Podopticon

Politics relates to imagery in ways that I was able to understand anew, thanks to this conversation with Aaron Tugendhaft. He’s the author of the "Idols of ISIS: from Assyria to the Internet." We quickly enough see how the book is not so much a book about ISIS as it is an allegory for political and apolitical tendencies closer to home.  

Tugendhaft manages to blend his background in art history, ancient and Near East studies, and political theory in a remarkably readable and enlightening way. The book should have broad appeal.

Get it here.  

We recorded this episode on Jan 12, just six days since a mob, whipped up by the president, breached the capitol. The first such breach since the war of 1812. So we’ve had to restart the clock, so to speak.

It’s the insurrection equivalent of a workplace injuries counter:  “6 days without a breach!”

So we recorded six days after a mob stormed the capitol and one day before the House voted to impeach for a second time. Nancy Pelosi wore the same dress for both impeachments, which is just cool, if you ask me. A sartorial power move.

My guests are Connor Ewing and Jeffrey Tulis, two political scientists.  I didn’t get to ask them about Pelosi’s dress, but I did get to ask them about impeachment, the pardon power, presidential power generally, and more. Be warned that we might get into the weeds a bit, but there are some interesting things that emerge from the conversation. I point out a few in the intro to the podcast...

In this episode, we discuss two things: constitutionalism and the Republican Party, which are these days opposing forces. 

My guests, George Thomas and Ben Kleinerman, are trying to recapture a kind of constitutionalism that goes back to the American founding thought in some ways. They don’t make that turn worshipfully, so they can be engaged reasonably.    

I like the classical authors. They’re fun. So many of them speak in earthy remarks, like, you can’t know you’re happy until you’re dead.  Stuff like that. Whatever’s the opposite of a cheerful nonsense slogan.  

But another reason to turn to the classics, even especially one Herodotus, is right here in this episode, which turns out to be timely–in so far as the humanities seem always now to be in a crisis.

Joel Alden Schlosser is my guest, and the crisis he addresses in his book, Herodotus in the Anthropocene, is not the humanities but climate.  And yet, he shows us exactly why we need authors like Herodotus, and by extension the humanities.

Among the things Joel and I discuss are:  types of equality and freedom, the notion of the known-world, collective action, despotism, the interplay of human freedom and earthly flourishing, Herodotus’s uniqueness, his use to us in the Anthropocence, and more–essentially what storytelling might do that shouting facts does not.  

Good books will make you think of things they don’t raise explicitly, and what Ariel Ron’s book does for me is it makes me think about the stories we tell ourselves–and what work those stories do.  

 His book, Grassroots Leviathan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North in the Slaveholding Republic uncovers what turns out to be a social movement of northern farmers who put their stamp on American democracy and American self-image in lasting ways.

The book runs from the lead up of the American Revolution through the Civil War, which I think most readers will find most interesting.  Most of us, that is, understand the Civil War as one that pitted the industrial north against the agrarian south; the city against the country. But this wasn’t the case, as Ron shows. And that’s just one way this book got me to thinking about the things we tell ourselves and the work those stories must be doing… 

In this episode, I talk to Annelien de Dijn about her new book Freedom: an Unruly History. The book is a fascinating read, and the pod is a great conversation. This one will be especially interesting to those interested in politics and political thought, as de Dijn dwells on the anti-democratic character of liberal conceptions of freedom and the government best set to attain it.  

So an ordinary guy stumbles into a conversation with two presidency scholars….  

That’s essentially what happens in this episode.  Jeremy Bailey, Benjamin Kleinerman, and I got together without a plan, just to discuss the argument advanced in Bailey’s book, “The Idea of Presidential Representation:  An Intellectual and Political History.” Good stuff comes of it, I think. And much territory is covered. 

Never Trumpers. Who are they? Who cares? Masters of the political universe? Conservative elites who had power till a minute ago and now have little to offer beyond what talking heads can do? Great chat with one of the guys who wrote the book on the matter, Rob Saldin, co-author of "Never Trump: the Revolt of the Conservative Elites."

This one's fun. Let it be a break from the noise. A leaf peeping drive around the history of color with historian, and my pal, Carolyn Purnell.  That she’s my pal explains the joy in my voice–joy where there’s more often doom.

In this episode, we discuss the strangely expanding institution of slavery in the United States from the time of the Revolution to the 19th century. Helped along this time by historian Richard Bell, author of "Stolen:  Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home."  He describes for us the wrenching story of what he calls the "reverse underground railroad."