Israel is holding an election and we go deep on its implications for the future of the country itself, the occupation, and American Jews' relationship with Zionism. What is Netanyahu's position within the Israeli right? What abou the Israeli left — remember them? And what are American Jews supposed to think about it all?

We go long on this topic, so we will be releasing the second segment of the episode (teased in the introduction) separately. Don't forget to send any feedback, questions, or angry diatribes to [email protected]. 

Also, there were some unexpected glitches in the version we first uploaded: some of our audio tracks fell out of the time/space continuum. The episode has been modified to minimize the disruption: for better or worse, it now ends with Ethan giving a kind of soliloquoy. Buckle up! 

Lately it seems like our world is headed back to the Middle Ages, with its brutal violence, strict hierarchies, and absolute monarchs. Worse yet, some people on the alt-Right think this is a good thing! We discuss how scholars of the Medieval period grapple with the use (and abuse) of their field of study, and whether identity politics can help sort any of this out. 

In the second segment, we discuss Curtis Yavin, aka Mencius Moldbug, "philosopher" of neoreaction and the alt-right. Max presents his book Patchwork, which harkens back to Medieval systems of power while remaining thoroughly techno-dystopian in its outlook. Once again, we ponder far-right affinities with the Middle Ages and think about the best ways to respond to them.

Programming notes: please email any questions or comments to [email protected]. And be sure to follow us on Twitter (@lit_every_pod) and Instagram (@literally_everything_podcast). Finally, in response to listener feedback, we want to mention that you don't have to listen to the episodes in order. Jump in wherever you like!

This week, Max calls in from Italy, where he is traveling with his European in-laws. We regale you with tales of the original summer vacation, the so-called "Grand Tour" taken by young British artistocrats to sample the beautiful scenery and classical sites of the Continent. Ethan discusses how the young, rich, and sexy authors behind English Romanticism (Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, et al.) made spending summers in Rome into a thing. Later, Max discusses the recent book "Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power" by Byung-Chul Han, which argues that the economic arrangements of our time completely separate our present moment from all of history.

We begin with a discussion about whether hotdogs are sandwiches — and how the debate illustrates the difference between realism and nominalism, the two rival movements within medieval philosophy. Then, we talk about a recent article on race relations in Hawaii, indigeneity, and settler colonialism. A technical note: due to editing difficulties, the first segment has a slight echo. We figure it's okay, because we're talking about medieval stuff, and it sounds like we're in a Romanesque cathedral.

We discuss the ongoing controversy about a mural in San Francisco's Washington High School. Does the mental health of students outweigh the artistic merit and pedagogical value of the mural, which is critical of America's history? More importantly, what kinds of assumptions and vocabularies are operative in this debate? We try to develop a more critical approach to the topic with assistance from Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood's essays on the Danish Cartoon Controversy, published in the 2009 volume "Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech."

It's the first episode of Literally Everything! Ethan and Max host a podcast about politics, culture, history and literature — all the ideas that shape the world around us. In this episode, we discuss Trump's attitude toward Iran and North Korea within the framework of "Orientalism," adopting a comparative approach to the ways in which Western attitudes are formed. Then we critique the omnipresent metaphor of the "political spectrum," and talk about how political ideas exist in history, rather than from "right to left" in abstract geometric space.