A Public Space, McSweeney's, Believer, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Best American Essays. His work has been translated into two dozen languages. The film adaptation of I Think You're Totally Wrong: A Quarrel, which Shields co-wrote and co-stars in, was released in 2017 and is now available as a DVD on Prime Video. Shields wrote, produced, and directed Lynch: A History, a 2019 documentary about Marshawn Lynch's use of silence, echo, and mimicry as key tools of resistance (streaming on Prime, Peacock, AMC, Sundance, Apple, and many other platforms). I'll Show You Mine, a feature film that Shields co-wrote and was produced by Mark and Jay Duplass, was released in 2023 and is now available on Prime and several other platforms. A new film, How We Got Here, which Shields wrote and directed and which argues that Melville plus Nietzsche divided by the square root of (Allan) Bloom times Zizek (squared) equals Bannon, is streaming now on Prime and several other platforms; the companion volume is forthcoming in September 2024. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Twitter Instagram  TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An amazing conversation about the book and documentary HOW WE GOT HERE - Melville Plus Nietzsche Divided by the Square Root of (Allan) Bloom Times Žižek (Squared) Equals Bannon, by David Shields! Get a copy today! Let us know what you think. https://sublationmedia.com/product/how-we-got-here-melville-plus-nietzsche-divided-by-the-square-root-of-allan-bloom-times-zizek-squared-equals-bannon-by-david-shields/   ABOUT Theory Underground is a research, publishing, and lecture institute. TU exists to develop the concept of timenergy in the context of critical social theory (CST). To get basically situated in this field you will have to know a handful of important figures from a bunch of areas of the humanities and social sciences. That would be a lot of work for you if not for the fact that Dave, Ann, and Mikey are consolidating hundreds of thousands of hours of effort into a pirate TV-radio-press that goes on tours and throws conferences and stuff. Enjoy a ton of its content here for free or get involved to access courses and the ongoing research seminars.  GET INVOLVED or SUPPORT  Join live sessions and unlock past courses and forums on the TU Discord by becoming a member via the monthly subscription! It's the hands-down best way to get the most out of the content if you are excited to learn the field and become a thinker in the milieu: https://theoryunderground.com/products/tu-subscription-tiers Pledge support to the production of the free content on YouTube and Podcast https://www.patreon.com/TheoryUnderground Fund the publishing work via the TU Substack, where original works by the TU writers is featured alongside original works by Slavoj Zizek, Todd McGowan, Chris Cutrone, Nina Power, Alenka Zupancic, et al. https://theoryunderground.substack.com/ Get TU books at a discount: https://theoryunderground.com/publications CREDITS / LINKS Missed a course at Theory Underground? Wrong! Courses at Theory Underground are available after the fact on demand via the membership. https://theoryunderground.com/courses If you want to help TU in a totally gratuitous way, or support, here is a way to buy something concrete and immediately useful https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/2MAWFYUJQIM58? Buy Dave and Ann a coffee date: https://www.venmo.com/u/Theorypleeb https://paypal.me/theorypleeb If Theory Underground has helped you see that text-to-speech technologies are a useful way of supplementing one's reading while living a busy life, if you want to be able to listen to PDFs for yourself, then Speechify is recommended. Use the link below and Theory Underground gets credit! https://share.speechify.com/mzwBHEB  Follow Theory Underground on Duolingo: https://invite.duolingo.com/BDHTZTB5CWWKTP747NSNMAOYEI  See Theory Underground memes and get occasional updates or thoughts via the Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/theory_underground MUSIC CREDITS Logo sequence music by https://olliebeanz.com/music https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode Mike Chino, Demigods https://youtu.be/M6wruxDngOk  

Havana for Men by Aramis (1994) + The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students by Allan Bloom (1987) 8/29/24 S6E66 To hear the complete continuing story of The Perfume Nationalist please subscribe on Patreon. 

Daniel O'Toole, assistant professor of politics at Hillsdale College, joins Hugh Hewitt on the Hillsdale Dialogues for the start of a new series on Plato's Republic. In this episode, Dr. O'Toole and Hugh discuss the merits of Allan Bloom's The Republic of Plato translation. Release date: 7 June 2024See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daniel O’Toole, assistant professor of politics at Hillsdale College, joins Hugh Hewitt on the Hillsdale Dialogues for the start of a new series on Plato’s Republic. In this episode, Dr. O’Toole and Hugh discuss the merits of Allan Bloom’s The Republic of Plato translation.

Daniel O'Toole, assistant professor of politics at Hillsdale College, joins Hugh Hewitt on the Hillsdale Dialogues for the start of a new series on Plato's Republic. In this episode, Dr. O'Toole and Hugh discuss the merits of Allan Bloom's The Republic of Plato translation. Release date: 7 June 2024See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, we revisit Episode 43 with Brad Carson on Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind! In this episode, I speak with the president of the University of Tulsa, Brad Carson, about Allan Bloom's infamous book, The Closing of the American Mind. Brad and I ultimately decide that while we like some of Bloom's key ideas about what a university is for, we do not love the book itself, which has some serious flaws (though we may differ slightly about what we think those flaws are). As always, I hope you enjoy our conversation. Brad Carson is The University of Tulsa's 21st president. Having built a distinguished career in public service, law and education, before becoming president of TU, Carson was a professor at the University of Virginia, teaching courses related to national security and public sector innovation. In 2015, President Barack Obama appointed Carson acting under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness at the U.S. Department of Defense. Prior to that, Carson served as the under secretary of the U.S. Army, where he managed the daily operations of the largest military service, and as general counsel of the U.S. Army, where he oversaw the service's worldwide legal operations. Carson is widely published and is a noted authority on national security, energy policy and American politics. From 2001 to 2005, Carson served two terms as a U.S. congressman, representing Oklahoma's 2nd District. Later, he was appointed to the faculty of TU's Collins College of Business and College of Law, where he taught courses on energy policy, property law, negotiation and game theory, globalization and law and literature. In 2008, Carson deployed during Operation Iraqi Freedom as an intelligence officer and was awarded the Bronze Star for his service. Raised in Oklahoma, Carson received his BA from Baylor University and was a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford. He then went on to earn a JD at the University of Oklahoma. Jennifer Frey is the inaugural dean of the Honors College at the University of Tulsa. Through Spring of 2023, she served as Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and as a fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America. She also previously served as a Collegiate Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of Chicago, where she was a member of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts and an affiliated faculty in the philosophy department. Frey holds a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh and a B.A. from Indiana University-Bloomington. She has published widely on action, virtue, practical reason, and meta-ethics, and has recently co-edited an interdisciplinary volume, Self-Transcendence and Virtue Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology (Routledge, 2018). You can follow her on Twitter @ jennfrey. Sacred and Profane Love is a podcast in which philosophers, theologians, and literary critics discuss some of their favorite works of literature, and how these works have shaped their own ideas about love, happiness, and meaning in human life. Host Jennifer A. Frey is inaugural dean of the Honors College at the University of Tulsa. The podcast is generously supported by The Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America and produced by Catholics for Hire.