Podcasts about American Enlightenment

So what, exactly, was “The Enlightenment”? According to the Princeton historian David A. Bell, it was an intellectual movement roughly spanning the early 18th century through to the French Revolution. In his Spring 2025 Liberties Quarterly piece “The Enlightenment, Then and Now”, Bell charts the Enlightenment as a complex intellectual movement centered in Paris but with hubs across Europe and America. He highlights key figures like Montesquieu, Voltaire, Kant, and Franklin, discussing their contributions to concepts of religious tolerance, free speech, and rationality. In our conversation, Bell addresses criticisms of the Enlightenment, including its complicated relationship with colonialism and slavery, while arguing that its principles of freedom and reason remain relevant today. 5 Key Takeaways* The Enlightenment emerged in the early 18th century (around 1720s) and was characterized by intellectual inquiry, skepticism toward religion, and a growing sense among thinkers that they were living in an "enlightened century."* While Paris was the central hub, the Enlightenment had multiple centers including Scotland, Germany, and America, with thinkers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Hume, and Franklin contributing to its development.* The Enlightenment introduced the concept of "society" as a sphere of human existence separate from religion and politics, forming the basis of modern social sciences.* The movement had a complex relationship with colonialism and slavery - many Enlightenment thinkers criticized slavery, but some of their ideas about human progress were later used to justify imperialism.* According to Bell, rather than trying to "return to the Enlightenment," modern society should selectively adopt and adapt its valuable principles of free speech, religious tolerance, and education to create our "own Enlightenment."David Avrom Bell is a historian of early modern and modern Europe at Princeton University. His most recent book, published in 2020 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution. Described in the Journal of Modern History as an "instant classic," it is available in paperback from Picador, in French translation from Fayard, and in Italian translation from Viella. A study of how new forms of political charisma arose in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the book shows that charismatic authoritarianism is as modern a political form as liberal democracy, and shares many of the same origins. Based on exhaustive research in original sources, the book includes case studies of the careers of George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Toussaint Louverture and Simon Bolivar. The book's Introduction can be read here. An online conversation about the book with Annette Gordon-Reed, hosted by the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, can be viewed here. Links to material about the book, including reviews in The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Harper's, The New Republic, The Nation, Le Monde, The Los Angeles Review of Books and other venues can be found here. Bell is also the author of six previous books. He has published academic articles in both English and French and contributes regularly to general interest publications on a variety of subjects, ranging from modern warfare, to contemporary French politics, to the impact of digital technology on learning and scholarship, and of course French history. A list of his publications from 2023 and 2024 can be found here. His Substack newsletter can be found here. His writings have been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Hebrew, Swedish, Polish, Russian, German, Croatian, Italian, Turkish and Japanese. At the History Department at Princeton University, he holds the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Chair in the Era of North Atlantic Revolutions, and offers courses on early modern Europe, on military history, and on the early modern French empire. Previously, he spent fourteen years at Johns Hopkins University, including three as Dean of Faculty in its School of Arts and Sciences. From 2020 to 2024 he served as Director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. Bell's new project is a history of the Enlightenment. A preliminary article from the project was published in early 2022 by Modern Intellectual History. Another is now out in French History.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. FULL TRANSCRIPTAndrew Keen: Hello everybody, in these supposedly dark times, the E word comes up a lot, the Enlightenment. Are we at the end of the Enlightenment or the beginning? Was there even an Enlightenment? My guest today, David Bell, a professor of history, very distinguished professor of history at Princeton University, has an interesting piece in the spring issue of It is One of our, our favorite quarterlies here on Keen on America, Bell's piece is The Enlightenment Then and Now, and David is joining us from the home of the Enlightenment, perhaps Paris in France, where he's on sabbatical hard life. David being an academic these days, isn't it?David Bell: Very difficult. I'm having to suffer the Parisian bread and croissant. It's terrible.Andrew Keen: Yeah. Well, I won't keep you too long. Is Paris then, or France? Is it the home of the Enlightenment? I know there are many Enlightenments, the French, the Scottish, maybe even the English, perhaps even the American.David Bell: It's certainly one of the homes of the Enlightenment, and it's probably the closest that the Enlightened had to a center, absolutely. But as you say, there were Edinburgh, Glasgow, plenty of places in Germany, Philadelphia, all those places have good claims to being centers of the enlightenment as well.Andrew Keen: All the same David, is it like one of those sports games in California where everyone gets a medal?David Bell: Well, they're different metals, right, but I think certainly Paris is where everybody went. I mean, if you look at the figures from the German Enlightenment, from the Scottish Enlightenment from the American Enlightenment they all tended to congregate in Paris and the Parisians didn't tend to go anywhere else unless they were forced to. So that gives you a pretty good sense of where the most important center was.Andrew Keen: So David, before we get to specifics, map out for us, because everyone is perhaps as familiar or comfortable with the history of the Enlightenment, and certainly as you are. When did it happen? What years? And who are the leaders of this thing called the Enlightenment?David Bell: Well, that's a big question. And I'm afraid, of course, that if you ask 10 historians, you'll get 10 different answers.Andrew Keen: Well, I'm only asking you, so I only want one answer.David Bell: So I would say that the Enlightenment really gets going around the first couple of decades of the 18th century. And that's when people really start to think that they are actually living in what they start to call an Enlightenment century. There are a lot of reasons for this. They are seeing what we now call the scientific revolution. They're looking at the progress that has been made with that. They are experiencing the changes in the religious sphere, including the end of religious wars, coming with a great deal of skepticism about religion. They are living in a relative period of peace where they're able to speculate much more broadly and daringly than before. But it's really in those first couple of decades that they start thinking of themselves as living in an enlightened century. They start defining themselves as something that would later be called the enlightenment. So I would say that it's, really, really there between maybe the end of the 17th century and 1720s that it really gets started.Andrew Keen: So let's have some names, David, of philosophers, I guess. I mean, if those are the right words. I know that there was a term in French. There is a term called philosoph. Were they the founders, the leaders of the Enlightenment?David Bell: Well, there is a... Again, I don't want to descend into academic quibbling here, but there were lots of leaders. Let me give an example, though. So the year 1721 is a remarkable year. So in the year, 1721, two amazing events happened within a couple of months of each other. So in May, Montesquieu, one of the great philosophers by any definition, publishes his novel called Persian Letters. And this is an incredible novel. Still, I think one of greatest novels ever written, and it's very daring. It is the account, it is supposedly a an account written by two Persian travelers to Europe who are writing back to people in Isfahan about what they're seeing. And it is very critical of French society. It is very of religion. It is, as I said, very daring philosophically. It is a product in part of the increasing contact between Europe and the rest of the world that is also very central to the Enlightenment. So that novel comes out. So it's immediately, you know, the police try to suppress it. But they don't have much success because it's incredibly popular and Montesquieu doesn't suffer any particular problems because...Andrew Keen: And the French police have never been the most efficient police force in the world, have they?David Bell: Oh, they could be, but not in this case. And then two months later, after Montesquieu published this novel, there's a German philosopher much less well-known than Montesqiu, than Christian Bolz, who is a professor at the Universität Haller in Prussia, and he gives an oration in Latin, a very typical university oration for the time, about Chinese philosophy, in which he says that the Chinese have sort of proved to the world, particularly through the writings of Confucius and others, that you can have a virtuous society without religion. Obviously very controversial. Statement for the time it actually gets him fired from his job, he has to leave the Kingdom of Prussia within 48 hours on penalty of death, starts an enormous controversy. But here are two events, both of which involving non-European people, involving the way in which Europeans are starting to look out at the rest of the world and starting to imagine Europe as just one part of a larger humanity, and at the same time they are starting to speculate very daringly about whether you can have. You know, what it means to have a society, do you need to have religion in order to have morality in society? Do you need the proper, what kind of government do you need to to have virtuous conduct and a proper society? So all of these things get, you know, really crystallize, I think, around these two incidents as much as anything. So if I had to pick a single date for when the enlightenment starts, I'd probably pick that 1721.Andrew Keen: And when was, David, I thought you were going to tell me about the earthquake in Lisbon, when was that earthquake?David Bell: That earthquake comes quite a bit later. That comes, and now historians should be better with dates than I am. It's in the 1750s, I think it's the late 1750's. Again, this historian is proving he's getting a very bad grade for forgetting the exact date, but it's in 1750. So that's a different kind of event, which sparks off a great deal of commentary, because it's a terrible earthquake. It destroys most of the city of Lisbon, it destroys other cities throughout Portugal, and it leads a lot of the philosophy to philosophers at the time to be speculating very daringly again on whether there is any kind of real purpose to the universe and whether there's any kind divine purpose. Why would such a terrible thing happen? Why would God do such a thing to his followers? And certainly VoltaireAndrew Keen: Yeah, Votav, of course, comes to mind of questioning.David Bell: And Condit, Voltaire's novel Condit gives a very good description of the earthquake in Lisbon and uses that as a centerpiece. Voltair also read other things about the earthquake, a poem about Lisbon earthquake. But in Condit he gives a lasting, very scathing portrait of the Catholic Church in general and then of what happens in Portugal. And so the Lisbon Earthquake is certainly another one of the events, but it happens considerably later. Really in the middle of the end of life.Andrew Keen: So, David, you believe in this idea of the Enlightenment. I take your point that there are more than one Enlightenment in more than one center, but in broad historical terms, the 18th century could be defined at least in Western and Northern Europe as the period of the Enlightenment, would that be a fair generalization?David Bell: I think it's perfectly fair generalization. Of course, there are historians who say that it never happened. There's a conservative British historian, J.C.D. Clark, who published a book last summer, saying that the Enlightenment is a kind of myth, that there was a lot of intellectual activity in Europe, obviously, but that the idea that it formed a coherent Enlightenment was really invented in the 20th century by a bunch of progressive reformers who wanted to claim a kind of venerable and august pedigree for their own reform, liberal reform plans. I think that's an exaggeration. People in the 18th century defined very clearly what was going on, both people who were in favor of it and people who are against it. And while you can, if you look very closely at it, of course it gets a bit fuzzy. Of course it's gets, there's no single, you can't define a single enlightenment project or a single enlightened ideology. But then, I think people would be hard pressed to define any intellectual movement. You know, in perfect, incoherent terms. So the enlightenment is, you know by compared with almost any other intellectual movement certainly existed.Andrew Keen: In terms of a philosophy of the Enlightenment, the German thinker, Immanuel Kant, seems to be often, and when you describe him as the conscience or the brain or a mixture of the conscience and brain of the enlightenment, why is Kant and Kantian thinking so important in the development of the Enlightenment.David Bell: Well, that's a really interesting question. And one reason is because most of the Enlightenment was not very rigorously philosophical. A lot of the major figures of the enlightenment before Kant tended to be writing for a general public. And they often were writing with a very specific agenda. We look at Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau. Now you look at Adam Smith in Scotland. We look David Hume or Adam Ferguson. You look at Benjamin Franklin in the United States. These people wrote in all sorts of different genres. They wrote in, they wrote all sorts of different kinds of books. They have many different purposes and very few of them did a lot of what we would call rigorous academic philosophy. And Kant was different. Kant was very much an academic philosopher. Kant was nothing if not rigorous. He came at the end of the enlightenment by most people's measure. He wrote these very, very difficult, very rigorous, very brilliant works, such as The Creek of Pure Reason. And so, it's certainly been the case that people who wanted to describe the Enlightenment as a philosophy have tended to look to Kant. So for example, there's a great German philosopher and intellectual historian of the early 20th century named Ernst Kassirer, who had to leave Germany because of the Nazis. And he wrote a great book called The Philosophy of the Enlightened. And that leads directly to Immanuel Kant. And of course, Casir himself was a Kantian, identified with Kant. And so he wanted to make Kant, in a sense, the telos, the end point, the culmination, the fulfillment of the Enlightenment. But so I think that's why Kant has such a particularly important position. You're defining it both ways.Andrew Keen: I've always struggled to understand what Kant was trying to say. I'm certainly not alone there. Might it be fair to say that he was trying to transform the universe and certainly traditional Christian notions into the Enlightenment, so the entire universe, the world, God, whatever that means, that they were all somehow according to Kant enlightened.David Bell: Well, I think that I'm certainly no expert on Immanuel Kant. And I would say that he is trying to, I mean, his major philosophical works are trying to put together a system of philosophical thinking which will justify why people have to act morally, why people act rationally, without the need for Christian revelation to bolster them. That's a very, very crude and reductionist way of putting it, but that's essentially at the heart of it. At the same time, Kant was very much aware of his own place in history. So Kant didn't simply write these very difficult, thick, dense philosophical works. He also wrote things that were more like journalism or like tablets. He wrote a famous essay called What is Enlightenment? And in that, he said that the 18th century was the period in which humankind was simply beginning to. Reach a period of enlightenment. And he said, he starts the essay by saying, this is the period when humankind is being released from its self-imposed tutelage. And we are still, and he said we do not yet live in the midst of a completely enlightened century, but we are getting there. We are living in a century that is enlightening.Andrew Keen: So the seeds, the seeds of Hegel and maybe even Marx are incant in that German thinking, that historical thinking.David Bell: In some ways, in some ways of course Hegel very much reacts against Kant and so and then Marx reacts against Hegel. So it's not exactly.Andrew Keen: Well, that's the dialectic, isn't it, David?David Bell: A simple easy path from one to the other, no, but Hegel is unimaginable without Kant of course and Marx is unimagineable without Hegel.Andrew Keen: You note that Kant represents a shift in some ways into the university and the walls of the universities were going up, and that some of the other figures associated with the the Enlightenment and Scottish Enlightenment, human and Smith and the French Enlightenment Voltaire and the others, they were more generalist writers. Should we be nostalgic for the pre-university period in the Enlightenment, or? Did things start getting serious once the heavyweights, the academic heavyweighs like Emmanuel Kant got into this thing?David Bell: I think it depends on where we're talking about. I mean, Adam Smith was a professor at Glasgow in Edinburgh, so Smith, the Scottish Enlightenment was definitely at least partly in the universities. The German Enlightenment took place very heavily in universities. Christian Vodafoy I just mentioned was the most important German philosopher of the 18th century before Kant, and he had positions in university. Even the French university system, for a while, what's interesting about the French University system, particularly the Sorbonne, which was the theology faculty, It was that. Throughout the first half of the 18th century, there were very vigorous, very interesting philosophical debates going on there, in which the people there, particularly even Jesuits there, were very open to a lot of the ideas we now call enlightenment. They were reading John Locke, they were reading Mel Pench, they were read Dekalb. What happened though in the French universities was that as more daring stuff was getting published elsewhere. Church, the Catholic Church, started to say, all right, these philosophers, these philosophies, these are our enemies, these are people we have to get at. And so at that point, anybody who was in the university, who was still in dialog with these people was basically purged. And the universities became much less interesting after that. But to come back to your question, I do think that I am very nostalgic for that period. I think that the Enlightenment was an extraordinary period, because if you look between. In the 17th century, not all, but a great deal of the most interesting intellectual work is happening in the so-called Republic of Letters. It's happening in Latin language. It is happening on a very small circle of RUD, of scholars. By the 19th century following Kant and Hegel and then the birth of the research university in Germany, which is copied everywhere, philosophy and the most advanced thinking goes back into the university. And the 18th century, particularly in France, I will say, is a time when the most advanced thought is being written for a general public. It is being in the form of novels, of dialogs, of stories, of reference works, and it is very, very accessible. The most profound thought of the West has never been as accessible overall as in the 18 century.Andrew Keen: Again, excuse this question, it might seem a bit naive, but there's a lot of pre-Enlightenment work, books, thinking that we read now that's very accessible from Erasmus and Thomas More to Machiavelli. Why weren't characters like, or are characters like Erasmuus, More's Utopia, Machiavell's prints and discourses, why aren't they considered part of the Enlightenment? What's the difference between? Enlightened thinkers or the supposedly enlightened thinkers of the 18th century and thinkers and writers of the 16th and 17th centuries.David Bell: That's a good question, you know, I think you have to, you, you know, again, one has to draw a line somewhere. That's not a very good answer, of course. All these people that you just mentioned are, in one way or another, predecessors to the Enlightenment. And of course, there were lots of people. I don't mean to say that nobody wrote in an accessible way before 1700. Obviously, lots of the people you mentioned did. Although a lot of them originally wrote in Latin, Erasmus, also Thomas More. But I think what makes the Enlightened different is that you have, again, you have a sense. These people have have a sense that they are themselves engaged in a collective project, that it is a collective project of enlightenment, of enlightening the world. They believe that they live in a century of progress. And there are certain principles. They don't agree on everything by any means. The philosophy of enlightenment is like nothing more than ripping each other to shreds, like any decent group of intellectuals. But that said, they generally did believe That people needed to have freedom of speech. They believed that you needed to have toleration of different religions. They believed in education and the need for a broadly educated public that could be as broad as possible. They generally believed in keeping religion out of the public sphere as much as possible, so all those principles came together into a program that we can consider at least a kind of... You know, not that everybody read it at every moment by any means, but there is an identifiable enlightenment program there, and in this case an identifiable enlightenment mindset. One other thing, I think, which is crucial to the Enlightenment, is that it was the attention they started to pay to something that we now take almost entirely for granted, which is the idea of society. The word society is so entirely ubiquitous, we assume it's always been there, and in one sense it has, because the word societas is a Latin word. But until... The 18th century, the word society generally had a much narrower meaning. It referred to, you know, particular institution most often, like when we talk about the society of, you know, the American philosophical society or something like that. And the idea that there exists something called society, which is the general sphere of human existence that is separate from religion and is separate from the political sphere, that's actually something which only really emerged at the end of the 1600s. And it became really the focus of you know, much, if not most, of enlightenment thinking. When you look at someone like Montesquieu and you look something, somebody like Rousseau or Voltaire or Adam Smith, probably above all, they were concerned with understanding how society works, not how government works only, but how society, what social interactions are like beginning of what we would now call social science. So that's yet another thing that distinguishes the enlightened from people like Machiavelli, often people like Thomas More, and people like bonuses.Andrew Keen: You noted earlier that the idea of progress is somehow baked in, in part, and certainly when it comes to Kant, certainly the French Enlightenment, although, of course, Rousseau challenged that. I'm not sure whether Rousseaut, as always, is both in and out of the Enlightenment and he seems to be in and out of everything. How did the Enlightement, though, make sense of itself in the context of antiquity, as it was, of Terms, it was the Renaissance that supposedly discovered or rediscovered antiquity. How did many of the leading Enlightenment thinkers, writers, how did they think of their own society in the context of not just antiquity, but even the idea of a European or Western society?David Bell: Well, there was a great book, one of the great histories of the Enlightenment was written about more than 50 years ago by the Yale professor named Peter Gay, and the first part of that book was called The Modern Paganism. So it was about the, you know, it was very much about the relationship between the Enlightenment and the ancient Greek synonyms. And certainly the writers of the enlightenment felt a great deal of kinship with the ancient Greek synonymous. They felt a common bond, particularly in the posing. Christianity and opposing what they believed the Christian Church had wrought on Europe in suppressing freedom and suppressing free thought and suppassing free inquiry. And so they felt that they were both recovering but also going beyond antiquity at the same time. And of course they were all, I mean everybody at the time, every single major figure of the Enlightenment, their education consisted in large part of what we would now call classics, right? I mean, there was an educational reformer in France in the 1760s who said, you know, our educational system is great if the purpose is to train Roman centurions, if it's to train modern people who are not doing both so well. And it's true. I mean they would spend, certainly, you know in Germany, in much of Europe, in the Netherlands, even in France, I mean people were trained not simply to read Latin, but to write in Latin. In Germany, university courses took part in the Latin language. So there's an enormous, you know, so they're certainly very, very conversant with the Greek and Roman classics, and they identify with them to a very great extent. Someone like Rousseau, I mean, and many others, and what's his first reading? How did he learn to read by reading Plutarch? In translation, but he learns to read reading Plutach. He sees from the beginning by this enormous admiration for the ancients that we get from Bhutan.Andrew Keen: Was Socrates relevant here? Was the Enlightenment somehow replacing Aristotle with Socrates and making him and his spirit of Enlightenment, of asking questions rather than answering questions, the symbol of a new way of thinking?David Bell: I would say to a certain extent, so I mean, much of the Enlightenment criticizes scholasticism, medieval scholastic, very, very sharply, and medieval scholasticism is founded philosophically very heavily upon Aristotle, so to that extent. And the spirit of skepticism that Socrates embodied, the idea of taking nothing for granted and asking questions about everything, including questions of oneself, yes, absolutely. That said, while the great figures of the Red Plato, you know, Socrates was generally I mean, it was not all that present as they come. But certainly have people with people with red play-doh in the entire virus.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Benjamin Franklin earlier, David. Most of the Enlightenment, of course, seems to be centered in France and Scotland, Germany, England. But America, many Europeans went to America then as a, what some people would call a settler colonial society, or certainly an offshoot of the European world. Was the settling of America and the American Revolution Was it the quintessential Enlightenment project?David Bell: Another very good question, and again, it depends a bit on who you talk to. I just mentioned this book by Peter Gay, and the last part of his book is called The Science of Freedom, and it's all about the American Revolution. So certainly a lot of interpreters of the Enlightenment have said that, yes, the American revolution represents in a sense the best possible outcome of the American Revolution, it was the best, possible outcome of the enlightened. Certainly there you look at the founding fathers of the United States and there's a great deal that they took from me like Certainly, they took a great great number of political ideas from Obviously Madison was very much inspired and drafting the edifice of the Constitution by Montesquieu to see himself Was happy to admit in addition most of the founding Fathers of the united states were you know had kind of you know We still had we were still definitely Christians, but we're also but we were also very much influenced by deism were very much against the idea of making the United States a kind of confessional country where Christianity was dominant. They wanted to believe in the enlightenment principles of free speech, religious toleration and so on and so forth. So in all those senses and very much the gun was probably more inspired than Franklin was somebody who was very conversant with the European Enlightenment. He spent a large part of his life in London. Where he was in contact with figures of the Enlightenment. He also, during the American Revolution, of course, he was mostly in France, where he is vetted by some of the surviving fellows and were very much in contact for them as well. So yes, I would say the American revolution is certainly... And then the American revolutionary scene, of course by the Europeans, very much as a kind of offshoot of the enlightenment. So one of the great books of the late Enlightenment is by Condor Say, which he wrote while he was hiding actually in the future evolution of the chariot. It's called a historical sketch of the progress of the human spirit, or the human mind, and you know he writes about the American Revolution as being, basically owing its existence to being like...Andrew Keen: Franklin is of course an example of your pre-academic enlightenment, a generalist, inventor, scientist, entrepreneur, political thinker. What about the role of science and indeed economics in the Enlightenment? David, we're going to talk of course about the Marxist interpretation, perhaps the Marxist interpretation which sees The Enlightenment is just a euphemism, perhaps, for exploitative capitalism. How central was the growth and development of the market, of economics, and innovation, and capitalism in your reading of The Enlightened?David Bell: Well, in my reading, it was very important, but not in the way that the Marxists used to say. So Friedrich Engels once said that the Enlightenment was basically the idealized kingdom of the bourgeoisie, and there was whole strain of Marxist thinking that followed the assumption that, and then Karl Marx himself argued that the documents like the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, which obviously were inspired by the Enlightment, were simply kind of the near, or kind of. Way that the bourgeoisie was able to advance itself ideologically, and I don't think that holds much water, which is very little indication that any particular economic class motivated the Enlightenment or was using the Enlightment in any way. That said, I think it's very difficult to imagine the Enlightement without the social and economic changes that come in with the 18th century. To begin with globalization. If you read the great works of the Enlightenment, it's remarkable just how open they are to talking about humanity in general. So one of Voltaire's largest works, one of his most important works, is something called Essay on Customs and the Spirit of Nations, which is actually History of the World, where he talks learnedly not simply about Europe, but about the Americas, about China, about Africa, about India. Montesquieu writes Persian letters. Christian Volpe writes about Chinese philosophy. You know, Rousseau writes about... You know, the earliest days of humankind talks about Africa. All the great figures of the Enlightenment are writing about the rest of the world, and this is a period in which contacts between Europe and the rest the world are exploding along with international trade. So by the end of the 18th century, there are 4,000 to 5,000 ships a year crossing the Atlantic. It's an enormous number. And that's one context in which the enlightenment takes place. Another is what we call the consumer revolution. So in the 18th century, certainly in the major cities of Western Europe, people of a wide range of social classes, including even artisans, sort of somewhat wealthy artisians, shopkeepers, are suddenly able to buy a much larger range of products than they were before. They're able to choose how to basically furnish their own lives, if you will, how they're gonna dress, what they're going to eat, what they gonna put on the walls of their apartments and so on and so forth. And so they become accustomed to exercising a great deal more personal choice than their ancestors have done. And the Enlightenment really develops in tandem with this. Most of the great works of the Enlightment, they're not really written to, they're treatises, they're like Kant, they're written to persuade you to think in a single way. Really written to make you ask questions yourself, to force you to ponder things. They're written in the form of puzzles and riddles. Voltaire had a great line there, he wrote that the best kind of books are the books that readers write half of themselves as they read, and that's sort of the quintessence of the Enlightenment as far as I'm concerned.Andrew Keen: Yeah, Voltaire might have been comfortable on YouTube or Facebook. David, you mentioned all those ships going from Europe across the Atlantic. Of course, many of those ships were filled with African slaves. You mentioned this in your piece. I mean, this is no secret, of course. You also mentioned a couple of times Montesquieu's Persian letters. To what extent is... The enlightenment then perhaps the birth of Western power, of Western colonialism, of going to Africa, seizing people, selling them in North America, the French, the English, Dutch colonization of the rest of the world. Of course, later more sophisticated Marxist thinkers from the Frankfurt School, you mentioned these in your essay, Odorno and Horkheimer in particular, See the Enlightenment as... A project, if you like, of Western domination. I remember reading many years ago when I was in graduate school, Edward Said, his analysis of books like The Persian Letters, which is a form of cultural Western power. How much of this is simply bound up in the profound, perhaps, injustice of the Western achievement? And of course, some of the justice as well. We haven't talked about Jefferson, but perhaps in Jefferson's life and his thinking and his enlightened principles and his... Life as a slave owner, these contradictions are most self-evident.David Bell: Well, there are certainly contradictions, and there's certainly... I think what's remarkable, if you think about it, is that if you read through works of the Enlightenment, you would be hard-pressed to find a justification for slavery. You do find a lot of critiques of slavery, and I think that's something very important to keep in mind. Obviously, the chattel slavery of Africans in the Americas began well before the Enlightment, it began in 1500. The Enlightenment doesn't have the credit for being the first movement to oppose slavery. That really goes back to various religious groups, especially the Fakers. But that said, you have in France, you had in Britain, in America even, you'd have a lot of figures associated with the Enlightenment who were pretty sure of becoming very forceful opponents of slavery very early. Now, when it comes to imperialism, that's a tricky issue. What I think you'd find in these light bulbs, you'd different sorts of tendencies and different sorts of writings. So there are certainly a lot of writers of the Enlightenment who are deeply opposed to European authorities. One of the most popular works of the late Enlightenment was a collective work edited by the man named the Abbe Rinal, which is called The History of the Two Indies. And that is a book which is deeply, deeply critical of European imperialism. At the same time, at the same of the enlightenment, a lot the works of history written during the Enlightment. Tended, such as Voltaire's essay on customs, which I just mentioned, tend to give a kind of very linear version of history. They suggest that all societies follow the same path, from sort of primitive savagery, hunter-gatherers, through early agriculture, feudal stages, and on into sort of modern commercial society and civilization. And so they're basically saying, okay, we, the Europeans, are the most advanced. People like the Africans and the Native Americans are the least advanced, and so perhaps we're justified in going and quote, bringing our civilization to them, what later generations would call the civilizing missions, or possibly just, you know, going over and exploiting them because we are stronger and we are more, and again, we are the best. And then there's another thing that the Enlightenment did. The Enlightenment tended to destroy an older Christian view of humankind, which in some ways militated against modern racism. Christians believed, of course, that everyone was the same from Adam and Eve, which meant that there was an essential similarity in the world. And the Enlightenment challenged this by challenging the biblical kind of creation. The Enlightenment challenges this. Voltaire, for instance, believed that there had actually been several different human species that had different origins, and that can very easily become a justification for racism. Buffon, one of the most Figures of the French Enlightenment, one of the early naturalists, was crucial for trying to show that in fact nature is not static, that nature is always changing, that species are changing, including human beings. And so again, that allowed people to think in terms of human beings at different stages of evolution, and perhaps this would be a justification for privileging the more advanced humans over the less advanced. In the 18th century itself, most of these things remain potential, rather than really being acted upon. But in the 19th century, figures of writers who would draw upon these things certainly went much further, and these became justifications for slavery, imperialism, and other things. So again, the Enlightenment is the source of a great deal of stuff here, and you can't simply put it into one box or more.Andrew Keen: You mentioned earlier, David, that Concorda wrote one of the later classics of the... Condorcet? Sorry, Condorcets, excuse my French. Condorcès wrote one the later Classics of the Enlightenment when he was hiding from the French Revolution. In your mind, was the revolution itself the natural conclusion, climax? Perhaps anti-climax of the Enlightenment. Certainly, it seems as if a lot of the critiques of the French Revolution, particularly the more conservative ones, Burke comes to mind, suggested that perhaps the principles of in the Enlightment inevitably led to the guillotine, or is that an unfair way of thinking of it?David Bell: Well, there are a lot of people who have thought like that. Edmund Burke already, writing in 1790, in his reflections on the revolution in France, he said that everything which was great in the old regime is being dissolved and, quoting, dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. And then he said about the French that in the groves of their academy at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing but the Gallows. So there, in 1780, he already seemed to be predicting the reign of terror and blaming it. A certain extent from the Enlightenment. That said, I think, you know, again, the French Revolution is incredibly complicated event. I mean, you certainly have, you know, an explosion of what we could call Enlightenment thinking all over the place. In France, it happened in France. What happened there was that you had a, you know, the collapse of an extraordinarily inefficient government and a very, you know, in a very antiquated, paralyzed system of government kind of collapsed, created a kind of political vacuum. Into that vacuum stepped a lot of figures who were definitely readers of the Enlightenment. Oh so um but again the Enlightment had I said I don't think you can call the Enlightement a single thing so to say that the Enlightiment inspired the French Revolution rather than the There you go.Andrew Keen: Although your essay on liberties is the Enlightenment then and now you probably didn't write is always these lazy editors who come up with inaccurate and inaccurate titles. So for you, there is no such thing as the Enlighten.David Bell: No, there is. There is. But still, it's a complex thing. It contains multitudes.Andrew Keen: So it's the Enlightenment rather than the United States.David Bell: Conflicting tendencies, it has contradictions within it. There's enough unity to refer to it as a singular noun, but it doesn't mean that it all went in one single direction.Andrew Keen: But in historical terms, did the failure of the French Revolution, its descent into Robespierre and then Bonaparte, did it mark the end in historical terms a kind of bookend of history? You began in 1720 by 1820. Was the age of the Enlightenment pretty much over?David Bell: I would say yes. I think that, again, one of the things about the French Revolution is that people who are reading these books and they're reading these ideas and they are discussing things really start to act on them in a very different way from what it did before the French revolution. You have a lot of absolute monarchs who are trying to bring certain enlightenment principles to bear in their form of government, but they're not. But it's difficult to talk about a full-fledged attempt to enact a kind of enlightenment program. Certainly a lot of the people in the French Revolution saw themselves as doing that. But as they did it, they ran into reality, I would say. I mean, now Tocqueville, when he writes his old regime in the revolution, talks about how the French philosophes were full of these abstract ideas that were divorced from reality. And while that's an exaggeration, there was a certain truth to them. And as soon as you start having the age of revolutions, as soon you start people having to devise systems of government that will actually last, and as you have people, democratic representative systems that will last, and as they start revising these systems under the pressure of actual events, then you're not simply talking about an intellectual movement anymore, you're talking about something very different. And so I would say that, well, obviously the ideas of the Enlightenment continue to inspire people, the books continue to be read, debated. They lead on to figures like Kant, and as we talked about earlier, Kant leads to Hegel, Hegel leads to Marx in a certain sense. Nonetheless, by the time you're getting into the 19th century, what you have, you know, has connections to the Enlightenment, but can we really still call it the Enlightment? I would sayAndrew Keen: And Tocqueville, of course, found democracy in America. Is democracy itself? I know it's a big question. But is it? Bound up in the Enlightenment. You've written extensively, David, both for liberties and elsewhere on liberalism. Is the promise of democracy, democratic systems, the one born in the American Revolution, promised in the French Revolution, not realized? Are they products of the Enlightment, or is the 19th century and the democratic systems that in the 19th century, is that just a separate historical track?David Bell: Again, I would say there are certain things in the Enlightenment that do lead in that direction. Certainly, I think most figures in the enlightenment in one general sense or another accepted the idea of a kind of general notion of popular sovereignty. It didn't mean that they always felt that this was going to be something that could necessarily be acted upon or implemented in their own day. And they didn't necessarily associate generalized popular sovereignty with what we would now call democracy with people being able to actually govern themselves. Would be certain figures, certainly Diderot and some of his essays, what we saw very much in the social contract, you know, were sketching out, you knows, models for possible democratic system. Condorcet, who actually lived into the French Revolution, wrote one of the most draft constitutions for France, that's one of most democratic documents ever proposed. But of course there were lots of figures in the Enlightenment, Voltaire, and others who actually believed much more in absolute monarchy, who believed that you just, you know, you should have. Freedom of speech and freedom of discussion, out of which the best ideas would emerge, but then you had to give those ideas to the prince who imposed them by poor sicknesses.Andrew Keen: And of course, Rousseau himself, his social contract, some historians have seen that as the foundations of totalitarian, modern totalitarianism. Finally, David, your wonderful essay in Liberties in the spring quarterly 2025 is The Enlightenment, Then and Now. What about now? You work at Princeton, your president has very bravely stood up to the new presidential regime in the United States, in defense of academic intellectual freedom. Does the word and the movement, does it have any relevance in the 2020s, particularly in an age of neo-authoritarianism around the world?David Bell: I think it does. I think we have to be careful about it. I always get a little nervous when people say, well, we should simply go back to the Enlightenment, because the Enlightenments is history. We don't go back the 18th century. I think what we need to do is to recover certain principles, certain ideals from the 18 century, the ones that matter to us, the ones we think are right, and make our own Enlightenment better. I don't think we need be governed by the 18 century. Thomas Paine once said that no generation should necessarily rule over every generation to come, and I think that's probably right. Unfortunately in the United States, we have a constitution which is now essentially unamendable, so we're doomed to live by a constitution largely from the 18th century. But are there many things in the Enlightenment that we should look back to, absolutely?Andrew Keen: Well, David, I am going to free you for your own French Enlightenment. You can go and have some croissant now in your local cafe in Paris. Thank you so much for a very, I excuse the pun, enlightening conversation on the Enlightenment then and now, Essential Essay in Liberties. I'd love to get you back on the show. Talk more history. Thank you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

This Day in Legal History: First American Anti-Slavery Society OrganizedOn April 14, 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the first American society dedicated to the abolition of slavery was organized. Known as the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, it marked a critical early step in the formal anti-slavery movement in the United States. Among its key founders were Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Benjamin Rush, both prominent figures of the American Enlightenment and signers of the Declaration of Independence. The society was composed primarily of Quakers, whose religious convictions aligned with the idea that slavery was morally wrong and incompatible with Christian values.While its initial activities were limited, the group laid the groundwork for more organized and effective abolitionist efforts in the decades to come. In 1787, after the American Revolution, the society was reconstituted as the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, with Franklin serving as its president. This reorganization gave the movement greater political clout and visibility. The society pushed for gradual emancipation, legal reforms, and the education and employment of freed Black individuals.Franklin's involvement lent substantial legitimacy to the cause, especially when he submitted a petition to the First Congress in 1790 calling for the federal government to take action against slavery. Although the petition was ultimately rejected, it sparked the first significant congressional debate over slavery in U.S. history. The 1775 founding of the original society represents a rare pre-Revolutionary acknowledgment of slavery's moral contradictions within the new American experiment. It also helped forge an early link between legal reform and moral advocacy, a tradition that would define much of the abolitionist movement in the 19th century.Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, is set to face trial in Washington over allegations that it created an illegal monopoly by acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) argues that these billion-dollar acquisitions were designed to eliminate emerging competition and solidify Facebook's dominance in the social media space. Filed in 2020, the case seeks to force Meta to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp, a move that would significantly impact the company's business, especially since Instagram alone is estimated to account for over half of its U.S. ad revenue.Meta's legal team has pushed back, calling the case weak and politically motivated. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify, facing scrutiny over past emails where he framed the Instagram acquisition as a defensive move against competition. Meta argues that the market has since changed, with strong competition from TikTok, YouTube, and Apple's messaging services.The FTC claims Meta still dominates platforms for sharing content among friends and family, while alternatives like Snapchat and MeWe lack sufficient market presence. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg has allowed the case to proceed but acknowledged the FTC faces a tough road. The trial will run through July and, if the FTC prevails, a second trial will determine remedies like a forced breakup. The case is one of several targeting alleged monopolistic practices by major tech firms, including Google, Amazon, and Apple.Facebook owner Meta faces existential threat at trial over Instagram, WhatsApp | ReutersThe Trump administration has repeatedly accused immigrants of serious criminal ties—such as gang leadership or terrorism—without backing those claims with evidence in court. Presumably because they aren't interested in immediately perjuring themselves. One high-profile example involved the FBI's arrest of a Salvadoran man in Virginia, publicly labeled a top MS-13 leader and terrorist. Yet the Justice Department dropped the sole charge—illegal gun possession—and instead moved to deport him without pursuing gang-related allegations in court. A similar case involved Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported and later labeled a human trafficker, though no such charge appeared in legal filings. Officials also deported 238 Venezuelans alleged to be part of the Tren de Aragua gang, despite some having no criminal records. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defended their imprisonment, citing national security, while declining to present supporting evidence. Legal experts caution that making unsupported public accusations risks undermining prosecutions and due process, as it can taint juries and violate Justice Department policy.Some judges have pushed back. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis emphasized that serious accusations should be vetted through the legal system, not just made in press conferences. Meanwhile, other alleged MS-13 members were charged through traditional indictments, showing the DOJ still uses evidence-backed prosecutions in some cases. Critics say the administration's approach mixes law enforcement with political messaging, leveraging public fear to justify aggressive immigration actions.Trump officials push immigrant gang message, but sometimes don't back it up in court | ReutersA group of Harvard University professors has filed a lawsuit to stop the Trump administration from reviewing nearly $9 billion in federal grants and contracts awarded to the university. The lawsuit, brought by the Harvard chapter of the American Association of University Professors and its national organization, argues that the administration is unlawfully targeting the school to suppress free speech and academic freedom. The review was announced amid ongoing scrutiny of elite universities over pro-Palestinian protests, diversity programs, and transgender policies.Federal agencies including the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, along with the General Services Administration, began investigating $255.6 million in contracts and $8.7 billion in multi-year grants. They demanded Harvard meet conditions to continue receiving funds, such as banning protester mask-wearing, eliminating DEI programs, cooperating with law enforcement, and revising departments allegedly involved in antisemitic harassment.The administration has cited Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination at federally funded institutions, as its legal basis. However, the plaintiffs argue that the government has not followed the proper legal process and is instead using funding threats to impose political viewpoints. Harvard law professor Andrew Crespo said the government cannot silence speech it disagrees with through funding leverage.Harvard professors sue over Trump's review of $9 billion in funding | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Benjamin Rush, a Founding Father of the United States, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a physician, politician, social reformer, humanitarian, and educator, known for his contributions to the American Enlightenment and for his advocacy for the abolition of slavery and universal public education. Rush believed that religion, as described in the New Testament, was the key source of moral guidance needed in the citizens of a republic.“the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”Benjamin Rush, Of the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, 1789Epilogue: Securing the Republic: Benjamin Rush, Of the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic (uchicago.edu) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clintmorey.substack.com

Well, last episode we surveyed the 13 original colonies, as they were at the start of the 1700's.  And as I mentioned, a lot happens in the 1700's.  And as I mentioned 2 episodes ago, one of the things that was happening at this time in Europe was the Enlightenment, which was in full swing by the 1700's.  Anyway, the Enlightenment had a unique expression in America.  The Enlightenment had a big effect in Europe, but its expression in the colonies was different.  Like I said last episode, the group of people who had migrated to the American colonies was a fairly well-educated group to begin with - the first generation was usually someone who had been educated in England, and had been strongly influenced by both Reformation and Enlightenment thinking.  The ideas of the Reformation and the Enlightenment, especially the idea of liberty of conscience, were part of reasons why people emigrated to the Americas in the first place

In This Episode:Matthew Spalding, Professor of Constitutional studies at Hillsdale College in Washington D.C., joins the podcast to discuss the first principles and permanent truths that undergird the American Foundinghow critiques from National Conservatives and Post-Liberal Integralists misunderstand classical liberalism and the “American Enlightenment”the common ground between Straussians and Kirkians, and the potential for a principled fusion between the once-warring camps in the conservative movementTexts Mentioned:We Still Hold These Truths by Matthew SpaldingHeritage Guide to the Constitution by Matthew Spalding and David FortePolitics by AristotleBecome a part of ISI:Become a MemberSupport ISIUpcoming ISI Events

In this episode, Doug looks into the sordid history of the Praetorian Guard. Originally created by Emperor Augustus, it was intended to be a few thousand simple bodyguards who would protect the emperor and his family. Little did Augustus know, "[he] created potentially the most dangerous institution the Roman world had ever seen." In less than 100 years, the Guard's role expanded to become cops, soldiers, spies, gladiators, and assassins. They were supposed to take out the emperor's enemies. But once they got the taste for killing emperors and replacing them with guys who gave them bonuses, they became the emperors' biggest enemies themselves. During their four-hundred-year history, they would have a hand in killing over a dozen emperors. And they abandoned many more. They would be responsible for both the Year of the Four Emperors (AD 69) and the Year of the Five Emperors (AD 193). At their lowest point, they were literally selling the emperorship to the highest bidder. Sources used in this episode: Cassius Dio's Roman History Machiavelli's The Prince Chapter 19 Carl J. Richard, The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment, p. 103 Hayden Chakra at About History, History Of The Praetorian Guard, https://about-history.com/history-of-the-praetorian-guard/ Mark Cartwright at World History Encyclopedia, Praetorian Guard, https://www.worldhistory.org/Praetorian_Guard/ Evan Andrews at History.com, 8 Things You May Not Know About the Praetorian Guard, https://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-praetorian-guard Peter Preskar at History of Yesterday, The Imperial German Bodyguard, https://historyofyesterday.com/the-imperial-german-bodyguard-c0abb84c0e3 Genevieve Carlton and John Kuroski at All That's Interesting, Inside The Praetorian Guard, The Fearsome Military Unit Of Ancient Rome, https://allthatsinteresting.com/praetorian-guard --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771-90, and has become one of the most famous and influential examples of an autobiography ever written.Benjamin Franklin's account of his life is divided into four parts, reflecting the different periods at which he wrote them. In the "Introduction" of the 1916 publication of the Autobiography, editor F. W. Pine wrote that Franklin's biography provided the "most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men" with Franklin as the greatest exemplar.Benjamin Franklin (1706 –1790) was an American polymath active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and political philosopher. Among the leading intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and the first United States Postmaster General. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions. He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia's first fire department, and the University of Pennsylvania. (From Wikipedia).Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771-90, and has become one of the most famous and influential examples of an autobiography ever written.Benjamin Franklin's account of his life is divided into four parts, reflecting the different periods at which he wrote them. In the "Introduction" of the 1916 publication of the Autobiography, editor F. W. Pine wrote that Franklin's biography provided the "most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men" with Franklin as the greatest exemplar.Benjamin Franklin (1706 –1790) was an American polymath active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and political philosopher. Among the leading intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and the first United States Postmaster General. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions. He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia's first fire department, and the University of Pennsylvania. (From Wikipedia).Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771-90, and has become one of the most famous and influential examples of an autobiography ever written.Benjamin Franklin's account of his life is divided into four parts, reflecting the different periods at which he wrote them. In the "Introduction" of the 1916 publication of the Autobiography, editor F. W. Pine wrote that Franklin's biography provided the "most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men" with Franklin as the greatest exemplar.Benjamin Franklin (1706 –1790) was an American polymath active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and political philosopher. Among the leading intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and the first United States Postmaster General. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions. He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia's first fire department, and the University of Pennsylvania. (From Wikipedia).Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771-90, and has become one of the most famous and influential examples of an autobiography ever written.Benjamin Franklin's account of his life is divided into four parts, reflecting the different periods at which he wrote them. In the "Introduction" of the 1916 publication of the Autobiography, editor F. W. Pine wrote that Franklin's biography provided the "most remarkable of all the remarkable histories of our self-made men" with Franklin as the greatest exemplar.Benjamin Franklin (1706 –1790) was an American polymath active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and political philosopher. Among the leading intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and the first United States Postmaster General. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions. He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia's first fire department, and the University of Pennsylvania. (From Wikipedia).Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Two disparate Americas have always coexisted. In this thoroughly researched, engaging and ultimately hopeful story of our nation's divergent roots, Seth David Radwell clearly links the fascinating history of the two American Enlightenments to our raging political division. He also demonstrates that reasoned analysis and historical perspective are the only antidote to irrational political discourse.“Did my vision of America ever exist at all, or was it but a myth?” Searching for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of our civic life, Radwell's very personal and yet broadly shared question propelled his search back to our nation's founding for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of our civic life - and led to a surprising discovery. Today's battles reflect the fundamentally divergent visions of our country that emerged at our nation's founding and have been vying for prominence ever since. The founding principles that shaped the United States may be rooted in the Enlightenment era. But the origin of our dual Americas is a product of two distinct Enlightenments - Radical and Moderate.American Schism begins with a quick reintroduction to the pre-Enlightenment Middle Ages and then takes readers on an in-depth journey through the revolutionary Enlightenment period including the eventual schism that began in Europe but then found its way to American shores. Radwell shows the impact of this schism on American history from the early expansion of the U.S. through Jim Crow and The Age of Trumpism.In an optimistic and rigorous final section, Radwell lays out an analysis of our current governmental structure and a plan to move forward, demonstrating that it is only by embracing Enlightenment principles that we can build a civilized, progressive, and tolerant society - where Americans can firmly ground their different views in rationality.HOST:  Rob MellonFEATURED BREW:  Outta Line West Coast IPA, Rogue Ales, Portland, OregonBOOK:  American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation https://www.amazon.com/American-Schism-Enlightenments-Secret-Healing/dp/1626348618/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1643778919&sr=8-1MUSIC:  Bones Forkhttps://bonesfork.com/

This year, I set my Goodreads 2021 Reading Challenge to 55 books. With just two days left to the year, I am three titles short and do not think I will have the bandwidth to meet my goal. Yet for all that, I got closer to my goal than I perhaps would have without setting the goal. For that matter, 95% is still an A in most grade scales. So an A for effort will have to suffice, and 52 titles seems like quite enough given the circumstances. But as the year draws to a close, let me share with you what I read and a brief takeaway for each title. Perhaps in the course of this rundown you will get some inspiration to join me on Goodreads and set a reading goal for 2022. Or perhaps you will just get some good ideas for titles you might be interested in reading, or not reading, in the year ahead. Without further adieu, here in the first part I will talk about the first twenty-two books in the sequence they were finished. Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre The River of Doubt by Candice Millard The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal Perelandria by C.S. Lewis The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine Last Stands by Michael Walsh The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl R. Trueman Hero of the Empire by Candice Millard Return of the Strong Gods by R.R. Reno Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton The City of God by Augustine of Hippo The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle How to Be a Conservative by Roger Scruton The French Revolution by Ian Davidson The Twilight of the American Enlightenment by George M. Marsden Grant by Ron Chernow Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen Fault Lines by Voddie Baucham The Children of Ash and Elm by Neil Price Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands by Roger Scruton The Church History by Eusebius Stay tuned for a treatment of the remaining thirty works. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/garrett-ashley-mullet/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/garrett-ashley-mullet/support

Why are Americans so angry? American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation (Greenleaf, 2021) explores history to find the answer to a divided America Two disparate Americas have always coexisted. In this thoroughly researched, engaging and story of our nation's divergent roots, Seth David Radwell clearly links the fascinating history of the two American Enlightenments to our raging political division. He also demonstrates that reasoned analysis and historical perspective are the only antidote to irrational political discourse. “Did my vision of America ever exist at all, or was it but a myth?” Searching for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of our civic life, Radwell's very personal and yet broadly shared question propelled his search back to the nation's founding for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of its civic life - and led to a surprising discovery. Today's battles reflect the fundamentally divergent visions of our country that emerged at the nation's founding and have been vying for prominence ever since. The founding principles that shaped the United States may be rooted in the Enlightenment era. But the origin of our dual Americas is a product of two distinct Enlightenments - Radical and Moderate. Radwell shows the impact of this schism on American history from the early expansion of the U.S. through Jim Crow and The Age of Trumpism. In an optimistic final section, Radwell lays out an analysis of our current governmental structure and a plan to move forward, arguing that it is only by embracing Enlightenment principles that we can build a civilized, progressive, and tolerant society - where Americans can firmly ground their different views in rationality. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network's Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. We invite your comments and suggestions: reneeg@vanleer.org.il. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

Why are Americans so angry? American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation (Greenleaf, 2021) explores history to find the answer to a divided America Two disparate Americas have always coexisted. In this thoroughly researched, engaging and story of our nation's divergent roots, Seth David Radwell clearly links the fascinating history of the two American Enlightenments to our raging political division. He also demonstrates that reasoned analysis and historical perspective are the only antidote to irrational political discourse. “Did my vision of America ever exist at all, or was it but a myth?” Searching for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of our civic life, Radwell's very personal and yet broadly shared question propelled his search back to the nation's founding for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of its civic life - and led to a surprising discovery. Today's battles reflect the fundamentally divergent visions of our country that emerged at the nation's founding and have been vying for prominence ever since. The founding principles that shaped the United States may be rooted in the Enlightenment era. But the origin of our dual Americas is a product of two distinct Enlightenments - Radical and Moderate. Radwell shows the impact of this schism on American history from the early expansion of the U.S. through Jim Crow and The Age of Trumpism. In an optimistic final section, Radwell lays out an analysis of our current governmental structure and a plan to move forward, arguing that it is only by embracing Enlightenment principles that we can build a civilized, progressive, and tolerant society - where Americans can firmly ground their different views in rationality. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network's Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. We invite your comments and suggestions: reneeg@vanleer.org.il. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

Why are Americans so angry? American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation (Greenleaf, 2021) explores history to find the answer to a divided America Two disparate Americas have always coexisted. In this thoroughly researched, engaging and story of our nation's divergent roots, Seth David Radwell clearly links the fascinating history of the two American Enlightenments to our raging political division. He also demonstrates that reasoned analysis and historical perspective are the only antidote to irrational political discourse. “Did my vision of America ever exist at all, or was it but a myth?” Searching for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of our civic life, Radwell's very personal and yet broadly shared question propelled his search back to the nation's founding for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of its civic life - and led to a surprising discovery. Today's battles reflect the fundamentally divergent visions of our country that emerged at the nation's founding and have been vying for prominence ever since. The founding principles that shaped the United States may be rooted in the Enlightenment era. But the origin of our dual Americas is a product of two distinct Enlightenments - Radical and Moderate. Radwell shows the impact of this schism on American history from the early expansion of the U.S. through Jim Crow and The Age of Trumpism. In an optimistic final section, Radwell lays out an analysis of our current governmental structure and a plan to move forward, arguing that it is only by embracing Enlightenment principles that we can build a civilized, progressive, and tolerant society - where Americans can firmly ground their different views in rationality. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network's Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. We invite your comments and suggestions: reneeg@vanleer.org.il. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Why are Americans so angry? American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation (Greenleaf, 2021) explores history to find the answer to a divided America Two disparate Americas have always coexisted. In this thoroughly researched, engaging and story of our nation's divergent roots, Seth David Radwell clearly links the fascinating history of the two American Enlightenments to our raging political division. He also demonstrates that reasoned analysis and historical perspective are the only antidote to irrational political discourse. “Did my vision of America ever exist at all, or was it but a myth?” Searching for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of our civic life, Radwell's very personal and yet broadly shared question propelled his search back to the nation's founding for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of its civic life - and led to a surprising discovery. Today's battles reflect the fundamentally divergent visions of our country that emerged at the nation's founding and have been vying for prominence ever since. The founding principles that shaped the United States may be rooted in the Enlightenment era. But the origin of our dual Americas is a product of two distinct Enlightenments - Radical and Moderate. Radwell shows the impact of this schism on American history from the early expansion of the U.S. through Jim Crow and The Age of Trumpism. In an optimistic final section, Radwell lays out an analysis of our current governmental structure and a plan to move forward, arguing that it is only by embracing Enlightenment principles that we can build a civilized, progressive, and tolerant society - where Americans can firmly ground their different views in rationality. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network's Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. We invite your comments and suggestions: reneeg@vanleer.org.il. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Why are Americans so angry? American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation (Greenleaf, 2021) explores history to find the answer to a divided America Two disparate Americas have always coexisted. In this thoroughly researched, engaging and story of our nation's divergent roots, Seth David Radwell clearly links the fascinating history of the two American Enlightenments to our raging political division. He also demonstrates that reasoned analysis and historical perspective are the only antidote to irrational political discourse. “Did my vision of America ever exist at all, or was it but a myth?” Searching for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of our civic life, Radwell's very personal and yet broadly shared question propelled his search back to the nation's founding for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of its civic life - and led to a surprising discovery. Today's battles reflect the fundamentally divergent visions of our country that emerged at the nation's founding and have been vying for prominence ever since. The founding principles that shaped the United States may be rooted in the Enlightenment era. But the origin of our dual Americas is a product of two distinct Enlightenments - Radical and Moderate. Radwell shows the impact of this schism on American history from the early expansion of the U.S. through Jim Crow and The Age of Trumpism. In an optimistic final section, Radwell lays out an analysis of our current governmental structure and a plan to move forward, arguing that it is only by embracing Enlightenment principles that we can build a civilized, progressive, and tolerant society - where Americans can firmly ground their different views in rationality. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network's Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. We invite your comments and suggestions: reneeg@vanleer.org.il. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Why are Americans so angry? American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation (Greenleaf, 2021) explores history to find the answer to a divided America Two disparate Americas have always coexisted. In this thoroughly researched, engaging and story of our nation's divergent roots, Seth David Radwell clearly links the fascinating history of the two American Enlightenments to our raging political division. He also demonstrates that reasoned analysis and historical perspective are the only antidote to irrational political discourse. “Did my vision of America ever exist at all, or was it but a myth?” Searching for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of our civic life, Radwell's very personal and yet broadly shared question propelled his search back to the nation's founding for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of its civic life - and led to a surprising discovery. Today's battles reflect the fundamentally divergent visions of our country that emerged at the nation's founding and have been vying for prominence ever since. The founding principles that shaped the United States may be rooted in the Enlightenment era. But the origin of our dual Americas is a product of two distinct Enlightenments - Radical and Moderate. Radwell shows the impact of this schism on American history from the early expansion of the U.S. through Jim Crow and The Age of Trumpism. In an optimistic final section, Radwell lays out an analysis of our current governmental structure and a plan to move forward, arguing that it is only by embracing Enlightenment principles that we can build a civilized, progressive, and tolerant society - where Americans can firmly ground their different views in rationality. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network's Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. We invite your comments and suggestions: reneeg@vanleer.org.il. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Why are Americans so angry? American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation (Greenleaf, 2021) explores history to find the answer to a divided America Two disparate Americas have always coexisted. In this thoroughly researched, engaging and story of our nation's divergent roots, Seth David Radwell clearly links the fascinating history of the two American Enlightenments to our raging political division. He also demonstrates that reasoned analysis and historical perspective are the only antidote to irrational political discourse. “Did my vision of America ever exist at all, or was it but a myth?” Searching for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of our civic life, Radwell's very personal and yet broadly shared question propelled his search back to the nation's founding for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of its civic life - and led to a surprising discovery. Today's battles reflect the fundamentally divergent visions of our country that emerged at the nation's founding and have been vying for prominence ever since. The founding principles that shaped the United States may be rooted in the Enlightenment era. But the origin of our dual Americas is a product of two distinct Enlightenments - Radical and Moderate. Radwell shows the impact of this schism on American history from the early expansion of the U.S. through Jim Crow and The Age of Trumpism. In an optimistic final section, Radwell lays out an analysis of our current governmental structure and a plan to move forward, arguing that it is only by embracing Enlightenment principles that we can build a civilized, progressive, and tolerant society - where Americans can firmly ground their different views in rationality. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network's Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. We invite your comments and suggestions: reneeg@vanleer.org.il. 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

Why are Americans so angry? American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation (Greenleaf, 2021) explores history to find the answer to a divided America Two disparate Americas have always coexisted. In this thoroughly researched, engaging and story of our nation's divergent roots, Seth David Radwell clearly links the fascinating history of the two American Enlightenments to our raging political division. He also demonstrates that reasoned analysis and historical perspective are the only antidote to irrational political discourse. “Did my vision of America ever exist at all, or was it but a myth?” Searching for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of our civic life, Radwell's very personal and yet broadly shared question propelled his search back to the nation's founding for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of its civic life - and led to a surprising discovery. Today's battles reflect the fundamentally divergent visions of our country that emerged at the nation's founding and have been vying for prominence ever since. The founding principles that shaped the United States may be rooted in the Enlightenment era. But the origin of our dual Americas is a product of two distinct Enlightenments - Radical and Moderate. Radwell shows the impact of this schism on American history from the early expansion of the U.S. through Jim Crow and The Age of Trumpism. In an optimistic final section, Radwell lays out an analysis of our current governmental structure and a plan to move forward, arguing that it is only by embracing Enlightenment principles that we can build a civilized, progressive, and tolerant society - where Americans can firmly ground their different views in rationality. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network's Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. We invite your comments and suggestions: reneeg@vanleer.org.il. 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

Why are Americans so angry? American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation (Greenleaf, 2021) explores history to find the answer to a divided America Two disparate Americas have always coexisted. In this thoroughly researched, engaging and story of our nation's divergent roots, Seth David Radwell clearly links the fascinating history of the two American Enlightenments to our raging political division. He also demonstrates that reasoned analysis and historical perspective are the only antidote to irrational political discourse. “Did my vision of America ever exist at all, or was it but a myth?” Searching for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of our civic life, Radwell's very personal and yet broadly shared question propelled his search back to the nation's founding for a fresh and distinctive perspective on the recent corrosion of its civic life - and led to a surprising discovery. Today's battles reflect the fundamentally divergent visions of our country that emerged at the nation's founding and have been vying for prominence ever since. The founding principles that shaped the United States may be rooted in the Enlightenment era. But the origin of our dual Americas is a product of two distinct Enlightenments - Radical and Moderate. Radwell shows the impact of this schism on American history from the early expansion of the U.S. through Jim Crow and The Age of Trumpism. In an optimistic final section, Radwell lays out an analysis of our current governmental structure and a plan to move forward, arguing that it is only by embracing Enlightenment principles that we can build a civilized, progressive, and tolerant society - where Americans can firmly ground their different views in rationality. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network's Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. We invite your comments and suggestions: reneeg@vanleer.org.il. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

This week we are thrilled to bring you Charles Brockden Brown's 1798 novel Wieland. It's about a guy who gets tricked by a ventriloquist into murdering his family and—we can't stress this enough—not anybody else. Not another soul was present. There was absolutely no other character involved in this situation. Even to suggest it would be ridiculous. And that's final. Also, the ventriloquist is a clown who shows up at a stranger's house demanding milk. There is spontaneous human combustion. Please read this book. We talked about the gothic, the terrifying continent of Europe, and religion and madness. And we have our own moment of quasi-religious epiphany: this book is early American It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. We read the Norton Critical Edition edited by Bryan Waterman, which includes Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist. For more on Wieland, ventriloquism, and so much more, we recommend Leigh Eric Schmidt's Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment. It's amazing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @betterreadpod, and email us nice things at betterreadpodcast@gmail.com. Find Tristan on Twitter @tjschweiger, Katie @katiekrywo, and Megan @tuslersaurus.

Oh say can you see where this one is going? Many people have heard about the influence of the Roman Republic on the shaping of the American government but are perhaps unaware how much deeper the ancient underpinnings go. This week, with Carl Richards' The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment, as their guide, Jeff and Dave take a star-spangled look at the Greeks and Romans read, revered, and almost rejected by the founders of the United States. From the earliest days of the revolution Washington, Adams, and Jefferson (and others) saw themselves and each other through the prism of many an ancient great, both historical and fictional. What did it mean that Sam Adams was the "Palinurus" of the Revolution? Why did Washington see himself as Cato?  Why does Benjamin Rush (boo!) come along and try to pour cold, stale ale over the whole classicy enterprise? And perhaps most importantly, if you don't have busts of your friends in your personal library are they really your friends?  

Since the attack on the Capitol on January 6 various moderate to progressive evangelical think pieces and mouth pieces have made a lot of noise decrying the rise of "Christian Nationalism". This is sort of like decrying the rise of fish eating by Alaskan bear. Various and diverse forms of "Christian Nationalism" or even Imperialisms have been a near constant element of American religious culture. The existence of this is not a novelty. What IS a novelty is the surprise at which it is viewed by moderate to progressive evangelicals and especially the implicit variety of Christian nationalism and even imperialism by the Christian and post-Christian left. This movement is deeply imperial but many of those who promote it most strongly are blind to its imperial qualities.  I'm going to list a series of books that illustrate the various nationalisms through American history, many written by George Marsden Jonathan Edwards https://amzn.to/2PG3yLt Fundamentalism and American Culture https://amzn.to/30gCgNx Twilight of the American Enlightenment https://amzn.to/2Org0hB Faiths of our Fathers https://amzn.to/3qnTi6Y Midnight Rising https://amzn.to/3bZXPY8 Great Courses American Religious History https://amzn.to/3kPaAZC A Great and Holy War https://amzn.to/30igN75 Jordan Peterson Ayaan Hirshi Ali https://youtu.be/yKhAh_qfO64 Jordan Peterson Gregg Hurtwitz https://youtu.be/yKhAh_qfO64 Chuck Colson Born Again https://amzn.to/3emYRAe Rhett and Link Spiritual Journey One Year Later https://youtu.be/CnYG6x-aOTk The Rest is History: Empires https://pca.st/8sq8h8f9 Douthat Smith Burton https://youtu.be/WIttJNroGyM The Benedict Option https://amzn.to/30jXvOI Click here to meetup with other channel viewers for conversation https://discord.gg/jdVk8XU Paul Vander Klay clips channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX0jIcadtoxELSwehCh5QTg If you want to schedule a one-on-one conversation check here. https://paulvanderklay.me/2019/08/06/converzations-with-pvk/ There is a video version of this podcast on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/paulvanderklay To listen to this on ITunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/paul-vanderklays-podcast/id1394314333  If you need the RSS feed for your podcast player https://paulvanderklay.podbean.com/feed/  All Amazon links here are part of the Amazon Affiliate Program. Amazon pays me a small commission at no additional cost to you if you buy through one of the product links here. This is is one (free to you) way to support my videos.  To support this channel/podcast on Paypal: https://paypal.me/paulvanderklay To support this channel/podcast with Bitcoin (BTC): 37TSN79RXewX8Js7CDMDRzvgMrFftutbPo  To support this channel/podcast with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) qr3amdmj3n2u83eqefsdft9vatnj9na0dqlzhnx80h  To support this channel/podcast with Ethereum (ETH): 0xd3F649C3403a4789466c246F32430036DADf6c62 Blockchain backup on Lbry https://lbry.tv/@paulvanderklay Powerpoints of Monologue videos are available for Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/paulvanderklay Paul's Church Content at Living Stones Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh7bdktIALZ9Nq41oVCvW-A To support Paul's work by supporting his church give here. https://tithe.ly/give?c=2160640

"Religion" will be increasingly difficult to marginalize and to stigmatize as modernity recedes. This conversation between  @Jordan B Peterson  ,  @Mikhaila Peterson  and  @Mark Manson  was remarkably good, and made better by Mikhaila's participation. What shone through was how "Self Help" segment functions as a folk religion, offering an implicit value hierarchy.   JBP, Mikhaila and Mark Manson whole https://youtu.be/dGDF2tTq6xw JBP short on values https://youtu.be/hWbmMOklBxU Judy Garland sings the Battle Hymn of the Republic https://youtu.be/e4Xz7WV_qJs Judy Trailer https://youtu.be/98t7aXRaA6w How the Civil Rights Movement Displaced the Mainline Church https://youtu.be/zxRymRwasLM Christian Nationalism in 1870s https://youtu.be/PfEYdG6mTQg https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2021/01/how-the-civil-rights-movement-converted-liberal-white-protestants-to-secularism/ https://enemieswithinthechurch.com/2020/08/22/tim-keller-and-progressive-evangelicalism/ https://jesusculture.com/sacramento/ George Marsden Twilight of the American Enlightenment https://amzn.to/3oIyZR4 Fundamentalism and American Culture https://amzn.to/3rkqEVc Mark Manson books https://amzn.to/3ry48IA 12 Rules for Life https://amzn.to/3jByJSM   Click here to meetup with other channel viewers for conversation https://discord.gg/jdVk8XU Paul Vander Klay clips channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX0jIcadtoxELSwehCh5QTg If you want to schedule a one-on-one conversation check here. https://paulvanderklay.me/2019/08/06/converzations-with-pvk/ There is a video version of this podcast on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/paulvanderklay To listen to this on ITunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/paul-vanderklays-podcast/id1394314333  If you need the RSS feed for your podcast player https://paulvanderklay.podbean.com/feed/  All Amazon links here are part of the Amazon Affiliate Program. Amazon pays me a small commission at no additional cost to you if you buy through one of the product links here. This is is one (free to you) way to support my videos.  To support this channel/podcast on Paypal: https://paypal.me/paulvanderklay To support this channel/podcast with Bitcoin (BTC): 37TSN79RXewX8Js7CDMDRzvgMrFftutbPo To support this channel/podcast with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) qr3amdmj3n2u83eqefsdft9vatnj9na0dqlzhnx80h To support this channel/podcast with Ethereum (ETH): 0xd3F649C3403a4789466c246F32430036DADf6c62 Blockchain backup on Lbry https://lbry.tv/@paulvanderklay Powerpoints of Monologue videos are available for Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/paulvanderklay Paul's Church Content at Living Stones Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh7bdktIALZ9Nq41oVCvW-A To support Paul's work by supporting his church give here. https://tithe.ly/give?c=2160640

This fascinating piece in Patheos on how the Civil Right movement carved out and replaced the American mainline tells an important story. It is a the center of the great current battle surrounding the moral combat played out in politics and the media today.  https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2021/01/how-the-civil-rights-movement-converted-liberal-white-protestants-to-secularism/  https://enemieswithinthechurch.com/2020/08/22/tim-keller-and-progressive-evangelicalism/  https://jesusculture.com/sacramento/  George Marsden Twilight of the American Enlightenment https://amzn.to/3oIyZR4  Fundamentalism and American Culture https://amzn.to/3rkqEVc  George Marsden the Soul of the American University https://amzn.to/3cHvuYG  Click here to meetup with other channel viewers for conversation https://discord.gg/jdVk8XU Paul Vander Klay clips channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX0jIcadtoxELSwehCh5QTg If you want to schedule a one-on-one conversation check here. https://paulvanderklay.me/2019/08/06/converzations-with-pvk/ There is a video version of this podcast on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/paulvanderklay To listen to this on ITunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/paul-vanderklays-podcast/id1394314333  If you need the RSS feed for your podcast player https://paulvanderklay.podbean.com/feed/  All Amazon links here are part of the Amazon Affiliate Program. Amazon pays me a small commission at no additional cost to you if you buy through one of the product links here. This is is one (free to you) way to support my videos.  To support this channel/podcast on Paypal: https://paypal.me/paulvanderklay To support this channel/podcast with Bitcoin (BTC): 37TSN79RXewX8Js7CDMDRzvgMrFftutbPo To support this channel/podcast with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) qr3amdmj3n2u83eqefsdft9vatnj9na0dqlzhnx80h To support this channel/podcast with Ethereum (ETH): 0xd3F649C3403a4789466c246F32430036DADf6c62 Blockchain backup on Lbry https://lbry.tv/@paulvanderklay Powerpoints of Monologue videos are available for Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/paulvanderklay Paul's Church Content at Living Stones Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh7bdktIALZ9Nq41oVCvW-A To support Paul's work by supporting his church give here. https://tithe.ly/give?c=2160640  

Eric Weinstein is on a roll. He's pushing hard to try to fill the vacuum left by Jordan Peterson. Can he get there? A big part of Peterson's power came from the fact that he understands religion in a way that few in the IDW seem to get. Until Eric learns to appreciate the history of religion in the secular world he's not be able to create a wave like Jordan's first. Charles Taylor A Secular Age https://amzn.to/35sL1pR Andrew Root The Pastor in a Secular Age https://amzn.to/3aY7GeO Postmodern Christianity Caputo https://youtu.be/BEn8RqYubmY On the Road with St. Augustine https://amzn.to/2z7fi12 Bishop Barron on Cuomo Getting God Wrong https://youtu.be/IgI29K3DC8w Transubstantiation Book https://amzn.to/2KUBazp Veritas Forum Peter Thiel, NT Wright, Ross Douthat https://youtu.be/vF9nE0jdM8E Jordan Peterson on Firing Line https://youtu.be/DSAhjJtigxA Jordan Peterson Sam Harris Vancouver 1 https://youtu.be/d-Z9EZE8kpo PVK Glossary https://bit.ly/pvk_BoM_Glossary The Atlantic Failed State https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underlying-conditions/610261/ Eric Weinstein on Twitter https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1255562184815329280 Peter Thiel with Eric Metaxas https://youtu.be/SO_00POR-Po Eric Weinstein on Periscope https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1254170390554804224 Jordan Peterson Roger Scruton https://youtu.be/XvbtKAYdcZY JD Vance on The Portal https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/32-j-d-vance-american-dreams-and-nightmares/id1469999563 Hillbilly Elegy https://amzn.to/3fp0k7w Dignity Chris Arnade https://amzn.to/2zUNjSP George Marsden Twilight of the American Enlightenment https://amzn.to/2L0TMh7 George Marsden Soul of the American University https://amzn.to/2SxbXiS Tom Holland Delingpod https://youtu.be/R8J2aChrf7Q Click here to meetup with other channel viewers for conversation https://discord.gg/jdVk8XU The link will prompt you to download the software for this free group messaging service. This link updates every 100 users so look for the most recent videos if this link doesn't work. If you want to schedule a one-on-one conversation check here. https://paulvanderklay.me/2019/08/06/converzations-with-pvk/ There is a video version of this podcast on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/paulvanderklay To listen to this on ITunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/paul-vanderklays-podcast/id1394314333 If you need the RSS feed for your podcast player https://paulvanderklay.podbean.com/feed/ All Amazon links here are part of the Amazon Affiliate Program. Amazon pays me a small commission at no additional cost to you if you buy through one of the product links here. This is is one (free to you) way to support my videos. To support this channel/podcast on Paypal: https://paypal.me/paulvanderklay To support this channel/podcast with Bitcoin (BTC): 37TSN79RXewX8Js7CDMDRzvgMrFftutbPo To support this channel/podcast with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) qr3amdmj3n2u83eqefsdft9vatnj9na0dqlzhnx80h To support this channel/podcast with Ethereum (ETH): 0xd3F649C3403a4789466c246F32430036DADf6c62 Blockchain backup on Lbry https://lbry.tv/@paulvanderklay https://www.patreon.com/paulvanderklay Join the Sacramento JBP Meetup https://www.meetup.com/Sacramento-Jordan-Peterson-Meetup/ Paul's Church Content at Living Stones Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh7bdktIALZ9Nq41oVCvW-A  

Skeptics are a feature of human community, not a bug. Skeptics are a part of the process of finding truth. If you have a community of knowledge you will have skeptics. In this time some knowledge of that the Bible calls "the Day of the LORD" is helpful. It always comes, we are seldom ready for it. It comes to all of us, alone or together. Links: OSJ Controlling the Virus Narrative https://www.wsj.com/articles/controlling-the-virus-narrative-11584899715 (paywall) Evidence and Hysteria https://www.zerohedge.com/health/covid-19-evidence-over-hysteria Tweet on state conspiracy https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1242006583535489024 Doctors selling cigarettes https://www.history.com/news/cigarette-ads-doctors-smoking-endorsement Alan Jacobs Year of our Lord 1943 https://amzn.to/2QE706I Marsden: Twilight of the American Enlightenment https://amzn.to/3bmMcZz My chat with Tom Holland https://youtu.be/_JADIcgUvw4 4 states of pandemic sense making https://youtu.be/vvcs8k0vUBQ Douthat Decadent Society https://amzn.to/2wxfpSO The Bible Project Joel https://youtu.be/zQLazbgz90c Pandemic and the Judgment of God https://youtu.be/_NMaLw0J3EQ Harari https://amzn.to/2WFQQNZ   Click here to meetup with other channel viewers for conversation https://discord.gg/2uUhZBK The link will prompt you to download the software for this free group messaging service. This link updates every 100 users so look for the most recent videos if this link doesn't work. If you want to schedule a one-on-one conversation check here. https://paulvanderklay.me/2019/08/06/converzations-with-pvk/ There is a video version of this podcast on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/paulvanderklay To listen to this on ITunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/paul-vanderklays-podcast/id1394314333 If you need the RSS feed for your podcast player https://paulvanderklay.podbean.com/feed/ All Amazon links here are part of the Amazon Affiliate Program. Amazon pays me a small commission at no additional cost to you if you buy through one of the product links here. This is is one (free to you) way to support my videos. To support this channel/podcast on Paypal: https://paypal.me/paulvanderklay To support this channel/podcast with Bitcoin (BTC): 37TSN79RXewX8Js7CDMDRzvgMrFftutbPo To support this channel/podcast with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) qr3amdmj3n2u83eqefsdft9vatnj9na0dqlzhnx80h To support this channel/podcast with Ethereum (ETH): 0xd3F649C3403a4789466c246F32430036DADf6c62 Blockchain backup on Lbry https://lbry.tv/@paulvanderklay https://www.patreon.com/paulvanderklay Join the Sacramento JBP Meetup https://www.meetup.com/Sacramento-Jordan-Peterson-Meetup/ Paul's Church Content at Living Stones Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh7bdktIALZ9Nq41oVCvW-A  

Dr Peter Ridd has won his legal battle with James Cook Univeristy, what does this mean for academic freedom in Australia? (1:34-19:15) The Mueller report has been released - will there be impeachment and is this a good strategy for Democrats? (19:15-37:25) And GetUp! are now a major political force in Australia, what should the centre-right's response be? (37:25-51:09) Scott Hargreaves and Dr Chris Berg are joined by Dr Aaron Lane and Gideon Rozner to discuss these issues and share what they've been reading, watching or listening to this week, including a new translation of The New Testament, Brexit: The Uncivil War, The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments and The Aftermath (51:09-1:04:38) Show Notes: The New Testament: A Translation, by David Bentley Hart: https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-David-Bentley-Hart/dp/0300186096 Brexit: The Uncivil War: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8425058/ he Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments, by Gertrude Himmelfarb: https://www.amazon.com/Roads-Modernity-British-American-Enlightenments/dp/1400077222 The Aftermath: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5977276/  Year Zero: A History of 1945, by Ian Buruma: https://www.amazon.com/Year-Zero-History-Notable-Adults/dp/1594204365

Well hello once again, once again those Nerds have given us another episode full of fun and laughter, so strap in and hang on tight as we enjoy the rid. Please remember to keep arms inside the ride at all times to avoid injury. To start this mad cap episode we have the cast list of the new Dr. Dolittle with Robert Downey Jr. This cast has almost as many stars as the US flag. Will this be just another remake of a great movie, or will it be great? Who knows, at present all we know for sure is the cast is pretty impressive. Next up we take a moment to discuss the presence of water on the moon. That’s right water on the moon, is it H2O or OH, is there enough for a pool to soak away the long dreary hours after working all day as a janitor. Oops, that was the story for Space Quest, sorry. But the presence of water is important to plans to build a moon base for further space exploration. Last topic is about Crazy Taxi and not horrifying us with gruesome violence like the horror movie right there on our TV, called the 6 o’clock news. Sorry, distracted again, but hey, it is an amazing line up to entertain you and is followed by the usual shout outs, remembrances, birthdays and events of interest. As always we would love to hear from you, and please remember to take care of each other and stay hydrated.EPISODE NOTES:Dr Dolittle Movie starring Robert Downey Jr - http://collider.com/robert-downey-jr-doctor-dolittle-movie-reshoots/Moon Water - https://phys.org/news/2019-04-meteoroid-eject-precious-moon.html- https://www.newscientist.com/article/2199618-there-is-water-just-under-the-surface-of-the-moon-that-we-could-use/Crazy Taxi patent expiration - https://patents.google.com/patent/US6200138B1/enGames currently playingProfessor– Age of Empire 2 HD - https://store.steampowered.com/app/221380/Age_of_Empires_II_HD/Buck– Car Simulator 2016 - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/car-mechanic-simulator-2016/9nblggh4t4c4DJ– Apex Legends - https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legendsOther topics discussedThe Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (2020 movie)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Voyage_of_Doctor_DolittleKnut the Polar Bear- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knut_(polar_bear)Inuka the Polar Bear- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InukaSelena Gomez bio- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selena_GomezThe Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (1922 novel)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Voyages_of_Doctor_DolittleThe Futurist (Robert Downey Jr. album)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Futurist_(Robert_Downey_Jr._album)Craig Robinson (actor)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Robinson_(actor)Pineapple Express (2008 movie)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineapple_Express_(film)Puss in Boots- https://shrek.fandom.com/wiki/Puss_in_BootsTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014 film)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles_(2014_film)LADEE - Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LADEELCROSS - Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCROSSNASA's strike on moon worked- http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/10/09/probe.moon.crash/index.htmlWater on Titan?- https://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/a-water-ocean-on-titan/Moon (2009 film)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_(film)Aniara (1956 poem)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AniaraSpace: 1999 (1975 TV Series)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space:_1999Bottle Waters of the World- http://www.finewaters.com/bottled-waters-of-the-world/japanDriver : San Franciso- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver:_San_FranciscoKylie Minogue Darling Perfume- https://www.fragrantica.com/perfume/Kylie-Minogue/Darling-842.htmlLoading screen mini games- https://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/11/the-patent-on-loading-screen-mini-games-is-about-to-expire/Patent - https://patents.google.com/patent/US5718632Midtown Madness (1999 game)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midtown_MadnessMidnight Club (racing series)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_ClubMidnight Club 3: Dub Edition- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Club_3:_Dub_EditionAssassin’s Creed Unity free giveaway- https://www.gamesradar.com/au/ubisoft-is-giving-away-assassins-creed-unity-for-free-as-a-nod-to-the-notre-dame-cathedral/My Summer Car (game)- https://store.steampowered.com/app/516750/My_Summer_Car/Days Gone motorcycle upgrade- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP5OjNq_CfsEVA-8 Auto (Apex Legends Gun)- https://apexlegends.gamepedia.com/EVA-8_AutoAl-Aqsa Mosque on fire same time as Notre Dame- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/small-fire-broke-out-jerusalems-al-aqsa-mosque-flames-ravaged-notre-dame-180971983/Monty Python's Life of Brian- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Life_of_Brian3D Printed heart using patient cells- https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2019/04/15/USAT/903d849a-04cb-4171-b786-4cd7e60fcf8a-AFP_AFP_1FN7BD.JPG?crop=5471,3077,x0,y566&width=3200&height=1680&fit=boundsLive Animal in keychains- http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/14/china.animal.keyring/index.htmlMel Blanc (voice actor)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_BlancPeppermint (2018 movie)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppermint_(2018_film)Ronin (1998 film)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronin_(film)Operation Desert Shield also known as The Gulf War- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_WarElvis Lives! (That’s Not Canon Podcast)- https://thatsnotcanon.com/elvislivesShoutouts15 Apr 2019 - Notre-Dame de Paris fire - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/notre-dame-fire-what-was-damaged-n99537116 Apr 1850 - Marie Tussaud, French artist known for her wax sculptures and Madame Tussauds, the wax museum she founded in London. She died of pneumonia at 88 in London, England - https://www.onthisday.com/articles/madame-tussauds-bloody-background16 Apr 1977 - David Soul, of Starsky & Hutch, has the #1 song on the U.S. pop charts - https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/david-soul-of-starsky-hutch-has-the-1-song-on-the-u-s-pop-charts16 Apr 2019 – Monty Python’s Life of Brian turns 40 - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-16/life-of-brian-by-monty-python-is-40/1100439416 Apr 2019 – First 3D printed heart from human patient cells - https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/15/health/3d-printed-heart-study/index.htmlRemembrances14 Apr 2019 – Gene Wolfe, American science fiction and fantasy writer. He was noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith. He was a prolific short-story writer and novelist and won many science fiction and fantasy literary awards. Wolfe is best known for his Book of the New Sun series (four volumes, 1980–83), the first part of his "Solar Cycle". He died of cardiovascular disease at 87 in Peoria, Illinois - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Wolfe15 Apr 2019 - Winston L. Shelton, American inventor, electrical engineer and entrepreneur who was awarded 76 US patents as an individual or as part of a team, as well as many corresponding patents. Shelton's patents have had an impact relating to home washing machines and the preparation of food in both the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) industry and fine dining. Technologies Shelton developed while an engineer at General Electric are still in use after more than fifty years. His patent for the modern "Washing Machine" (US 3257830 A), licensed in 1965 to General Electric has been referenced in over 40 subsequent patents. Shelton also invented new ways to cook and hold food, including the Collectramatic, the first pressurized fryer that did not require interrupting production to frequently filter shortening while cooking. Shelton also invented Controlled Vapor Technology, a patented cooking method that uses water vapor to prepare and safely hold food. He died at 96- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_L._SheltonPatents - https://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=3257830&idkey=NONE&homeurl=http%3A%252F%252Fpatft.uspto.gov%252Fnetahtml%252FPTO%252Fpatimg.htm16 Apr 1958 - Rosalind Elsie Franklin, English chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was central to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal, and graphite. Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA, particularly Photo 51, while at King's College London, which led to the discovery of the DNA double helix for which James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Watson suggested that Franklin would have ideally been awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Wilkins, but, although there was not yet a rule against posthumous awards, the Nobel Committee generally does not make posthumous nominations. She died of bronchopneumonia, secondary carcinomatosis, and ovarian cancer at 37 in Chelsea, London - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin17 Apr 1790 – Benjamin Franklin, American polymath and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, humourist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod,bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions. He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia's first fire department and the University of Pennsylvania. His colourful life and legacy of scientific and political achievement, and his status as one of America's most influential Founding Fathers, have seen Franklin honoured more than two centuries after his death on coinage and the $100 bill, warships, and the names of many towns, counties, educational institutions, and corporations, as well as countless cultural references. He died of pleurisy at 84 in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin17 Apr 2016 – Doris Roberts, American actress, author, and philanthropist whose career spanned six decades of television and film. She received five Emmy Awards and a Screen Actors Guild award during her acting career, which began in 1951. She had several prominent roles in movies, including playing opposite Shirley Stoler in The Honeymoon Killers (1970), Elliott Gould in Little Murders (1971), Steven Keats in Hester Street (1975), Billy Crystal in Rabbit Test (1978), Robert Carradine in Number One with a Bullet (1987), and Cady McClain in Simple Justice (1989), among many others. She achieved continuing success in television, becoming known for her role as Mildred Krebs in Remington Steele from 1983 to 1987 and her co-starring role as Raymond Barone's mother, Marie Barone, on the long-running CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond (1996–2005). Towards the end of her acting career, she also had a prominent role opposite Tyler Perry in Madea's Witness Protection (2012). She died of a stroke at 90 in Los Angeles, California - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Roberts17 Apr 2019 - Kazuhiko Katō known by the pen name Monkey Punch, Japanese manga artist, best known for his series Lupin III. In April 2005 he became the professor of Manga Animation at Otemae University, in their Faculty of Media and Arts, and was a visiting professor at Tokyo University of Technology in May 2010. He died of pneumonia at 81 in Sakura, Chiba on April 11, 2019. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_PunchFamous Birthdays16 Apr 1952 – Billy West, American voice actor, singer, musician, songwriter and former radio personality. He is known for his voice-over work in a number of television series, films, video games, and commercials. He has done hundreds of voice-overs in his career such as Ren (season 3 to season 5) and Stimpy on The Ren & Stimpy Show; Doug Funnie and Roger Klotz on Doug; and Philip J. Fry,Professor Farnsworth, Dr. Zoidberg,Zapp Brannigan and a number of others on Futurama. He does voices for commercials and is the current voice of the red M&M and was also the voice of Buzz, the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee until 2004. Born in Detroit, Michigan - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_West17 Apr 1972 - Jennifer Garner, American actress. Following a supporting role in Pearl Harbor (2001), Garner gained recognition for her performance as CIA officer Sydney Bristow in the ABC spy-action thriller Alias, which aired from 2001 to 2006. For her work on the series, she won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award and received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations. While working on Alias, Garner made a cameo appearance in Catch Me If You Can (2002), followed by giving a praised leading performance in the romantic comedy film 13 Going on 30 (2004). Garner has appeared in supporting as well as lead film roles, including the superhero films Daredevil (2003) and Elektra (2005), the comedy-drama Juno (2007), and the fantasy-comedy The Invention of Lying (2009). In the 2010s, she appeared in the romantic-comedy Valentine's Day (2010), the fantasy comedy-drama The Odd Life of Timothy Green (2012), the biographic drama Dallas Buyers Club (2013), the comedy film Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014), the drama film Miracles from Heaven (2016), and the romantic comedy-drama film Love, Simon (2018). Born in Houston, Texas - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Garner17 Apr 1959 – Sean Bean, English actor. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Bean made his professional debut in a theatre production of Romeo and Juliet in 1983. Retaining his Yorkshire accent, he first found mainstream success for his portrayal of Richard Sharpe in the ITV series Sharpe. Bean subsequently gained further recognition for his performance as Ned Stark in the HBO epic fantasy series Game of Thrones, and won both a BAFTA and an International Emmy, both for Best Actor. He has also been nominated for a Saturn Award. One of his most prominent film roles was Boromir in The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003). Other roles include Alec Trevelyan in the James Bond film GoldenEye (1995) and Odysseus in Troy (2004), as well as roles in Patriot Games (1992), Ronin (1998), Equilibrium (2002), National Treasure (2004), North Country (2005), The Island (2005), Silent Hill (2006), Black Death (2010), Jupiter Ascending (2015) and The Martian (2015). Other TV roles include the BBC anthology series Accused and the ITV historical drama series Henry VIII. As a voice actor, Bean has been featured in the video games The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Sid Meier's Civilization VI, and the drama The Canterbury Tales, among several others. Born in Handsworth, Sheffield - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Bean18 Apr 1927 – Samuel P Huntington, American political scientist, adviser and academic. He spent more than half a century at Harvard University, where he was director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs and the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor. During the presidency of Jimmy Carter, Huntington was the White House Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council. He is best known for his 1993 theory, the "Clash of Civilizations", of a post–Cold War new world order. He argued that future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures, and that Islamic extremism would become the biggest threat to world peace. Huntington is credited with helping to shape U.S. views on civilian–military relations, political development, and comparative government. Born in New York City, New York - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._HuntingtonEvents of Interest16 Apr 1705 - Anne of England knights Isaac Newton at Trinity College, Cambridge - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton16 Apr 1943 – Albert Hofmann accidentally discovers the hallucinogenic effects of the research drug LSD. He intentionally takes the drug three days later April 19. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hofmann18 Apr 1909 – Joan of Arc is beatified in Rome. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonization_of_Joan_of_Arc18 Apr 1983 - Alice Walker becomes the first woman of colour to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her book “The Colour Purple” - http://www.famousdaily.com/history/pulitzer-prize-the-color-purple.htmlA Special Shoutout goes to My Favourite Murder Podcast- Bio - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Favorite_Murder- Official website(s) - https://www.myfavoritemurder.com/- https://www.exactlyrightmedia.com/myfavoritemurder- Where you can find themItunes - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-favorite-murder-karen-kilgariff-georgia-hardstark/id1074507850PlayerFM - https://player.fm/series/my-favorite-murder-with-karen-kilgariff-and-georgia-hardstark-2084036Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/exactly-right/my-favorite-murderSpotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0U9S5J2ltMaKdxIfLuEjzEIntroArtist – Goblins from MarsSong Title – Super Mario - Overworld Theme (GFM Trap Remix)Song Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GNMe6kF0j0&index=4&list=PLHmTsVREU3Ar1AJWkimkl6Pux3R5PB-QJFollow us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/NerdsAmalgamated/Email - Nerds.Amalgamated@gmail.comTwitter - https://twitter.com/NAmalgamatedSpotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6Nux69rftdBeeEXwD8GXrSiTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/top-shelf-nerds/id1347661094RSS - http://www.thatsnotcanonproductions.com/topshelfnerdspodcast?format=rss

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's The Ideas that Made America: A Brief History (Oxford University Press, 2019) is a sweeping examination of the key ideas that have infused American society. Moving across borders, time, and within American culture the author gives a well-written and spirited account of why ideas matter. Beginning with how the name “America” came to be in the mind of European empires in the sixteenth century, to the end of the twentieth century when globalization, another form of empire, was on the minds of Americans. Along the way Ratner-Rosenhagen, offers a tour through early European contact with native people, the American Enlightenment, the romance with the new republic, the remaking of the nation through the transcendentalist movement, scientific discoveries, pragmatism and modernism to the intellectual, social and political ruptures of the late twentieth centuries that owe a great deal to what came before. This bird’s eye view captures the significance of attending to ideas that motivated Americans to different forms of action and engagement— A great book for those unfamiliar with the intellectual history of America and for those wanting to connect different streams of that history. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen is the Merle Curti Associate Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This episode of New Books in American Studies was produced in cooperation with the Society for U.S. Intellectual History. Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her recent book is The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018).   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's The Ideas that Made America: A Brief History (Oxford University Press, 2019) is a sweeping examination of the key ideas that have infused American society. Moving across borders, time, and within American culture the author gives a well-written and spirited account of why ideas matter. Beginning with how the name “America” came to be in the mind of European empires in the sixteenth century, to the end of the twentieth century when globalization, another form of empire, was on the minds of Americans. Along the way Ratner-Rosenhagen, offers a tour through early European contact with native people, the American Enlightenment, the romance with the new republic, the remaking of the nation through the transcendentalist movement, scientific discoveries, pragmatism and modernism to the intellectual, social and political ruptures of the late twentieth centuries that owe a great deal to what came before. This bird’s eye view captures the significance of attending to ideas that motivated Americans to different forms of action and engagement— A great book for those unfamiliar with the intellectual history of America and for those wanting to connect different streams of that history. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen is the Merle Curti Associate Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This episode of New Books in American Studies was produced in cooperation with the Society for U.S. Intellectual History. Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her recent book is The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018).   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's The Ideas that Made America: A Brief History (Oxford University Press, 2019) is a sweeping examination of the key ideas that have infused American society. Moving across borders, time, and within American culture the author gives a well-written and spirited account of why ideas matter. Beginning with how the name “America” came to be in the mind of European empires in the sixteenth century, to the end of the twentieth century when globalization, another form of empire, was on the minds of Americans. Along the way Ratner-Rosenhagen, offers a tour through early European contact with native people, the American Enlightenment, the romance with the new republic, the remaking of the nation through the transcendentalist movement, scientific discoveries, pragmatism and modernism to the intellectual, social and political ruptures of the late twentieth centuries that owe a great deal to what came before. This bird’s eye view captures the significance of attending to ideas that motivated Americans to different forms of action and engagement— A great book for those unfamiliar with the intellectual history of America and for those wanting to connect different streams of that history. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen is the Merle Curti Associate Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This episode of New Books in American Studies was produced in cooperation with the Society for U.S. Intellectual History. Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her recent book is The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018).   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's The Ideas that Made America: A Brief History (Oxford University Press, 2019) is a sweeping examination of the key ideas that have infused American society. Moving across borders, time, and within American culture the author gives a well-written and spirited account of why ideas matter. Beginning with how the name “America” came to be in the mind of European empires in the sixteenth century, to the end of the twentieth century when globalization, another form of empire, was on the minds of Americans. Along the way Ratner-Rosenhagen, offers a tour through early European contact with native people, the American Enlightenment, the romance with the new republic, the remaking of the nation through the transcendentalist movement, scientific discoveries, pragmatism and modernism to the intellectual, social and political ruptures of the late twentieth centuries that owe a great deal to what came before. This bird's eye view captures the significance of attending to ideas that motivated Americans to different forms of action and engagement— A great book for those unfamiliar with the intellectual history of America and for those wanting to connect different streams of that history. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen is the Merle Curti Associate Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This episode of New Books in American Studies was produced in cooperation with the Society for U.S. Intellectual History. Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her recent book is The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018).  

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's The Ideas that Made America: A Brief History (Oxford University Press, 2019) is a sweeping examination of the key ideas that have infused American society. Moving across borders, time, and within American culture the author gives a well-written and spirited account of why ideas matter. Beginning with how the name “America” came to be in the mind of European empires in the sixteenth century, to the end of the twentieth century when globalization, another form of empire, was on the minds of Americans. Along the way Ratner-Rosenhagen, offers a tour through early European contact with native people, the American Enlightenment, the romance with the new republic, the remaking of the nation through the transcendentalist movement, scientific discoveries, pragmatism and modernism to the intellectual, social and political ruptures of the late twentieth centuries that owe a great deal to what came before. This bird’s eye view captures the significance of attending to ideas that motivated Americans to different forms of action and engagement— A great book for those unfamiliar with the intellectual history of America and for those wanting to connect different streams of that history. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen is the Merle Curti Associate Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This episode of New Books in American Studies was produced in cooperation with the Society for U.S. Intellectual History. Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her recent book is The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018).   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's The Ideas that Made America: A Brief History (Oxford University Press, 2019) is a sweeping examination of the key ideas that have infused American society. Moving across borders, time, and within American culture the author gives a well-written and spirited account of why ideas matter. Beginning with how the name “America” came to be in the mind of European empires in the sixteenth century, to the end of the twentieth century when globalization, another form of empire, was on the minds of Americans. Along the way Ratner-Rosenhagen, offers a tour through early European contact with native people, the American Enlightenment, the romance with the new republic, the remaking of the nation through the transcendentalist movement, scientific discoveries, pragmatism and modernism to the intellectual, social and political ruptures of the late twentieth centuries that owe a great deal to what came before. This bird’s eye view captures the significance of attending to ideas that motivated Americans to different forms of action and engagement— A great book for those unfamiliar with the intellectual history of America and for those wanting to connect different streams of that history. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen is the Merle Curti Associate Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This episode of New Books in American Studies was produced in cooperation with the Society for U.S. Intellectual History. Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her recent book is The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018).   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's The Ideas that Made America: A Brief History (Oxford University Press, 2019) is a sweeping examination of the key ideas that have infused American society. Moving across borders, time, and within American culture the author gives a well-written and spirited account of why ideas matter. Beginning with how the name “America” came to be in the mind of European empires in the sixteenth century, to the end of the twentieth century when globalization, another form of empire, was on the minds of Americans. Along the way Ratner-Rosenhagen, offers a tour through early European contact with native people, the American Enlightenment, the romance with the new republic, the remaking of the nation through the transcendentalist movement, scientific discoveries, pragmatism and modernism to the intellectual, social and political ruptures of the late twentieth centuries that owe a great deal to what came before. This bird’s eye view captures the significance of attending to ideas that motivated Americans to different forms of action and engagement— A great book for those unfamiliar with the intellectual history of America and for those wanting to connect different streams of that history. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen is the Merle Curti Associate Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This episode of New Books in American Studies was produced in cooperation with the Society for U.S. Intellectual History. Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her recent book is The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018).   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re living in a period of climate change. Our Earth has been getting warmer since the mid-19th century. So how will humans adapt to and endure this period of global warming? Will they adapt to it and endure? It turns out the people of early America also lived through a period of climate change and their experiences may hold some answers for us. Sam White, an Associate Professor at The Ohio State University and author of A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe’s Encounter, joins us to explore the Little Ice Age and how it impacted initial European exploration and colonization of North America. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/189   Meet Ups Boston History Camp Boston Meet Up: July 8, 10am Meet at the corner of Park Street and Tremont Street on Boston Common Cleveland Meet Up: Saturday July 21   Episode 200 Tell Liz what would you like to know about early American history?   Sponsor Links Omohundro Institute The Great Courses Plus (Free Trial)   Complementary Episodes Episode 015: Joyce Chaplin, Round About the Earth Episode 049: Malcolm Gaskill, How the English Became America Episode 079: James Horn, What Are Historical Sources (Colonial Jamestown) Episode 116: Erica Charters, Disease & the Seven Years’ War Episode 127: Caroline Winterer, American Enlightenments   Helpful Show Links Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Join the Ben Franklin's World Community Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter Ben Franklin's World iOS App Ben Franklin's World Android App   *Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

This week, we’re talking about the conflict between Puritans and pirates in the late 1600s and early 1700s. Cotton Mather is remembered for his role in the Salem Witch Trials, but he was the childhood minister to Ben Franklin, ultimate symbol of the American Enlightenment, and he died less than fifty years before our Declaration of Independence was signed. In a way, Mather was one of the last Puritans, and some of his most famous sermons are the ones he wrote for mass executions of pirates. Times were changing, setting up a conflict between rigidly hierarchical Puritan societies and fledgling democracies that could be found on board pirate ships. Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/066

How much merit do the economic factors behind the cry “No Taxation Without Representation” have when we consider the origins of the American Revolution? In this episode of the Doing History: To the Revolution series we begin a 3-episode exploration of different aspects of the early American economy and what roles these economic aspects played in causing the American Revolution. Serena Zabin, a Professor of History at Carleton College and author of Dangerous Economies: Status and Commerce in Imperial New York, helps us survey the economic scene by guiding us through the British North American economy on the eve of the American Revolution. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/159   Sponsor Links Omohundro Institute OI Reader App The Great Courses Plus (1 Free Month of Unlimited Courses)   Complementary Episodes Episode 109: John Dixon, The American Enlightenment and Cadwallader Colden Episode 111: Jonathan Eacott, India and the Making of Britain and America, 1700-1830 Episode 112: Mary Beth Norton, The Tea Crisis of 1773 Episode 127: Caroline Winterer, American Enlightenments Episode 150: Abigail Adams, Revolutionary Speculator Bonus: The Stamp Act of 1765     Helpful Show Links Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Join the Ben Franklin's World Community Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter Ben Franklin's World iOS App Ben Franklin's World Android App   *Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

From Cato University 2017: College of History and Philosophy See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Nathaniel Bowditch worked as a navigator, mathematician, astronomer, and business innovator. Over the course of his lifetime, his fellow Americans hailed him as the “American Sir Isaac Newton.” Tamara Thornton, a professor of history at the University of Buffalo and author of Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed America, leads us on a detailed exploration of the life of Nathaniel Bowditch. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/140   Sponsor Links Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Georgian Papers Programme   Complementary Episodes Episode 057: Max Edling, War, Money, and the American State, 1783-1867 Episode 098: Gautham Rao, Birth of the American Tax Man Episode 113: Brian Murphy, Building the Empire State Episode 109: John Dixon, The American Enlightenment & Cadwallader Colden Episode 127: Caroline Winterer, American Enlightenments   Helpful Show Links Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Join the Ben Franklin's World Community Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter Ben Franklin's World iOS App Ben Franklin's World Android App   *Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

When we explore the history of early America, we often look at people who lived and the events that took place in North America. But what about the people who lived and worked in European metropoles? What about Native Americans? Today, we explore early American history through a slightly different lens, a lens that allows us to see interactions that occurred between Native American peoples and English men and women who lived in London. Our guide for this exploration is Coll Thrush, an Associate Professor of History at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and author of Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of the Empire. Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/132   Sponsor Links Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture William and Mary Quarterly Episode 105: Josh Piker, How Historians Publish History (Behind-the-Scenes of the William and Mary Quarterly)   Complementary Episodes Episode 079: Jim Horn, What is a Historic Source? (Jamestown and Pocahontas) Episode 104: Andrew Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier Episode 109: John Dixon, The American Enlightenment & Cadwallader Colden Episode 127: Caroline Winterer, American Enlightenments   Helpful Show Links Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Join the Ben Franklin's World Community Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter Ben Franklin's World iOS App Ben Franklin's World Android App   *Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

In many ways, the Enlightenment gave birth to the United States. Enlightened ideas informed protests over imperial governance and taxation and over whether there should be an American bishop. If we want to understand early America, we need to understand the Enlightenment. Caroline Winterer, a Professor of History at Stanford University and author of American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason, takes us through her ideas about the Enlightenment and how it influenced early America. Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/127   Sponsor Links DelanceyPlace.com “The Hostility Between Christians and Deists”   Complementary Episodes Bonus: Why Historians Study History Episode 085: George Goodwin, Benjamin Franklin in London Episode 088: Michael McDonnell: The History of History Writing Episode 096: Nicholas Guyatt, The Origins of Racial Segregation in the United States Episode 109: John Dixon, The American Enlightenment & Cadwallader Colden Episode 117: Annette Gordon-Reed, The Life & Ideas of Thomas Jefferson   Helpful Show Links Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Join the Ben Franklin's World Community Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter Ben Franklin's World iOS App Ben Franklin's World Android App   *Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

Are you familiar with the New Atheists? The late Christopher Hitchens wrote biting books about religion as “poison,” Richard Dawkins champions a sort of scientism as a replacement for faith, and people like Bill Maher spend time each evening poking fun at the pious. Despite their unofficial “New Atheist” title, they're perhaps not actually all that new. Award-winning historian Leigh Eric Schmidt sees them as ancestors of village atheists of days gone by. Atheists in American history have often been at the forefront of debates about the necessity of religion for healthy social life. They've fought legal battles over free speech and minority rights. In this episode, you'll hear Schmidt tell the stories of four controversial folks who called themselves freethinkers—stories of integrity and courage, humor and hypocrisy. We're talking about Leigh Eric Schmidt's new book Village Atheists: How America's Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation. About the Guest Leigh Eric Schmidt is the Edward C. Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. He is author of the highly acclaimed book Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment, among other titles. His latest is called Village Atheists: How America's Unbelievers Made Their Way In a Godly Nation (Princeton University Press). The post Village atheists, with Leigh Eric Schmidt [MIPodcast #59] appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU.

We’ve heard that the American Revolution took place during a period called “the Enlightenment.” But what was the Enlightenment? Was it an intellectual movement? A social movement? A scientific movement? Today, John Dixon, an Assistant Professor of History at CUNY-College of Staten Island, leads us on an exploration of the Enlightenment by taking us through the life of Cadwallader Colden, the subject of his book The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden: Empire, Science, and Intellectual Culture in British New York. Show Notes: http://www.benfranklinsworld.com/109   Helpful Show Links Help Support Ben Franklin's World Crowdfunding Campaign   Ben Franklin's World Facebook Page Join the Ben Franklin's World Community Sign-up for the Franklin Gazette Newsletter Ben Franklin's World iOS App Ben Franklin's World Android App   Episode Sponsor Cornell University Press   Complementary Episodes Episode 021: Eugene Tesdahl, Smuggling in Colonial America & Living History   Episode 051: Catherine Cangany, Frontier Seaport: A History of Early Detroit   Episode 082: Alejandra Dubcovsky, Information & Communication in the Early American South   Episode 086: George Goodwin, Benjamin Franklin in London   Episode 104: Andrew Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier: Europeans & Native Americans on the Northeastern Coast *Books purchased through this link will help support the production of Ben Franklin's World.

Caroline Winterer is the Anthony P. Meier Family Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University. American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason (Yale University Press, 2016) gives us a glimpse into how eighteenth-century Americans, as the “first prophets of tomorrow,” thought of enlightenment, what it meant and how to achieve it. For centuries, enlightenment had a religious meaning of the soul awakening to divine light; increasingly it meant using reason and empirical evidence as guides and exchanging tradition and divine revelation for a humanistic and historical view of the world. The aim was nothing short of the pursuit of happiness. Winterer challenges mid-twentieth-century Cold War conceptualization of an American Enlightenment, as largely an appropriation of European ideas. The language of enlightenment was ubiquitous among educated Americans and applied to a broad range of endeavors. She demonstrates how the encounter with Indians, the expansion of slavery, the application of political economy, and the emergence of natural religion allowed Americans to contribute to a transatlantic conversation. By placing American thinkers within a transnational and a fresh hemispheric context and by adding local particularity Winterer allows us to see the diversity of American Enlightenments. Lilian Calles Barger, www.lilianbarger.com, is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her current book project is entitled The World Come of Age: Religion, Intellectuals and the Challenge of Human Liberation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caroline Winterer is the Anthony P. Meier Family Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University. American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason (Yale University Press, 2016) gives us a glimpse into how eighteenth-century Americans, as the “first prophets of tomorrow,” thought of enlightenment, what it meant and how to achieve it. For centuries, enlightenment had a religious meaning of the soul awakening to divine light; increasingly it meant using reason and empirical evidence as guides and exchanging tradition and divine revelation for a humanistic and historical view of the world. The aim was nothing short of the pursuit of happiness. Winterer challenges mid-twentieth-century Cold War conceptualization of an American Enlightenment, as largely an appropriation of European ideas. The language of enlightenment was ubiquitous among educated Americans and applied to a broad range of endeavors. She demonstrates how the encounter with Indians, the expansion of slavery, the application of political economy, and the emergence of natural religion allowed Americans to contribute to a transatlantic conversation. By placing American thinkers within a transnational and a fresh hemispheric context and by adding local particularity Winterer allows us to see the diversity of American Enlightenments. Lilian Calles Barger, www.lilianbarger.com, is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her current book project is entitled The World Come of Age: Religion, Intellectuals and the Challenge of Human Liberation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caroline Winterer is the Anthony P. Meier Family Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University. American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason (Yale University Press, 2016) gives us a glimpse into how eighteenth-century Americans, as the “first prophets of tomorrow,” thought of enlightenment, what it meant and how to achieve it. For centuries, enlightenment had a religious meaning of the soul awakening to divine light; increasingly it meant using reason and empirical evidence as guides and exchanging tradition and divine revelation for a humanistic and historical view of the world. The aim was nothing short of the pursuit of happiness. Winterer challenges mid-twentieth-century Cold War conceptualization of an American Enlightenment, as largely an appropriation of European ideas. The language of enlightenment was ubiquitous among educated Americans and applied to a broad range of endeavors. She demonstrates how the encounter with Indians, the expansion of slavery, the application of political economy, and the emergence of natural religion allowed Americans to contribute to a transatlantic conversation. By placing American thinkers within a transnational and a fresh hemispheric context and by adding local particularity Winterer allows us to see the diversity of American Enlightenments. Lilian Calles Barger, www.lilianbarger.com, is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her current book project is entitled The World Come of Age: Religion, Intellectuals and the Challenge of Human Liberation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caroline Winterer is the Anthony P. Meier Family Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University. American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason (Yale University Press, 2016) gives us a glimpse into how eighteenth-century Americans, as the “first prophets of tomorrow,” thought of enlightenment, what it meant and how to achieve it. For centuries, enlightenment had a religious meaning of the soul awakening to divine light; increasingly it meant using reason and empirical evidence as guides and exchanging tradition and divine revelation for a humanistic and historical view of the world. The aim was nothing short of the pursuit of happiness. Winterer challenges mid-twentieth-century Cold War conceptualization of an American Enlightenment, as largely an appropriation of European ideas. The language of enlightenment was ubiquitous among educated Americans and applied to a broad range of endeavors. She demonstrates how the encounter with Indians, the expansion of slavery, the application of political economy, and the emergence of natural religion allowed Americans to contribute to a transatlantic conversation. By placing American thinkers within a transnational and a fresh hemispheric context and by adding local particularity Winterer allows us to see the diversity of American Enlightenments. Lilian Calles Barger, www.lilianbarger.com, is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her current book project is entitled The World Come of Age: Religion, Intellectuals and the Challenge of Human Liberation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caroline Winterer is the Anthony P. Meier Family Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University. American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason (Yale University Press, 2016) gives us a glimpse into how eighteenth-century Americans, as the “first prophets of tomorrow,” thought of enlightenment, what it meant and how to achieve it. For centuries, enlightenment had a religious meaning of the soul awakening to divine light; increasingly it meant using reason and empirical evidence as guides and exchanging tradition and divine revelation for a humanistic and historical view of the world. The aim was nothing short of the pursuit of happiness. Winterer challenges mid-twentieth-century Cold War conceptualization of an American Enlightenment, as largely an appropriation of European ideas. The language of enlightenment was ubiquitous among educated Americans and applied to a broad range of endeavors. She demonstrates how the encounter with Indians, the expansion of slavery, the application of political economy, and the emergence of natural religion allowed Americans to contribute to a transatlantic conversation. By placing American thinkers within a transnational and a fresh hemispheric context and by adding local particularity Winterer allows us to see the diversity of American Enlightenments. Lilian Calles Barger, www.lilianbarger.com, is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her current book project is entitled The World Come of Age: Religion, Intellectuals and the Challenge of Human Liberation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caroline Winterer is the Anthony P. Meier Family Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University. American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason (Yale University Press, 2016) gives us a glimpse into how eighteenth-century Americans, as the “first prophets of tomorrow,” thought of enlightenment, what it meant and how to achieve it. For centuries, enlightenment had a religious meaning of the soul awakening to divine light; increasingly it meant using reason and empirical evidence as guides and exchanging tradition and divine revelation for a humanistic and historical view of the world. The aim was nothing short of the pursuit of happiness. Winterer challenges mid-twentieth-century Cold War conceptualization of an American Enlightenment, as largely an appropriation of European ideas. The language of enlightenment was ubiquitous among educated Americans and applied to a broad range of endeavors. She demonstrates how the encounter with Indians, the expansion of slavery, the application of political economy, and the emergence of natural religion allowed Americans to contribute to a transatlantic conversation. By placing American thinkers within a transnational and a fresh hemispheric context and by adding local particularity Winterer allows us to see the diversity of American Enlightenments. Lilian Calles Barger, www.lilianbarger.com, is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her current book project is entitled The World Come of Age: Religion, Intellectuals and the Challenge of Human Liberation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While we focus mainly on the politics of the time (and of ours), this conversation with Cody certainly reveals in him a broad, deep-seeded love of this time in our nation's history and a ton of insight on how it got us where we are as a nation. Cody just got back from some touring through the colonial states, so be prepared for more delightful Marquis de Lafayette stories than you can shake a musket at. There's also plenty of chatting about how we would fix the current political landscape (because clearly we are experts) and how the Internet Age has become its own Enlightenment of sorts. Check out In Falsitas Veritas and/or Star-Spangled Sitcoms for the fruits of Cody's creative labor, all in some way inspired by these topics. Ticket link for Cody and I's shared slot at the Chicago Podcast Festival. Thanks to Know Your Company for sponsoring and the Chicago Podcast Cooperative for their continued support and community.

Author Robert Curry sits down with Ben Weingarten of Encounter Books to discuss his new book "Common Sense Nation." During the interview, Ben and Bob discuss a variety of topics including the gargantuan debt America owes to the Scots for its founding, the single most influential college course in American history, the impact of "common sense realism" on the American Enlightenment, Locke versus The Founders, the debate between John Witherspoon and Woodrow Wilson and much more.

Author Robert Curry sits down with Ben Weingarten of Encounter Books to discuss his new book "Common Sense Nation." During the interview, Ben and Bob discuss a variety of topics including the gargantuan debt America owes to the Scots for its founding, the single most influential college course in American history, the impact of "common sense realism" on the American Enlightenment, Locke versus The Founders, the debate between John Witherspoon and Woodrow Wilson and much more.

Author Robert Curry sits down with Ben Weingarten of Encounter Books to discuss his new book "Common Sense Nation." During the interview, Ben and Bob discuss a variety of topics including the gargantuan debt America owes to the Scots for its founding, the single most influential college course in American history, the impact of "common sense realism" on the American Enlightenment, Locke versus The Founders, the debate between John Witherspoon and Woodrow Wilson and much more.

Author Robert Curry sits down with Ben Weingarten of Encounter Books to discuss his new book "Common Sense Nation." During the interview, Ben and Bob discuss a variety of topics including the gargantuan debt America owes to the Scots for its founding, the single most influential college course in American history, the impact of "common sense realism" on the American Enlightenment, Locke versus The Founders, the debate between John Witherspoon and Woodrow Wilson and much more.

Podcast Transcript... The post The American Enlightenment at Twilight - A Conversation with Historian George M. Marsden appeared first on AlbertMohler.com.

George Marsden on “The Twilight of the American Enlightenment.”

George Marsden on “The Twilight of the American Enlightenment.”

Caroline Winterer discusses the American Enlightenment Exhibit, exploring how New World discoveries and ideas contributed to the Enlightenment and the transatlantic debates over government, science, religion and individual rights. (February 7, 2011)

Cyrus Patell, american literature, from the beginnings to the civil war, New York University, NYU, OpenEd, Open Ed, Open, Education, american enlightenment, benjamin franklin, thomas jefferson