1 00:00:17,280 --> 00:00:21,120 We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinsky, 2 00:00:21,199 --> 00:00:24,000 culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show 3 00:00:24,039 --> 00:00:28,039 at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on exit fdr LST. 4 00:00:28,280 --> 00:00:31,280 Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course to the 5 00:00:31,280 --> 00:00:35,240 premium version of our website, The Federalist dot Com as well. Today we're 6 00:00:35,320 --> 00:00:39,399 joined by author Anthony Esslin. He's out with a new book called The Lies 7 00:00:39,560 --> 00:00:45,960 of Our Time, but is prolific also a distinguished professor of Humanities at Tailey's 8 00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:51,840 College, speaking of being prolific more than thirty books, more than thirty books, 9 00:00:51,840 --> 00:00:56,359 and also publishes a web magazine with his wife called Word and Song on 10 00:00:56,560 --> 00:01:00,520 language, poetry, music and classic films, and it aims to reintroduce people 11 00:01:00,560 --> 00:01:04,000 to the good, the true, and the beautiful. Anthony, thank you 12 00:01:04,000 --> 00:01:07,519 for joining the show. Oh, thank you for having me. It's a 13 00:01:07,519 --> 00:01:10,359 great honor, of course. Now, in addition to this new book, 14 00:01:10,400 --> 00:01:15,040 The Lies of Our Time, you actually spend a lot of your time translating 15 00:01:15,439 --> 00:01:18,239 works of classic literature. Could you ask for a little bit about that, 16 00:01:18,719 --> 00:01:23,079 Yeah, translating and actually writing my own poetry too. I've written a wide 17 00:01:23,200 --> 00:01:30,719 variety of things. But yeah, I take for granted that our schools have 18 00:01:30,719 --> 00:01:38,480 have done such a such a terrible job of introducing young people to their own 19 00:01:38,519 --> 00:01:48,680 cultural heritage, that you know, it became incumbent upon me to produce works 20 00:01:48,719 --> 00:01:56,319 and translations, but also additions that college freshman college sophomores would find convenient to 21 00:01:56,359 --> 00:02:06,359 you. So the additions that you can use as teaching tools for people who 22 00:02:07,840 --> 00:02:12,280 my Gosha, they're encountering the divine comedy that they might as well have been 23 00:02:12,680 --> 00:02:16,520 They might as well have been shot to Mars or someplace like that in a 24 00:02:16,560 --> 00:02:27,120 completely different universe. And so it's been my task to in part that's one 25 00:02:27,120 --> 00:02:31,120 of the things that I do, to try to try to keep the fires 26 00:02:31,479 --> 00:02:37,800 lit into light fires where they've gone out. This is really great and wonderful 27 00:02:37,800 --> 00:02:43,000 stuff, and it should belong to every educated person all. It belongs to 28 00:02:43,080 --> 00:02:46,599 all of us in the West, our cultural heritage. How does that work? 29 00:02:46,879 --> 00:02:51,879 And I think for you this is probably very fertile ground. How does 30 00:02:51,919 --> 00:02:54,879 that work? Sort of? How did it inform the work in the lives 31 00:02:54,879 --> 00:03:00,639 of our times? You've written a lot about Western civilization in general, the 32 00:03:00,680 --> 00:03:06,000 translation the attempt to preserve and keep the flame of that kind of literature a 33 00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:08,479 live. How does that how did that work kind of bleed into the work 34 00:03:08,479 --> 00:03:15,840 in the Lives of Our Time? Well, one of the things that is 35 00:03:15,960 --> 00:03:22,120 most harmful for us as a civilization, especially for young people in school, 36 00:03:22,599 --> 00:03:27,400 is this crazy idea. And I write about this in the book The Lives 37 00:03:27,400 --> 00:03:32,000 of Our Time. It's this crazy idea that if you are going to study 38 00:03:32,039 --> 00:03:39,520 the past, you study it with an aim to expose its absurdities, its 39 00:03:39,680 --> 00:03:45,560 mistakes, it's cruelties, and so forth. You don't really have anything in 40 00:03:45,599 --> 00:03:53,960 there to admire unless by happenstance they came upon something that we now do. 41 00:03:53,639 --> 00:03:59,280 But as for things that mark them out as different from us, to the 42 00:03:59,319 --> 00:04:02,719 extent that they are different from us, there to be disdained, ignored, 43 00:04:03,800 --> 00:04:08,080 shelved bypassed, right, we were pasted all that we don't need, don't 44 00:04:08,080 --> 00:04:12,120 need to learn anything from them right now. In the course of my career 45 00:04:12,159 --> 00:04:17,920 as a professor, I've been a professor since nineteen eighty eight. I've had 46 00:04:17,920 --> 00:04:24,279 the privilege, I've had the great joy of teaching literature and philosophy and history 47 00:04:24,279 --> 00:04:32,279 and the arts from around the time of the Gilgamesh Epic, which is over 48 00:04:32,319 --> 00:04:39,160 two thousand years old, two thousand years before Christ two thousand BC up to 49 00:04:39,199 --> 00:04:44,199 the presence. I've been teaching three thousand and four thousand years of literature and 50 00:04:44,240 --> 00:04:49,279 the arts, and philosophy and theology and so on. And I love to 51 00:04:49,360 --> 00:04:53,759 do this. And one of the great things about it is that I show 52 00:04:53,879 --> 00:04:58,000 to I get to show to young people. Look, there are things about 53 00:04:58,360 --> 00:05:02,759 human nature and the the nature of a healthy society that you can learn from 54 00:05:02,800 --> 00:05:09,759 Homer's Odyssey that we have forgotten now that we have either forgotten or we downplay. 55 00:05:09,319 --> 00:05:13,360 But they're there, they're true, and it's very exciting to recover these 56 00:05:13,399 --> 00:05:15,600 things and say, well, you know, how about that. I mean, 57 00:05:16,160 --> 00:05:20,040 it's onto something there. I never thought of it that way. It's 58 00:05:23,839 --> 00:05:31,040 going on a wonderful tour of different worlds. And yet they are in some 59 00:05:31,120 --> 00:05:35,839 important ways your own world, because they're your ancestors, so they do and 60 00:05:35,879 --> 00:05:42,040 they do not speak your language. They do so they're accessible to you. 61 00:05:42,120 --> 00:05:46,279 I mean, you've heard of Odysseus, but they're not. They don't share 62 00:05:46,360 --> 00:05:53,560 your assumptions about the world and about life. And in that way, they 63 00:05:53,680 --> 00:05:58,399 do have They're not always wrong, they're often quite right, and they do 64 00:05:58,480 --> 00:06:01,560 have things to teach us. And when you open young people up to that, 65 00:06:01,639 --> 00:06:04,600 it's very exciting to see what can happen. I see it happen with 66 00:06:04,680 --> 00:06:08,920 my students at day least. I've seen it happen over the course of all 67 00:06:08,959 --> 00:06:14,199 these years, since nineteen eighty eight. And it's a constant in what I 68 00:06:14,240 --> 00:06:17,519 write about, right, I mean the lies of our time. I keep 69 00:06:17,639 --> 00:06:20,720 urging people, you want to get away from the lies of our time. 70 00:06:21,360 --> 00:06:27,720 One of the means is to study other times. Is there a sense in 71 00:06:27,800 --> 00:06:32,480 which people's ignorance is being preyed upon by those who are selling the lies? 72 00:06:33,720 --> 00:06:39,839 Oh? Yeah, I mean absolutely. That's the question that you ask. 73 00:06:40,800 --> 00:06:45,639 It's a cynical question, but it's a powerful question. Who profits from this? 74 00:06:46,199 --> 00:06:54,759 Right? So, for instance, who profits from the insane lie that 75 00:06:56,000 --> 00:07:01,360 no human culture has ever accepted that there are are there are no distinguishing features 76 00:07:01,439 --> 00:07:06,279 other than a couple of little, minor anatomical details between men and women. 77 00:07:06,680 --> 00:07:11,680 Right now, that's just complete not sence. No culture has ever believed it. 78 00:07:11,720 --> 00:07:15,000 We don't really even believe it now. If you watch how people actually 79 00:07:15,079 --> 00:07:19,600 live how they talk to each other and so forth. But we are made 80 00:07:19,959 --> 00:07:27,439 to say that we believe it, we base public policy on it, and 81 00:07:28,319 --> 00:07:31,680 we do so to our harm. Im it's an engagement with unreality. But 82 00:07:31,800 --> 00:07:36,360 somebody benefits from it. Now, the common good doesn't benefit from it, 83 00:07:36,920 --> 00:07:43,399 but some sector of the population, they benefit from it. In general, 84 00:07:44,560 --> 00:07:53,560 we might say that illegitimate rulers or governors benefit by keeping their people tame, 85 00:07:54,240 --> 00:08:01,279 distracted, and ignorant. That's as general rule throughout human history. But I 86 00:08:01,279 --> 00:08:05,279 mean, if you ask in particular who benefits from this lie, well, 87 00:08:05,360 --> 00:08:11,040 and a lot of academic feminists do, I suppose, but people whose job 88 00:08:11,160 --> 00:08:18,399 is predicated upon making sure that uh, I don't know that that some experiment 89 00:08:18,920 --> 00:08:26,240 in indistinguishability between male and female goes on, and that its results are massaged 90 00:08:26,439 --> 00:08:28,560 so that we can say, oh, mostly it's not a big deal. 91 00:08:30,600 --> 00:08:35,200 Those people have whole careers that are devoted to this, uh, to this 92 00:08:35,320 --> 00:08:41,320 falsehood. I mean they have to they have to change their lives. I 93 00:08:41,960 --> 00:08:46,159 hope that that. Yeah. I mean, depending upon the depending upon the 94 00:08:46,240 --> 00:08:50,519 falsehood, we get different groups of people who benefit. But in general, 95 00:08:50,039 --> 00:08:58,919 uh, illegitimate governors benefit from an ignorant populace, And could you talk to 96 00:08:58,919 --> 00:09:01,879 specifically about some of the lies of our time as it pertains to beauty, 97 00:09:03,039 --> 00:09:07,960 especially somebody who spends so much time immersed in again the preservation of and in 98 00:09:07,000 --> 00:09:11,120 the beauty of literature itself. What lies are we being told about beauty? 99 00:09:11,120 --> 00:09:15,679 And what a fact are they having on our civilization? Yeah? Okay, 100 00:09:15,759 --> 00:09:22,720 so you know, the funny thing about some of these is that what people 101 00:09:22,919 --> 00:09:28,399 say is one thing, but what you catch them actually doing maybe quite another. 102 00:09:28,200 --> 00:09:33,799 So, for example, people will say, because they've been taught to 103 00:09:33,840 --> 00:09:46,000 say it, that the the abstract sculptures of Henry Moore, which like enormous 104 00:09:46,399 --> 00:09:54,399 lumps of bronze, that they are just as good as Michaelangelo Donatello and so 105 00:09:54,399 --> 00:10:01,480 on. They're taught to say something like that. But if if you actually 106 00:10:01,600 --> 00:10:05,799 look at what they what they want to surround themselves within their own homes, 107 00:10:07,399 --> 00:10:11,600 it's not going to be vague, shapeless slumps of bronze. But the trouble 108 00:10:11,720 --> 00:10:22,120 is that public policy is beholden to this lie, and we've ended up with 109 00:10:22,320 --> 00:10:31,080 a lot of really bad public architecture and public art, and it has helped 110 00:10:31,080 --> 00:10:41,200 to impoverish our common lives. I noticed that a certain certain very famous television 111 00:10:41,320 --> 00:10:50,360 journalist was recently in Russia and he viewed the subways in I don't know if 112 00:10:50,360 --> 00:10:56,639 it was Moscow, one of the Russian cities, and they were not only 113 00:10:56,720 --> 00:11:01,080 just immaculate, but they were actually quite attractive. They were beautiful, beautiful 114 00:11:01,120 --> 00:11:07,720 subways. And we used to have beautiful train stations and even beautiful subway stations 115 00:11:07,720 --> 00:11:20,879 in the United States, but having bought into the modernists, huha, we 116 00:11:20,000 --> 00:11:26,399 destroyed a lot of that, deliberately destroyed, and replaced it with things that 117 00:11:26,480 --> 00:11:31,879 are disheartening, dispiriting, frankly, sometimes unsettling. They even cause your metabolism 118 00:11:31,960 --> 00:11:39,519 to go creepy. And we had to pretend that they're grand and wonderful, 119 00:11:39,519 --> 00:11:43,960 but nobody actually, I think nobody actually really believes it. It's as if 120 00:11:43,320 --> 00:11:54,240 it's as if the worst of Soviet architecture had taken over in our midst and 121 00:11:54,320 --> 00:12:00,600 for what for what purpose? I mean, because because it's simply said, 122 00:12:00,679 --> 00:12:05,519 well, this sort of thing is just as good as those more traditional forms 123 00:12:05,519 --> 00:12:13,519 of architecture that you love so much, and I defy people to prove it 124 00:12:13,600 --> 00:12:24,399 by living in houses that look like miniature versions of the public architectitecture that we've 125 00:12:24,399 --> 00:12:31,200 defaced our cities with. They don't no matter what side of funding the war 126 00:12:31,240 --> 00:12:35,000 in Ukraine you fall on. Enough is enough. The watch Dot on Wall 127 00:12:35,000 --> 00:12:39,720 Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics 128 00:12:39,759 --> 00:12:43,240 and the economy and how it affects your wallet. Conress is taking your tax 129 00:12:43,320 --> 00:12:46,720 dollars, but they don't want to offset it by cutting anything else. They'll 130 00:12:46,799 --> 00:12:50,159 just throw it onto the pile of trillions of more debt. Cut it from 131 00:12:50,200 --> 00:12:54,279 somewhere else in the budget. Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall 132 00:12:54,279 --> 00:12:56,240 Street, it's affecting you financially. Be informed. Check out the watch Doot 133 00:12:56,240 --> 00:13:00,679 on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you 134 00:13:00,720 --> 00:13:09,399 get your podcasts. I'm curious when people say they see, for example, 135 00:13:09,720 --> 00:13:15,480 modern architecture as beautiful, and it's the sort of kind of going to do 136 00:13:15,519 --> 00:13:20,159 my best version of the devil's advocate argument here a little advocate and say you 137 00:13:20,200 --> 00:13:24,440 know that this is the cis heter Norman of white male perspective of beauty that 138 00:13:24,679 --> 00:13:33,080 excludes Eastern perspectives and is just cherishing, you know, the the Greco Roman 139 00:13:33,080 --> 00:13:39,399 tradition at the expense of others. And it's right this idea that beauty is 140 00:13:39,720 --> 00:13:45,200 subjective fundamentally. Do they think that their architecture is beautiful, that their art 141 00:13:45,240 --> 00:13:50,360 is beautiful, or have they convinced themselves that it's beautiful. Uh? Sometimes 142 00:13:50,399 --> 00:13:58,279 I think they don't care if it's beautiful, or they have rejected beauty as 143 00:13:58,519 --> 00:14:03,279 a category itself, so they they don't intend for it to be beautiful. 144 00:14:03,320 --> 00:14:07,559 They intend for it to be unsettling, so to speak. This is their 145 00:14:07,600 --> 00:14:13,080 word, not mine. Transgressive right. By the way, much modern architecture 146 00:14:13,279 --> 00:14:20,279 is really beautiful, and I might even say that some modernist architecture is pretty 147 00:14:20,320 --> 00:14:31,399 darn impressive. I've got I don't have complaints about the the Art Deco modernism 148 00:14:31,679 --> 00:14:35,279 that produced the Empire State Building, for instance. Okay, I mean there 149 00:14:35,320 --> 00:14:43,240 are there are great things even in even in a tradition that maybe played itself 150 00:14:43,279 --> 00:14:46,440 out a long time ago. There there were things to be said about it. 151 00:14:46,440 --> 00:14:50,399 There were there were great things that were done in it. But the 152 00:14:50,480 --> 00:15:00,240 objection that that this is peculiarly Western, we just will not stand against any 153 00:15:01,159 --> 00:15:09,679 real engagement with For instance, the East Japanese houses are quite beautiful in their 154 00:15:09,759 --> 00:15:16,440 peculiar way, in their particular way, but they aren't like glass and steel 155 00:15:16,720 --> 00:15:24,919 shells that we are made to work in in cities like New York or Chicago. 156 00:15:24,600 --> 00:15:28,639 Uh. I mean, take a look at what the Japanese build for 157 00:15:28,679 --> 00:15:35,960 themselves, or or the culture of India or or China. Okay, you 158 00:15:35,000 --> 00:15:41,559 will find the same principles of beauty, not not the same working out of 159 00:15:41,600 --> 00:15:50,480 those principles, but the same principles in a Chinese pagoda as you will find 160 00:15:50,679 --> 00:15:54,240 in a Gothic cathedral. Not the same working out, They're not going to 161 00:15:54,279 --> 00:15:58,799 look the same, but the same principles are in play. And if you 162 00:16:00,039 --> 00:16:07,080 begin to appreciate what makes the Gothic cathedral beautiful, you will have miles and 163 00:16:07,159 --> 00:16:11,919 miles of a head start and understanding why the Chinese pagoda is beautiful. So 164 00:16:11,960 --> 00:16:17,840 it won't wash. Don't nobody better play that game with me? Because I've 165 00:16:17,879 --> 00:16:25,639 studied too many things? Yeah? Absolutely, another Actually in that vein, 166 00:16:26,519 --> 00:16:30,399 because you have spent so much time mired in history, how did the lies 167 00:16:30,440 --> 00:16:37,759 of our time compare with the lies of previous times? Well, one of 168 00:16:37,799 --> 00:16:45,360 the problems in our time is that I see previous times, you couldn't stray 169 00:16:45,440 --> 00:16:55,600 too far from reality because you're very survival depended on getting fundamental things more or 170 00:16:55,679 --> 00:17:03,600 less right. Right. So if you let's suppose that you in you say, 171 00:17:03,759 --> 00:17:08,279 hey, you know what, here's what we're going to do. We're 172 00:17:08,319 --> 00:17:14,160 going to move out to this territory called Iowa. We're gonna farm it. 173 00:17:15,160 --> 00:17:19,359 But I have this ideological belief that there's no there's no difference between men and 174 00:17:19,400 --> 00:17:27,519 women. Really, So my wife is going to handle the plow exactly the 175 00:17:27,640 --> 00:17:32,640 same number of hours as I handled the plow. In fact, we're going 176 00:17:32,680 --> 00:17:36,279 to do exactly the same things for exactly the same time. There's going to 177 00:17:36,319 --> 00:17:44,880 be absolutely no difference between It's except when maybe she is with childs and childbirth 178 00:17:44,960 --> 00:17:48,680 and so on, then we'll we'll fudge a little bit then, But otherwise 179 00:17:48,039 --> 00:17:55,319 it's back to the plow for her. Okay, well that doesn't work. 180 00:17:56,039 --> 00:18:02,000 Okay, Uh, just a week of it, a few days of it 181 00:18:02,039 --> 00:18:07,799 will show that it's stupid, it's impracticable. It's reality is not obliged, 182 00:18:08,200 --> 00:18:12,039 that that earth is not obliged, that two hundred pounds rock is not obliged. 183 00:18:12,359 --> 00:18:19,119 That big ox that needs to be manhandled is not obliged to respect your 184 00:18:19,160 --> 00:18:26,480 ideology. So people, people in all places, at all times, have 185 00:18:26,599 --> 00:18:33,599 developed folk traditions, ways of living that allow them to survive and to thrive, 186 00:18:33,720 --> 00:18:36,839 to you know, to get married, to have a bunch of kids, 187 00:18:36,880 --> 00:18:41,960 have those kids survive into adulthood, get grandchildren. Get decent food on 188 00:18:41,000 --> 00:18:45,079 the table, a leak free roof over your head, and warm clothes on 189 00:18:45,119 --> 00:18:53,400 your back. They couldn't go too far into madness. We can because we're 190 00:18:53,799 --> 00:19:03,440 wealthy. We can engage in all kinds of experiments because we can get away 191 00:19:03,480 --> 00:19:08,200 with them. We don't have to worry about the hay rotting before we can 192 00:19:08,240 --> 00:19:12,759 get it in, before we can bail it and get it safe in the 193 00:19:12,799 --> 00:19:17,839 hay loft. We don't have to worry about things like that described as do 194 00:19:17,880 --> 00:19:23,039 you think do you agree with people who describe that as decadence? You know 195 00:19:23,640 --> 00:19:32,519 it's well, it can It can lead very quickly to decadence with us. 196 00:19:33,839 --> 00:19:40,319 I mean, I look at the various arts and I don't see any of 197 00:19:40,359 --> 00:19:44,119 them right now that are thriving. There's a variety of reasons why not, 198 00:19:44,279 --> 00:19:52,400 I think, But in one case after another, the decadence is marked by 199 00:19:52,400 --> 00:20:03,039 a forgetting of past forms, a loss of know how that is strange when 200 00:20:03,079 --> 00:20:11,039 it comes along with in some other regards, are very sophisticated development of technology, 201 00:20:11,039 --> 00:20:18,880 but it's been accompanied by a sort of subterranean loss of technology, loss 202 00:20:18,880 --> 00:20:22,920 of know how. I mean technology in the very broadest sense, knowing how 203 00:20:22,960 --> 00:20:26,960 to do certain things, okay, with your hands or with your back, 204 00:20:27,079 --> 00:20:37,799 or with your mind. And if you combine this with this overweening confidence that 205 00:20:37,480 --> 00:20:42,680 just because we have television and radio now that all the other areas of human 206 00:20:42,759 --> 00:20:48,640 knowledge and human wisdom must have advanced along with that, that's just crazy. 207 00:20:48,920 --> 00:20:55,400 But if you take that overconfident and presumptuous attitude, then you're on the road 208 00:20:55,440 --> 00:21:00,799 to being a very stupid, very stupid people. And then you begin to 209 00:21:00,839 --> 00:21:10,119 see a falling off in quality, in quantity and quality and range and variety 210 00:21:10,119 --> 00:21:14,440 in all the arts. And I think I think we're in the middle of 211 00:21:14,480 --> 00:21:19,599 that. Now. I can pick an art, a poetry, and I'll 212 00:21:19,680 --> 00:21:23,240 show you. You know, if you went back one hundred years, you'll 213 00:21:23,279 --> 00:21:30,720 not just find a higher quality, you find that more people are influenced by 214 00:21:30,839 --> 00:21:34,400 more people read it, more people commit these things to heart, and there's 215 00:21:34,480 --> 00:21:44,039 a broader variety of kinds out there, broader scope, broader variety, and 216 00:21:44,559 --> 00:21:52,440 what's popular is of a much higher quality. And I think that that's the 217 00:21:52,519 --> 00:21:56,279 case in one art after another in our time. Yeah, And I'm so 218 00:21:56,400 --> 00:22:00,240 curious as you work with students and you probably we see, you know, 219 00:22:00,440 --> 00:22:03,400 what this has done to the kind of high tech world, has done to 220 00:22:03,440 --> 00:22:11,279 people's even ability to process beauty and truth and all of that. And you 221 00:22:11,279 --> 00:22:18,640 know, as somebody who writes poetry just sits down and participates in the most 222 00:22:18,839 --> 00:22:23,240 primal forms of art. I don't mean that pejoratively. I mean it's one 223 00:22:23,200 --> 00:22:26,720 of the most basically, it's the universal human art. And what is that 224 00:22:26,880 --> 00:22:30,640 like? You know, do you think that it'll be possible or it'll be 225 00:22:30,720 --> 00:22:36,240 common for you know, people like your students' age, as they grow older 226 00:22:36,839 --> 00:22:41,359 and as people in younger generations grow older and their attention spans have been so 227 00:22:41,480 --> 00:22:47,720 captured by technology and truncated, will people be able to write beautiful poetry? 228 00:22:47,920 --> 00:22:51,400 And what's it like for you doing that in such a high tech society as 229 00:22:51,440 --> 00:22:53,960 well? Well, I'll tell you I answered the first part of question. 230 00:22:55,079 --> 00:23:00,799 First, we are in danger of raising generations of people who cannot read it. 231 00:23:00,799 --> 00:23:04,599 I don't mean, of course, that they can't decipher the sounds of 232 00:23:06,240 --> 00:23:10,680 alphabet, letters of the alphabet and pronounce words in the page. I mean, 233 00:23:11,000 --> 00:23:17,599 you know, if you've got the attention span of a flea on math 234 00:23:17,759 --> 00:23:25,079 amphetamines, you're not going to read a novel by Sir Walter Scott. You 235 00:23:25,160 --> 00:23:32,119 don't have the quiet in your mind to permit you to do that. It's 236 00:23:32,599 --> 00:23:37,400 like asking if you can, if you can read a book. If someone 237 00:23:37,759 --> 00:23:45,119 is pinching you with needles at random, on an average of every one and 238 00:23:45,160 --> 00:23:48,640 a half seconds on this or that part of your body at random, Well, 239 00:23:48,720 --> 00:23:56,920 nobody can read a book if that's happening. Okay, Well, mentally 240 00:23:56,039 --> 00:24:03,519 that's what's happening. You're going to produce people who are who are who cannot 241 00:24:03,559 --> 00:24:11,000 read a good book. Okay. That's the first part of the question. 242 00:24:11,160 --> 00:24:15,200 The second part is what have I had to do? Well, I'll tell 243 00:24:15,240 --> 00:24:22,720 you when I wrote in my book length poem one Hundredfold, centered on the 244 00:24:22,720 --> 00:24:26,960 Life of Christ. It's a collection of one hundred poems of three different varieties, 245 00:24:27,640 --> 00:24:37,359 lyrics, hymns, and long dramatic monologues. I had to write an 246 00:24:37,440 --> 00:24:42,960 introduction to it, to enable people, people with goodwill right, to enable 247 00:24:44,039 --> 00:24:51,519 people to read the work, to introduce them to how English poetry works, 248 00:24:52,680 --> 00:24:56,920 to the kinds of things that poets do and why they do them. In 249 00:24:56,960 --> 00:25:00,160 other words, I had to kind of write an introduction to poetry to put 250 00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:06,119 it as an introduction to the work that I wrote. Now, had I 251 00:25:06,160 --> 00:25:10,240 done this one hundred years ago, people would have laughed at me. They 252 00:25:10,279 --> 00:25:12,240 said, what do you think? We are idiots? You don't need to 253 00:25:12,240 --> 00:25:17,720 do this right, What do you do this for? You go back one 254 00:25:17,799 --> 00:25:22,319 hundred and thirty one hundred and forty years to the popular magazines that I collect 255 00:25:22,720 --> 00:25:30,759 from the eighteen eighties eighteen nineties. You would embarrass yourself if you thought that 256 00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:37,000 your readers needed to have French translated for them. So in a popular magazine 257 00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:41,920 where you'd be following along with Mark Twain's selections from Huckleberry Finn or with the 258 00:25:42,039 --> 00:25:49,720 his serialized Connecticut Yankee king Arthur's Court, it's a very popular magazine. If 259 00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:53,119 you have a passage in French, you're writing an article and you're quoting some 260 00:25:53,160 --> 00:25:59,240 French author, you just give the passage in French. Nobody translates it because 261 00:25:59,240 --> 00:26:03,480 it's taken for granted that anybody reading that article will be able to figure out 262 00:26:03,519 --> 00:26:11,839 what French means. Right. That's now to help people read the poem, 263 00:26:12,480 --> 00:26:18,559 I've got to teach them what poetry is and how it works in English. 264 00:26:18,599 --> 00:26:23,000 And I mean, I'm pleased to do that. I'm happy to do that. 265 00:26:23,079 --> 00:26:26,799 I think it's necessary. But it's a shame that it has to be 266 00:26:26,880 --> 00:26:30,680 necessary. And you know, I kind of want to ask about that tension 267 00:26:30,680 --> 00:26:34,440 you were talking about it earlier between living in one of the most high information 268 00:26:34,519 --> 00:26:41,599 societies, well the most high information society technologically that's ever existed, and being 269 00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:45,680 so susceptible to lies. The lives of our time, the lives of our 270 00:26:45,880 --> 00:26:49,400 high tech time, the lives of our high information time. Why are lies 271 00:26:49,480 --> 00:26:55,000 so easily sold in an age where you know, it feels like there's so 272 00:26:55,079 --> 00:27:03,519 much truth at our fingertips. Well, we need to draw a distinction. 273 00:27:06,160 --> 00:27:11,839 That word information is a funny word. Let's back it up and say that 274 00:27:11,880 --> 00:27:18,279 what's at our fingertips is quite a lot of data. Okay, So, 275 00:27:18,359 --> 00:27:26,240 for instance, I have a funny hobby. I want to this is just 276 00:27:26,279 --> 00:27:30,839 what I did yesterday. I want to find out how good a certain picture 277 00:27:32,079 --> 00:27:34,920 was at holding men on base or picking them off. So I go to 278 00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:40,119 a website and I find out I found out that he picked off one hundred 279 00:27:40,119 --> 00:27:45,359 and forty six runners. But it's amazing, And I find out how many 280 00:27:45,359 --> 00:27:48,759 people stole bases against him, how many were caught stealing, and so on 281 00:27:48,920 --> 00:27:55,440 over how many innings I can do that right? Data is at your fingertips. 282 00:27:55,519 --> 00:28:00,920 Information is a little bit different thing because it presumes an intelligible form, 283 00:28:00,319 --> 00:28:10,880 and that that's where the devil lies. Because what people get from clicking here, 284 00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:19,200 clicking there is they get. They get bits and scraps of data or 285 00:28:19,480 --> 00:28:32,599 of people's reaction to data, but they don't get they don't get anything like 286 00:28:33,400 --> 00:28:45,640 an organized form that some intelligent person has carefully, uh put the data into 287 00:28:47,119 --> 00:28:55,160 in order to make best rational sense of them. So it's it's an illusion 288 00:28:55,559 --> 00:29:03,240 of information usually. Uh, I mean, how many people really trust what 289 00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:08,839 what they read in Wikipedia? Uh? Well, maybe they do trust, 290 00:29:08,839 --> 00:29:17,119 but they shouldn't. There there's a there's a mathematician named uh Murray Murray. 291 00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:21,039 I'm not sure I pronounce this. His last name gel man G E L 292 00:29:21,279 --> 00:29:26,920 L, hyphen m A N and and he pointed out something interesting. He 293 00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:32,480 said, when whenever you read an article in a newspaper or magazine, and 294 00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:41,079 now this goes in spades for you read something on on online and it's something 295 00:29:41,119 --> 00:29:44,839 that is in your field of expertise. So let's say I read an article 296 00:29:44,960 --> 00:29:52,319 that I bump into online on some Renaissance English poet. I can tell right 297 00:29:52,359 --> 00:29:59,880 away that the article is full of errors. The person is out to lunch, 298 00:30:00,119 --> 00:30:03,559 they don't know what they're talking about. I can see, I can 299 00:30:03,599 --> 00:30:07,400 see all the mistakes. They're laid bare before me. But then the same 300 00:30:07,519 --> 00:30:19,680 person going to an article on a different field, let's say let's say climate, 301 00:30:21,759 --> 00:30:26,680 the climate of Europe in the Middle Ages, Okay, the same person 302 00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:33,839 will trust what he reads in the same kind of article. When he doesn't, 303 00:30:34,039 --> 00:30:38,720 it's the gel Man effect. He doesn't make that leap that he knows 304 00:30:38,720 --> 00:30:47,119 when he reads articles in his field that they're no they range from uh, 305 00:30:48,279 --> 00:30:52,720 you know, pretty good, down to adequate, down to absolutely full of 306 00:30:52,839 --> 00:30:57,799 nonsense. But when they go to another field, they it's as if they 307 00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:04,079 leave that experience behind and they lend credibility to what they read. But when 308 00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:10,400 somebody who is an expert in medieval history will look at the same articles say 309 00:31:10,440 --> 00:31:15,319 this is after lunch, this is this is crazy. So uh, I 310 00:31:15,279 --> 00:31:22,000 don't know. Maybe maybe it is all the easier to deceive us because things 311 00:31:22,039 --> 00:31:34,440 are presented as the results of experts having done investigation, when in fact it's 312 00:31:34,480 --> 00:31:42,880 not so. It's so some investigation mixed up with rank assumptions that needn't be 313 00:31:44,000 --> 00:31:49,559 true, mixed up with some bad logic, some some sheer mistakes, things 314 00:31:49,559 --> 00:31:56,960 that aren't true at all, just a jumble that that that jumble characterizes pretty 315 00:31:57,039 --> 00:32:04,920 much anything that you will encounter that rises any distance beyond that of hard data. 316 00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:08,920 And I trust Wikipedia to tell me how many miles it is from one 317 00:32:09,119 --> 00:32:14,000 end of Interstate ninety to the other, and what towns goes through, et 318 00:32:14,039 --> 00:32:20,680 cetera. That I can trust Wikipedia for. But something that involves actually, 319 00:32:21,440 --> 00:32:28,400 I mean real intelligence, not so much. Absolutely fascinating. Once again. 320 00:32:28,440 --> 00:32:30,960 The book is called Lies of Our Time, The Lies of Our Time by 321 00:32:31,039 --> 00:32:36,599 Anthony Esslyn. Thank you so much for joining the show, well, thank 322 00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:38,359 you for having me. I hope we can do this again. Absolutely, 323 00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:43,799 it was very very interesting, super super appreciative of your time. I'm a 324 00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:47,759 Kashinski culture editor here at the Federalist movie back soon until then the lovers of 325 00:32:47,799 --> 00:33:08,039 freedom and anxious fool fray earn a faderies, and then it faded away. Mm hmm