Podcast appearances and mentions of Samuel Johnson

Is rotary really better than reciprocating? Can you safely skip the glide path with modern reciprocating systems? What is the best file system for a GDP who wants predictable endodontic results? And perhaps the biggest question of all: does the file system matter as much as we think it does? In Part 2 of the Endo Showdown, Dr Samuel Johnson returns to tackle some of the most common questions dentists have about file systems, glide path preparation, retreatment, and endodontic workflow. From practical negotiation tips to choosing a system that works in your hands, this episode focuses on the decisions that can make endodontics simpler, safer, and more predictable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onZMR-872HQ Watch PDP271 on YouTube Protrusive Dental Pearl Cut your gutta-percha at the level of the canal orifice and thoroughly clean the pulp chamber before placing the coronal restoration. ⚠️ Leaving gutta-percha and sealer coronally can compromise the coronal seal and promote leakage. ✅ Use isopropyl alcohol to clean resin-based sealer residue before bonding. Water is effective for cleaning bioceramic sealers. Key Takeaways Establish a glide path before shaping whenever possible. D-Finders can negotiate difficult canals more predictably than traditional K-files. Intermediate files such as size 12 or 12.5 can help bridge the jump from size 10 to size 15. Straight-line access reduces file binding and improves shaping efficiency. Avoid forcing glide path files to working length. Gates Glidden drills may be unnecessarily aggressive for routine coronal flaring. Consistency with one file system is often more important than chasing the latest product. WaveOne Gold remains a simple and user-friendly option for many GDPs. Rotary and reciprocating systems can both achieve successful outcomes when used appropriately. A good glide path is often more important than the type of motion being used. Hand files and Hedström files remain valuable during retreatment. Mechanical GP removal near the apex increases the risk of extrusion. Solvents are best reserved for residual gutta-percha rather than used at the start of retreatment. Understanding motor settings, torque, and RPM improves file safety and efficiency. Knowing when to refer is a sign of clinical maturity, not weakness. Clear consent and expectation management reduce stress for both clinician and patient. Highlights of this episode: 00:00 Teaser 01:09 Introduction 02:15 Protrusive Dental Pearl: Coronal GP Removal & Pulp Chamber Clean-Up 03:59 Glide Path File Protocol & Canal Negotiation 06:24 Access Cavity Design & Coronal Flaring in RCT 08:38 File Taper & Canal Preparation Philosophy 09:54 Managing Difficult Canals in Endodontic Treatment 11:48 When to Introduce the Glide Path File 13:24 Using Intermediate File Sizes 15:39 Useful Negotiation & Shaping Tips 17:19 Choosing a File System 20:19 Rotary vs Reciprocating in Clinical Practice 21:29 Motor Settings & File Control 21:40 XP-Endo & Specialised File Designs 22:05 Endo Motor Ads 24:44 XP-Endo & Specialised File Designs 25:16 Retreatment Files & GP Removal 26:08 Preferred Gutta-Percha Removal 31:21 Recommended System for Simplicity 32: 44 Building Skills Faster in Endodontics 36:13 Consent & Managing Expectations 41:51 Reciproc vs WaveOne Gold 42:22 Preferred Retreatment Protocol 43:33 Using Rotary Files in Reciprocation 45:12 Curved Canals & Shaping Efficiency 46:32 Can Reciproc Blue Bypass the Glide Path? 49:29 Outro Want more? Check out the previous episode with Dr. Samuel Johnson: Working Lengths and Troubleshooting Apex Locators – PDP216

Rotary or reciprocating files — which should you actually be using? Is one safer than the other? Does reciprocation really reduce file separation? Are you choosing your system because it suits the canal anatomy, or because it is simply the one you were taught? Endodontic file systems can feel like a maze of brands, tapers, alloys, motions and marketing claims. But beneath all that noise, the real question is much more practical: what is your file doing inside the canal, and what compromise are you accepting? In this episode, Dr Samuel Johnson returns to unpack the Endo Showdown: rotary versus reciprocating files. We cover file motion, glide paths, shaping philosophy, NiTi metallurgy, cyclic fatigue, torsional fatigue, and why no system is perfect. https://youtu.be/HfWDBbNgjsA Watch PDP270 on YouTube Protrusive Dental Pearl A palliative root canal can be useful for an unrestorable tooth if disinfecting the canal allows infection to heal and natural bone to recover before extraction and future implant planning. ⚠️ Do not dismiss root canal treatment purely because the tooth is not a long-term functional restoration. ✅ Where appropriate, consider whether endodontic disinfection could improve the future implant site by allowing natural bone healing. Key Takeaways The purpose of shaping is not simply to scrape canal walls; it is to create space for irrigant flow. Irrigation is the most important part of root canal disinfection. Rotary files move in a continuous 360-degree rotation. Reciprocating files cut in one direction and reverse before excessive stress builds up. Modern reciprocation is designed to cut, release and gradually progress apically. File choice is not just about motion; metallurgy, taper, design and operator experience all matter. NiTi hand files with strong shape memory may be problematic in curved canals because they want to straighten. Martensitic heat-treated files are more flexible and can better follow canal curvature. Unwinding flutes are a warning sign that a file may be close to separation. Inspect files regularly during treatment, especially in curved, calcified or difficult canals. A glide path is essential before introducing larger rotary or reciprocating files. Without a glide path, a shaping file may create its own path, risking ledging, transportation or perforation. “Grabby” files pull themselves into the canal; this can be useful in experienced hands but risky if forced. Reciprocating systems can feel simpler and safer, but they are not foolproof. Cyclic fatigue happens when a file repeatedly bends around a curve until microcracks form. Torsional fatigue happens when part of the file binds while the motor continues to turn. Highlights of the episode: 00:00 Teaser 00:47 Introduction 02:13 Protrusive Dental Pearl: Palliative Root Canal Treatment 05:30 Main Question: Rotary vs Reciprocating Files 06:31 Hybrid File Motions 08:19 File Choice Is More Than Motion 10:26 Purpose of Shaping in Endodontics 11:10 Chemo-Mechanical Preparation 11:34 Rotary Motion in Root Canal Treatment 11:45 Origins of Reciprocation 12:21 Balanced Force Technique 18:00 NiTi K-Files vs Stainless Steel K-Files 22:37 Practical Advice: Inspect the File 23:40 Rotary Can Also Be a One File System 24:24 Reciprocation and Sense of Safety 24:47 “Grabby” Files 24:53 Midroll 33:54 Choosing Between Rotary and Reciprocating 35:20 Cyclic Fatigue 37:41 Endo Radar Pro Ads 40:20 Torque and RPM in Endodontics 41:41 Why Reciprocation Advances 42:56 Debris Extrusion in RCT 43:34 Benefits of Rotary Systems 44:13 Tactile Feedback in Root Canal Treatment 45:21 Outro Want more? Check out previous episode with Dr. Samuel Johnson: Working Lengths and Troubleshooting Apex Locators – PDP216

The British wit, Samuel Johnson, described second marriages as “the triumph of hope over experience.” So are negotiated “deals” with Iran's sharia-supremacist regime. For decades, unfulfilled diplomatic promises have bought it breathing room, legitimacy, money and strategic advantage.  As I speak, President Trump is being told that this time Iran will actually honor such promises – including ceasing its efforts to control the Strait of Hormuz. By tying himself to such an unfounded hope, he will not avoid an endless war.  Instead, Donald Trump would become humiliatingly responsible for perpetuating – rather than terminating – the one we are in, made possible, not least, by the previous bad deals. Only by decisively defeating the Iranian regime and helping liberate its people is there a real chance for peace. And there will be no better time, no more favorable circumstances than today's to do that.  This is Frank Gaffney.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (or, more briefly, Tristram Shandy) is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next 10 years. It was not always held in high esteem by other writers (Samuel Johnson responded that, "Nothing odd can last"), but its bawdy humour was popular with London society, and it has come to be seen as one of the greatest comic novels in English, as well as a forerunner for many modern narrative devices.This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (or, more briefly, Tristram Shandy) is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next 10 years. It was not always held in high esteem by other writers (Samuel Johnson responded that, "Nothing odd can last"), but its bawdy humour was popular with London society, and it has come to be seen as one of the greatest comic novels in English, as well as a forerunner for many modern narrative devices.This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (or, more briefly, Tristram Shandy) is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next 10 years. It was not always held in high esteem by other writers (Samuel Johnson responded that, "Nothing odd can last"), but its bawdy humour was popular with London society, and it has come to be seen as one of the greatest comic novels in English, as well as a forerunner for many modern narrative devices.This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (or, more briefly, Tristram Shandy) is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next 10 years. It was not always held in high esteem by other writers (Samuel Johnson responded that, "Nothing odd can last"), but its bawdy humour was popular with London society, and it has come to be seen as one of the greatest comic novels in English, as well as a forerunner for many modern narrative devices.This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (or, more briefly, Tristram Shandy) is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next 10 years. It was not always held in high esteem by other writers (Samuel Johnson responded that, "Nothing odd can last"), but its bawdy humour was popular with London society, and it has come to be seen as one of the greatest comic novels in English, as well as a forerunner for many modern narrative devices.This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (or, more briefly, Tristram Shandy) is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next 10 years. It was not always held in high esteem by other writers (Samuel Johnson responded that, "Nothing odd can last"), but its bawdy humour was popular with London society, and it has come to be seen as one of the greatest comic novels in English, as well as a forerunner for many modern narrative devices.This is a collaborative reading.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken. - Samuel Johnson Check out John Lee Dumas' award winning Podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire on your favorite podcast directory. For world class free courses and resources to help you on your Entrepreneurial journey visit EOFire.com

My colleague Oliver Traldi recently published an essay called ‘Jane Austen's Virtuous Liberalism'. It's a very nice discussion of the ways in which Austen understand the challenges of character formation.Virtue, as Austen sees it, faces two tough challenges. First, people whose characters are not yet formed must see how to be virtuous rather than vicious. Then, the virtuous must somehow find a way to succeed in their struggles against the vicious without adopting vicious means.In this episode, Oliver and I discussed Austen's ideas of virtue, what that has to do with liberalism, the relationship between philosophy and literature more broadly, as well as poetry and ideas about the Great Books. We also talked about the Keira Knightly Pride and Prejudice. Yes, we both liked it. Here is why Oliver thinks Jane Austen is so popular among philosophers.TRALDI: And so I do think that even though she's not making arguments, she's not laying out philosophical theories, there is a level of precision in her thinking about virtue, which I do think is something that it took me a little aback.And I think it's part of why—one person who quote-tweeted my article was Daniel Kodsi, who's a friend of our colleague John Maier and his coauthor often. And he runs this magazine called The Philosophers' Magazine, which I had written before. And Daniel quote-tweeted my article with something like, “Add Oliver to the list of all the philosophers who love Austen.”OLIVER: And it's a long list.TRALDI: And I think it's a long list. And I do think this precision is part of it that she does, that it is—again, it's not like a philosophy journal article, but it is an intellectual sophistication that is often not present in novelists that we really appreciate.And here is an extract about Austen, Smith, and the wonderfully fertile period at the end of the eighteen century.TRALDI: But yes, I think it's obvious—without knowing the background, I'm sure there are scholarly questions about, how much Smith did Austen read? And they're both 250th—a lot was happening in 1775 and 1776.OLIVER: Those were great years. Those were the good old days.TRALDI: They were great years. In the great books syllabus, you get to the end of the 1700s and suddenly there's this—you have Smith, you have Kant, you have the American Revolution, you have the French Revolution, you have Burke. Rousseau is right before, Montesquieu is right before. I mean, it was a real—OLIVER: It's a great time.TRALDI: It was a great time. A lot was being done. And obviously, you know, I love the 1800s. I love the Romantics. But you could teach a whole great books course from 1750 to 1800, probably.OLIVER: You've also got all the dictionaries and all that kind of work going on as well. It's a very, very fertile—explorations.TRALDI: Yes, yes. There's all sorts of—yes, it was an amazing time.OLIVER: So did you, having read these two, Austen and Smith, close together—TRALDI: Yes, and I should say that my reading of Austen was much more careful than my reading of Smith.OLIVER: Sure, but you wrote this before you read Smith.TRALDI: Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: Or at least you fully conceived it. Do you see a lot of Smith in Austen?TRALDI: “A lot” might be—This was my favourite bit.TRALDI: Yes. But this is one of the great—I know we talked about this, but it's one of the great—you see this in Smith, you see this in Austen—commerce has its own virtues, and they are very traditional virtues. You have to be trustworthy. You have to be pleasant. You can't really be wholly self-interested in every moment because people have to be willing to deal with you given your—I mean, think about Yelp reviews or even just word of mouth. “Oh, that person screwed me over.”OLIVER: There's a discussion in one of Hayek's papers, which is—it's a very Smithian point he makes about, the nature of the knowledge problem means that it's not so much that I'm trying to get information about the thing you're trying to sell me, but I'm really trying to get information about you and whether you are someone I should be buying from. Which is exactly the project that the novelists and Smith—there's a sort of period between Smith and the early novelists, running through Austen to George Eliot, when they're all working on that problem together.TRALDI: Yes. I do think in Austen, it's often—the real puzzle is, how do you make out somebody else's character?OLIVER: Exactly.TRALDI: This is a phrase that Lizzy Bennet does use with regard to Darcy. And how do we actually figure out who the trustworthy and untrustworthy people are?OLIVER: And if you're too philosophical about that, in the sort of analytic sense, I think you can end up not paying enough attention to the particulars of that question.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: Because when you actually try and do it, it's really, really hard.TRALDI: Yes. And I think this is the sort of—reading Austen, you get a sense of—and there are very few philosophy papers on things like this. Reading Austen, you get a sense of, what sorts of details in a normal life are the ones that I can extract information from to make out somebody else's character?Oliver is an analytical, political philosopher. You can find out more about his work here. Here he is on Twitter. His Substack is orting. You can watch the episode on YouTube here.TranscriptHENRY OLIVER: Today I am talking to Oliver Traldi. Oliver is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Toledo in Ohio. He is my colleague on the Emerging Scholars Program at the Mercatus Center, and he's written a book about political beliefs as well as many other articles for magazines, online.He's got a Substack. He's maybe the most prominent political and epistemological young philosopher of his generation. [laughter] But most importantly for us, he is interested in Jane Austen and the idea of virtue. Oliver, welcome.OLIVER TRALDI: Thank you so much for having me.Reading Austen as a PhilosopherOLIVER: Let's just start—before we get to this article you've written, tell me about being a philosopher but reading Jane Austen, because she's often read and commented on by people who are not philosophers or who are only philosophers by acquaintance or whatever.TRALDI: Right.OLIVER: Is it different reading as a philosopher, do you think?TRALDI: I think yes and no. One thing as a philosopher, there are—contemporary philosophy, we have very exacting standards of rigor and clarity. And when we look for a theory, we want something that's been improved by hundreds of people and thousands of journal articles.And so, if you were to simply extract a theory of virtue from a novel and say, “Does this—is this the end-all, be-all of moral thinking?” obviously you're going to be disappointed. So I think as a philosopher, you have to look for other types of things, other types of sensitivities rather than logical sensitivity.You have to say, how sensitive is the author to the different types of situations where people's virtue can be exhibited or challenged? Or how sensitive is the author to the different types of pressures that a character's convictions can be put under, or the different sorts of compromises that they might have to make, or the different sorts of people who might not be virtuous who they might have to interact with and sort of, you know, contract with or avoid? And what are going to be the impacts of different kinds of choices in those situations?So the novelists, I think, tend—if they do it well, a novelist who's interested in morality will understand living morally probably better than a philosopher, while maybe not understanding, say, arguments about whether morality supervenes on reality or vice versa, or what grounds morality, or different theories of meta-ethics or whatever.OLIVER: I mean, there are obviously some novelists who do have a better appreciation of those things than others, we should say.TRALDI: Yes, I think that's absolutely true. And as I wrote in my article, I do think Austen in particular had an appreciation for this issue that you might call moral disarming or unilateral disarming. You know, does the moral person put themselves at a disadvantage relative to the immoral person? And then how do we actually help—how does morality survive?So that's a kind of philosophical question, but I tend to think—I taught last year—I think we've talked about this a bit. I taught in a great books program at Tulsa.OLIVER: This is the Jennifer Frey program.TRALDI: This is the ill-fated Jennifer Frey program. Jennifer—I don't know if you've met her, but she's an incredibly charismatic person. But somehow the program, despite being enormously successful, did not survive. You know, I was there for a year, and they decided that was long enough.OLIVER: [laughs] You don't think your arrival was the—TRALDI: No, no. I hope not. I most certainly hope not.OLIVER: No. General problems of higher education prevailed. Yes.TRALDI: Yes, many, many problems of higher education these days. But yes, so I think—what was I saying?OLIVER: Well, I think we're getting to this question of, you are not just a philosopher; you teach the great books.TRALDI: Right, exactly. The great books. That's where I was. Yes.Philosophy and the Great BooksOLIVER: So, one thing I'm interested in is that, you know, reading as a philosopher, you get a slightly different perspective on Austen. When you read other fiction, poetry, whatever, is there a benefit to you as a philosopher? Does it broaden you in some way?TRALDI: Yes. I think absolutely, it's broadening, but it's also focusing in a different way. You know, contemporary philosophy is often described or captured with the word epicycles. So what we mean when we say epicycles is, you have some major theory, which is supposed to answer some big question. And then your career as a philosopher—you're like three layers deep in the theory, in some sub-debate, and you're making some really fine-grained distinctions.And if you can make those distinctions successfully, you've had a really great career. But I think it's easy to forget, why are we doing—you know, what attracted us to philosophy? Why are we doing this to begin with?And the great novels, great books in general—one example I always use is the Book of Job. It doesn't really—it's not doing clear philosophy on the question of why do bad things happen to good people. But when you read it, you feel the question, why do bad things happen to good people? You get it, you know? You get why this is a question that people have worried about for thousands of years. You get why it calls out for an answer.You know, there's a lot of truth out there. I'm looking at a set of coat hangers, and I could count the coat hangers. But if you were given the decision, would I rather have an answer to how many coat hangers are across the room from me, or why do bad things happen to good people? You'd probably go with the latter one. There's somehow some kind of depth or importance to that question, right?And I think there's—a great novelist can often generate some vividity to these questions. They can show how these questions are part of a good life, asking these questions, trying to have these questions answered—or a not-so-good life.Certainly in Austen there are a lot of characters who learn to be more virtuous. Probably Emma is the clearest example. But you might also think of Marianne Dashwood. Really—OLIVER: Lizzy Bennet.TRALDI: Lizzy Bennet really learns to be a better person. I actually think her character is rather close to Emma in a lot of ways.OLIVER: Yes, I think Emma's sort of a clear rewrite of Lizzy in some—yes, yes.TRALDI: Yes, and in some ways more evocative, actually. Yes. I mean, we can talk about all these books. But yes, I think there's these things, even—obviously qua literature, they have other virtues, right? Which much philosophy doesn't have; very little philosophy has the literary virtues.But the philosophical virtue that a lot of literature does have is you see, okay, these are the—this is what a life is like. This is what making choices is like. These are the big questions when you decide how to live your life and what kinds of choices to make.And I think Austen—these questions are all through Austen, even though nobody has to murder anybody in Austen. Nobody has to make decisions about war and peace or about, you know, civilizational decline or civilizational progress or anything like that. These people making these small choices in a lot of ways. But those are the lives that most of us lead. And when you read Austen, you think, “Oh, okay, there's a virtuous and a vicious way to lead this kind of rather normal life.”The Good LifeOLIVER: The question of what is a good life, or what is a good life in a commercial society, maybe, is the sort of bedrock of what she's doing.TRALDI: Yes, I think so. And that's why I think Austen—you know, Austen wasn't on our syllabus at Tulsa, but she was certainly discussed. And the “what is a good life” question—to me, it's the big question that a great books program for college students should always come back to.If I didn't know what else to talk about, I would just say, “Well, we just read this book.” You know, we read these old biographies of Charlemagne from, like, Einhard—Notker the Stammerer and Einhard, his adopted son or whatever. I don't remember. But this is like 800s. I'm sure you know more about this stuff than I do.And I wasn't quite sure what to do with them because what do I know about Charlemagne? So I just said, “Does it seem like Charlemagne lived a good life?” And you know, you're off to the races. And I think that's important at that age, because that's the age at which—OLIVER: For the undergraduates?TRALDI: Yes. I think that's the age at which you're starting to make your own big decisions about what sort of life to lead. And I think for me, looking back to myself at that age, I think one thing I did wrong—at Tulsa I was in some ways as much a student as a teacher. I was rereading a lot of this stuff for the first time in decades. And some of it I was reading for the first time. As I told you, I was reading a lot of Austen for the first time for this essay.OLIVER: Right, right.TRALDI: And yes, it was stuff that I had thought about at a theoretical level, you know, like what are the ins and outs of this theory or this philosophical move or something like that. But you feel the question a bit differently when you're like, “Okay, I'm an adult. I have to decide whether to live in this way or that way.”The world is open to you. You could convert to Thomism [laughter] like so many have tried to have me do, or you could become a merchant after reading The Wealth of Nations. Or you could become a revolutionary after reading Marx, or you could become a Nietzschean. You know, there are all these choices open to you.OLIVER: Please don't become a Nietzchean.TRALDI: No, no. That is, I'm a—OLIVER: Keep your children out of school if that's going to be the result. [laughs]TRALDI: Yes. I'm a committed moralist, so I cannot, but he is—he made a comeback, that's for sure.Philosophy and PoetryOLIVER: Now, there's this obviously sort of long-running question in philosophy about, what is the relationship between philosophy and poetry? Are they antagonists, or are they in some way, you know, twins, and each provides one half of what is needed for a complete way of understanding the world? Do you have a position on this?TRALDI: Yes, I mean, I think they're what the kids call twinning.OLIVER: Twinning? [laughs]TRALDI: I think they're twinning. No, no, I think that means something different. I think that means when you're wearing the same outfit or something like that.OLIVER: So we're almost twinning with our stripes—yes, I see.TRALDI: We're almost. We actually—we are stripes and blue. Yes, we're closer than I would've expected.I would say closer to twins. There are a lot of claims that philosophy is at odds somehow with this or that. There's also this—certain people will say, “Well, ever since Socrates, philosophy has been at odds with politics.” And a big part of philosophy is, how do you survive? Well, I don't know. Nobody's trying to kill me. I think of myself as a decently committed philosopher.OLIVER: It seems to me this changed fundamentally in the Enlightenment and with the Romantics, and they see it all much more joined up. It's a sort of ancient-and-modern dynamic.TRALDI: Yes, there may be an ancient-and-modern distinction there. But yes, for me I don't see any kind of contradiction. Now, there are—and I think this comes out of what I said before—philosophical attempts to understand poetry. And certain kinds of literary and aesthetic devices do sometimes fall a little flat.The philosophical literature on metaphor, for instance—I think some theories of metaphor really don't get why people use metaphors. [laughter] So one of the most important theories of metaphor is that they're all just false, that it's like everybody who uses a metaphor is lying. This isn't the full theory. There are bells and whistles added.OLIVER: Sure, sure.TRALDI: But yes, so I think there's no contradiction. But at the same time, they are different modes in some ways, and people who do the one are often trying to do something different than the other.I do think that the desire for rigor and precision and clarity that philosophers have can be a little maddening to nonphilosophers, who see the pull of philosophical questions like, “What sort of life I should lead?” and then see, what do philosophers actually do?And we're doing all this modal logic and all these truth tables and all this very technical stuff that looks like math. And they say, “That can't possibly be the right way to think about how to live.” And it's true that there are these studies of—that suggest ethicists aren't actually very good people and things like that, although you have to wonder what is the background ethical theory that went into evaluating them.So yes, I don't think there's really a contradiction between philosophy and anything else. But certainly, there was a point in my life where I always come back to trying to write poetry and do poorly and then stop. But it was always something where I would say, “Okay, if I'm doing philosophy in the afternoon, I better wait till the evening to write poetry.” You have to sort of reboot and get into a different mode.OLIVER: Iris Murdoch used to write philosophy in the morning and novels in the afternoon. That kind of thing.TRALDI: Yes, I think that's very sensible.OLIVER: And she was upstairs for the one and downstairs for the other.TRALDI: Yes. That's even better, you know?Favorite PoetsOLIVER: Which poets do you like?TRALDI: Geez, I guess for an American, I like Wallace Stevens. I wasn't expecting this question. For a Brit, you know, I actually like Philip Larkin a lot.OLIVER: Oh, yes?TRALDI: I know—what is the opinion of Larkin? Is he considered—OLIVER: Very high.TRALDI: Very high? Okay.OLIVER: Some—there are some dissenters, but basically he's the guy.TRALDI: He's the guy, okay. Yes.OLIVER: Twentieth-century English poetry is like Auden, Larkin, Betjeman.TRALDI: Yes, Auden is—actually, my friend Jane Cooper just wrote something about Auden.OLIVER: Yes, Jane is excellent.TRALDI: Yes, Jane is really great.OLIVER: That was in the New Statesman if you want to look it up.TRALDI: That was in the New Statesman. Yes, yes, yes. But Auden, I don't know quite as well.I mean, poetry is—I think it's interesting the way that we receive poetry now. I think you were talking about this a few days ago, about things like poems appearing as inspirational quotes on social media or something like that, and whoever is the most quotable. And you felt like maybe Dostoevsky is very quotable.OLIVER: Dostoevsky has a sort of screenshot quality.TRALDI: Yes, yes.OLIVER: As does Martin Amis.TRALDI: Yes. So I—OLIVER: Whereas Philip Larkin in a funny way—you know, he has very short poems. You can get the whole poem on Twitter. Like, Robert Frost has that. But something like “The Whitsun Weddings,” it's quite hard to just take three lines out. The whole thing works as a—and that, so that poem gets less—TRALDI: Yes. Which is what you would expect from a good poem, really, that it would form a kind of whole.OLIVER: Exactly. If it's a three-page ode, it should have a continuous quality.TRALDI: Yes, it should have a kind of internal structure. Yes.OLIVER: There are some one-line things and—but I think it's notable that a poet like Wordsworth doesn't seem to get a lot of social media play. And I think probably that's one reason.TRALDI: So yes, I think Larkin is somebody who, I did see some shorter references to him, and I thought I'd better just go and look up a ton of poems by this guy. And Stevens was the same way.Death and Philip LarkinOLIVER: So, which Larkin do you like?TRALDI: You're really putting me on the spot here. [laughter] It has been a little while.OLIVER: I lied to you and said it would be about Jane Austen.TRALDI: Yes, now I'm completely screwed. Well, he has a bunch about death. He has one where death is a ship following you. And he has one where death is, like, a fruit that gets picked or something.OLIVER: Apple?TRALDI: Might be an apple.OLIVER: He decides not to throw the apple.TRALDI: There's one with sweetbreads in it. And now I'm really—OLIVER: The ship one, “Next, Please”—that's excellent.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: He sees the—it's like hearing the music coming, and then the ship.TRALDI: I forgot that that was the title. I forgot that that was the title.OLIVER: And then as the ship goes past, it leaves nothing in its wake. It's very sort of—very gloomy.TRALDI: It's very gloomy, yes. I think I read Larkin in a gloomy phase; it was like Larkin and Radiohead or something.OLIVER: But he's a good example of what you were saying before, that he won't think propositionally. He's logical in the sense that he's sort of orderly, and he goes from one thing to the next. But he's not being a philosopher.TRALDI: No, of course. Yes.OLIVER: But he's very preoccupied with the sorts of questions that philosophers are probing, but has a sort of very meaningful treatment of them.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: And I think in a way, the sharp response that you want from the reader in those questions, Larkin is better at provoking than someone like Bertrand Russell or some other contemporary of his.TRALDI: Yes, yes.OLIVER: Bertrand Russell's a bit earlier, but you know what I mean.TRALDI: No, I think that's exactly right. And I think that is why I'm a fan of the great books pedagogically and not—I don't know if Larkin will be called a great, you know, like, who knows? I don't really understand that designation, but tings like poetry and novels.OLIVER: The biggest dissenter was Harold Bloom, who said Philip Larkin's just a period piece. And he doesn't understand why everyone likes him.TRALDI: Oh, yes, well, I'm not on board with everything. Oh, I've also been—OLIVER: No, you're not very Bloomian.TRALDI: I'm not very Bloomian, I don't think.OLIVER: Either Allan or Harold.TRALDI: Yes. Well, I actually—this is very embarrassing, but I've actually never read The Closing of the American Mind, which I know is—OLIVER: But why should you? I'm not sure it's retained its—TRALDI: Well, it's certainly been received into my circle. But it is like a classic of anti-ideological—OLIVER: Sure. Have you read Adler, How to Read a Book, that kind of great books stuff?TRALDI: No. There's so many things that I haven't read. I mean, I'm just learning how to read. I learned how to read in Tulsa last year, [laughter] in Oklahoma, which is not where most people would go to learn how to read.Jane Austen and the Problem of MoralityOLIVER: So let's move to Jane Austen. Your thesis basically is, many moral theories face this problem that if I believe XYZ theory and you don't believe it, you can get the advantage of me. Because I'll always stick to my principles and you can just be a bad guy.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: So is morality screwed? This is what people say about liberalism. This is what you're arguing. And you think Jane Austen's got an answer to that?TRALDI: Yes, I think she has a kind of answer. And again, one decision I had to make while writing the essay was, am I going to go super—this is a completely philosophically rigorous and respectable answer? Or am I just going to kind of sketch it?OLIVER: Slum it in literary criticism? [laughter]TRALDI: Yes, I wouldn't put it quite that way, but—and I think I went for the latter, where I just wanted to kind of evoke the answer. And I think the answer has something to do with living in a large enough society where—and Austen I think is not the only person to give this answer. But you live in a large enough society where, when people see you acting well and somebody else acting poorly, the disadvantage that you have in that one interaction is outweighed by the advantages you have from the society that you gain from being seen to act well by many others.So one thing I didn't mention here, but a connection I made when I was first coming up with this idea, is that it's actually a lot like what Martin Luther King Jr. says about civil disobedience. So he says, you might think, if you're out there and the police are coming at you with bats, or the white supremacists are coming at you with bats or whatever, weapons or whatever, you might think, “I'm on the losing end of this interaction.”But actually what will happen is that this interaction will be seen by many others. And you, by keeping your calm, will be seen to be the virtuous one, and they, by being violent, will be seen to be the vicious ones. And this can only help your political cause. I'm probably abstracting some of the details of King's presentation.OLIVER: In a vulgar sense, this is the sort of “be the change you want to see” approach.TRALDI: Yes, but also, be the change you want other people to see. You know? Because that's how it gets saved from—and again, one of the ways in which this is not quite philosophically rigorous is because the philosopher can say, “Well, what about an example where nobody's going to see it? Or what about an example where the situation is set up that in doing the right thing, you're perceived to have done the wrong thing?” And you get back into tough problems. And that's why we have philosophy. You know, there's always going to be these puzzles.OLIVER: But we don't get the—I think this is what the novelists are helpful for. We don't get to set the conditions in our lives. You know, when you're doing a philosophical problem, you can just say, “Well, these are the conditions. What happens then?” And what Jane Austen is so good at is saying, “I'm going to take her and drop her in this house, and that's life. And she's just going to—she won't even know what the conditions are for a long time.” That's the novelist's preoccupation.TRALDI: Yes. Yes. It's interesting what you said about not even knowing what the conditions are. It's one thing I love, which is there in, I think, a lot of Austen—and it's done by a lot of my favorite novelists. I think Kazuo Ishiguro is really good at this. It's just novels where you see the characters' growing awareness of their circumstances and—OLIVER: Like in Klara and the Sun or something.TRALDI: Yes, or I think certainly in Never Let Me Go and in Remains of the Day, a lot of the action is in a situation where you understand what's going on better than the characters do.Clues and GamesTRALDI: And I think we talked about this the other day. In Austen, Emma, for example, is this sort of, like, halfway detective where she sees a lot of clues that could help her understand the nature of the life she's leading and the circumstances she's in, but she always misinterprets the clues. But on the other hand, it's not like she misses them entirely. She's kind of on the right track, and at least she's trying.OLIVER: And what I think Austen does so well in that book—I think it's her most important book—is that by putting us, without quite realizing it, with Emma's blinkers on, as it were, and only allowing our perspective to be her perspective, she makes us the detective.But whereas in a detective novel, you know, there's a funny little man and he is a detective, and he says, “Oh, there's a clue in this novel,” the read of—on the first read very often goes straight past what they must later realize to be a clue. And that is such a normal condition of life, that, “Oh, actually, that was one of the conditions, but you couldn't have known it. Sorry.” And you can only work it out in retrospect.TRALDI: Yes. In modern love, these are sometimes called red flags. [laughter] I think it's not quite a precise analogy, but yes, I think it's right. And I certainly—I had read Emma years ago and didn't really notice. As you say, on my first read, I didn't really notice, even having watched—I think it was the, what is it, the Kate Beckinsale version maybe, from ITV in like 1996 or something.It was really in reading it for this essay that I noticed that this feature that, starting on page 30 or 40 or so, there's a—and they're often in games. The clues are often in games. So very early on, Elton is playing some sort of poem game with Emma.OLIVER: The riddles, yes.TRALDI: The riddle game. And you know, Emma already misinterprets his riddles as being about Harriet rather than about her. But then there's also—the riddles also have some relation to things that happen much later.OLIVER: Then there's the anagram game at the end.TRALDI: There's the anagram game at the end. Yes, it's the—and I don't think there are many games like that in any of the other Austen.OLIVER: People play games, but we're not taken into them and have them narrated in that way.TRALDI: And they're not word games in general. There's card games and things like that. And you know, in Pride and Prejudice, Wickham has all these gambling debts and things like that.OLIVER: Yes.TRALDI: You know, in—I don't know if you know Whit Stillman, but for the same magazine a couple years ago I wrote about Whit Stillman, who's a sort of conservative filmmaker who's a huge Austen fan and brings in Austenian themes to a lot of his movies, but writes them about characters in the 1960s and '70s. And one of them was called The Last Days of Disco, for example, about—and some of the broader social themes he talks about are also there in Austen.So one thing that was just on the edges of my consciousness as I read through the novels for this essay was the question of the noble man versus the working man, which I think is very present in Austen and has something to do with her conception of virtue: that the virtuous person will be engaging in commerce in some way.OLIVER: Those moments of the noble and the virtuous man or whatever often take place in a shop, like the drapier in Emma or the jewelry shop in Sense and Sensibility.TRALDI: That's interesting. That's interesting.OLIVER: She's very careful to take us into a commercial situation and contrast.TRALDI: See, that is the sort of detail that I think a philosopher—I think we—the mere—the vibe of, “You're in a shop, and this means something.” I think this is something philosophers are—we can watch for the action; we can judge the characters' actions. But then there are these questions of atmosphere and milieu. And certain things happen in a shop; certain things happen at the seaside. In Persuasion there's an injury by the seaside.OLIVER: Yes. That's one of the most exciting scenes in Austen. Very dramatic.TRALDI: Yes, yes. I think actually Persuasion in some ways is quite different than her other books. It has a sort of—you know, in some ways it feels a little more like Frankenstein or Wuthering Heights at points. There's a little bit of a windblown, dark quality to it at times. It's a little bit bleaker. It's a little hard to explain why, but that's just a feeling that I had reading it that maybe had changed with some of the other literary tastes of the time.Artlessness in Austen's HeroinesOLIVER: Now, the quality that you focus on in the heroines, in this question of virtue defending itself against bad actors who break the rules, is artlessness.TRALDI: Yes. So this is a term Austen uses quite a bit, and almost always, she very much picks and chooses the characters who are going to receive this term. And I thought that this is like—it's not only her artless characters who face this question about how can morality survive, or how can virtue prevail, but I think they're the limit point.Like, if you really are unwilling to use—and I mentioned in the essay, when Darcy describes—I forget what; maybe it's him describing how he found Lydia and Wickham, or it's something to do with Wickham—he said, “I had to resort to arts.” So it must be, the “arts” back then means—one of the meanings of the term is dishonesty or subterfuge or something.OLIVER: Yes, if someone was artful, it could have—TRALDI: Yes, like the Artful Dodger.OLIVER: Exactly. Could have negative connotations for sure.TRALDI: Yes. And so the artless one, you know, they're missing something.So it's the question of, if you view—morality in a way means you're missing something, right? You've taken arts out of your arsenal. You've taken tools that could deal with certain situations, and you've just decided not to use them. So the question is, how can it be an advantage to have less tools?You know, we're here at Mercatus; the economists would tell you it's never advantageous to have fewer choices, right? There's no paradox of choice. It's never advantageous to have fewer choices. And so I think this is the—if morality is a kind of unilateral disarmament, artlessness is the clearest case of that.OLIVER: And you're seeing that in Fanny Price, Elinor—TRALDI: You see that in Fanny Price. You see that in Elinor. Harriet Smith is described as artless over and over again. And then there are these other characters who are described as artful, or other things that are mentioned as arts.I think Harriet, in a lot of ways, is the one who's most often described this way. And it's interesting because you think of Emma changing a lot in Emma, but Knightley actually shifts in his evaluation of Harriet, who he thought of as sort of an unserious person. And Knightley himself comes to recognize her artlessness as a kind of seriousness which makes her a good match, not ultimately for him, but for his dude, Robert.OLIVER: The farmer.TRALDI: The farmer, yes.OLIVER: He doesn't change his view of her social position, though.TRALDI: No, certainly not. But he does change his view of her character, basically. You know, her artlessness is not silliness. It has a sort of depth to it.And yes, certainly Fanny. In the Whit Stillman movie Metropolitan that's part of what set me on this, there's this whole discussion of the book Mansfield Park and this old Lionel Trilling essay about it where he says, how is it—there's this question about how modern people can even like Mansfield Park because we've sort of lost the notion of virtue being exciting or something.One of the most provocative lines to me in Austen was in Sense and Sensibility where it says that Elinor glories in Edward's integrity, which is an odd thing to glory in. You don't glory—nobody is on Instagram showing off their integrity, you know?OLIVER: It's like that René Gerard quote people like to pass around: “Everyone is on diet pills and nobody wants to be a saint.”TRALDI: I like that. That is very Instagrammable.OLIVER: Exactly. Exactly.TRALDI: That's very good, actually. I like that. Yes, so there's something provocative about the notion that virtue can be exciting, and in particular can be romantically exciting.The Importance of IntegrityOLIVER: Or even less than that. One thing I think is difficult for people interpreting Austen today is that virtue, whether it's exciting or romantically exciting, or the notion of integrity is of interest for its own sake.There's a lot of—you know, we have integrity as an organization. It's very important for me to have integrity as a professional. But there's not as much a sense of, just having integrity is the good life. We don't need to be complicated about this. That's just—you should just do that. And Austen's very firm on that all the way through.And criticism wants to pull her towards sometimes feminism, sometimes discussions of slavery, sometimes various other things. And she's just constantly sort of resisting that by saying, “I like integrity. I like good people. I don't think it's that hard.” It's a good line you've picked up on, I think.TRALDI: There's a character in The Wire who says, “A man's gotta have a code.” I think he's Omar, who murders the drug dealers and steals from them.OLIVER: I haven't seen it.TRALDI: So he says, “A man's gotta have a code.” And I think there is a—even in a character who in some ways is bad, we admire the integrity of having a code and sticking to it.There is this debate, I guess in moral philosophy, or at least on the outskirts of moral philosophy, about, “Well, if your code is wrong, maybe it's better not to stick to it.” I don't share that perspective. I think part of the good life is holding yourself to certain standards. And if those standards turn out to be wrong, the holding yourself is still of moral value, right? Not allowing yourself—OLIVER: It doesn't mean they're not adjustable.TRALDI: Yes, no, of course. If you decide the standards are wrong, and in Austen—OLIVER: It's sort of implicit in the idea of having standards that you will be honest and therefore accept when your standards need to be improved or whatever. Right?TRALDI: Yes, I think that's absolutely right. And in Austen we certainly see people shifting their standards. And I think one thing that I—of course, modern readers and watchers of Austen do not quite understand some of these things. But I think in Pride and Prejudice in particular, we're supposed to feel that Lizzy Bennet is quite hard on people and has to learn to improve herself in that way.OLIVER: We're delighted with her when she does that because we think it's sassy.TRALDI: Yes, exactly. If you go on YouTube, you can see all these, like, “Lizzy Bennet owning people's lives for 50 minutes,” these compilations of clips from the various movies or whatever. And she's obviously very, very clever.But she realizes—after coming to understand who Wickham is and feeling that she might not have another chance with Darcy, she comes to realize that she has had certain prejudices, which have made her blind to the realities of the world and blind to what might be her best options.So yes, I was saying I believe in integrity; that's all I was saying. And integrity obviously is adjustable, but I tend to think that it's better—even if the rule is wrong, it's better for the person who has it to hold themselves to it, rather than to adjust to try to get an advantage.And in philosophy, we have all sorts of terminology for these sorts of questions: “Are you an internalist or an externalist about reasons or about rules or whatever?” I think the more literary way to say it would just be that integrity is a virtue. And people should stick to their codes unless they see a good reason to change them.Austen and Adam SmithOLIVER: Now, you have recently been reading Adam Smith.TRALDI: Yes, I did read a lot of Adam Smith for this debate we had last week. Although I did a poor job because I had forgotten that the debate was about whether Smith was a philosopher or an economist. [laughter] I thought it was simply, is he a philosopher or not? So I put myself in the odd position of arguing that Adam Smith is not an economist.But yes, I think it's obvious—without knowing the background, I'm sure there are scholarly questions about, how much Smith did Austen read? And they're both 250th—a lot was happening in 1775 and 1776.OLIVER: Those were great years. Those were the good old days.TRALDI: They were great years. In the great books syllabus, you get to the end of the 1700s and suddenly there's this—you have Smith, you have Kant, you have the American Revolution, you have the French Revolution, you have Burke. Rousseau is right before, Montesquieu is right before. I mean, it was a real—OLIVER: It's a great time.TRALDI: It was a great time. A lot was being done. And obviously, you know, I love the 1800s. I love the Romantics. But you could teach a whole great books course from 1750 to 1800, probably.OLIVER: You've also got all the dictionaries and all that kind of work going on as well. It's a very, very fertile—explorations.TRALDI: Yes, yes. There's all sorts of—yes, it was an amazing time.OLIVER: So did you, having read these two, Austen and Smith, close together—TRALDI: Yes, and I should say that my reading of Austen was much more careful than my reading of Smith.OLIVER: Sure, but you wrote this before you read Smith.TRALDI: Yes, absolutely.OLIVER: Or at least you fully conceived it. Do you see a lot of Smith in Austen?TRALDI: “A lot” might be—OLIVER: Primarily from Theory of Moral Sentiments.TRALDI: So I would say that the notion of sympathy as being fundamentally part of how you recognize a good person seems to me to be there in Austen. The characters are—OLIVER: And this is the thing about awareness of other people and learning from that awareness.TRALDI: Awareness of other people and learning from other people and feeling other people's emotions. One thing that is related to sympathy in an odd way—and I think actually Austen and Smith conceive of it a bit differently, but that is there for both of them, in particular in Sense and Sensibility—is this notion of self-control or self-command.OLIVER: Self command. Yes. Yes.The Importance of Self-CommandTRALDI: Now, Smith gives a really odd argument about self command, which is that if you don't have control over your emotions, you will end up feeling or expressing something that other people can't sympathize with. And this is bad because sympathy is good, or something like that. I actually think it's a rather confused argument.OLIVER: I think what he's saying is that if you display a lack of self-command, then no matter what you are feeling, people find it difficult to deal with that sort of uncontrolled behavior. It's not the particular expression of feeling; it's the fact that you are a little unstable or—TRALDI: Yes, I think that's right.OLIVER: —a bit extra.TRALDI: I think what Smith doesn't do is explain quite how that's bad. But what I think is that actually, in Sense and Sensibility, it's a little bit the reverse, where actually Elinor and their mother, they do sympathize with Marianne. They do feel what she's feeling after—who's the other, the w guy in Sense and Sensibility? They're all w's.OLIVER: Oh, Willoughby.TRALDI: Willoughby, right, right. Not Wickham, Willoughby. When Willoughby—OLIVER: You can just say “the cad.”TRALDI: The cad. There's always a cad. So when the cad leaves, Marianne has all these emotions, and you really feel them. And Marianne also has a lack of self-command when Willoughby is there. There's this whole episode, which I didn't quite make the most of but felt very important, where they go to the house of this woman. They just sort of barge into this house, Willoughby and Marianne.And this is really supposed to show something about the relationship. If you and your partner barge into somebody's house, it can't be a good relationship somehow because it's leading you into bad actions. That's my sense of what that episode is supposed to show from the highest possible remove.OLIVER: I think, yes, and I think there are several other instances of that: when they ride in the carriage together, unaccompanied.TRALDI: Right, right.OLIVER: And there's a sort of general consternation about this. And Marianne sort of says, “Oh, well, how can it be a problem?” And they—part of the consternation is, you're breaking the rules in a very flagrant way, but also that you are assuming that it's okay because you'll get married. And this assumption is a very big one.TRALDI: Yes. And obviously there is this assumption that—she doesn't recognize quite how—she thinks her position is much more secure than it actually is, which is how it turns out in the book. But I think we're supposed to think that even if she were right about Willoughby's affection, which in a sense, she—Willoughby—OLIVER: No. Even if they do get married, she's broken the rules in a way that—TRALDI: She's broken certain rules in a way that is—but I think what's different from Smith is, there is sympathy from her family even though she lacks self-command. But that is precisely—so it's sort of a different theory of why self-command is good. It's precisely because her emotional state is actually draining for her family.And then Elinor says—when she learns that Elinor has actually been going through something—OLIVER: The same.TRALDI: —very similar, and maybe even rougher, in this whole thing with Lucy Steele telling her about this, you know, blah, blah, blah.OLIVER: Which is a beautiful name—to steal. I mean, it's great.TRALDI: It's an amazing—honestly, in some ways Sense and Sensibility may have been my favorite. I think it's just lovely.OLIVER: If I just wanted to just read one for fun, that's what I go to. I do, yes.TRALDI: Yes. And there's a lot—none of these things are quite perfectly in there. But I think honestly, everything that's in the other novels has a little part to play in Sense and Sensibility. You know, I think if I were to recommend just one, if somebody was like, “I have time for just one,” I might recommend Sense and Sensibility.But in the end, Marianne says—again, it's one of these amazingly evocative lines. Elinor says, “You didn't act that badly. Do you compare your conduct with Willoughby's?” And she says, “No, I compare it with—Elinor, I compare it with your conduct. You have this self-command.”And it's precisely the fact—it's not—and I think this is why philosophers do like Austen, because it's not—it's still literary, but there is a precision to her moral evaluations. It's precisely the fact that Elinor knew that her family loved her and didn't want to burden—it's all quite conscious. She didn't want to burden her family with her emotions. But you actually see that Elinor has this family trait of having very strong sentiment, which Marianne does, and simply also has this virtue of self-command.And that is—there are film adaptations and TV adaptations that demonstrate self-command, but it's a very hard thing to film. It's something you feel inside. It's a very hard—the actors have to be very good for you to see—you see pieces of it in some of the adaptations of Persuasion and some of the adaptations of Sense and Sensibility, but self-command is very hard to find.Austen AdaptationsOLIVER: Which adaptations do you like the best?TRALDI: I'm forgetting—I often like the long ones that I think were for the British ITV. So I like the—I think Kate Beckinsale was in the Emma one. Although I think there was one of Persuasion, which was also quite good. I like the one of Northanger Abbey. I don't think it's that good, but it's kind of cute, which I think it's probably the cutest of her long novels.Whit Stillman did a very loose adaptation of Lady Susan, which is hilariously funny at times, and also has Kate Beckinsale and some other great actors in it.OLIVER: Did you see the new Persuasion on Netflix a couple of years ago?TRALDI: No. No.OLIVER: It has that—is it Dakota Johnson, the actress, who's famous for other non-Austenian—Fifty Shades of Grey or whatever.TRALDI: Yes, and isn't she one of the Avengers or something like that?OLIVER: Something like that. But everyone was very upset that it was this terrible adaptation.TRALDI: Oh, yes.OLIVER: Didn't—it sort of killed all of Austen's words. She looks at the camera; she drinks from the bottle. I actually thought it was quite fun. On the basis that all adaptations are bad—TRALDI: I think if you allow some looseness, it can be quite fun. So for example, the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, I think if you're just sort of like, “Well, this is just somebody who was inspired by Pride and Prejudice,” you can have a lot of fun with the movie.OLIVER: I think as an interpretation of the book, that film is quite bad.TRALDI: Oh, yes. I think it's absolutely missing the mark.OLIVER: But in terms of like, the countryside and the house and the geese and the food, it's fantastic.TRALDI: Oh, yes. It's lovely to look at.OLIVER: The dresses, right? The clothes are amazing.TRALDI: And a lot of the—and the cast is honestly like—OLIVER: Yes, it's great.TRALDI: The cast is really, really great. And the parts as they are—OLIVER: Rosamund Pike is maybe the best Jane on TV.TRALDI: She's terrific. And who's the one who plays Kitty?OLIVER: Yes.TRALDI: Who is in—and the father is the guy from The Hunger Games. I forget his name, but I think the father is excellent in that. But of course, it's not exactly the father from Austen.OLIVER: No, no, no.TRALDI: But as a movie itself—but yes, I like a lot of these longer TV versions.One odd thing—they make these choices. So there is some scholarly apparatus brought to bear on some of them. So I think maybe it's Persuasion that there were multiple versions of, and some of the adaptations use pieces from the unpublished version, which are interesting. And as I was reading it, I had to Google around a bit and figure out these things.Austen's Moral PrecisionTRALDI: I was going to say about Austen's moral precision, the other place where I think this comes in—and I wrote a bit about this in the essay—is near the end of Mansfield Park, when—the names are what I'm worst at—when Edmund, right, is finally disillusioned with—OLIVER: Mary.TRALDI: With Mary Crawford?OLIVER: Mm-hmm.TRALDI: It's because there was this affair. There's always a sibling or a cousin who makes some horrible mistake, you know? So there was this affair, and Mary Crawford can only criticize it by saying that they weren't very prudent, you know, in prudential terms. They took a big risk. They made a bad decision. You know, they really screwed themselves over.OLIVER: They could have made it work. Yes.TRALDI: Yes. And Edmund realizes that she lacks moral fervor because he thinks the appropriate criticism should be a moral one. And as a psychological matter, it shouldn't even enter your head, I think is the idea. I'm extrapolating a bit, but if you see somebody acting this badly, to then say, “Well, geez, you're doing something that isn't in your interest”—for that to be your first thought indicates that your priorities are highly misplaced in a way that, to him, is quite unattractive.And this also struck me as a moment of—this is something we philosophers talk about. What is the distinction between prudence and morality? They both tell you what you should do, in some sense, but there's different—the shoulds have different forces, right? So Edmund has a certain moral precision and sensitivity which, actually, Fanny is basically the only person he knows—not that everybody in the house is a bad person; his father is a decent guy, and one of the aunts is okay, I think.But yes, there's a real sophistication to this evaluation. And it's funny to me that she actually used this as the—I mean, I suspect that even at the time there were readers who were just like, “Wait, I really don't get what the nature of Edmund's problem is here,” because it's not like Mary—Mary's not like, “Oh, yes, I support infidelity.” You know? She's not like— it's if you blinked, you might miss it, the mistake that Mary has made.And so I do think that even though she's not making arguments, she's not laying out philosophical theories, there is a level of precision in her thinking about virtue, which I do think is something that it took me a little aback.And I think it's part of why—one person who quote-tweeted my article was Daniel Kodsi, who's a friend of our colleague John Maier and his coauthor often. And he runs this magazine called The Philosophers' Magazine, which I had written before. And Daniel quote-tweeted my article with something like, “Add Oliver to the list of all the philosophers who love Austen.”OLIVER: And it's a long list.TRALDI: And I think it's a long list. And I do think this precision is part of it that she does, that it is—again, it's not like a philosophy journal article, but it is an intellectual sophistication that is often not present in novelists that we really appreciate.Every Word MattersOLIVER: I mean, one way people talk about the great books is to say that every word matters. And a lot of novelists will say that about their own. Well, you know, Elizabeth Bowen used to say, “What you're doing is to make everything count.” Austen is one of the examples where it's actually true. Every word is being used carefully.TRALDI: Yes. It's funny, this bears on another Twitter argument I had recently about this phrase logographic necessity. Basically, every word in a great book is there for a reason. I think that's right. Although you have to be careful about—if you were to say, “Well, every word in Plato is there for a reason, so you can't really say he's wrong about every—” you would be kind of abandoning the philosophical mission.OLIVER: I mean it in the sense of what you might call the artistic or structural integrity of the book. Not everything has to tell in the meaning sense. But it all holds as a unit for some—TRALDI: Yes. I think everything is there—there is what we could call an internal reason for everything to be there. Everything is there to hold together—OLIVER: Like the making of a piece of furniture or something.TRALDI: And I think you hear—I think this is one thing that—and not all classical music, but I think it's one thing that distinguishes classical music even from very good contemporary pop music or jazz or rock music, is that you have this sense of, “Yes, every note I hear basically is holding up a larger structure of some sort.”OLIVER: Yes. And Jane Austen is very Mozart in that way.TRALDI: Yes, I think that's right. Yes.Austen's Place in Great Books ProgramsOLIVER: So should Jane Austen have a bigger place on great books programs, based on all these things you've said about her?TRALDI: Yes, this is—so, there was actually a debate—I did not write the piece in response to this debate, but this is—OLIVER: Tanner Greer.TRALDI: Yes, there was—Tanner Greer weighed in on this, and my friend Circe. I think—OLIVER: I think they're just desperately wrong.TRALDI: You think they don't—that she—OLIVER: I think Emma is obviously a book that should be on one of these syllabuses. Maybe Sense and Sensibility.TRALDI: Yes. I think the ones I would consider are Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park. I do think they're actually longer than I realized, which is always—I mean, there are these very practical concerns with putting together a syllabus.OLIVER: Sure, sure. Although I want to ask you about that, because my response to a lot of these debates, which is maybe just because of where I studied, but just make them read more. And if they don't do the reading, that's their, you know—TRALDI: That's true. Well, I don't want to get into this too much. We already make them read a lot compared to—so for example, a year ago, I had my students read two novels in a week, which is more than most courses make college students read.OLIVER: But that's by no means unreasonable.TRALDI: No, no, of course, of course.OLIVER: You know.TRALDI: Well, exigencies of the teenage mind aside—OLIVER: Because I often think this, when people debate how things should be taught and why it's so important to keep these programs, and they'll talk about the importance of writing essays. And then it turns out the students maybe write one essay a semester. And I sort of think, well, who cares? All this rhetoric for one essay.TRALDI: Yes. I don't know if I'm really ever going to assign essays again. It just is—the age of AI is upon us.OLIVER: Sure. But you see what I mean.TRALDI: No, yes, I know exactly what you mean. And I do think reading a lot is the main part of—and certainly, you know, when I read all seven of these in two weeks, that's much more reading than I normally do, as well, to write this essay.OLIVER: But you didn't have to lie on the sofa afterwards with a cold compress. You were fine.TRALDI: In a way it was a really good two weeks. If you get to read—I mean, this is why we have good lives, right? If you get to read Jane Austen and you call that work, it's a nice life.OLIVER: So yes, will you be putting Emma on your program?TRALDI: I would definitely consider Emma. I would definitely consider Sense and Sensibility. I would consider Mansfield Park. I think these are the ones that have—the moral element is very prominent. But it's obviously there in all of her books.OLIVER: You can have a really good moral discussion about Mansfield Park, which is a bigger, broader thing than Pride and Prejudice, for example.TRALDI: Yes, I think so. I would definitely consider—in the 1800s there were—obviously the British novel of the 1800s was a big deal, and there's—OLIVER: [laughs] We did quite well, yes.TRALDI: You all did quite well. So the ones we did at Tulsa—we had Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights and The Picture of Dorian Gray. And then we had one Irish, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. And I don't think anybody—if you replaced one of those with Emma or Mansfield Park, I don't think anybody would say, “Oh, you made a horrible call.”OLIVER: I think Tanner's point was that you simply don't have that many slots for an English novel that deals with these sorts of ideas, and that it should obviously be Middlemarch because that is the bigger novel. It's about bigger questions of society. It's about the whole—it's got more greatness in it, whereas Austen is sort of more about the individual.TRALDI: So I do think that this question of greatness—I think there are some people who read Austen and they think, “Well, this is—obviously it has all these sorts of themes, but it's not great. It has this littleness to it. It has this smallness to it.”OLIVER: It's domestic.TRALDI: That is not my reading of it. I think if that's the question, I don't feel that way. I think it pulls out these great themes about the nature of virtue and the nature of moral learning, becoming a better person, the nature of love. We read Sappho. We read the Symposium.To me, you read Wuthering Heights and you say, “Oh, this is a really big book because it's about society and how trauma gets passed down, and it has these horror elements, and it's very dark.” But actually, it's quite hard to figure out, how do we turn Wuthering Heights in a discussion about how to live? With Austen, it's just completely straightforward.OLIVER: [laughs] How not to live, maybe.TRALDI: Yes. In Austen, it's just completely straightforward. This is the discussion. This is what she had in mind as well, this question of how to live. So to me, Austen is completely—in terms of her successes as an artist, she belongs. In terms of her themes, she belongs. So I would not rule her out. I think she is absolutely a great, and who knows what that means, but I think she would be completely appropriate on any of these syllabi.Reading PlansOLIVER: Very good. And what will you read next?TRALDI: What will I read next? I mean, our—from the beginning, I'm thinking I should read some more poetry. It's been a while. Actually, speaking of—this is funny. Well, I want to get into William Empson. He had an odd life, which I think somebody should do like a movie about him or something.OLIVER: Yes, he'd make a great movie.TRALDI: I think Empson would be a good movie. So that might be—OLIVER: Are you going to read the poems or the criticism?TRALDI: Probably a little of both, but that's for a while from now. I think, you know, at the moment I'm back to reading philosophy. So what novel will I read next? That's a good question. What should I read next?OLIVER: If you like Jane Austen?TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: Maybe read one of the people that she admired, like Samuel Richardson or Fanny Burney, someone like that.TRALDI: You know, I do think—you saying Samuel Richardson reminded me, I've read very little Samuel Johnson. I think reading some of the great critics, I think, writing this piece—OLIVER: Oh, Johnson, yes. You would like Johnson.TRALDI: I think I would like Johnson. I think I would like Empson. The history of literary criticism is something I have very, very little idea of.OLIVER: Oh, well, then, Johnson. I mean, he's the best.TRALDI: Yes, I think I should, I should definitely read Johnson.OLIVER: English literary criticism begins and ends with Samuel Johnson.TRALDI: You know what, this is a little different, but—I might have talked about this with you a little bit—I want to read The Fable of the Bees, Mandeville, because reading about Smith—a lot of the ideas that we think of as Smithian are actually Mandevillian, and he kind of moderated them.OLIVER: Well, he hated Mandeville.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: Very hard on him.TRALDI: Yes. So a lot—like the invisible hand, it's only a small part of Smith's thinking, but it was like the entirety of Mandeville's thinking, this sort of dynamic.OLIVER: Well, I think it means different things for them. I think Mandeville, in a funny way, is more philosophical in the sense you were saying, and trying to make these propositions. And Smith was saying, “Well, what about feelings? What about all these funny things that we can't account for? Like, look around. It's too messy.”TRALDI: No, that makes sense to me. Yes, I think between Mandeville and Smith, Mandeville is somebody who thought virtue was sort of like a con.OLIVER: A fool's game.TRALDI: Exactly. You're sort of a sucker if you try to be virtuous.OLIVER: I think he also just assumed that if you were commercial, you were obviously on the get.TRALDI: Yes. But this is one of the great—I know we talked about this, but it's one of the great—you see this in Smith, you see this in Austen—commerce has its own virtues, and they are very traditional virtues. You have to be trustworthy. You have to be pleasant. You can't really be wholly self-interested in every moment because people have to be willing to deal with you given your—I mean, think about Yelp reviews or even just word of mouth. “Oh, that person screwed me over.”OLIVER: There's a discussion in one of Hayek's papers, which is—it's a very Smithian point he makes about, the nature of the knowledge problem means that it's not so much that I'm trying to get information about the thing you're trying to sell me, but I'm really trying to get information about you and whether you are someone I should be buying from. Which is exactly the project that the novelists and Smith—there's a sort of period between Smith and the early novelists, running through Austen to George Eliot, when they're all working on that problem together.TRALDI: Yes. I do think in Austen, it's often—the real puzzle is, how do you make out somebody else's character?OLIVER: Exactly.TRALDI: This is a phrase that Lizzy Bennet does use with regard to Darcy. And how do we actually figure out who the trustworthy and untrustworthy people are?OLIVER: And if you're too philosophical about that, in the sort of analytic sense, I think you can end up not paying enough attention to the particulars of that question.TRALDI: Yes.OLIVER: Because when you actually try and do it, it's really, really hard.TRALDI: Yes. And I think this is the sort of—reading Austen, you get a sense of—and there are very few philosophy papers on things like this. Reading Austen, you get a sense of, what sorts of details in a normal life are the ones that I can extract information from to make out somebody else's character?In philosophy, we do ask, what is a good character and what is the good action in this sort of situation? What is the bad action in this sort of situation? But it's not for the philosopher to say, “Okay, in the sorts of situations you're likely to be in, what do you pay—where do you direct your attention to try to figure out these things about?”And it's not—I don't think Austen—it's not super subtle either. In Persuasion—I mentioned in the essay—in Persuasion, it starts out by saying Anne really cared about paying off the family's debts, and the rest of her family didn't give a s**t, you know? And it's sort of like, okay, so we just immediately are like, Anne's the sort of person who you might want to have a business transaction with because if she has a debt to you, she might actually pay it. And I forget if that's the exact detail, but it's something like that, you know?OLIVER: And there's also the novelist—Jane Austen is very good at what you don't see, which aga

On this episode, Steve and Cody discuss William Samuel Johnson, the legal genius and educator that guided the final text of the Constitution.Sources· Groce, Jr., George C. William Samuel Johnson: A Maker of the Constitution. New York City, NY: AMS Press, 1937.· McCaughey, Elizabeth P. From Loyalist to Founding Father: The Political Odyssey of William Samuel Johnson. New York City, NY: Columbia U. Press, 1980.· See General Sources page for additional sources Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Part three of our highlights of James Boswell's seminal biography of the eighteenth-century giant of English literature, Dr Samuel Johnson.Part one: https://spotifycreators-web.app.link/e/p3AA29Zql2bPart two: https://spotifycreators-web.app.link/e/pmbrftnRz2bFor the text of this vlog, visit https://wwcorrigan.blogspot.com/2026/04/quotes-and-notes-on-james-boswells-life_30.html.#SamuelJohnson #DrJohnson #JamesBoswell #EdmundBurke #biography #literature #EnglishLiterature #GoldDiggers

In the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson famously argued that Shakespeare is enduringly popular because he “is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life.” Johnson's view largely prevailed until the late twentieth century, when it was challenged by a growing scepticism about the existence of a general human nature. In Thinking Through Shakespeare (Princeton UP, 2026), eminent literary critic David Womersley pushes back against this change by exploring how Shakespeare's plays think through—and invite us to think through—deep human questions of lasting importance.Thinking Through Shakespeare explores four perennial human problems: personal identity, the distinction between civilization and barbarism, the relation between political power and religious authority and the tension between means and ends. It examines the history of these problems, from antiquity to today, and traces how Shakespeare engages with them in the great tragedies—Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear—but also in his other plays. Without arguing that human nature is universal or unchanging, or that Shakespeare has some special access to timeless wisdom, the book makes the case that his drama is powerful because it serves as a forensic tool, probing rival perspectives on questions that have preoccupied many people in many societies over many centuries.By revealing in new ways how Shakespeare's plays are animated and driven by central human problems, and why he should again be viewed as the great poet of human nature, Thinking Through Shakespeare opens up a richer understanding and appreciation of his work. David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. His books include Divinity and State, Gibbon and the “Watchmen of the Holy City” and The Transformation of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He is also the editor of many books, including the Penguin Classics editions of Gibbons's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson and David Hume's complete essays. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here 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

In the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson famously argued that Shakespeare is enduringly popular because he “is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life.” Johnson's view largely prevailed until the late twentieth century, when it was challenged by a growing scepticism about the existence of a general human nature. In Thinking Through Shakespeare (Princeton UP, 2026), eminent literary critic David Womersley pushes back against this change by exploring how Shakespeare's plays think through—and invite us to think through—deep human questions of lasting importance.Thinking Through Shakespeare explores four perennial human problems: personal identity, the distinction between civilization and barbarism, the relation between political power and religious authority and the tension between means and ends. It examines the history of these problems, from antiquity to today, and traces how Shakespeare engages with them in the great tragedies—Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear—but also in his other plays. Without arguing that human nature is universal or unchanging, or that Shakespeare has some special access to timeless wisdom, the book makes the case that his drama is powerful because it serves as a forensic tool, probing rival perspectives on questions that have preoccupied many people in many societies over many centuries.By revealing in new ways how Shakespeare's plays are animated and driven by central human problems, and why he should again be viewed as the great poet of human nature, Thinking Through Shakespeare opens up a richer understanding and appreciation of his work. David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. His books include Divinity and State, Gibbon and the “Watchmen of the Holy City” and The Transformation of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He is also the editor of many books, including the Penguin Classics editions of Gibbons's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson and David Hume's complete essays. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson famously argued that Shakespeare is enduringly popular because he “is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life.” Johnson's view largely prevailed until the late twentieth century, when it was challenged by a growing scepticism about the existence of a general human nature. In Thinking Through Shakespeare (Princeton UP, 2026), eminent literary critic David Womersley pushes back against this change by exploring how Shakespeare's plays think through—and invite us to think through—deep human questions of lasting importance.Thinking Through Shakespeare explores four perennial human problems: personal identity, the distinction between civilization and barbarism, the relation between political power and religious authority and the tension between means and ends. It examines the history of these problems, from antiquity to today, and traces how Shakespeare engages with them in the great tragedies—Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear—but also in his other plays. Without arguing that human nature is universal or unchanging, or that Shakespeare has some special access to timeless wisdom, the book makes the case that his drama is powerful because it serves as a forensic tool, probing rival perspectives on questions that have preoccupied many people in many societies over many centuries.By revealing in new ways how Shakespeare's plays are animated and driven by central human problems, and why he should again be viewed as the great poet of human nature, Thinking Through Shakespeare opens up a richer understanding and appreciation of his work. David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. His books include Divinity and State, Gibbon and the “Watchmen of the Holy City” and The Transformation of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He is also the editor of many books, including the Penguin Classics editions of Gibbons's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson and David Hume's complete essays. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

In the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson famously argued that Shakespeare is enduringly popular because he “is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life.” Johnson's view largely prevailed until the late twentieth century, when it was challenged by a growing scepticism about the existence of a general human nature. In Thinking Through Shakespeare (Princeton UP, 2026), eminent literary critic David Womersley pushes back against this change by exploring how Shakespeare's plays think through—and invite us to think through—deep human questions of lasting importance.Thinking Through Shakespeare explores four perennial human problems: personal identity, the distinction between civilization and barbarism, the relation between political power and religious authority and the tension between means and ends. It examines the history of these problems, from antiquity to today, and traces how Shakespeare engages with them in the great tragedies—Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear—but also in his other plays. Without arguing that human nature is universal or unchanging, or that Shakespeare has some special access to timeless wisdom, the book makes the case that his drama is powerful because it serves as a forensic tool, probing rival perspectives on questions that have preoccupied many people in many societies over many centuries.By revealing in new ways how Shakespeare's plays are animated and driven by central human problems, and why he should again be viewed as the great poet of human nature, Thinking Through Shakespeare opens up a richer understanding and appreciation of his work. David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. His books include Divinity and State, Gibbon and the “Watchmen of the Holy City” and The Transformation of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He is also the editor of many books, including the Penguin Classics editions of Gibbons's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson and David Hume's complete essays. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here

In the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson famously argued that Shakespeare is enduringly popular because he “is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life.” Johnson's view largely prevailed until the late twentieth century, when it was challenged by a growing scepticism about the existence of a general human nature. In Thinking Through Shakespeare (Princeton UP, 2026), eminent literary critic David Womersley pushes back against this change by exploring how Shakespeare's plays think through—and invite us to think through—deep human questions of lasting importance.Thinking Through Shakespeare explores four perennial human problems: personal identity, the distinction between civilization and barbarism, the relation between political power and religious authority and the tension between means and ends. It examines the history of these problems, from antiquity to today, and traces how Shakespeare engages with them in the great tragedies—Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear—but also in his other plays. Without arguing that human nature is universal or unchanging, or that Shakespeare has some special access to timeless wisdom, the book makes the case that his drama is powerful because it serves as a forensic tool, probing rival perspectives on questions that have preoccupied many people in many societies over many centuries.By revealing in new ways how Shakespeare's plays are animated and driven by central human problems, and why he should again be viewed as the great poet of human nature, Thinking Through Shakespeare opens up a richer understanding and appreciation of his work. David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. His books include Divinity and State, Gibbon and the “Watchmen of the Holy City” and The Transformation of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He is also the editor of many books, including the Penguin Classics editions of Gibbons's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson and David Hume's complete essays. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Part two of a taste of the wit and wisdom to be found in Boswell's biography of the legendary 18th-century English writer Dr Samuel Johnson. Part one is at https://open.spotify.com/episode/1lhToOu2qKG5VMbykurfqa?si=RBsH2OW4RUWfHIqIvOuCxA.For the text of this vlog, visit https://wwcorrigan.blogspot.com/2026/04/quotes-and-notes-on-james-boswells-life_23.html.#SamuelJohnson #DrJohnson #JamesBoswell #biography #literature #England #Ireland #Scotland

The conversation is in English, after a short introduction in Swedish. Den bästsäljande militärhistoriska författaren Antony Beevor är aktuell med "Rasputin och tsarfamiljens undergång", ett porträtt av bondsonen som underminerade det ryska tsardömets makt. Antony Beevor är en av vår tids främsta militärhistoriska författare, internationellt erkänd för sina banbrytande verk om andra världskriget. Hans böcker har översatts till över trettio språk och sålt i miljonupplagor, varav över en halv miljon exemplar bara på svenska. Han har belönats med flera prestigefulla utmärkelser, bland annat Samuel Johnson-priset, och är hedersdoktor vid University of Kent och University of Bath. Anna-Lena Laurén är en finlandssvensk journalist och författare, under många år bosatt i Ryssland. Från 2016 var hon Dagens Nyheters Rysslandskorrespondent, fram till att hon 2023 tvingades lämna landet på grund av kriget mot Ukraina. Sedan 2024 är hon DN:s Tysklandskorrespondent, bosatt i Berlin. I samarbete med Historiska Media. Från 14 april 2026 Jingel: Lucas Brar

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 21, 2026 is: orthography • or-THAH-gruh-fee • noun Orthography refers to the way in which the words of a language are spelled, or to the art of writing words with the proper letters according to standard usage. // As the winner of several spelling bees, she impressed her teachers with her exceptional grasp of orthography. See the entry > Examples: “Ormin, a medieval monk, sought to bring order to English orthography by addinng morre letterrs to worrds. August Thibaudin, a London professor, tried 9dding n3mbers. Our ideas for simplifying spelling have ranged from the rashonal to the redikulus to the döunnryt ubsërrd, and with each whimsical solution we seem to get further away from cognitive stability.” — Gabe Henry, Enough is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Eezier to Spell, 2025 Did you know? The concept of orthography (a term that comes from the Greek words orthos, meaning “right or true,” and graphein, meaning “to write”) was not something that really concerned English speakers until the introduction of the printing press in England during the 15th century. From that point on, English spelling became progressively more uniform. Our orthography has been relatively stable since the 1755 publication of Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language, with the notable exception of certain spelling reforms, such as the change of musick to music. Incidentally, many of these reforms were championed by Merriam-Webster's own Noah Webster.

Happy “Tax Day”! I wonder what the American Revolutionary Founders would think of ‘Tax Day’, on this momentous 250th Anniversary of our American Independence…? Links Videos / Clips [x] = Played The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer – American Archive of Public Broadcasting [x] 48:56--49:39 JIM LEHRER: What is the proper relationship, what should be the proper relationship between a chairman of the Fed and a president of the United States? ALAN GREENSPAN: Well, first of all, the Federal Reserve is an independent agency, and that means, basically, that there is no other agency of government which can overrule actions that we take. So long as that is in place and there is no evidence that the administration or the Congress or anybody else is requesting that we do things other than what we think is the appropriate thing, then what the relationships are don’t, frankly, matter. And I’ve had very good relationships with presidents. 1. [x] Understanding Fractional Reserve Banking: How It Fuels Economic Growth Fractional reserve banking is the banking system most countries use today. It requires banks to hold only a fraction of the money their customers deposit. That amount is the reserve requirement, and in most countries, it is set by the central bank. Banks can loan the rest of their deposits to other customers, which serves to expand the economy. It works like this. Banks accept deposits from individuals and businesses providing them with savings and checking accounts in return. Banks can loan out the bulk of those deposits to other customers to buy homes or cars, start businesses, or to fund other projects. If a customer deposits $100,000 into a bank and the reserve requirement is 5%, the bank can loan $95,000 out to other customers. Once the bank has loaned out $95,000, it in essence has created $195,000. Customers borrow that $95,000 and deposit some or all of it into other banks. If the reserve requirement is still 5%, then the other banks can loan $90,250 to new customers. And the process keeps repeating itself. Financial crisis occurs when the fractional banking system breaks down and the money supply does not expand. Many US banks had to shut down during the Great Depression, because so many people attempted to withdraw their money at the same time. Today, safeguards exist to prevent such an occurrence. 1. Dollar Decline, Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) & IMF as World Federal Bank – Jim Rickards – The Triffin Dilemma Headlines [x] = Mentioned / Discussed [x] Secretive Bilderberg group just met – but who knows what global elite said? | Washington DC | The Guardian [x] Prosecutors from Jeanine Pirro’s office tried to access Federal Reserve headquarters, but were turned away | CBS News [x] Grand jury declines criminal charges against 6 Democrats who urged military to reject illegal orders | CBS News [x] Google, Microsoft, Meta All Tracking You Even When You Opt Out, According to an Independent Audit | 404 Media WebinarTV Secretly Scraped Zoom Meetings of Anonymous Recovery Programs | 404 Media Farmer Arrested for Speaking Too Long at Datacenter Town Hall Vows to Fight | 404 Media The Rest [x] = Mentioned / Discussed Previous RWR Episodes [x] Road Warrior Radio with Chris Hinkley, April 14, 2026 | Hour 1 | Hour 2 Administrative Fourth Branch [x] The Birth of the Administrative State: Where It Came From and What It Means for Limited Government | The Heritage Foundation [x] The Rise and Rise of the Administrative State on JSTOR [x] America Is A Don't Ask Don't Tell Nation – Road Warrior Radio The Paper Ponzi Scheme [x] Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 27 May 1788 The bankruptcies in London have recommenced with new force. There is no saying where this fire will end. Perhaps in the general conflagration of all their paper. …nothing is necessary but a general panic, produced either by failures, invasion or any other cause, and the whole visionary fabric vanishes into air and shews that paper is poverty, that it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself. [x] Money, whence it came, where it went : Galbraith, John Kenneth, 1908-2006 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. Where something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent. [x] Economists John Kenneth Galbraith and Alan Greenspan appeared before… News Photo – Getty Images [x] Crash Could Not Happen Again, Heller, Galbraith and Greenspan Tell Congress – The New York Times [x] FRB Speech, Bernanke – On Milton Friedman’s ninetieth birthday – November 8, 2002 Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again. [x] Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval (1816) – Teaching American History We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. Our landholders, too, like theirs, retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries, and be contented with penury, obscurity, exile, and the glory of the nation. This example reads to us the salutary lesson, that private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression. [x] Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address (Mar 4, 1837) | The American Presidency Project The severe lessons of experience will, I doubt not, be sufficient to prevent Congress from again chartering such a monopoly, even if the Constitution did not present an insuperable objection to it. But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government. The power which the moneyed interest can exercise, when concentrated under a single head and with our present system of currency, was sufficiently demonstrated in the struggle made by the Bank of the United States. [x] Federal Reserve Act – Wikisource, the free online library Sec. 30.. The right to amend, alter, or repeal this Act is hereby expressly reserved. [x] hypothecate – definition and meaning [x] Websters 1828 – Webster’s Dictionary 1828 – Hypothecate HYPOTH’ECATE, verb transitive [Latin hypotheca, a pledge; Gr. to put under, to suppose.] 1. To pledge, and properly to pledge the keel of a ship, that is, the ship itself, as security for the repayment of money borrowed to carry on a voyage. In this case the lender hazards the loss of his money by the loss of the ship, but if the ship returns safe, he received his principal, with the premium or interest agreed on, though it may exceed the legal rate of interest. 2. To pledge, as goods. [x] 321gold: Gold and Economic Freedom by Alan Greenspan 1966 In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard. Triffin dilemma – Wikipedia The Shot Heard Round The World [x] Battles of Lexington and Concord – Wikipedia On This Day Events April 2026 Calendar of Public Holidays | Office Holidays Holidays and Observances in the United States in 2026 What day is it today? Important events every day ad-free | United States OTD Worldwide Public Holidays Wednesday April 15th 2026 | Office Holidays On This Day – What Happened on April 15 Today in History: April 15, the Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic | AP News What Happened on April 15 – On This Day What Happened on April 15 | HISTORY April 15 – Wikipedia What Happened On April 15 In History? 15 | April | 2020 | Executed Today Holidays Tax Day (US) Father Damien Day (Hawaii) Jackie Robinson Day (US) Titanic Remembrance Day (US) American Sign Language (ASL) Day (US) Historical Events 2013 – Boston Marathon Bombing: Two bombs made from pressure cookers exploded at the Boston Marathon finish line, killing two women and an 8-year-old boy and injuring more than 260. But: Who is Graham Fuller, and who is Uncle Ruslan…?123456789 1998 – Pol Pot, the architect of Cambodia's killing fields, dies of apparently natural causes while serving a life sentence imposed against him by his own Khmer Rouge. 1994 – The World Trade Organization is founded: The WTO coordinates and strives to liberalize international trade. It has been criticized for ignoring and escalating the negative social and environmental side-effects of globalization. 1990 – Sketch comedy TV series In Living Color premieres on FOX TV 1989 – A small group of students initiates pro-democracy protest on Tiananmen Square in Beijing: The death of reformer Hu Yaobang triggered the demonstrations, which grew in size and were brutally dispersed in the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4. 1986 – The United States launches retaliatory air strikes against Libya: Around 40 Libyans died in Operation El Dorado Canyon, including an infant girl. The attack was the United States’ response to the bombing of a Berlin discotheque on April 5, in which 3 people had died. 1974 – Members of the Symbionese Liberation Army held up a branch of the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco; a member of the group was SLA kidnap victim Patricia Hearst. (Hearst later said she had been forced to participate in the robbery.) 1960 – Guy Carawan sings We Shall Overcome to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Raleigh, popularizing the song as a protest anthem 1955 – Ray Kroc opened the first franchised McDonald's restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois. 1945 – The German concentration camp Bergen-Belsen is liberated: British and Canadian troops found about 53,000 prisoners inside the camp. Tens of thousands died before and after the liberation. 1935 – The Eastman Kodak Company launches Kodachrome: The photographic film was one of the most popular media used by professional and hobby photographers around the world. The product was discontinued in 2009 because of the advent of digital photography. 1924 – Rand McNally publishes its first road atlas. 1912 – British luxury liner RMS Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland just over two and a half hours after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage. Over 1,500 people died; 710 survived. 1900 – Philippine–American War: Filipino guerrillas launch a surprise attack on U.S. 1892 – The General Electric Company is formed. 1877 – World’s first home telephone is installed in Somerville, Massachusetts at the house of Charles Williams Jr. 1874 – First Impressionist art exhibition opens in Paris, features Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot 1865 – Abraham Lincoln died after being shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater the previous evening; Andrew Johnson was sworn in as the 17th president hours later. 1861 – Federal army of 75,000 volunteers is mobilized by President Abraham Lincoln at the start of the American Civil War 1802 – William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy see a “long belt” of daffodils, inspiring the former to pen I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. 1783 – Preliminary articles of peace ending the American Revolutionary War (or American War of Independence) are ratified. 1755 – Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language is published in London 1729 – Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew Passion premieres at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, Holy Roman Empire (now Germany) Births 1978 – Chris Stapleton, American country singer-songwriter and guitarist (48) 1922 – Harold Washington, American lawyer and politician, 51st Mayor of Chicago (died 1987) 1894 – Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet politician, 7th Premier of the Soviet Union (died 1971) 1858 – Émile Durkheim, French sociologist, psychologist, and philosopher [read Lark’s Collected Musings] (died 1917) 1843 – Henry James, American/English author (died 1916) 1841 – Joseph E. Seagram, Canadian businessman and politician, founded the Seagram Company Ltd (died 1919) 1832 – Wilhelm Busch, German poet, painter, illustrator (died 1908) 1452 – Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, sculptor, architect (died 1519) Deaths 2025 – Wink Martindale, American DJ, radio personality, and TV personality (born 1933) 2024 – Whitey Herzog, American professional baseball outfielder and manager (born 1931) 2018 – R. Lee Ermey, USMC drill instructor, American actor (born 1944) 1998 – Pol Pot, Cambodian general and politician, 29th Prime Minister of Cambodia (born 1925) 1990 – Greta Garbo, Swedish actress (born 1905) 1980 – Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher, writer, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1905) 1912 – Victims of the Titanic disaster: Archibald Butt, American general and journalist (born 1865) Benjamin Guggenheim, American businessman (born 1865) Charles Melville Hays, American businessman (born 1856) Edward Smith, English Captain (born 1850) Henry B. Harris, American producer and manager (born 1866) Henry Tingle Wilde, English chief officer (born 1872) Ida Straus, German-American businesswoman (born 1849) Isidor Straus, German-American businessman and politician (born 1845) Jack Phillips, English telegraphist (born 1887) Jacques Futrelle, American journalist and author (born 1875) James Paul Moody, English Sixth Officer (born 1887) John B. Thayer, American business and sportsman (born 1862) John Jacob Astor IV, American colonel, businessman, and author (born 1864) Thomas Andrews, Irish shipbuilder (born 1873) Wallace Hartley, English violinist and bandleader (born 1878) William McMaster Murdoch, Scottish First Officer (born 1873) William Thomas Stead, English journalist (born 1849) 1889 – Father Damien, Flemish missionary, priest, and saint (born 1840) 1865 – Abraham Lincoln, American lawyer, politician, 16th President of the United States (born 1809) Footnotes Jimenez, Guillermo. “The Tsarnaevs and the CIA: Who Is Graham Fuller?” Traces of Reality by Guillermo Jimenez, 2026, web.archive.org/web/20130503080950/tracesofreality.com/2013/04/29/the-tsarnaevs-and-the-cia-who-is-graham-fuller/. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. It has been confirmed that the Tsarnaev family, at least to some degree, have been connected to the Central Intelligence Agency for almost 20 years. In 1995, Ruslan Tsarni (formerly known as Ruslan Tsarnaev, affectionately known as “Uncle Ruslan,” the American corporate media darling who bemoaned the alleged actions of his nephews Dzhokar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev ) married the daughter of the former Deputy Director of the CIA's National Council on Intelligence, Graham Fuller. While the marriage of Samantha Ankara Fuller and Ruslan Tsarnaev was short-lived, reportedly ending in divorce in 1999, it appears that Ruslan and Graham Fuller were more than just father-in-law and son.  They may also been business partners. These key details in the history of the Tsarnaev family and the CIA were first reported by Daniel Hopsicker of Mad Cow Morning News, and the marriage of Fuller's daughter and Ruslan has indeed been confirmed by Al-Monitor reporter, Laura Rozen. ↩ Hopsicker, Daniel. “Boston Bombers' Uncle Married Daughter of Top CIA Official.” MadCow Morning News, 26 Apr. 2013, www.madcowprod.com/2013/04/26/boston-bombers-uncle-married-daughter-of-top-cia-official/. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. ↩ Hopsicker, Daniel. ““Uncle Ruslan” Aided Terrorists from CIA Official's Home.” MadCow Morning News, 29 Apr. 2013, www.madcowprod.com/2013/04/29/uncle-ruslan-aid-to-terrorists-from-cia-officials-home/. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. ↩ Corbett, James. “Who Is Graham Fuller?” The Corbett Report, 2026, corbettreport.com/who-is-graham-fuller/. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. ↩ “Graham Fuller – Wikispooks.” Wikispooks.com, 2026, wikispooks.com/wiki/Graham_Fuller. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. ↩ Wikipedia Contributors. “Graham E. Fuller.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 30 Mar. 2026, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_E._Fuller. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. ↩ Wikipedia Contributors. “Islamism.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Feb. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamism. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. ↩ Wikipedia Contributors. “Tablighi Jamaat.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Apr. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablighi_Jamaat. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. ↩ Engdahl, F. William. “Graham E. Fuller Where Were You on the Night of July 15?” Archive.org, 9 Aug. 2016, www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO9Aug2016.php. Accessed 15 Apr. 2026. ↩

James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson left such an impression on me that I've felt compelled to share my highlights from this pioneering biography. For the text of this vlog, visit https://wwcorrigan.blogspot.com/2026/04/quotes-and-notes-on-james-boswells-life.html.#SamuelJohnson #DrJohnson #JamesBoswell #biography #literature

Uno de mis héroes literarios es Samuel Johnson. Nadie, a excepción de Shakespeare, ha hecho más por la lengua inglesa ni ha mostrado una mayor pasión por las palabras. El caso es que, cuando no estaba redactando su celebre diccionario, cuidaba a su gato, al que mimaba y compraba ostras. Ya se sabe: puedes escribir el mayor diccionario de la lengua inglesa, pero tu humanidad se revela por cómo cuidabas al gato.Lo mismo cabría decir en relación al gato de Jésica. Me gustó escuchar lo que contó la odontóloga este martes: que su expareja, el exministro Ábalos, se gastó seiscientos pavos en una operación cuando se rompió la pierna —el gato, digo, no Jésica; por lo que sea, Jésica dijo la pierna, no la pata—. Lo que la gente no entiende es el gato no quiere ostras, porque le valen sardinas, ni quiere un piso en Plaza España, porque con una caja de cartón se basta. El gato no quiere ascensos, porque se encarama cuando le place y luego se deja caer con elegancia. El gato, como decia el poema de Neruda, solo quiere ser gato. No quiere mordidas, porque reserva los colmillos para lo que le interesa, ni firma recibos ni devuelve favores: todo lo màs, se limpia los bigotes, se sacude la cola y se ovilla en su cojín. Carlos, nunca he conocido un gato director general ni un gato subsecretario, ni por supuesto un gato exministro en el banquillo. Por algo será.Seamos felinos, porque quien nada debe, nada teme, y duerme a pierna o a pata suelta. No nos hagamos daño.

Uno de mis héroes literarios es Samuel Johnson. Nadie, a excepción de Shakespeare, ha hecho más por la lengua inglesa ni ha mostrado una mayor pasión por las palabras. El caso es que, cuando no estaba redactando su celebre diccionario, cuidaba a su gato, al que mimaba y compraba ostras. Ya se sabe: puedes escribir el mayor diccionario de la lengua inglesa, pero tu humanidad se revela por cómo cuidabas al gato.Lo mismo cabría decir en relación al gato de Jésica. Me gustó escuchar lo que contó la odontóloga este martes: que su expareja, el exministro Ábalos, se gastó seiscientos pavos en una operación cuando se rompió la pierna —el gato, digo, no Jésica; por lo que sea, Jésica dijo la pierna, no la pata—. Lo que la gente no entiende es el gato no quiere ostras, porque le valen sardinas, ni quiere un piso en Plaza España, porque con una caja de cartón se basta. El gato no quiere ascensos, porque se encarama cuando le place y luego se deja caer con elegancia. El gato, como decia el poema de Neruda, solo quiere ser gato. No quiere mordidas, porque reserva los colmillos para lo que le interesa, ni firma recibos ni devuelve favores: todo lo màs, se limpia los bigotes, se sacude la cola y se ovilla en su cojín. Carlos, nunca he conocido un gato director general ni un gato subsecretario, ni por supuesto un gato exministro en el banquillo. Por algo será.Seamos felinos, porque quien nada debe, nada teme, y duerme a pierna o a pata suelta. No nos hagamos daño.Conviértete en un supporter de este podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mas-noticias--4412383/support.ESCUCHAR RADIO 

This episode is titled: The Story of Sack Wine in Early Modern Europe.Imagine walking into the lively taverns and candlelit theaters of early modern Europe, where one drink stood out among both the fashionable and the literary: sack. Think of Sir John Falstaff, the unforgettable character from Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part II, delivering his famous speech. With great enthusiasm, he says that if he had a thousand sons, the first lesson he would teach—the most important of all—would be to avoid weak, watery drinks and instead dedicate themselves to sack.Falstaff's love for sack was not just a joke; it reflected a real trend that spread through England and beyond in the 16th and 17th centuries. Sack was a fortified white wine—rich, strong, and often sweet—similar to what we now call sherry or white port. The origin of the name “sack” is still debated. According to several dictionaries cited by Wikipedia, some believe it comes from the French word “sec,” meaning “dry,” though this explanation has certain linguistic uncertainties.Others suggest it may derive from the Spanish word “sacar,” which means “to withdraw,” referring to the process of drawing wine from a solera. Some historians suggest that the name “sack” comes from the Spanish verb “sacar,” which means “to withdraw,” possibly in reference to drawing wine from barrels for export. The wine itself was traditionally produced in the vineyards of Spain and Portugal. In Spain, the Canary Islands became a major producer after colonization in the 1400s, and regions such as Málaga, Jerez, and Andalusia also produced well-known types. Portugal also played a part, with wines from the north and center of the country, and especially from Madeira. Merchants labeled their shipments by where they came from—” Canary sack,” “Malaga sack,” “Madeira,” or “Jerez”—and these names appeared in trade records from London to Dublin.The trade was massive, especially to the British Isles. According to Jerez-Xeres-Sherry, in 1517, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, Don Alfonso Pérez de Guzmán, granted extended privileges to English merchants operating in Sanlúcar, many of whom were facing difficulties with the Inquisition. Later, in the 1530s, English merchants formed the Spanish Company to facilitate trade, exporting cloth and importing sack wine. So intertwined were the goods that some wines earned the cheeky nickname “bastard”—a nod to the English cloth measure and the back. Even war did not stop people from wanting to sack. During the Anglo-Spanish conflict from 1585 to 1604, smugglers risked crossing the Channel to keep the wine coming when official trade was blocked. Official trade faltered.One of the most memorable moments was Sir Francis Drake's bold raid on Cádiz in 1587, when he set out to “singe the King of Spain's beard.” During the attack, Drake's men took about 2,900 pipes, or butts, of sack, with each holding around 600 liters. This added up to more than a million liters of wine taken as loot. Back in England, drinking this captured wine became a patriotic gesture, a playful way to celebrate victory while enjoying the spoils.Sack became a big part of English culture. On the London stage, it was often mentioned. Ben Jonson praised “a pure rich cup of Canary wine” in his poetry, and later writers, such as John Dryden, who was appointed poet laureate in 1670, according to Samuel Johnson, even accepted barrels of sack as payment. But Shakespeare was its biggest fan. Falstaff talks about the amazing effects of sack: it clears the mind, sharpens wit, warms the blood, and gives courage. “Skill in the weapon is nothing without sack,” he says, and his friends joke about how much he loves it. Audiences in the late 1590s would have recognized sack everywhere, seeing it as a symbol of English energy.Read the full textMore Podcasts

Ahead of her new book What's So Great About the Great Books? coming out in April, Naomi Kanakia and I talked about literature from Herodotus to Tony Tulathimutte. We touched on Chaucer, Anglo-Saxon poetry, Scott Alexander, Shakespeare, William James, Helen deWitt, Marx and Engels, Walter Scott, Les Miserables, Jhootha Sach, the Mahabharata, and more. Naomi also talked about some of her working habits and the history and future of the Great Books movement. Naomi, of course, writes Woman of Letters here on Substack.TranscriptHenry Oliver: Today, I am talking with Naomi Kanakia. Naomi is a novelist, a literary critic, and most importantly she writes a Substack called Woman of Letters, and she has a new book coming out, What's So Great About the Great Books? Naomi, welcome.Naomi Kanakia: Thanks for having me on.Oliver: How is the internet changing the way that literature gets discussed and criticized, and what is that going to mean for the future of the Great Books?Kanakia: How is the internet changing it? I can really speak to only how it has changed it for me. I started off as a writer of young adult novels and science fiction, and there's these very active online fan cultures for those two things.I was reading the Great Books all through that time. I started in 2010 through today. In the 2010s, it really felt like there was not a lot of online discussion of classic literature. Maybe that was just me and I wasn't finding it, but it didn't necessarily feel like there was that community.I think because there are so many strong, public-facing institutions that discuss classic literature, like the NYRB, London Review of Books, a lot of journals, and universities, too. But now on Substack, there are a number of blogs—yours, mine, a number of other ones—that are devoted to classic literature. All of those have these commenters, a community of commenters. I also follow bloggers who have relatively small followings who are reading Tolstoy, reading Middlemarch, reading even much more esoteric things.I know that for me, becoming involved in this online culture has given me much more of an awareness that there are many people who are reading the classics on their own. I think that was always true, but now it does feel like it's more of a community.Oliver: We are recording this the day after the Washington Post book section has been removed. You don't see some sort of relationship between the way these literary institutions are changing online and the way the Great Books are going to be conceived of in the future? Because the Great Books came out of a an old-fashioned, saving-the-institutions kind of radical approach to university education. We're now moving into a world where all those old things seem to be going.Kanakia: Yes. I agree. The Great Books began in the University of Chicago and Columbia University. If you look into the history of the movement, it really was about university education and the idea that you would have a common core and all undergraduates would read these books. The idea that the Great Books were for the ordinary person was really an afterthought, at least for Mortimer Adler and those original Great Books guys. Now, the Great Books in the university have had a resurgence that we can discuss, but I do think there's a lot more life and vitality in the kind of public-facing humanities than there has been.I talked to Irina Dumitrescu, who writes for TLS (The Times Literary Supplement), LRB (The London Review of Books), a lot of these places, and she also said the same thing—that a lot of these journals are going into podcasts, and they're noticing a huge interest in the humanities and in the classics even at the same time as big institutions are really scaling back on those things. Humanities majors are dropping, classics majors are getting cut, book coverage at major periodicals is going down. It does seem like there are signals that are conflicting. I don't really know totally what to make of it. I do think there is some relation between those two things.Ted Gioia on Substack is always talking about how culture is stagnant, basically, and one of the symptoms of that is that “back list” really outsells “front list” for books. Even in 2010, 50 percent of the books that were sold were front-list titles, books that had been released in the last 18 months. Now it's something like only 35 percent of books or something like that are front-list titles. These could be completely wrong, but there's been a trend.I think the decrease in interest in front-list books is really what drives the loss of these book-review pages because they mostly review front-list books. So, I think that does imply that there's a lot of interest in old books. That's what our stagnant culture means.Oliver: Why do you think your own blog is popular with the rationalists?Kanakia: I don't know for certain. There was a story I wrote that was a joke. There are all these pop nonfiction books that aim to prove something that seems counterintuitive, so I wrote a parody of one of those where I aim to prove that reading is bad for you. This book has many scientific studies that show the more you read, the worse it is because it makes you very rigid.Scott Alexander, who is the archrationalist, really liked that, and he added me to his blog roll. Because of that, I got a thousand rationalist subscribers. I have found that rationalists at least somewhat interested in the classics. I think they are definitely interested in enduring sources of value. I've observed a fair amount of interest.Oliver: How much of a lay reader are you really? Because you read scholarship and critics and you can just quote John Gilroy in the middle of a piece or something.Kanakia: Yeah. That is a good question. I have definitely gotten more interested in secondary literature. In my book, I really talk about being a lay reader and personally having a nonacademic approach to literature. I do think that, over 15 years of being a lay reader, I have developed a lot of knowledge.I've also learned the kind of secondary literature that is really important. I think having historical context adds a lot and is invaluable. Right now I'm rereading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. When I first read it in 2010, I hardly knew anything about French history. I was even talking online with someone about how most people who read Les Miserables think it's set in the French Revolution. That's basically because Americans don't really know anything about French history.Everything makes just a lot more sense the more you know about the time because it was written for people in it. For people in 1860s France, who knew everything about their own recent history, that really adds a lot to it. I still don't tend to go that much into interpretive literature, literature that tries to do readings of the stories or tell me the meaning of the stories. I feel like I haven't really gotten that much out of that.Oliver: How long have you been learning Anglo-Saxon?Kanakia: I went through a big Anglo-Saxon phase. That was in 2010. It started because I started reading The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. There is a great app online called General Prologue created by one of your countrymen, Terry Richardson [NB it is Terry Jones], who loved Middle English. In this app, he recites the Middle English of the General Prologue. I started listening to this app, and I thought, I just really love the rhythms and the sounds of Middle English. And it's quite easy to learn. So then, I got really into that.And then I thought, but what about Anglo-Saxon? I'm very bad at languages. I studied Latin for seven years in middle school and high school. I never really got very far, but I thought, Anglo-Saxon has to be the easiest foreign language you can learn, right? So, I got into it.I cannot sight read Anglo-Saxon, but I really got into Anglo-Saxon poetry. I really liked the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Most people probably would not like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle because it's very repetitive, but that makes it great if you're a language learner because every entry is in this very repetitive structure. I just felt such a connection. I get in trouble when I say this kind of stuff, because I'm never quiet sure if it's 100 percent true. But it's certainly one of the oldest vernacular literatures in Europe. It's just so much older than most of the other medieval literature I've read. And it just was such a window into a different part of history I never knew about.Oliver: And you particularly like “The Dream of the Rood”?Kanakia: Yeah, “The Dream of the Rood” is my favorite Anglo-Saxon poem. “The Dream of the Rood” is a poem that is told from the point of view of Christ's cross. A man is having a dream. In this dream he encounters Christ's cross, and Christ's cross starts reciting to him basically the story of the crucifixion. At the end, the cross is buried. I don't know, it was just so haunting and powerful. Yeah, it was one of my favorites.Oliver: Why do you think Byron is a better poet than Alexander Pope?Kanakia: This is an argument I cannot get into. I think this is coming up because T. S. Eliot felt that Alexander Pope was a great poet because he really exemplified the spirit of the age. I don't know. I've tried to read Pope. It just doesn't do it for me. Whereas with Byron, I read Don Juan and found it entertaining. I enjoyed it. Then, his lyric poetry is just more entertaining to read. With Alexander Pope, I'm learning a lot about what kind of poetry people wrote in the 18th century, but the joy is not there.Oliver: Okay. Can we do a quick fire round where I say the name of a book and you just say what you think of it, whatever you think of it?Kanakia: Sure.Oliver: Okay. The Odyssey.Kanakia: The Odyssey. Oh, I love The Odyssey. It has a very strange structure, where it starts with Telemachus and then there's this flashback in the middle of it. It is much more readable than The Iliad; I'll say that.Oliver: Herodotus.Kanakia: Herodotus is wild. Going into Herodotus, I really thought it was about the Persian war, which it is, but it's mostly a general overview of everything that Herodotus knew, about anything. It's been a long time since I read it. I really appreciate the voice of Herodotus, how human it is, and the accumulation of facts. It was great.Oliver: I love the first half actually. The bit about the Persian war I'm less interested in, but the first half I think is fantastic. I particularly love the Egypt book.Kanakia: Oh yeah, the Egypt book is really good.Oliver: All those like giant beetles that are made of fire or whatever; I can't remember the details, but it's completely…Kanakia: The Greeks are also so fascinated by Egypt. They go down there like what is going on out there? Then, most of what we know about Egypt comes from this Hellenistic period, when the Greeks went to Egypt. Our Egyptian kings list comes from the Hellenistic period where some scholar decided to sort out what everybody was up to and put it all into order. That's why we have such an orderly story about Egypt. That's the story that the Greeks tried to tell themselves.Oliver: Marcus Aurelius.Kanakia: Marcus Aurelius. When I first read The Meditations, which I loved, obviously, I thought, “being the Roman emperor cannot be this hard.” It really was a black pill moment because I thought, “if the emperor of Rome is so unhappy, maybe human power really doesn't do it.”Knowing more about Marcus Aurelius, he did have quite a difficult life. He was at war for most of his—just stuck in the region in Germany for ages. He had various troubles, but yeah, it really was very stoic. It was, oh, I just have to do my duty. Very “heavy is the head that wears the crown” kind of stuff. I thought, “okay, I guess being Roman emperor is not so great.”Oliver: Omar Khayyam.Kanakia: Omar Khayyam. Okay, I've only read The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward Fitzgerald, which I loved, but I cannot formulate a strong opinion right now.Oliver: As You Like It.Kanakia: No opinions.Oliver: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.Kanakia: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. I do have an opinion about this, which is that they should make a redacted version of Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. I normally am not a big believer in abridgements because I feel like whatever is there is there. But, Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, first of all, has a long portion before Boswell even meets Johnson. That portion drags; it's not that great. Then it has all these like letters that Johnson wrote, which also are not that great. What's really good is when Boswell just reports everything Johnson ever said, which is about half the book. You get a sense of Johnson's conversation and his personality, and that is very gripping. I've definitely thought that with a different presentation, this could still be popular. People would still read this.Oliver: The Communist Manifesto.Kanakia: The Communist Manifesto. It's very stirring. I love The Communist Manifesto. It has very haunting, powerful lines. I won't try to quote from it because I'll misquote them.Oliver: But it is remarkably well written.Kanakia: Oh yeah, it is a great work of literature.Oliver: Yeah.Kanakia: I read Capital [Das Kapital], which is not a great work of literature, and I would venture to say that it is not necessarily worth reading. It really feels like Marx's reputation is built on other political writings like The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and works like that, which really seem to have a lot more meat on the bone than Capital.Oliver: Pragmatism by William James.Kanakia: Pragmatism. I mean, I've mentioned that in my book. I love William James in general. I think William James was writing in this 19th-century environment where it seemed like some form of skepticism was the only rational solution. You couldn't have any source of value, and he really tried to cut through that with Pragmatism and was like, let's just believe the things that are good to believe. It is definitely at least useful to think, although someone else can always argue with you about what is useful to believe. But, as a personal guide for belief, I think it is still useful.Oliver: Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw.Kanakia: No strong opinions. It was a long time ago that I read Major Barbara.Oliver: Tell me what you like about James Fenimore Cooper.Kanakia: James Fenimore Cooper. Oh, this is great. I have basically a list of Great Books that I want to read, but four or five years ago, I thought, “what's in all the other books that I know the names of but that are not reputed, are not the kind of books you still read?”That was when I read Walter Scott, who I really love. And I just started reading all kinds of books that were kind of well known but have kind of fallen into literary disfavor. In almost every case, I felt like I got a lot out of these books. So, nowadays when I approach any realm of literature, I always look for those books.In 19th-century American literature, the biggest no-longer-read book is The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, which was America's first bestseller. He was the first American novelist that had a high reputation in Europe. The Last of the Mohicans is kind of a historical romance, à la Walter Scott, but much more tightly written and much more tightly plotted.Cooper has written five novels, the Leatherstocking Tales, that are all centered around this very virtuous, rough-hewn frontiersman, Natty Bumppo. He has his best friend, Chingachgook, who is the last of the Mohicans. He's the last of his tribe. And the two of these guys are basically very sad and stoic. Chingachgook is distanced from his tribe. Chingachgook has a tribe of Native Americans that he hates—I want to say it's the Huron. He's always like, “they're the bad ones,” and he's always fighting them. Then, Natty Bumppo doesn't really love settled civilization. He's not precisely at war with it, but he does not like the settlers. They're kind of stuck in the middle. They have various adventures, and I just thought it was so haunting and powerful.I've been reading a lot of other 19th-century American literature, and virtually none of it treats Native Americans with this kind of respect. There's a lot of diversity in the Native American characters; there's really an attempt to show how their society works and the various ways that leadership and chiefship works among them. There's this very haunting moment in The Last of the Mohicans, where this aged chief, Tamenund, comes out and starts speaking. This is a chief who, in American mythology, was famous for being a friend to the white people. But, James Fenimore Cooper writing in the 1820s has Tamenund come out at 80 years old and say, “we have to fight; we have to fight the white people. That's our only option.” It was just such a powerful moment and such a powerful book.I was really, really enthused. I read all of these Leatherstocking Tales. It was also a very strange experience to read these books that are generally supposed to be very turgid and boring, and then I read them and was like, “I understand. I'm so transported.” I understand exactly why readers in the 1820s loved this.Oliver: Which Walter Scott books do you like?Kanakia: I love all the Walter Scott books I've read, but the one I liked best was Kenilworth. Have you ever read Kenilworth?Oliver: I don't know that one.Kanakia: Yeah, it's about Elizabeth I, who had a romantic relationship with one of her courtiers.Oliver: The Earl of Essex?Kanakia: Yeah. She really thought they were going to get married, but then it turned out he was secretly married. Basically, I guess the implication is that he killed his wife in order to marry Queen Elizabeth I. It's a novel all about him and that situation, and it just felt very tightly plotted. I really enjoyed it.Oliver: What did you think of Rejection?Kanakia: Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte? Initially when I read this book, I enjoyed it, but I was like, “life cannot possibly be this sad.” It's five or six stories about these people who just have nothing going on. Their lives are so miserable, they can't find anyone to sleep with, and they're just doomed to be alone forever. I was like, “life can't be this bad.” But now thinking back over it, it is one of the most memorable books I've read in the last year. It really sticks with you. I feel like my opinion of this book has gone up a lot in retrospect.Oliver: How antisemitic is the House of Mirth?Kanakia: That is a hotly debated question, which I mentioned in my book. I think there has been a good case made that Edith Wharton, the author of House of Mirth, who was from an old New York family, was herself fairly antisemitic and did not personally like Jewish people. What she portrays in this book is that this old New York society also was highly suspicious of Jewish people and was organized to keep Jewish people out.In this book there is a rich Jewish man, Simon Rosedale, and there's a poor woman, Lily Bart. Lily Bart's main thing is whether she's going to marry the poor guy, Lawrence Selden, or the rich guy, Percy Gryce. She can't choose. She doesn't want to be poor, but she also is always bored by the rich guys. Meanwhile, through the whole book, there's Simon Rosedale, who's always like, “you should marry me.” He's the rich Jewish guy. He's like, “you should marry me. I will give you lots of money. You can do whatever you want.”Everybody else kind of just sees her as a woman and as a wife; he really sees her as an ally in his social climbing. That's his main motivation. The book is relatively clear that he has a kind of respect for her that nobody else does. Then, over the course of the book, she also gains a lot more respect for him. Basically, late in the book, she decides to marry him, but she has fallen a lot in the world. He's like, “that particular deal is not available anymore,” but he does offer her another deal that—although she finds it not to her taste—is still pretty good.He basically is like, “I'll give you some money, you'll figure out how to rehabilitate your reputation, and later down the line, we can figure something out.” So, I think with a great author like Edith Wharton, there's power in these portrayals. I felt it hard to come away from it feeling like the book is like a really antisemitic book.Oliver: Now, you note that the Great Books movement started out as something quite socially aspirational. Do you think it's still like that?Kanakia: I do think so. Yeah. For me, that's 100 percent what it was because I majored in econ. I always felt kind of inadequate as a writer against people who had majored in English. Then I started off as a science fiction writer, young adult writer, and I was like, “I'm going to read all these Great Books and then I'll have read the books that everybody else has read.” In my mind, that's also what it was—that there was some upper crust or literary society that was reading all these Great Books.That's really what did it. I do think there's still an element of aspiration to it because it's a club that you can join, that anyone can join. It's very straightforward to be a Great Books reader, and so I think there's still something there. I think because the Great Books movement has such a democratic quality to it, it actually doesn't get you to the top socially, which has always been the true, always been the case. But, that's okay. As long as you end up higher than where you started, that's fine.Oliver: What makes a book great?Kanakia: I talk about it this in the book, and I go through many different authors' conceptions of what makes a book great or what constitutes a classic. I don't know that anyone has come up with a really satisfying answer. The Horatian formulation from Horace—that a book is great or an author is great if it has lasted for a hundred years—is the one that seems to be the most accurate. Like, any book that's still being read a hundred years after it was written has a greatness.I do think that T. S. Eliott's formulation—that a civilization at its height produces certain literature and that literature partakes of the greatness of the civilization and summarizes the greatness of the civilization—does seem to have some kind of truth to it.But it's hard, right? Because the greatest French novel is In Search of Lost Time, but I don't know that anyone would say that the France in the 1920s was at its height. It's not a prescriptive thing, but it does seem like the way we read many of these Great Books, like Moby Dick, it feels like you're like communing with the entire society that produced it. So, maybe there's something there.Oliver: Now, you've used a list from Clifton Fadiman.Kanakia: Yes.Oliver: Rather than from Mortimer Adler or Harold Bloom or several others. Why this list?Kanakia: Well, the best reason is that it's actually the list I've just been using for the last 15 years. I went to a science fiction convention in 2009, Readercon, and at this science fiction convention was Michael Dirda, who was a Washington Post book critic. He had recently come out with his book, Classics for Pleasure, which I also bought and liked. But he said that the list he had always used was this Clifton Fadiman book. And so when I decided to start reading the Great Books, I went and got that book. I have perused many other lists over time, but that was always the list that seemed best to me.It seemed to have like the best mix. There's considerable variation amongst these lists, but there's also a lot of overlap. So any of these lists is going to have Dickens on it, and Tolstoy, and stuff like that. So really, you're just thinking about, “aside from Dickens and Tolstoy and George Eliot and Walt Whitman and all these people, who are the other 50 authors that you're going be reading?”The Mortimer Adler list is very heavy on philosophy. It has Plotinus on it. It has all these scientific works. I don't know, it didn't speak to me as much. Whereas, this Clifton Fadiman and John Major list has all these Eastern works on it. It has The Tale of Genji, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Story of the Stone, and that just spoke to me a little bit more.Oliver: What modern books will be on a future Great Books list, whether it's from someone alive or someone since the war.Kanakia: Have you ever heard of Robert Caro?Oliver: Sure.Kanakia: Yeah. I think his Lyndon Johnson books are great books. They have changed the field of biography. They're so complete, they seem to summarize an entire era, epoch. They're highly rated, but I feel like they're underrated as literature.What else? I was actually a little bit surprised in this Clifton Fadiman-John Major book, which came out in 1999, that there are not more African Americans in their list. Like, Invisible Man definitely seemed like a huge missed work. You know, it's hard. You would definitely want a book that has undergone enough critical evaluation that people are pretty certain that it is great. A lot of things that are more recent have not undergone that evaluation yet, but Invisible Man has, as have some works by Martin Luther King.Oliver: What about The Autobiography of Malcolm X?Kanakia: I would have to reread. I feel like it hasn't been evaluated much as a literary document.Oliver: Helen DeWitt?Kanakia: It's hard to say. It's so idiosyncratic, The Last Samurai, but it is certainly one of the best novels of the last 25 years.Oliver: Yeah.Kanakia: It is hard to say, because there's nothing else quite like it. But I would love if The Last Samurai was on a list like this; that would be amazing.Oliver: If someone wants to try the Great Books, but they think that those sort of classic 19th-century novels are too difficult—because they're long and the sentences are weird or whatever—what else should they do? Where else should they start?Kanakia: Well, it depends on what they're into, or it depends on their personality type. I think like there are people who like very, very difficult literature. There are people who are very into James Joyce and Proust. I think for some people the cost-benefit is better. If they're going to be pouring over some book for a long time, they would prefer if it was overtly difficult.If they're not like that, then I would say, there are many Great Books that are more accessible. Hemingway is a good one and Grapes of Wrath is wonderful. The 19th-century American books tend to be written in a very different register than the English books. If you read Moby Dick, it feels like it's written in a completely different language than Charles Dickens, even though they're writing essentially at the same time.Oliver: Is there too much Freud on the list that you've used?Kanakia: Maybe. I know that Interpretation of Dreams is on that list, which I've tried to read and have decided life is too short. I didn't really buy it, but I have read a fair amount of Freud. My impression of Freud was always that I would read Freud and somehow it would just seem completely fanciful or far out, like wouldn't ring true. But then when I started reading Freud, it was more the opposite. I was like, oh yeah, this seems very, very true.Like this battle between like the id and the ego and the super ego, and this feeling that like the psyche is at war with itself. Human beings really desire to be singular and exceptional, but then you're constantly under assault by the reality principle, which is that you're insignificant. That all seemed completely true. But then he tries to cure this somehow, which does not seem a curable problem. And he also situates the problem in some early sexual development, which also did not necessarily ring true. But no, I wouldn't say there's too much. Freud is a lot of fun. People should read Freud.Oliver: Which of the Great Books have you really not liked?Kanakia: I do get asked this quite a bit. I would say the Great Book that I really felt like—at least in translation—was not that rewarding in an unabridged version was Don Quixote. Because at least half the length of Don Quixote is these like interpolated novellas that are really long and tedious. I felt Don Quixote was a big slog. But maybe someday I'll go back and reread it and love it. Who knows?Oliver: Now you wrote that the question of biography is totally divorced from the question of what art is and how it operates. What do you think of George Orwell's supposition that if Shakespeare came back tomorrow, and we found out he used to rape children that we should—we would not say, you know, it's fine to carry on to doing that because he might write another King Lear.Kanakia: Well, if we discovered that Shakespeare was raping children, he should go to prison for that. No. It's totally divorced in both senses. You don't get any credit in the court of law because you are the writer of King Lear. If I murdered someone and then I was hauled in front of a judge and they were like, oh, Naomi's a genius, I wouldn't get off for murder. Nor should I get off for murder.So in terms of like whether we would punish Shakespeare for his crime of raping children, I don't think King Lear should count at all, but it's never used that way. It's never should someone go to prison or not for their crimes, because they're a genius. It's always used the other way, which is should we read King Lear knowing that the author raped children, but I also feel like that is immaterial. If you read King Lear, you're not enabling someone to rape children.Oliver: There's an almost endless amount of discussion these days about the Great Books and education and the value of the humanities, and what's the future of it all. What is your short opinion on that?Kanakia: My short opinion is that the Great Books at least are going to be fine. The Great Books will continue to be read, and they would even survive the university. All these books predate the university and they will survive the university. I feel like the university has stewarded literature in its own way for a while now and has made certain choices in that stewardship. I think if that stewardship was given up to more voluntary associations that had less financial support, then I think the choices would probably be very different. But I still think the greatest works would survive.Oliver: Now this is a quote from the book: “I am glad that reactionaries love the Great Books. They've invited a Trojan horse into their own camp.” Tell us what you mean by that.Kanakia: Let's say you believed in Christian theocracy, that you thought America should be organized on explicitly Christian principles. And because you believe in Christian theocracy, you organize a school that teaches the Great Books. Many of these schools that are Christian schools that have Great Books programs will also teach Nietzsche. They definitely put some kind of spin on Nietzsche. But they will teach anti-Christ, and that is a counterpoint to Christian morality and Christian theology. There are many things that you'll read in the Great Books that are corrosive to various kinds of certainties.If someone who I think is bad starts educating themselves in the Great Books, I don't think that the Great Books are going to make them worse from my perspective. So it's good.Oliver: How did reading the Mahabharata change you?Kanakia: Oh yeah, so the Mahabharata is a Hindu epic from, let's say, the first century AD. I'm Indian and most Indians are familiar with the basic outline of the Mahabharata story because it's told in various retellings, and there's a TV serial that my parents would rent from the Indian store growing up and we would watch it tape by tape. So I'm very familiar with it. Like there's never been a time I have not known this story.But I was also familiar with the idea that there is a written version in Sanskrit that's extremely long. It is 10 times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. This Mahabharata story is not that long. I've read a version of it that's about 800 pages long. So how could something that's 10 times this long be the same? A new unabridged translation came out 10 years ago. So I started reading it, and it basically contains the entire Sanskrit Vedic worldview in it.I had never been exposed to this very coherently laid-out version of what I would call Hindu cosmology and ethics. Hindus don't really get taught those things in a very organized way. The book is basically about dharma, the principle of rightness and how this principle of rightness orders the universe and how it basically results in everybody getting their just deserts in various ways. As I was reading the book, I was like, this seems very true that there is some cosmic rebalancing here, and that everything does turn out more or less the way it should, which is not something that I can defend on a rational level.But just reading the book, it just made me feel like, yes, that is true. There is justice, the universe is organized by justice. It took me about a year to read the whole thing. I started waking up at 5:00 a.m. and reading for an hour each morning, and it just was a really magical, profound experience that brought me a lot closer to my grandmother's religious beliefs.Oliver: Is it ever possible to persuade someone with arguments that they should read literature, or is it just something that they have to have an inclination toward and then follow someone's example? Because I feel like we have so many columns and op-eds and “books are good because of X reason, and it's very important because of Y reason.” And like, who cares? No one cares. If you are persuaded, you take all that very seriously and you argue about what exactly are the precise reasons we should say. And if you're not persuaded, you don't even know this is happening.And what really persuades you is like, oh, Naomi sounds pretty compelling about the Mahabharata. That sounds cool. I'll try that. It's much more of a temperamental, feelingsy kind of thing. Is it possible to argue people into thinking about this differently? Or should we just be doing what we do and setting an example and hoping that people will follow.Kanakia: As to whether it's possible or not, I do not know. But I do think these columns are too ambitious. A thousand-word column and the imagined audience for this column is somebody who doesn't read books at all, who doesn't care about literature at all. And then in a thousand-word column, you're going to persuade them to care about literature. This is no good. It's so unnecessary.Whereas there's a much broader range of people who love to read books, but have never picked up Moby Dick or have never picked up Middlemarch, or who like maybe loved Middlemarch, but never thought maybe I should then go on and read Jane Austen and George Eliot.I think trying to shift people from “I don't read books at all; reading books is not something I do,” to being a Great Books card-carrying lover of literature is a lot. I really aim for a much lower result than that, which is to whatever extent people are interested in literature, they should pursue that interest. And as the rationalists would say, there's a lot of alpha in that; there's a lot to be gained from converting people who are somewhat interested into people who are very interested.Oliver: If there was a more widespread practice of humanism in education and the general culture, would that make America into a more liberal country in any way?Kanakia: What do you mean by humanism?Oliver: You know, the old-fashioned liberal arts approach, the revival of the literary journal culture, the sort of depolitical approach to literature, the way things used to be, as it were.Kanakia: It couldn't hurt. It couldn't hurt is my answer to that question.Oliver: Okay.Kanakia: What you're describing is basically the way I was educated. I went to Catholic school in DC at St. Anselm's Abbey School, in Northeast, DC, grade school. Highly recommend sending your little boys there. No complaints about the school. They talked about humanism all the time and all these civic virtues. I thought it was great. I don't know what people in other schools learn, but I really feel like it was a superior way of teaching.Now, you know, it was Catholic school, so a lot of people who graduated from my school are conservatives and don't really have the beliefs that I have, but that's okay.Oliver: Tell us about your reading habits.Kanakia: I read mostly ebooks. I really love ebooks because you can make the type bigger. I just read all the time. They vary. I don't wake up at 5:00 a.m. to read anymore. Sometimes if I feel like I'm not reading enough—because I write this blog, and the blog doesn't get written unless I'm reading. That's the engine, and so sometimes I set aside a day each week to read. But generally, the reading mostly takes care of itself.What I tend to get is very into a particular thing, and then I'll start reading more and more in that area. Recently, I was reading a lot of New Yorker stories. So I started reading more and more of these storywriters that have been published in the New Yorker and old anthologies of New Yorker stories. And then eventually I am done. I'm tired. It's time to move on.Oliver: But do you read several books at once? Do you make notes? Do you abandon books? How many hours a day do you read?Kanakia: Hours a day: Because my e-reader keeps these stats, I'd say 15 or 20 hours a week of reading. Nowadays because I write for the blog, I often think as I'm reading how I would frame a post about this. So I look for quotes, like what quote I would look at. I take different kinds of notes. I'll make more notes if I'm more confused by what is going on. Especially with nonfiction books, I'll try sometimes to make notes just to iron out what exactly I think is happening or what I think the argument is. But no, not much of a note taker.Oliver: What will you read next?Kanakia: What will I read next? Well, I've been thinking about getting back into Indian literature. Right now I'm reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. But there's an Indian novel called Jhootha Sach, which is a partition novel that is originally in Hindi. And it's also a thousand pages long, and is frequently compared to Les Miserables and War and Peace. So I'm thinking about tackling that finally.Oliver: Naomi Kanakia, thank you very much.Kanakia: Thanks for having me. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

Stop. Everything. Now. It’s Claudia Karvan day.

1149. This week, we look at the life and legacy of Samuel Johnson, the man behind the 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. We talk with John Overholt, curator at Harvard's Houghton Library, about Johnson's eclectic career. We also look at what it's like to manage a collection of 4,000 rare books and why even the most "unremarkable" items deserve a home in a library.Find John Overholt on Mastodon.Houghton Library's websiteLinks to Get One Month Free of the Grammar Girl Patreon (different links for different levels)Order of the Snail ($1/month level): https://www.patreon.com/grammargirl/redeem/687E4Order of the Aardvark ($5/month level): https://www.patreon.com/grammargirl/redeem/07205Keeper of the Commas ($10/month level): https://www.patreon.com/grammargirl/redeem/50A0BGuardian of the Grammary ($25/month level): https://www.patreon.com/grammargirl/redeem/949F7

In this first episode of Biographers in Conversation's special summer season, the distinguished British biographer Oliver Soden chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about his choices while crafting Jeoffry: The Poet's Cat. Here's what you'll discover in this episode: How Virginia Woolf's Flush: A Biography, the imaginative biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's cocker spaniel, influenced Oliver Soden's choices while crafting The Poet's Cat How Oliver cleverly used Jeoffry as a lens through which to explore Christopher Smart's character, personality and often troubled life How Oliver retraced Jeoffry's and Christopher Smart's real and imagined footsteps in 18th-century London, discovering its vibrant cast of characters such as King George, the composer Handel and Samuel Johnson, one of the towering figures of British literature How Oliver balanced fact and fiction given his admission that ‘the dividing line between fact and fiction is necessarily wobbly' in The Poet's Cat, and ‘sometimes one is disguised as the other' How Oliver accessed Jeoffry's interior life and inner monologue, enabling him to write from the perspective of an 18th-century alley cat How Oliver shifted from the traditional, scholarly tone and narrative style of his biographies of the composer Michael Tippett and playwright Noël Coward to the whimsical, witty, affectionate and playful style of The Poet's Cat How Oliver balanced the lightheartedness of Jeoffry's antics with the book's deeper philosophical themes.

Samuel Johnson's doctor, Robert Levet, had piecemeal medical knowledge at best, was described as an ‘an obscure practiser in physick' by James Boswell and was only paid for his work with gin. Yet for Johnson this eccentric man deserved a poetic tribute for demonstrating ‘the power of the art without show', a phrase that could as much describe the poem itself. In this episode, Seamus and Mark close their series by looking at the ways in which Johnson's elegy, 'On the Death of Dr Robert Levet', rejects the pastoral heroism of the poem they started with, Milton's ‘Lycidas', and compare it to two poems that offer their own kinds of unsentimental, eccentric portrait: 'Felix Randal' by Gerard Manley Hopkins and 'Stephen Boyd, 1957-99' by Mick Imlah. Seamus and Mark will be back in January to start their new series, 'Narrative Poems'. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrld⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsld⁠⁠⁠ Find tickets to Seamus's LRB Winter Lecture in London here: https://lrb.me/perrywlpod Further reading in the LRB: Freya Johnston on Samuel Johnson: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n09/freya-johnston/i-m-coming-my-tetsie! Patricia Beer on Hopkins: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n11/patricia-beer/what-he-meant-by-happiness

On the anniversary of Samuel Johnson's death, we look back at the life of the man who gave the English language its first great map. From Lichfield beginnings to London triumphs, Johnson's wit, grit and mighty dictionary reshaped literature and defined an age. A portrait of a brilliant, battered, booming voice that still echoes through London's streets and our own daily speech.

Message from Samuel Johnson on November 30, 2025

Dominic is joined by the inimitable Prof. Emma Clery - author of The Rise of Supernatural Fiction 1762-1800 and Professor of English Literature at Uppsala University, Sweden. They continue this month's theme of the supernatural, taking you on a journey into the heart of an event that caused a sensation in Georgian London, and would inspire Dickens decades later …The real life story of The Cock Lane Ghost set the stage for an earnest debate between Anglicans and Methodists - the former skeptical the latter credulous towards a spirit realm - where the dead can seek out the living and communicate with them. The alleged haunting in Cock Lane quickly spiralled in the first months of 1762, with many great figures of the age Samuel Johnson, Horace Walpole and Prince Edward, Duke of York attending seances to cross examine the ghost. At the heart of the controversy lay the very serious charge of murder that the ghost - known as ‘Scratching Fanny' - was trying to convince her hearers of, and the very real possibility of the man accused being sent to the gallows.It will come as no surprise to you that Dickens loved this story! Mentioning it not only in articles but in three of his novels - through Mrs Nickleby's flighty imagination, the disgruntled temper of Mrs Pipchin, and as Prologue to the madness and terror that engulfs A Tale of Two Cities …Joining us to bring to life the real characters from this story - in the form of articles, letters and transcripts - are the fantastic actors Peter Bray and Rachel Winters.Additional Sound Effects in this episode have been used under license from Epidemic Sounds Support the showIf you'd like to make a donation to support the costs of producing this series you can buy 'coffees' right here https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dominicgerrardThank you so much!Host: Dominic GerrardSeries Artwork: Léna GibertOriginal Music: Dominic GerrardThank you for listening!

Message from Samuel Johnson on October 19, 2025

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute. Yesterday, negotiations in Egypt on a 20-point plan for ending hostilities in Gaza bore fruit with a ceasefire that is supposed to result in Hamas releasing “all” of the remaining Israeli hostages, living and dead, whom it seized two years ago.  The question is: Will that fruit prove to be poisonous for Israel and our interests?  As the British wit, Samuel Johnson, said of second marriages, Mideast peace processes involve “the triumph of hope over experience.” Hard experience with Sharia-supremacists is that so-called ceasefires going back to Mohammed's day are actually just “hudnas” – temporary suspensions of hostilities when the Muslim side is facing defeat and used to regroup, rearm, then resume the fighting on more favorable terms.  A critical briefing at 2 p.m. Eastern Time today will examine whether hope is justified. Join us at VictoryCo.org. In the meantime, hold the champagne. This is Frank Gaffney.

"Such is the state of life, that none are happy except in the anticipation of change; the change itself is nothing...." (Samuel Johnson)

This two-part video series provides a deep historical analysis of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD), tracing its ingredients from 19th-century New England intellectual and social revolutions to its status as America's de facto civic religion. We argue that MTD collapsed when the sexual and moral revolutions forced a devastating fracture between its Christian heritage and its core principles of self-actualization and benevolence, leading to the polarized political landscape of today.Moralist Therapeutic Deism Part 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eHYMzanOvs&t=4679s @triggerpod   @InterestingTimesNYT   @JonathanPageau   @PaulVanderKlay 00:00:00 - Introduction and Recap00:10:07 - MTD, Chicago, and Obama00:13:00 - Cornell as Microcosm00:25:15 - Tim Keller on programatic secularism00:35:55 - Mainline Christianity00:37:45 - Wokeness and MTD00:47:05 - MTD and Partisanship00:49:20 - Arena vs Agent00:51:00 - Donald Trump 00:56:15 - Nationalism vs Globalism01:03:40 - Who killed MTD?01:05:55 - Competing Arenas01:08:25 - The future of Christian NationalismIn this video I mention:Aaron Renn, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Baker, Alfred, Allen C. Guelzo, Amos, Andrew Jackson Davis, Ann Lee, Anagarika Dharmapala, Arthur Conan Doyle, Athanasius, Barack Obama, Benjamin Franklin, Billy Graham, Black Lives Matter, Bud, Buddha, Calvin, Cathleen Falsani, Catherine Fox, Charles B. Rosna, Charles Carroll Bonney, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Charlie Kirk, Christian Smith, Christopher Pearse Cranch, Clement of Alexandria, Conrad Grebel, Constantine, David Bentley Hart, Deepak Chopra, Donahoe, Donald Trump, Eddie Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Elijah Muhammad, Eliott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth Keckley, Ellen Todd, Emilie Todd Helm, Emanuel Swedenborg, Epictetus, Erica Kirk, Ernst Troeltsch, Ezra Klein, Fanny Hayes Platt, Faustus Socinus, Finney, Fox Sisters, Franz Anton Mesmer, Fred Shuttlesworth, Frederick the Wise, Friedrich Nietzsche, Galen, George Barna, George Fox, George W. Bush, Gregory of Nyssa, Henry Clay, Henry David Thoreau, Henry James, H. P. Blavatsky, H. Richard Niebuhr, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harold Ockenga, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Helen Schucman, Hosea Ballou, J. Gresham Machen, Jacob Blake, James, James Comey, James Lindsay, James Russell Lowell, Jared Sparks, Jean H. Baker, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Jesus Christ, Jim Lindsay, John, John Adams, John Bunyan, John D. Rockefeller, John Henry Barrows, John Locke, John Milton, John Murray, John Stott, Jonathan Edwards, Jordan Peterson, Joseph Priestly, Joseph Smith, Judith Skutch, Julius Dresser, Kant, Karl Menninger, Karlstadt, Kate Fox, Kenneth Minkema, Koot Hoomi, Kyle Rittenhouse, Lelio Socinus, Leonard Zusne, Lou Malnatis, Luke Thompson (  @WhiteStoneName  ), Lyman Beecher, Madame Blavatsky, Margaretta Fox, Marianne Williamson, Mark Parker (  @MarkDParker  ) , Mark Twain, Mary Baker Eddy, Mary Todd Lincoln, Matt Herman, Meister Eckhart, Melinda Lundquist Denton, Mesmer, Micah, Michael Bronky, Michael Servetus, Monophysite, Morya, Moses, Nancy Pelosi, Napoleon Bonaparte, Nettie Colburn Maynard, Newton, Niccolò Machiavelli, Nicholas of Cusa, Norman Vincent Peale, Oprah, Origen, Paul, Paul Tillich, Paul Vanderlay, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, Plotinus, Proclus, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ramakrishna, Rick Warren, Robert Schuller, Robin D'Angelo, Rod Dreher, Ronald Reagan, Ross Douthat, Rowan Williams, Rudolf Steiner, Samuel Johnson, Septimus J. Hanna, Shailer Mathews, Shakers, Shadrach, Socrates, Soyen Shaku, Swami Vivekananda, Tad Lincoln, Tertullian, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Starr King, Tracy Herman, Virchand Gandhi, Victoria Woodhull, Warren Felt Evans, William Ellery Channing, William James, William Lloyd Garrison, William Newton Clarke, Willie Lincoln, Winthrop, Zwingli.

What do you do when you fail God again? Most of us know the cycle of good intentions, spiritual resolutions, and inevitable reversals. Samuel Johnson, William Carey, and even Simon Peter struggled with the same pattern. But in John 21, the risen Christ meets Peter after his devastating denials. Around a charcoal fire, Jesus doesn't demand apologies or guarantees of future faithfulness. Instead, He asks one question three times: “Do you love Me?” Then He recommissions Peter to feed His sheep. In this message, Stephen Davey shows us why this conversation is such good news for every follower of Jesus. Failure is not the end of the story. God doesn't use proud, self-sufficient vessels; He uses broken, contrite ones. The gospel is not just for unbelievers who repent—it's for disciples who fall short, confess, and come back to Christ in love and humility. If you've ever wondered whether God could still use you after repeated failure, this episode will encourage your heart and call you back to the seashore of grace. Stephen Davey's newest book, The Disciples Prayer, is available now. https://www.wisdomonline.org/store/view/the-disciples-prayer-hardback

What do you do when you fail God again? Most of us know the cycle of good intentions, spiritual resolutions, and inevitable reversals. Samuel Johnson, William Carey, and even Simon Peter struggled with the same pattern. But in John 21, the risen Christ meets Peter after his devastating denials. Around a charcoal fire, Jesus doesn't demand apologies or guarantees of future faithfulness. Instead, He asks one question three times: “Do you love Me?” Then He recommissions Peter to feed His sheep. In this message, Stephen Davey shows us why this conversation is such good news for every follower of Jesus. Failure is not the end of the story. God doesn't use proud, self-sufficient vessels; He uses broken, contrite ones. The gospel is not just for unbelievers who repent—it's for disciples who fall short, confess, and come back to Christ in love and humility. If you've ever wondered whether God could still use you after repeated failure, this episode will encourage your heart and call you back to the seashore of grace. Stephen Davey's newest book, The Disciples Prayer, is available now. https://www.wisdomonline.org/store/view/the-disciples-prayer-hardback

Message from Samuel Johnson on September 21, 2025

Message from Samuel Johnson on August 24, 2025

When you hear the word "shaman," I'm guessing a web of associations starts to form in your mind. Perhaps you imagine strange ceremonies and strong substances; maybe you think of an earlier time when magic and superstition reined. But shamanism is not just some relic of the past, or a curio from exotic lands. It's part of our present, and it will almost certainly be part of our future. This is because the roots of shamanism lie within us all. My guest today is Dr. Manvir Singh. Manvir is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis and a regular contributor to The New Yorker. He's also the author of a new book—Shamanism: The Timeless Religion. Here, Manvir and I talk about his fieldwork with Mentawai shamans in Indonesia. We discuss what makes a shaman a shaman, and consider the cognitive building blocks that make shamanism so widespread and so appealing. We discuss the shamanic origins of Abrahamic religions. We consider how, over the course of history, shamanism has repeatedly resurged, despite attempts to snuff it out. And we also talk about the various forms and flavors that shamanism takes in contemporary Western societies. Along the way, Manvir and I touch on: drumming, fasting, and the “dark tent”; Jesus; experimental Edens; witches, prophets, and messiahs; glossolalia; disenchantment and re-enchantment; the rise of neoshamanism; Paleolithic rock art; hedge wizards and tech CEOs; Western exceptionalism; and the routinization of charisma. If you enjoy this episode, I highly recommend that you check out Manvir's book—it's a captivating blend of narrative and ideas and it goes far beyond what we were able to talk about here. I'll also flag that this Manvir's second time on Many Minds. Back in July of 2020 we had another conversation—broader in scope—where we talked about shamanism but also Manvir's work on witches, stories, and music. So you might check that one out as well. Alright friends, on to my conversation with Dr. Manvir Singh. Enjoy!   A transcript of this episode will be available soon.   Notes and links 4:00 – For a video examples of shamanic rituals from around the world, see Dr. Singh's recent thread on Bluesky / Twitter. 12:30 – On the idea of “cultural attraction” and “cultural attractors,” see here and here. For a recent treatment of the idea of “super-attractors,” see Dr. Singh's preprint here. 16:00 – On the case of cultural loss among the Northern Aché, see the recent work by Dr. Singh and a colleague. 17:30 – For more on Dr. Singh's theoretical framework for understanding shamanism, see his earlier academic paper. 19:00 – The 2005 review of altered states of consciousness by Vaitl et al. For more on psychedelics and altered states, see our recent episode with Chris Letheby. 29:00 – Murcia Eliade's classic work on shamanism—Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. 34:00 – For the book by Martin Riesebrodt on the nature of religion, see here. 36:00 – For more on the human propensity for ritual, see our earlier episode with Dimitris Xygalatas. 43:00 – For one influential interpretation of Paleolithic rock art as evidence for shamanism, see David Lewis-Williams' book, Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art. 52:00 – For a discussion of psychedelics and organized religion that touches on the “routinization of charisma,” see this article by Michael Pollan. 54:00 – For more about the case of Alice Auma, see Dr. Singh's recent piece in The New Yorker. 1:00:30 – For more about neoshamanism and Michael Harner, see the website of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies—www.shamanism.org. 1:03:00 – Samual Johnson analysis of money managers 1:04:00 – For the analysis of financial managers, by Samuel Johnson, see here.  1:06:00 – For more on the quasi-shamanic flavor of tech CEOs, see Rakesh Khurana's book, Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs. 1:08:00 – See, again, Dr. Singh's recent piece in The New Yorker in which he discusses Trump and prophet-like status. 1:13:00 – For Dr. Singh's work on other complex cultural traditions, see the website for his lab.   Recommendations The Sambia: Ritual, Sexuality, and Change in New Guinea, by Gilbert Herdt The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman, by Davi Kopenawa & Bruce Albert   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation to Indiana University. The show is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala. Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. s For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter (@ManyMindsPod) or Bluesky (@manymindspod.bsky.social).

Lately on the podcast, I've been wrestling with a question of language. What does the word hemp really mean, where did that meaning come from, how has it shifted over time, and who gets to define the word hemp today? For a thousand years, hemp was known as the plant or material that you made things from — things like rope, cloth and paper. But now when people hear the word hemp, they think about weed. And that's not helpful for a nascent industry trying to raise capital, build infrastructure and develop markets. To help me sort out the history and meaning of the word hemp, I spoke with Oxford University Professor Lynda Mugglestone, a historian of the English language, a lexicographer and an expert in how words evolve and collide with law, commerce and culture. “You would be cheered to know that hemp as a plant grown for fiber has history on its side. If we go right back to Old English we can see the very earliest kind of herbals and leech books talking about hemp,” Mugglestone said. For most of its long life in English, hemp meant the fiber plant grown for ropes, sails and home spun fabrics, and that meaning was stable for centuries. It was a household word, part of daily life, tied to farming and industry. But language doesn't sit still, and hemp is no exception. Over time, new uses for the word hemp have crept in. First medicinal, then psychoactive, and now commercial forces are pulling hemp in more directions. While lawmakers try to impose definitions and industries fight for market share, ordinary people just keep using the word however they want. That's how language works. But the original meaning hasn't gone anywhere — the fiber, the grain and the plant with history behind it. That meaning is still there and perhaps more robust today than at any time in the past 80 years. But the meaning of hemp has been expanded, like it or not, to include these new definitions, including that hemp can be THC-a flower or that hemp can get you high. Of course, I disagree with this new definition. Hemp that gets you high isn't hemp. Call it pot, call it weed, call it what you will, just don't call it hemp. As Mugglestone, paraphrasing Samuel Johnson, said, “Words, like their author, when they're not gaining strength, they're generally losing it.” So there you go, fiber and grain folks. You know what to do. Claim the word hemp and make it grow strong. You are hemp's rightful heir. Be the signal in the noise. * Books by Lynda Mugglestone, author of a range of books on English words and how they get used and recorded.Recent books include: Dictionaries. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, paperback) Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words (OUP, paperback) Writing a War of Words: Andrew Clark and the Search for meaning in World War One (Oxford University Press, hardback)   Thanks to our Sponsors! IND HEMP Forever Green National Hemp Association Credits: Produced by Eric Hurlock, mixed and mastered by Justin Berger

In a world competing for our attention, our guest this week admits: “It's probably harder to read novels now than it ever was.” But their value cannot be overstated. The novel's unique humanity, its careful and open treatment of the human experience, helps us to develop a sympathetic imagination, tuning our hearts and minds in a way that non-fiction argument simply cannot. Christopher Scalia, author of 13 Novels Conservatives Will Love (but Probably Haven't Read), makes the case that it is a distinctly conservative interest to explore the Western tradition through fiction. Recommendations in hand, he invites adults to refresh their reading list with novels—from the very inception of the form up to the present. Chapters: 1:47 The great book rut 4:11 Novels: the medium of recent Western tradition 5:30 The 18th-century bildungsroman 9:47 “Conservative” themes 16:18 The American dream in My Ántonia 22:39 Miraculous realism in Peace Like a River 29:02 Acknowledging the existence of evil 31:44 Wonder and encounter over strict interpretation 37:03 Revisiting works from your school years 38:47 Why narrative works 42:01 Books that nearly made the cut Links: 13 Novels Conservatives Will Love (but Probably Haven't Read) by Christopher Scalia Christopher J. Scalia at American Enterprise Institute The History of Rasselas by Samuel Johnson (1759) Evelina by Frances Burney (1778) Waverley by Sir Walter Scott (1814) The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1852) Daniel Deronda by George Eliot (1876) My Ántonia by Willa Cather (1918) Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937) The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark (1963) The Children of Men by P. D. James (1992) Peace Like a River by Leif Enger (2001) Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2004) The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006) How I Won a Nobel Prize: A Novel by Julius Taranto (2023) Also on the Forum: Heights Forum Book Reviews On Reading Literature by Joseph Bissex Some Summer Reading Recommendations for Teachers by Tom Cox Modern Literature: On Curating the Contemporary featuring Mike Ortiz Guiding Our Boys through Modern Literature featuring Joe Breslin and Lionel Yaceczko Featured opportunities: Teaching Essentials Workshop at The Heights School (June 16-20, 2025) Convivium for Teaching Men at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2025)

When Hilde Hinton was on the cusp of adolescence, her mother died. For years she protected her younger siblings from the truth about their mum.Despite the great grief of her mother's shocking death when Hilde was just 12 years old, there was also a sense of relief for Hilde. She shielded her younger siblings, Samuel and Connie Johnson, from the truth of how and why their mother died.But when Connie also died, decades later of cancer, Hilde was propelled into writing her first novel, in between shifts as a prison officer.Her debut book, The Loudness of Unsaid things, was intensely autobiographical.While Connie never got to read the book, Hilde's brother Samuel finally 'met' their mother through Hilde's writing, and learned all that his big sister had done for them growing up.Now, from her home in Melbourne, where people who need solace freely come and go, Hilde explores in her writing the ordinary things that make life extraordinary.This episode was produced by Meggie Morris. Conversations Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison. Presented by Richard Fidler.This episode of Conversations explores mental health, suicide, grieving, grief, death, mothers, single fathers, bipolar, mothers with mental health issues, mental health hospitals, institutionalisation, prisons, writing, books, novels, siblings, Love Your Sister, nuns, Australian Story, childhood cancer.Further informationThe Opposite of Lonely is published by Hachette.You can watch the episode of Australian Story, which features Hilde's brother, Samuel Johnson, online at ABC iview.

Ep. 683: Cranford | Chapter 5 Book talk begins at 9:31 A mysterious stranger arrives in town, and you just know the ladies of Cranford are ready to investigate... politely, of course. --------------------------------------------------------------- 00:00 Episode start 01:28 2:42 Plum Deluxe . Plum Deluxe's CraftLit tea collection is here: Also, MAY RAFFLE - Sir Walter Scott Cross stitch from Rebecca S (Of Book it with Becca, who wrote the wonderful post: 04:25 Gardening! 09:30 - START BOOK TALK: Last week, the lovely Mr Holbrook and his very sad passing. 12:06 Joint- Stock bank: > A bank owned by shareholders, operating under a charter or act of Parliament, and offering services to the public. Unlike older private banks (run by individuals or families), joint-stock banks were corporations, meaning shared risk and more capital. How bank books worked— A bank book (also called a passbook) was given to bank customers to record all transactions in their account—- Every deposit and withdrawal was manually written into the book by a bank clerk. The customer's copy was their only proof of the account's balance. 14:12 Envelope usage / turning inside out (ETSY doing this NOW) Whole vs half sheet and crossed letters 16:36 STRING and Indian-rubber rings 17:24 “India-rubber” was the 19th-century term for what we now just call rubber—and India-rubber rings were small rubber loops or bands like we use today. Came from the latex of tropical trees (especially Hevea brasiliensis) 18:42 TONQUIN beans: TONKA beans: Tonka beans are the wrinkled, black seeds of the Dipteryx odorata tree, native to South America. Chefs outside the US use them in desserts and to replace nuts. AND ILLEGAL in the USA since 1954 due to the presence of liver damaging “coumarin” - - and 20:54 22:43 PADUASOY: heavy, rich corded or embossed silk fabric, From French - peau de soie, a cloth resembling serge (twill fabric with diagonal lines/ridges on both inner and outer surfaces per a two-up/two-down weave.) 24:19 Bottom of page a small “T.O.” = turn over / Molly's writing is full of spelling like “Bewty” which is a subsequent joke line 25:49 Dum memor ipse Mei, dum Spiritus regift artus - Virgil, Æneid, IV.382, “While memory shall last and breath still control my limbs” 25:28 Carmen (lowercase) like CARMINA (song poem or verse) 26:54 Gentleman's Magazine 1782—Kind of an Atlantic Monthly—guess who contributed? Samuel Johnson! 27:18 M. T. Ciceroni's Epistolae: The letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43BCE) Roman statesman, orator, philosopher, and writer with 800+ letters surviving Heather before recording, in garden, with skewer pack: 28:41 “Rod in a pickle” - rod, method of punishment; pickle, something preserved for future use. 29:42 Life is a vale of tears: Psalm 84:6 also, description of a helicopter parent feels marvelously modern 30:21 Mrs Chapone (1727-1801) Contributed to the Rambler AND Gentleman's Magazine and wrote “Letters on the Improvement of the Mind (1773) and Mrs Carter (1717-1806) many languages and in 1758 published first translation of Epictetus THE Stoic Philosopher. 31:32 “Before Miss Edgeworth's ‘Patronage' had banished wafers from polite society…”: Patronage was a book (1814) with a character who was offended by a letter she received that was sealed with a wafer: “I wonder how any man can have the impertinence to send me his spittle” (I, 248) 33:06 “Old original post with stamp in the corner” not exactly the right watermark, but you get the idea… 34:30 “Sesquipedalian” writing - foot and a half long sesqui = 1-½ pedalis =foot looonng polysyllabic words 35:13 Buonaparte (Bony)1805 invasion fears - In case you still need to build your own 36:55 David and Goliath, son of Jesse (I Samuel 17) Apollyon (Greek version) and Abbadon (Hebrew version) are names for an archangel In Revelation 9:11—> _“And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.” (Revelation 9:11, KJV) Meaning: Abaddon (Hebrew) means “destruction” or “place of destruction.” Apollyon (Greek) means “destroyer.” It's overblown biblical satire—calling someone “Apollyon” in Cranford is like referring to a strict schoolmarm as “Beelzebub.” 38:08 Bonus Bernardus non video omnia The Blessed Bernard does not see everything - maybe said by St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)— This quote is often attributed (possibly apocryphally) to Peter Abelard, the 12th-century theologian, as a gentle jab at St. Bernard of Clairvaux, with whom he clashed theologically. Meaning: Even the wisest man (here, Blessed Bernard) can be wrong sometimes. Post-chapter Notes Chapone and Carter and Bluestockings (see below for big notes) real historical women writers, both part of the 18th-century English Bluestocking movement—educated, literary women who promoted female intellectualism and moral development. Gaskell is absolutely name-dropping intentionally here for Cranford's themes of domestic gentility, moral seriousness, and self-improvement. ⸻ Mrs. Hester Chapone (1727–1801) Best known for Letters on the Improvement of the Mind (1773), addressed to her niece. It was a conduct book for young women, offering advice on moral character, reading habits, and proper behavior. Hugely popular—Cranford-adjacent readers would know her by name. ⸻ Mrs. Elizabeth Carter (1717–1806) A respected scholar, translator, and poet—a genuine intellectual heavyweight. Famously translated the Discourses of Epictetus from Greek in 1758—the first English translation by a woman, and one of the first of Epictetus at all. She knew multiple classical and modern languages and was close friends with figures like Samuel Johnson and Hannah More. *CraftLit's Socials* • Find everything here: https://www.linktr.ee/craftlitchannel • Join the newsletter: http://eepurl.com/2raf9  • Podcast site: http://craftlit.com • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CraftLit/ • Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/craftlit • Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/craftlit/ • TikTok podcast: https://www.tiktok.com/@craftlit • Email: heather@craftlit.com • Previous CraftLit Classics can be found here: https://bit.ly/craftlit-library-2023   *SUPPORT THE SHOW!* • CraftLit App Premium feed bit.ly/libsynpremiumcraftlit (only one tier available) • PATREON:   https://patreon.com/craftlit (all tiers, below) ——Walter Harright -  $5/mo for the same audio as on App ——Jane Eyre - $10/mo for even-month Book Parties ——Mina Harker - $15/mo for odd-month Watch Parties *All tiers and benefits are also available as* —*YouTube Channel Memberships*  —*Ko-Fi* https://ko-fi.com/craftlit  —*NEW* at CraftLit.com — Premium Memberships https://craftlit.com/membership-levels/ *IF you want to join a particular Book or Watch Patry but you don't want to join any of the above membership options*, please use PayPal.me/craftlit or CraftLit @ Venmo and include what you want to attend in the message field. 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Journalist and author Barbara Demick discusses her new, powerful, and must-read book "Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins". With a deep boots-on-the-ground experience, she details the brutality of China's one-child policy and the profound lasting effects it continues to have. She describes the scandalous adoption frenzy that took place, where officials illegally kidnapped Chinese children from their families and disappeared them. Demick found a needle in a haystack and managed to reunite one set of twins who were strewn across the planet, from America to China. Watch on BitChute / Brighteon / Rumble / Substack / YouTube Geopolitics & Empire · Barbara Demick: Abducted & Adopted, The Story of China's One-Child Policy #553 *Support Geopolitics & Empire! Become a Member https://geopoliticsandempire.substack.com Donate https://geopoliticsandempire.com/donations Consult https://geopoliticsandempire.com/consultation **Visit Our Affiliates & Sponsors! Above Phone https://abovephone.com/?above=geopolitics easyDNS (15% off with GEOPOLITICS) https://easydns.com Escape Technocracy course (15% off with GEOPOLITICS) https://escapethetechnocracy.com/geopolitics PassVult https://passvult.com Sociatates Civis (CitizenHR, CitizenIT, CitizenPL) https://societates-civis.com Wise Wolf Gold https://www.wolfpack.gold/?ref=geopolitics Websites Website https://www.barbarademick.com Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins https://www.barbarademick.com/book/daughters-of-the-bamboo-grove X https://x.com/barbarademick About Barbara Demick Barbara Demick is author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea and Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood and the recently released Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town, published by Random House in July 2020.  She was bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times in Beijing and Seoul, and previously reported from the Middle East and Balkans for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Demick grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Yale College Her work has won many awards including the Samuel Johnson prize (now the Baillie Gifford prize) for non-fiction in the U.K., the Overseas Press Club's human rights reporting award, the Polk Award and the Robert F. Kennedy award and Stanford University's Shorenstein Award for Asia coverage. Her North Korea book was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She was a press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Bagehot fellow in business journalism at Columbia University and a visiting professor of journalism at Princeton University.  She lives in New York City. *Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

A giant black hole awakens and is multitasking bad for your brain? On This Day in History, we head back to the books as another important dictionary is released. From boring to bursting: Giant black hole awakens | ScienceDaily Why multitasking is bad for your brain, explained by a neuroscientist | BBC Science Focus Magazine Origins of English: Samuel Johnson's Dictionary A Dictionary of the English Language | Definition & Facts | Britannica Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language Johnson's Dictionary Online Go to my sponsor https://venice.ai/coolstuff and use code coolstuff to enjoy private, uncensored AI. Using our code will get you 20% off a pro plan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oliver Goldsmith (born Nov. 10, 1730, Kilkenny West, County Westmeath, Ire.—died April 4, 1774, London) was an Anglo-Irish essayist, poet, novelist, dramatist, and eccentric, made famous by such works as the series of essays The Citizen of the World, or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher (1762), the poem The Deserted Village (1770), the novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), and the play She Stoops to Conquer (1773).Goldsmith was the son of an Anglo-Irish clergyman, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, curate in charge of Kilkenny West, County Westmeath. At about the time of his birth, the family moved into a substantial house at nearby Lissoy, where Oliver spent his childhood. Much has been recorded concerning his youth, his unhappy years as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin, where he received the B.A. degree in February 1749, and his many misadventures before he left Ireland in the autumn of 1752 to study in the medical school at Edinburgh. His father was now dead, but several of his relations had undertaken to support him in his pursuit of a medical degree. Later on, in London, he came to be known as Dr. Goldsmith—Doctor being the courtesy title for one who held the Bachelor of Medicine—but he took no degree while at Edinburgh nor, so far as anyone knows, during the two-year period when, despite his meagre funds, which were eventually exhausted, he somehow managed to make his way through Europe. The first period of his life ended with his arrival in London, bedraggled and penniless, early in 1756.Goldsmith's rise from total obscurity was a matter of only a few years. He worked as an apothecary's assistant, school usher, physician, and as a hack writer—reviewing, translating, and compiling. Much of his work was for Ralph Griffiths's Monthly Review. It remains amazing that this young Irish vagabond, unknown, uncouth, unlearned, and unreliable, was yet able within a few years to climb from obscurity to mix with aristocrats and the intellectual elite of London. Such a rise was possible because Goldsmith had one quality, soon noticed by booksellers and the public, that his fellow literary hacks did not possess—the gift of a graceful, lively, and readable style. His rise began with the Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe (1759), a minor work. Soon he emerged as an essayist, in The Bee and other periodicals, and above all in his Chinese Letters. These essays were first published in the journal The Public Ledger and were collected as The Citizen of the World in 1762. The same year brought his Life of Richard Nash, of Bath, Esq. Already Goldsmith was acquiring those distinguished and often helpful friends whom he alternately annoyed and amused, shocked and charmed—Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Percy, David Garrick, Edmund Burke, and James Boswell. The obscure drudge of 1759 became in 1764 one of the nine founder-members of the famous Club, a select body, including Reynolds, Johnson, and Burke, which met weekly for supper and talk. Goldsmith could now afford to live more comfortably, but his extravagance continually ran him into debt, and he was forced to undertake more hack work. He thus produced histories of England and of ancient Rome and Greece, biographies, verse anthologies, translations, and works of popular science. These were mainly compilations of works by other authors, which Goldsmith then distilled and enlivened by his own gift for fine writing. Some of these makeshift compilations went on being reprinted well into the 19th century, however.By 1762 Goldsmith had established himself as an essayist with his Citizen of the World, in which he used the device of satirizing Western society through the eyes of an Oriental visitor to London. By 1764 he had won a reputation as a poet with The Traveller, the first work to which he put his name. It embodied both his memories of tramping through Europe and his political ideas. In 1770 he confirmed that reputation with the more famous Deserted Village, which contains charming vignettes of rural life while denouncing the evictions of the country poor at the hands of wealthy landowners. In 1766 Goldsmith revealed himself as a novelist with The Vicar of Wakefield (written in 1762), a portrait of village life whose idealization of the countryside, sentimental moralizing, and melodramatic incidents are underlain by a sharp but good-natured irony. In 1768 Goldsmith turned to the theatre with The Good Natur'd Man, which was followed in 1773 by the much more effective She Stoops to Conquer, which was immediately successful. This play has outlived almost all other English-language comedies from the early 18th to the late 19th century by virtue of its broadly farcical horseplay and vivid, humorous characterizations.During his last decade Goldsmith's conversational encounters with Johnson and others, his foolishness, and his wit were preserved in Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. Goldsmith eventually became deeply embroiled in mounting debts despite his considerable earnings as an author, though, and after a short illness in the spring of 1774 he died.-bio via Britannica This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe