Podcast Episodes

The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection (Gardner Dozois ed.)

Episode 237

A review that in effect passes judgment on all modern science fiction, with a slightly different tack from my usual. (This article was first published August 23, 2016.)

The written, original version …

Published on 3 years, 8 months ago

The Fate of Empires (John Bagot Glubb)

Episode 236

A famous, but at best incomplete, analysis of the course of empires--with an emphasis on describing the end stages of empires.

The written version of this review can be found here.

We strongly encour…

Published on 3 years, 8 months ago

Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933-1939 (Wolfgang Schivelbusch)

Episode 235

It was as a result of this discussion, of Three New Deals, that my program came to be called Foundationalism. And here, learning from movements of the past, I offer thoughts about how Foundationalism…

Published on 3 years, 9 months ago

On the Marble Cliffs (Ernst Jünger)

Episode 234

The third book in Jünger's (unrecognized) trilogy about tyranny—not in the abstract, but how to live in relation to, and what to do about, tyranny. Any relationship to current events in the West is p…

Published on 3 years, 10 months ago

Throw Back Thursday: I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon (Crystal Zevon)

Episode 233

Something new:  Throw Back Thursday, in which I showcase older articles that newer readers may have missed.  This is, for once, not political.  Rather, it is an oral history of the ultra-talented War…

Published on 3 years, 10 months ago

Against Counsels of Defeat

Episode 232

My antidote to pessimism in the face of the Left. Not only can we win, we are going to win, and that right soon—if we have the will.

The written version of this article can be found here.

We strongly…

Published on 3 years, 10 months ago

Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment (Stephen Kotkin)

Episode 231

Of the looming collapse of our own American (and Canadian) regimes, through the lens of the 1989 collapse of similar regimes in Eastern Europe. With plenty of my thoughts on how to avoid the errors m…

Published on 3 years, 10 months ago

The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt (Gopal Balakrishnan)

Episode 230

Before I began working my way individually through all of Carl Schmitt's important works, I read this excellent book, which provides a fine overview of Schmitt's thought and relevance. And that relev…

Published on 3 years, 10 months ago

God Is a Man of War: The Problem of Violence in the Old Testament (Stephen De Young)

Episode 229

An exposition and explanation of why God sometimes commands violence, and of why the Old and New Testaments are not in tension or contradiction.  With my own thoughts on justice, in particular the ap…

Published on 3 years, 11 months ago

Anabasis; Or, The March Up-Country (Xenophon)

Episode 228

The classic story, from 2,500 years ago, of how determination and vitalism led to success for men in a desperate situation. With lessons, no surprise, for today.

The written version of this review ca…

Published on 3 years, 11 months ago