LA, Santa Monica, Malibu, Ventura, San Simeon, Monterey, Santa Cruz, Soledad, Altadena, Pasadena, Beverly Hills, Venice Beach, Anaheim: The entire podcast episode is dedicated to California. Well, the entire podcast, minus a few detours. 

 Thanks a Thousand: A.J. Jacob's’ new book about tracking down the people who make his cup of morning coffee.

Boris at the Grocery Store: A Houston grocery store blew Boris Yeltsin away. I can relate.

Lightning Segments: New drinking terms, starting mindfulness now, draining interactions. 

The Freakin’ Poor: Why do we treat the poor like they have no moral agency? 

Dogs: Strict liability for dog owners? I think so, even though I know it’s a quixotic crusade. 

 Postmodernism: That’s a pretty big umbrella of thought. Please excuse my broad—sloppy—use of the term. 

Standpoint Epistemology: You know why whites can’t think like blacks, and men like women, or cis like queers? Because a Soviet philosopher told them it’s so. 

Act = Brahman: Think hard about the verb “act.” It might be a word that Derrida himself couldn’t deconstruct. I’m not sure it’s defined by reference to something else. It might stand on its own, like the Hindu/Buddhist Brahman. I flush it out here. 

Praxeology: That Brahman stuff is my attempt to slip some von Misesian thought into the postmoderns.

Lightning Segments: Mindfulness, drinking cities, essential oils, more.

The Stylites: Living on pillars in the late Roman Empire. 

Artificial Intelligence: What it is. How it is a threat . . . or how it might be a threat. 

Famine and Tyranny: Courtesy of the State. Free markets merely avoid them. 

Lightning Segments: Bill Burr, Going for the Snatch, Other

Cool Dudes: Cool dudes in high school stay cool, I think. 

Music attribution

Theme song: Skinnin’ Lynyrd by Greg Scheske, a bespoke expert. Email him here: [email protected] 

Background music for Lightning Segments is courtesy of Audionautix.   

 Drinking and Lent: Why would I give up booze for Lent? It’s practically a sacramental. 

Zen Lent: Do you hope to make spiritual progress during Lent? Then you won’t. Your focus is wrong because you have a focus.

Tariffs: They’re a bad thing. It’s Econ 101. I explain why here. 

Lightning Segments: Two funny stories, Bill Burr and the Catholic Church, Joe Rogen and the Catholic Church

David Foster Wallace: My introduction to this brilliant essayist

 The Imitation of Christ. What do I think of his classic? It’s a, you know, classic. I think it hits the psychology of devotion well . . . at least as far as 15th century standards go. It was, however, the product of 200 years of bad philosophy known as “nominalism.” I flush it out here. 

Miami. I went to the Capital of Latin America for a bachelor party. I was blown away. The bulk of the podcast explains why. 

The Old Testament. I summarize the OT in about eight minutes. The segment is closer to 11, but I throw in a couple of decidedly un-OT anecdotes. 

Words. A short look at a few unusual words. 

Lightning Segments. The ideal gin and tonic, The Adventures of Beer Man, Ira Gershwin, More. 

Radical Derrida? I know Derrida was radical, but I’m not sure three of his main conclusions—words don’t carry ultimate meaning, no text outside the text, and condemnation of binaries—are all that startling. I explain why, pulling from my personal experience, the Warren Court, and Lao Tzu. 

Sex in the Stall. A couple allegedly has sex in the bathroom stall at a NFL games. That’s unbelievably gross. Deconstructionism is partly to blame. The fact that these people are absolute pigs doesn’t help, but deconstructionism feeds them. I explain how. 

Communist Gnosticism. Marx, Lenin, and hatred for religion = shuttering of Greek Orthodox Churches in the early USSR. Homosexuality, deconstructionism, and hatred for truth = shuttering of Roman Catholic Churches in contemporary USA? 

Deconstructionism. Summarized succinctly. Words carry no meaning. Therefore, anything anybody purports to know is merely what they derive from individual experience: subjectivism. No truth . . . only “truth claims.”

Lightning Segments. Hip and renegades: shaping American culture. More McLuhan.

What TWE is Trying to Do. It started as “messages to my adult children,” but quickly grew. What am I trying to do? Nothing more nor less than imitating the essays of Joseph Epstein and honoring Samuel Johnson’s axion: The only end of writing is to allow the reader to better enjoy life. 

Books

Taki Theodoracopulos, Nothing to Declare: A Memoir

John Leland, Hip: The History

Joseph Epstein, Familiar Territory: Observations on American Life

Thaddeus Russell, A Renegade History of the United States

Eric Voegelin, From Enlightenment to Revolution

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

 Introverts. An introvert is not a shy person. It’s someone who draws energy from quiet. He has a finite supply of energy for interaction . . . it drains him. A huge revelation for this podcaster. Hat tip to The Matt Walsh Show. 

Deconstructionists. Derrida’s attack on binaries was an overreaction to Descartes’ erroneous dualism that denied the sacramental nature of reality. That, anyway, is my theory. 

Gnostic Gays: Deconstructionism + Gnosticism = LGBTQ movement. 

Touching During Mass. Enough already. Enough with shaking hands, too, at least during the cold and flu season. That custom has ran its course. 

Today’s Pride and Prejudice Parlor Scenes. Family members lounging around the living room, each with individual screens in their hands. The end of the family? Or a return of the family to 1800 leisurely norms?

Marshall McLuhan. This Catholic convert would probably take major issue with my conclusions in the previous segment. I introduce the thought of this man who used to be a household name and the meaning of his signature line, “The medium is the message.” 

Lighting Segments. Augustine didn’t say “He who sings prays twice,” plus it seems kind of self-laudatory. School of Rock, the musical . . . excellent. Andrew Lloyd Weber . . . rich and conservative. More.

Gnosticism. Introducing the thought of Eric Voegelin, one of the twentieth centuries greatest, yet unheralded, thinkers.