Speaker 1: Well whiskey, come and take my pain.
Speaker 2: The moneys all ring Oh don't why think alone when
Speaker 2: you can drink it all In with Ricochet's three Whiskey
Speaker 2: Happy Hour, join your bartenders Steve Hayward, John U and
Speaker 2: the International Woman of Mystery, Lucretia.
Speaker 1: Where this laps it up and live it?
Speaker 2: Ain't you easy on the should tap guy to give me?
Speaker 1: And left that whiskey clone.
Speaker 2: Well the paraphrase Monty Python And now for something completely
Speaker 2: different on the three Whiskey Happy Hour. This week, John
Speaker 2: U is not available to join us, so we have
Speaker 2: a ringer. We have a special guest, and not just
Speaker 2: a special guest, but the proprietor of a rival podcast.
Speaker 2: It's Alex Priu of the New Thinkery. Welcome Alex, how
Speaker 2: are you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing great, It's great to be here. This is
Speaker 1: a drinking show. But you're not drinking.
Speaker 2: Steve Hi, you know I'm on the road. I forgot
Speaker 2: my flask.
Speaker 1: She drink he put some hair on your head.
Speaker 2: Well at this hotel, this resort hotel I'm staying at.
Speaker 2: It's very fancy and I'm just off the pool where
Speaker 2: there is a bar. So when we're done, I walk
Speaker 2: straight out the door. And then thirty seconds, I'll have
Speaker 2: my Martine Lucretia. How are you if you got a drink?
Speaker 2: Or you do?
Speaker 3: I do? I have? I have scotch now that now
Speaker 3: that I can afford it again, Well, that's good podcast.
Speaker 2: Well you know we uh, Lucretia was a pretty stout
Speaker 2: defender of Trump's tariffs. I'm more equivocal about that, and
Speaker 2: Trump removed tariffs on scotch whiskey last.
Speaker 3: Week, so that right, Just just to be nice to
Speaker 3: King Charles.
Speaker 2: We might talk about Trump's speech. I just wrote an
Speaker 2: article about it for our friends with the American Mind,
Speaker 2: because I thought Trump's speech was really quite a mischievous
Speaker 2: and ironic and on borderline esoteric message. But we'll leave
Speaker 2: that for now. Ah So, first of all, Alex, I
Speaker 2: think we want to have you introduce yourself a little
Speaker 2: bit to our listeners. A few obviously like Jack you Pray,
Speaker 2: are familiar with you, but you're well, let's do it
Speaker 2: this way. Let's do personal stuff first, and then I'll
Speaker 2: ask about the new thinkering. And my first question for
Speaker 2: you is how many packs a day do you smoke?
Speaker 2: To keep your heavy smoking deep voice?
Speaker 1: You know, I I you know, puberty hit me like
Speaker 1: a ton of bricks when I was young. I started
Speaker 1: shaving in sixth grade. And then when I was in
Speaker 1: high school, I was able to call myself out of
Speaker 1: class and say, ah, yes, this is mister Preu. My
Speaker 1: son has a doctor. So I actually actually quit smoking
Speaker 1: because it made it worse. Oh maybe borderline on intelligible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so how long ago?
Speaker 1: Well, I should say quit a while ago. I wasn't
Speaker 1: smoking cigarettes. I was smoking cigars, and I actually just
Speaker 1: started again. So but but no, I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: just I've been blessed with a voice and a face
Speaker 1: for radio, and so I'm sort of disappointed we're on
Speaker 1: video today.
Speaker 2: Right now, give us a little brief, you know, origin
Speaker 2: story of yourself, because I don't actually I haven't paid
Speaker 2: attention to where you went to graduate school or where
Speaker 2: you went to college, what you studied, how you became
Speaker 2: Alex Preu.
Speaker 1: All right, well, I mean I'll skip the meeting and
Speaker 1: copulation of my parents in jump education, which is I.
Speaker 2: Studied the show.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, you know, origins are hard. Do I
Speaker 1: go back to the beginning of all things, you know
Speaker 1: versus welter and waste and then anyways, No, I mean
Speaker 1: I got into political philosophy, and undergrad I went to
Speaker 1: graduate school at Tulane University a brief stand at Saint
Speaker 1: John's University of Connecticut. Undergrad, I wanted to be a doctor.
Speaker 1: They were attached to a good medical program, and then
Speaker 1: I quickly realized it wasn't for me. I was reading
Speaker 1: a lot of dosto Yevsky and Nietzsche in my free time,
Speaker 1: which gives you an act events of my mental state,
Speaker 1: which was not hot I We'll put it like that.
Speaker 1: But I gradually got into Plato and very interested in
Speaker 1: what seemed to me just a brilliant understanding of the
Speaker 1: human being in human psychology, a political, social, and individual level.
Speaker 1: I got into the works of Leo Strauss and also
Speaker 1: of his great student Seth Bennardetti, who was unfortunately dead
Speaker 1: by that time, and so I went to study with
Speaker 1: one of his students, Roni Berger, at Rann University, also
Speaker 1: Richard Welkley, who had came in the same year. So
Speaker 1: from Richard I was able to learn a lot about
Speaker 1: Strauss and Heidiger, which I've actually been using lately because
Speaker 1: I'm working on something on Strauss and Heidiger right now,
Speaker 1: and from I learned a ton on Plato. It was
Speaker 1: my dissertation. Dissertation became my first book, and I wrote
Speaker 1: two more books on Plato, number of articles, et cetera
Speaker 1: on early Greek philosophy. At the same time as I
Speaker 1: went onto the job market. And this is maybe something
Speaker 1: we'll get into, which is, oh, the academy, which is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite things to gripe about, both in
Speaker 1: print and on Twitter. But hit with the job market,
Speaker 1: realizing how the political landscape had really changed things. It
Speaker 1: took me five years to land a good job. I
Speaker 1: ended up at CU Boulder. I was associated a bit
Speaker 1: with the Benson Center, which you were a crucial encoundering
Speaker 1: and for which founding I'm very grateful. And then I
Speaker 1: made my way in and currently am a professor of
Speaker 1: political philosophy at the University of Austin, not being confused
Speaker 1: with the University of Texas at Austin our pale imitator,
Speaker 1: but the University of University. But I'm currently on eighteen
Speaker 1: months of research leave, where I'm back at the Benson
Speaker 1: Center at CU Boulder as a sabbatical scholar and visiting researcher,
Speaker 1: writing on very right topics.
Speaker 2: Do let me have you back up a bit about
Speaker 2: two Lane. I'm a huge ron A Burger fan, and
Speaker 2: I enjoyed the podcast you did, right, I mean, and
Speaker 2: I've met her several times. It turns out she she's
Speaker 2: a fan of my weekend pictures on power Line. Okay,
Speaker 2: that may be my highest and best use for a
Speaker 2: lot of people, but okay, I'll take it. And she
Speaker 2: says that she and her husband that's the first thing
Speaker 2: they do Saturday mornings. Okay, good.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: But Toulane has always been this I don't want to
Speaker 2: say outlier, but you know, when you think about the
Speaker 2: world of political philosophy, you think about Chicago, Harvard with Harvey,
Speaker 2: Boston College, Clairemont until they killed the program, if you
Speaker 2: have Dallas right, Hillsdale, I guess in a certain way,
Speaker 2: and people don't normally think of Tulane. And that's because
Speaker 2: it's a philosophy Is it just because it's a philosophy
Speaker 2: department and not part of a politics department or is
Speaker 2: there something else there? And why did you pick Tulane,
Speaker 2: by the way, and not.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, the interest was primarily in Bennadette's works and
Speaker 1: and RNA's sort of masterful treatment of him. She had
Speaker 1: written a few pieces that really just so helpful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's East coast trausings, there's West coast trausings, and now
Speaker 1: there's a burgeoning Gulf coast drowsing. And well, you know,
Speaker 1: for a long time, Rona got there in the early eighties,
Speaker 1: and then Richard got there in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: I think, so for a long time it was just
Speaker 1: Rana there and it was kind of hard to compete.
Speaker 1: I think since then it's become a real home, and
Speaker 1: she has a number of graduate students, and the students
Speaker 1: do really well. I tend to think for all the
Speaker 1: programs out there, it's about the best to engage in
Speaker 1: close reading. I mean, Rana sits there and she reads
Speaker 1: one Patonic dialogue of say, fifty sixty pages over fifteen weeks,
Speaker 1: and she really takes you through the ringer, shows you
Speaker 1: how to notice all the odd details. Doesn't always tell
Speaker 1: you what to do with them, which is good, but
Speaker 1: she trains your eyes, and when you do something wrong
Speaker 1: with it, she tells you why you're wrong, but she
Speaker 1: pushes you off the wrong track. You have to make
Speaker 1: your own way, and so if you really take that
Speaker 1: sort of education seriously, you're going to get a lot
Speaker 1: out of it. At the same time, you know, studying
Speaker 1: with Richard, what always struck me as his amazing talent
Speaker 1: was his ability to enter any of the systems of
Speaker 1: these modern thinkers, whether it's Rousseau or Kant, or Hegel
Speaker 1: or Heideger or a Nietzsche or Strauss himself, just to
Speaker 1: masterfully switch from one to the other. And so you
Speaker 1: really learned what it's like to occupy and think through
Speaker 1: a systematic philosophy, but with an eye to a philosopher's irony,
Speaker 1: which he often finds in these these thinkers. And so
Speaker 1: you really do get two different approaches within the tradition.
Speaker 1: But it is a philosophy program, which is meant it's
Speaker 1: been harder to find jobs traditionally, but with the New
Speaker 1: Civic Center, there's not a lot of philosophy programs that
Speaker 1: want Straussians that very allergic to.
Speaker 2: Them, even someone from Tulane. We're not part of the club.
Speaker 2: You're not part of the Southeastern Conference of Straussian programs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly, so, you but you do now, I see,
Speaker 1: I was just there and I was very heartened to
Speaker 1: see a lot of the grad students finish up their
Speaker 1: PhDs already have tenure track jobs or good post docs
Speaker 1: at Princeton and other places that show that there's a
Speaker 1: real desire. And these civic institutes have a lot of
Speaker 1: political science PhDs, economists, et cetera, but not a lot
Speaker 1: of philosophers well versed in the traditions and with that
Speaker 1: philosophic training. And so I think it's actually having a
Speaker 1: good sort of run on these these new programs right now.
Speaker 2: Lucretia Alex was asking me before we got on the air,
Speaker 2: how you picked your non diplume, and I thought, I'm
Speaker 2: going to let her tell you that story.
Speaker 3: Well, when when Steve first asked me to come on
Speaker 3: the podcast with him, it was not the three whiskey
Speaker 3: Happy Hour, it was just the what did you call
Speaker 3: power line?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: And I was a dean at the time at the
Speaker 3: University of Arizona, and we thought a that it was
Speaker 3: probably not a good idea for me to be the
Speaker 3: outspoken person that I usually am about my political views
Speaker 3: and as the dean, so we decided it'd be fun
Speaker 3: to have a pseudonym, and he wanted to call me
Speaker 3: Professor X and I absolutely despise anything that hints of
Speaker 3: a Marvel movie. Yeah, and so I said, I don't
Speaker 3: want to be Professor X, and off the top of
Speaker 3: my head I had to come.
Speaker 1: Up with something else.
Speaker 3: And I had just been talking with my old mentor
Speaker 3: about some things with some parallels between the rape of
Speaker 3: Lucretia and some biblical things and whatnot. And I decided,
Speaker 3: since Lucretia was the founder of the technically the led
Speaker 3: at least to the founding of the Roman Republic, that
Speaker 3: that would be an appropriate name.
Speaker 1: There we go. Yeah, it's not. I thought it was
Speaker 1: a reference to Lucretius and you are ad and and
Speaker 1: and Steve is void or something like that.
Speaker 3: It's it's that simple.
Speaker 2: So so one more a little bit of history with you,
Speaker 2: Alex is uh your your podcast, which I guess it's
Speaker 2: sort of dormant at the moment because it's just like us,
Speaker 2: it's difficult to get your other two papers together. But
Speaker 2: first of all, the new thinkery, and yet it's almost
Speaker 2: entirely about old books, So that seems a little discordant.
Speaker 2: What's new about the new thinkery?
Speaker 1: Well, I guess there's electricity, there's technology, there's the internet,
Speaker 1: that's the new part. But uh, yeah, it was. We
Speaker 1: were trying to think of something that would uh suggest
Speaker 1: the kind of levity but also the tradition better and
Speaker 1: we thought, well better than the thinkery. Uh, but we
Speaker 1: were not the original thinker, So we have to go
Speaker 1: with the new the new think from Aristot.
Speaker 3: What would argue or could easily argue that anybody talking
Speaker 3: about philosophic topics and hearkening back to real classical interpretations
Speaker 3: of real classical books actually is very very new and
Speaker 3: novel right now?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, yes, I mean this is Isn't this often
Speaker 1: the case with conservatives that you're you seem to be
Speaker 1: part of the old guard, but you're actually very much
Speaker 1: like what could be more cutting edge than then, I
Speaker 1: don't know, not not transing yourself or something like that. Right,
Speaker 1: Like it's everywhere believing in natural law, I know, I
Speaker 1: mean believing in anything before like twenty fifteen or twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: I guess was, yeah, right, that's that's completely off your
Speaker 1: rockers these days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then how did you so? Your Your two
Speaker 2: co hosts were Greg mcbraer, who's now the provost at
Speaker 2: astron University, The poor Man, but he's going. He's going.
Speaker 1: He's going to be a assistant or associate director at
Speaker 1: the new Civic Center at Miami under Flag Taylor. So
Speaker 1: he's moving on in Ohio.
Speaker 2: Yes, the univer of Miami of Ohio. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: I didn't know that. And then David Barr was the
Speaker 2: third one who I don't know. I know David a
Speaker 2: little and he was at the Claremont Institute for a while.
Speaker 2: And how did you get to know those two guys
Speaker 2: and start us up.
Speaker 1: In the first place. So when I was at Saint John's,
Speaker 1: David popped into my class. He was just said it
Speaker 1: was a fellow student. And immediately after the after seminary gatherings,
Speaker 1: we'd be having you know, beers and eating food, and
Speaker 1: we both caught each other, as you know, poor students,
Speaker 1: smuggling beers and our jacket said, I think I liked
Speaker 1: the cut of this guy's jip. And so we got
Speaker 1: we got to know each other. Now he was a
Speaker 1: student at the University of Maryland of Charles Butterworth. Oh,
Speaker 1: great translator, interpreter of medieval thought also but I'm known
Speaker 1: very much for his translations of Frabbi of airways et cetera.
Speaker 1: And so I went to sit in on a class
Speaker 1: and Greg was a graduate student at the University of
Speaker 1: Maryland under Butterworth, and so I got to meet him
Speaker 1: a little bit there. But then over the years, you know,
Speaker 1: I think we were all together at a bachelor party
Speaker 1: or two, and and then you know, we had a
Speaker 1: text threat. And you know, I had thought about starting
Speaker 1: a podcast or some kind of online magazine, kind of
Speaker 1: journal that's kind of centered on philosophy, but a little
Speaker 1: more loose without all the academic structures. And when COVID hit,
Speaker 1: we decided, let's just record conversations and it became weekly
Speaker 1: and uh uh it did well for a niche, and
Speaker 1: we just kind of brought our banter from text messages,
Speaker 1: took out all the stuff that we get you immediately
Speaker 1: canceled and and uh, you know, turned it into a
Speaker 1: podcast and and it worked well because there was a
Speaker 1: genuine friendship right now, the genuine friendship was eroded by
Speaker 1: the routineness of it. And now we all bid each
Speaker 1: other and each other behind wells, which if you keep
Speaker 1: if you keep having me on, that'll happen here too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, we probably, I mean, you know, we we we
Speaker 2: abused John you ritually, which I think is why he
Speaker 2: is suddenly he's not available. He's getting tired of his
Speaker 2: being pummeled every week.
Speaker 3: Oh don't, don't even accuse John of that.
Speaker 2: Well doesn't. I'll tell you.
Speaker 3: What John doesn't want is a professional podcast. He likes
Speaker 3: the free willing part of it.
Speaker 2: Okay, by the way, quick question and we'll go to
Speaker 2: break alex So Saint John's Napolis. It sounds like that's right, right,
Speaker 2: I say that one of the top five breakfast spots
Speaker 2: in the country, if not the world. There was Ruth
Speaker 2: and Ned's Deli. What's it? The Deli, the Nellie's Deli.
Speaker 2: What's the place down there?
Speaker 1: I mean I never really went there.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Well, so what I did? What I did? I would
Speaker 1: wake up, you know, at the at the early hour
Speaker 1: of eleven a m. And I would go to I
Speaker 1: would go to the coffee shop and I get myself
Speaker 1: a big coffee and go across the street to the
Speaker 1: smoke shop where there was an ornery frenchman ran and
Speaker 1: I would smoke a cigar, do a little reading, have
Speaker 1: my coffee, and then go off to class. And so
Speaker 1: I often skipped breakfast for caffeine and nicotine only right
Speaker 1: and proper.
Speaker 3: All right, you're life that wait before you go on, Alex,
Speaker 3: I haven't told this one in a while, but I
Speaker 3: did quit smoking. Gosh, probably forty years ago now, but
Speaker 3: I started smoking at a very young age. And some
Speaker 3: of my fondest memories the house I grew up in,
Speaker 3: at least my teenage years I spent, had this lovely
Speaker 3: huge picture window overlooking this beautiful valley, and my dad
Speaker 3: and I when I was in college, I would work
Speaker 3: at his glass company, and so we would get up
Speaker 3: very early, you know, to be to work by six
Speaker 3: in the morning, and we'd sit and watch the sun
Speaker 3: come up over the valley in this picture window, and
Speaker 3: we would have what my dad would call a horse breakfast,
Speaker 3: which was two cups of coffee and three cigarettes. Some
Speaker 3: of my fondest memories.
Speaker 1: Ever other day, you know, one of my fondest memories
Speaker 1: from when he was when I was a kid, was
Speaker 1: when he would get frustrated with my mother. He would
Speaker 1: go to the kitchen with a cigarette, turn on the
Speaker 1: stove and light the cigarette from the stove. Oh God,
Speaker 1: that was the coolest thing he ever did.
Speaker 3: So because I know Steve was going to go there
Speaker 3: at some point. What did you think about all of
Speaker 3: those incredibly gorgeous Persian women lighting their cigarettes on the
Speaker 3: burning picture of Komani? That was just like, that was
Speaker 3: my feminist moment. I've never been a feminist my whole life,
Speaker 3: but I was cheering those women on. That was the
Speaker 3: coolest thing I think I ever saw.
Speaker 1: I wanted to do that. I got to go look
Speaker 1: at you didn't see that?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. You know he's busy translating. So what
Speaker 2: listeners should know? I think? You know this Lucretia is
Speaker 2: alex Is. Are you half Iranian?
Speaker 1: I think by Hakarani? Yeah, my mother's from Iran.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, yeah, he may come back to all that
Speaker 2: after we take a quick ad break. Care the three
Speaker 2: whiskey happy Era will be right back. All right, Let's
Speaker 2: turn to the subject that's on all of our minds.
Speaker 2: But you've done more work on it, I think than
Speaker 2: we have, Alex And that's the state of the humanities
Speaker 2: and higher education, among other things. Quick story for you.
Speaker 2: It came back to me as I was reading that
Speaker 2: Compact magazine piece about if you want to study the
Speaker 2: humanities or read English literature, don't go to graduate school.
Speaker 2: Good advice. I think. I remember back in the seventies
Speaker 2: when I was in college and a friend of mine,
Speaker 2: who I think was going to USC, back when it
Speaker 2: was purely a party school, told me the story of
Speaker 2: a class one day when in the seventies.
Speaker 3: What okay, sorry, go ahead. Wells like it's become a
Speaker 3: beacon of intellectual activity or something in recent years.
Speaker 2: Look, I agree with you. Have you seen what the
Speaker 2: admission radio is now at USC and what its rankings are?
Speaker 2: It's preposterous, but that may be part of the subject too. Anyway,
Speaker 2: friend of mine plosophy class said the professor was talking
Speaker 2: about Aristotle, and some blonde girl in the back says,
Speaker 2: wasn't he into shipping? And Professor's thinking, you know the punchline,
Speaker 2: don't you. The professor's thinking that I missed something. Was
Speaker 2: there a treatise? Was there somewhere in one of his
Speaker 2: books where he wrote about voter sailing? And turned out
Speaker 2: it turned out no, you know married you know Jackie Kennedy,
Speaker 2: And he realized the lady thought Aristotle was Aristotle Onathis.
Speaker 2: That's the sort of ignorance we had, And now it's
Speaker 2: probably even worse. So let's see, let's try this. I
Speaker 2: think you have got a book almost done or close
Speaker 2: to being published or something on this.
Speaker 1: I've got a book. It's in manuscript Forum. It's with
Speaker 1: a publisher being reviewed on sort of the state of
Speaker 1: the Academy, how to fix it. But it's actually pretty broad.
Speaker 1: It starts with a sense of crisis, but it goes
Speaker 1: through the ideological battles of the last century or so
Speaker 1: really sort of you know, American and French revolutions, but
Speaker 1: then you get the Industrial Revolution. You get suddenly the
Speaker 1: three major ideologies have the equipment necessary to propagate themselves
Speaker 1: and also to institute their schemes, and it sort of
Speaker 1: lays those out from the standpoint of political psychology, arguing
Speaker 1: broadly for a kind of platonic perspective, but in not
Speaker 1: being so direct in that way. The second chapter then
Speaker 1: goes back. It goes from political history to something like
Speaker 1: philosophic history, to the modern revolution what I call the
Speaker 1: modern conspiracy, starting from Machiavelli, and tries to lay out
Speaker 1: how we got this place. And it's basically a kind
Speaker 1: of sweeping history of modernity, but the main thrust of it,
Speaker 1: and we could get into this a little bit if
Speaker 1: you want to, but the main thrust of it is
Speaker 1: how we got to have these kind of chaotic education
Speaker 1: institutions we have, which are a weird mixture of medieval
Speaker 1: kind of study, really small, right, but it's still there
Speaker 1: in little vestigial forms, at least in the mottos on
Speaker 1: the buildings that nobody knows how to translate anymore. Right.
Speaker 1: And then you know there's a business interest, technological interests
Speaker 1: from early modernity. There's an ideological pressure from the left
Speaker 1: that's very well sort of cataloged. And then there's also
Speaker 1: just the kind of its market pressures, right, dumbing everything
Speaker 1: down so they can get the students. And what happens
Speaker 1: when you have a the peak of education, or what
Speaker 1: ought to be the peak of education, is so chaotic
Speaker 1: and contradictory, is that everything that's downstream from that, which
Speaker 1: is the regime, becomes chaotic and contradictory. You get the
Speaker 1: regime you earn by the citizens or subjects I would
Speaker 1: argue that you make. So the third chapter goes into
Speaker 1: the chaos of the education institutions, students, faculty, administrators, and
Speaker 1: the fourth chapter so that's more like social criticism and
Speaker 1: the fourth chapter is kind of like bird's eye view
Speaker 1: public policy, not really concerned with the nuts and bolts
Speaker 1: of it, but in broad sweeps, how do you start
Speaker 1: thinking about universities differently so that you can fix them?
Speaker 1: So this has been something I've been meditating about a while,
Speaker 1: drawing a lot from my experience being disgruntled within the academy,
Speaker 1: but seeing on the ground what's happening with civic institutes,
Speaker 1: what's happening at UATX, the things I think we're doing
Speaker 1: that are genuinely innovative and should be a model for
Speaker 1: other institutions.
Speaker 2: Right wow, Okay, Well there's a lot there that sounds
Speaker 2: very original to me. First of all, you know, most
Speaker 2: of the books these days, even the best ones, I think,
Speaker 2: but they tend to start in the sixties when things
Speaker 2: really do go bad. It sounds like you have a
Speaker 2: much longer range view of this, I think.
Speaker 1: I say, the really fifteen sixties is the latest I'd
Speaker 1: go for whateverything was.
Speaker 2: Okay, No, I think that's the better because well, the
Speaker 2: next point to make. As Lucretian, I think that a
Speaker 2: large part of the problem is simply the triumph of
Speaker 2: historicism that has overtaken all the disciplines in humanities, where
Speaker 2: and everything is the problem of the present horizon, right,
Speaker 2: the fact that people don't take well, what was it,
Speaker 2: you know, Jaffa, not just Jaffa, but others said, you know,
Speaker 2: the study of political philosophy in the forties or thirties, forties,
Speaker 2: fifties was like a survey of a waxworks museum. You know,
Speaker 2: maybe interesting, but not really relevant because it's not from
Speaker 2: our time. And I just think that makes students think
Speaker 2: the material is not important, therefore not serious. So you know,
Speaker 2: that compact article said don't go to graduate school if
Speaker 2: you want to read English literature. Lucretia for years has
Speaker 2: been saying, if you want to understand the Constitution, for
Speaker 2: God's sake, don't go to law school. Right, isn't that
Speaker 2: still your view of Lucretia, I think most.
Speaker 3: Of them, yes, well, absolutely most of them. But actually,
Speaker 3: whatever you do, don't if you want to study literature
Speaker 3: any kind, don't ever enroll in an English department, English
Speaker 3: major in English graduate school. I just I think I
Speaker 3: mentioned once that I was looking for outside reviewers for
Speaker 3: an English professor we had who was going up for tenure,
Speaker 3: and I started and she had this Sorry it was stupid,
Speaker 3: this stupid focus on technology in Shakespeare whatever. I didn't
Speaker 3: and it made no sense to me. But so I was,
Speaker 3: you know, the good dean that I was. I was
Speaker 3: trying to find reviewers who would be you know, sympathetic,
Speaker 3: but at the same time had good reputations. And god,
Speaker 3: when I started looking into what populated English departments, I just,
Speaker 3: I mean I almost became physically ill. And never mind
Speaker 3: what they did to Shakespeare and critical race theory and
Speaker 3: LGBTQ queer plus US and you know, it's just there
Speaker 3: was no English anywhere. There was no there was nothing
Speaker 3: I mean anyway. So, and that was ten years ago,
Speaker 3: almost now, probably five ten years I once saw, I
Speaker 3: once read an article on that argued that Caliban.
Speaker 1: Was falsely used.
Speaker 2: I'm not here right like like a like a.
Speaker 1: You know, a Victorian George Floyd or something like that.
Speaker 1: It was absolutely bonkers. It was the worst argue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was obviously fitting a narrative, that's what you get.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've read if you're lucky, Yeah, for my sins,
Speaker 2: I've read a couple of feminist takes on Shakespeare that
Speaker 2: are well, they're written in the usual jargon of you know,
Speaker 2: critical theory, and so they're almost unreadable and so unremittingly stupid,
Speaker 2: as someone here might say, uh, you know Gary. So
Speaker 2: I don't know if you're familiar with Gary Saul Morrison,
Speaker 2: who teaches Russian literature Northwestern. So two interesting things. One is,
Speaker 2: his classes are hugely popular. I think maybe he's the
Speaker 2: preeminent American specialist in Russian literature. And second, he was
Speaker 2: telling me, so, you know, he gets classes with free, you.
Speaker 3: Real Russian literature like Dostoevsky and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, okay, yeah, all those right, Tolstoy, the
Speaker 2: the you know, the classics, right, he was telling me.
Speaker 2: I had dinner with him once ten years ago, and
Speaker 2: Dan Lowenstein at UCLA put us together for dinner. Lucretian
Speaker 2: knows Dan a little bit, and he was telling us
Speaker 2: that the political no, the English department, he's part of
Speaker 2: the you know, the languages department, they won't give him
Speaker 2: any graduate students as teaching assistants because they don't like
Speaker 2: his politics and they don't like his popularity, I think,
Speaker 2: even more than his politics, which aren't that overt really.
Speaker 2: He writes for commentary now and then, but U and
Speaker 2: so he has to get teaching assistance from the political
Speaker 2: science department for a course on Russian literature, which I mean,
Speaker 2: you and I could squeeze that in easily enough, but
Speaker 2: it's still an interesting thing.
Speaker 3: I've read in a political science independent study class. I
Speaker 3: read all the Russian novels, and I have to tell
Speaker 3: you that I once on a Friday night, read the
Speaker 3: entire Idiot The Idiot until the wee hours of the morning.
Speaker 3: And that was forty some years ago, and to this
Speaker 3: day I can remember the horror of waking up from
Speaker 3: the most incredibly awful nightmare I had ever had and
Speaker 3: have ever had since in my life. There was just
Speaker 3: something about going down into that abyss with Dostavskan coming
Speaker 3: back out, But in my nightmare, I didn't come back out,
Speaker 3: and I've never forgotten that. So, you know, the idea
Speaker 3: that they could just turn Russian literature or Shakespeare or
Speaker 3: anything else into nonsense just makes me sick.
Speaker 2: I hate you.
Speaker 3: I hate English professors.
Speaker 2: You know, for for what it's worth, Alex. You know,
Speaker 2: our mutual teacher, Harry Jaffa did a long lecture on
Speaker 2: Dostoyevsky once which he gave a Hillsdale College around nineteen.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure it was ever published in print, but
Speaker 2: you can find the you know, the tape of the
Speaker 2: lecture on the Hillsdale website somewhere. It's quite interesting. That
Speaker 2: sounds interesting, Yeah, it is. It was very interesting to
Speaker 2: listen to. Now, I think I want to take an
Speaker 2: und break real quick because we got a little bit
Speaker 2: out of phase. But when we come back, Alex, I
Speaker 2: want to ask you for step one on your path
Speaker 2: to recovery for higher education. So don't go eight. The
Speaker 2: three whiskey happy hour will be right back. So, Alex,
Speaker 2: you mentioned that you're very capacious sounding book that I
Speaker 2: can't wait to read. I may flog the manuscript out
Speaker 2: of you at some point. Is you know, ideas for
Speaker 2: the way back? So what's step one? And maybe the
Speaker 2: next two or three after that too?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I mean, let me let me in answering
Speaker 1: that question. Let me just offer a kind of way
Speaker 1: to think about modernity and about modern institutions. Right, So,
Speaker 1: manchi Vellu gave a very vivid image for how he
Speaker 1: was thinking about politics, which is there is a torrent,
Speaker 1: an out of control torrent, a flood of human wickedness, right,
Speaker 1: and it will tear cities apart and rip up the earth,
Speaker 1: he says, right, unless you set up dikes and dams, right,
Speaker 1: just walls that this torrent has to respond to, so
Speaker 1: it can be guided safely and soundly to its low
Speaker 1: but very very concrete end. Right. This is how institutions operate. Right.
Speaker 1: You set up and you set up walls, and you say,
Speaker 1: go at it. Be greedy, do whatever you can to
Speaker 1: get rich, whether it's the market or the state. Be ambitious,
Speaker 1: politically ambitious. We have checks and balances, We have certain
Speaker 1: sort of regulations around the market that make sure it
Speaker 1: has basic fairness. And then you go out and you
Speaker 1: will maximize productivity. And if politicians can't agree on what's
Speaker 1: a sensible policy, they'll just cancel each other out and
Speaker 1: we'll get a still which is much better than the alternative,
Speaker 1: which is active idiocy, right, which is too often what's
Speaker 1: pa all the ancient republics, right as the moderns well understood. Right.
Speaker 1: So the problem with that, though, is that you turn
Speaker 1: human beings into very greedy, selfish and narrowly ambitious people. Right.
Speaker 1: And so what we want, what I propose is thinking
Speaker 1: about dikes and dams that don't just direct the torrent
Speaker 1: of human wickedness downward, but maybe upwards a little bit.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Is there a way to incentivize thinking, thinking about institutions
Speaker 1: that move people in the right direction? And there are
Speaker 1: ways to do this, I think, especially with education institutions.
Speaker 1: So taking this image of institutions, right, So let me
Speaker 1: give another image, just to make this a bit more concrete.
Speaker 1: Think about an engine, a car engine. Right, you're driving
Speaker 1: down the highway. You're going going seventy eighty miles an hour.
Speaker 2: And and uh in ninety a fairy of lucretia.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you.
Speaker 3: You know you're twenty seven.
Speaker 1: The other day one and seven were driving.
Speaker 3: There's a stretch of road that is essentially a frontage road,
Speaker 3: but it goes off and so it's not very well
Speaker 3: populated and a huge long straight away.
Speaker 2: I think you said, what are you driving? You just
Speaker 2: say where?
Speaker 1: Oh what?
Speaker 3: I drive a Tesla?
Speaker 1: Oh there you go?
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, sorry, I.
Speaker 1: Just saw a studio of mine in the chat. How
Speaker 1: are you doing it? It's good, okay, So think about
Speaker 1: it like this. You're driving your car. There's thousands of
Speaker 1: explosions happening just like a two feet from your face
Speaker 1: in this engine and you're hurling, but you feel safe,
Speaker 1: right because you know that engine will contain the explosions,
Speaker 1: the fuel tank's not going to explode randomly. You trust
Speaker 1: in the engineering, helltho you? Yeah, you don't. Honestly, I
Speaker 1: think I think more teslas in getting gulfed in than that. Yeah. Anyways,
Speaker 1: trust you trust that this is going to work right.
Speaker 1: Similarly with institutions. But the problem is, human beings are
Speaker 1: not just fuel. Yeah, we can be irritated, set on fire,
Speaker 1: and we'll go out there and we'll find a way
Speaker 1: to make a buck, right. But the problem is is
Speaker 1: we don't always feel good about it, right, And so
Speaker 1: we have to educate those moral sentiments and we have
Speaker 1: to direct people to take them seriously. So what's wrong
Speaker 1: with education institutions, probably especially higher education. Well, we've talked
Speaker 1: about lower lower standards, right, We've talked about a lack
Speaker 1: of historical literacy. Right. So one of the things we've
Speaker 1: done at the University of Austin is that every student
Speaker 1: has to take a core curriculum. Every single grade in
Speaker 1: that core curriculum is ai proof to I think something
Speaker 1: like eighty percent very high percent, which means you can
Speaker 1: be certain that and we're also anti grade inflation.
Speaker 3: Okay, what was the thing you said before?
Speaker 1: A I proved right, So I proved yeah, so you
Speaker 1: know that. So just to give a simple example, just
Speaker 1: have essay exams. Have three hour essay exams. You have
Speaker 1: to sit down, you get a question you haven't heard before,
Speaker 1: that's what my h my preference, and you sit down
Speaker 1: and you have to actually work out that question of
Speaker 1: three hours.
Speaker 3: It's like we did in the old days.
Speaker 1: Just like we did in the old days, right, And
Speaker 1: so that's what I was trained to do since middle school.
Speaker 1: And this is what students ought to be doing from
Speaker 1: very young. So if you do that and then you say, okay,
Speaker 1: you're we're not having great inflation. This is an actual
Speaker 1: measure of your knowledge and your abilities. And on top
Speaker 1: of that, your access to university resources will be dependent
Speaker 1: on your rank in the class. So one policy we've
Speaker 1: had is that if we have a let's say you
Speaker 1: have a startup idea and we have a wealthy venture capitalist.
Speaker 1: Sounds redundant, but never met a down on can probably
Speaker 1: not be a venture capitalist anymore. But you've got a
Speaker 1: wealthy venture capitalcies interested and guess what, only the top
Speaker 1: GPAs get to go there. Those are concrete sort of walls.
Speaker 1: Let's say, if you want access, if you want the degree,
Speaker 1: first of all, but also if you want access, you
Speaker 1: need to be doing the right things. If you start
Speaker 1: thinking about educational institutions in this way, you can revitalize
Speaker 1: and incentivize historical literacy, right, institutional literacy just understanding how
Speaker 1: we got where we are, why it's sensible, what the
Speaker 1: limits are of what we're doing, and you can then
Speaker 1: take the most ambitious students, make sure that they have
Speaker 1: that background knowledge, but then also give them access to
Speaker 1: real opportunities. If you start thinking about institutions in that way,
Speaker 1: you'll you'll start producing much better citizens and leaders. Right.
Speaker 1: So that's just a single example that gives you a
Speaker 1: kind of general sense of how I'm thinking about this conceptually.
Speaker 3: Another word devil's advocate for a moment to things on that.
Speaker 3: Number one, the problem with sort of putting Machiavelli in
Speaker 3: the terms that you did is that this is the
Speaker 3: problem with the Machiavelli, not you, and that is that
Speaker 3: somehow you've got ends that are defined by nothing that
Speaker 3: leads me to my second problem with what you said,
Speaker 3: which is the left has successfully done everything you say
Speaker 3: in a perfectly Machiavellian way, which is to say, they
Speaker 3: have taken over educational institutions. They have to what purpose.
Speaker 3: It's not entirely clear, because there is no end for
Speaker 3: the right thinking leftist, but they have been so successful
Speaker 3: at destroying the ability of students to think, at the
Speaker 3: ability of students to write. They have been so successful
Speaker 3: all the way down to pre school that I am
Speaker 3: not sure unless we can sort of begin there rather
Speaker 3: than with right thinking, intelligent graduate students. I really am
Speaker 3: playing Devil's advocate a little bit because I'm not quite
Speaker 3: as it's pessimistic about this. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: you know, I have students who really cannot form a sentence.
Speaker 3: Now they can because they have AI, of course, but well,
Speaker 3: you know, and and they have this zero, absolutely zero
Speaker 3: historical knowledge.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: No, they're smart, but they're so poorly educated for so
Speaker 3: long that I don't know what you do about it.
Speaker 1: This is your your This is a great question because
Speaker 1: you're you're forcing me to bring a lot more into this,
Speaker 1: and let me just hit a couple bullet points that
Speaker 1: I think we'll address a few things that you said first.
Speaker 1: First thing you said about this this question of so
Speaker 1: I think what you're touching on is the malleability of man,
Speaker 1: the idea that human beings can be shaped to whatever
Speaker 1: end you want, which helps when you think of human
Speaker 1: beings as a kind of monad of fear and greed,
Speaker 1: self interest, right, which is what Machiavelli does, Hobbes does. Right.
Speaker 1: They all kind of do this, and then they say, well,
Speaker 1: taking man singularly, we can kind of build institutions around them.
Speaker 1: I'm heartened by the fact that as theoretical physics seems
Speaker 1: to sort of not have basic answers to our deepest questions.
Speaker 1: Is this revival of interest in Stoicism, in traditional Christianity,
Speaker 1: especially Catholicism, right in pre modern thought generally, It's remarkable
Speaker 1: to see technologists talking about Xenophon's education of Cyrus, Plutarch,
Speaker 1: about Marcus Thereli, is about Plato, even as they talk
Speaker 1: about Machiavelli and others.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There's a real longing at the heart there, and I
Speaker 1: think this shows that we're well aware that the attempt
Speaker 1: to explain all of human longing, all of human ends
Speaker 1: in terms of mere matter, emotions, atoms, and void, my
Speaker 1: feminine lucretius over here. All of that has not really
Speaker 1: satisfied us deep down. And I think there's a real
Speaker 1: sense that there's a limit here, and there's a real hunger.
Speaker 1: And I see this from young students, a couple of
Speaker 1: whom I see Judah as in the chat here how
Speaker 1: you doing. I see this from young students that they
Speaker 1: really do want more. They do want something more, but
Speaker 1: they want it to be rigorous, and so there's a
Speaker 1: real opportunity for revival of nutrition. Now, as to where
Speaker 1: you should start to go back to the beginning of education,
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. But here's the thing that I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about more and more lately, is that when a
Speaker 1: student comes into your classroom at eighteen, they haven't been
Speaker 1: in education that long. It's civilization can be destroyed very quickly.
Speaker 1: It can also be revived by people who really are
Speaker 1: not unafraid to wield power. And I'm hardened by the
Speaker 1: fact that the right is getting less afraid of wielding
Speaker 1: power and less sort of anti status. And it's I
Speaker 1: think that the libertarianism has its place in market et cetera.
Speaker 1: But we need to be dear about what our cultural
Speaker 1: priority civilizational priorities are. And I think if you did
Speaker 1: something as simple as classify any education institute that is
Speaker 1: accepting a certain percentage of students that are reading and
Speaker 1: doing math at below a certain level as remedial institutions
Speaker 1: and then use that as an index for failing high schools.
Speaker 1: If you just to clear an education crisis and really
Speaker 1: compel some serious changes, you'd see something. Now if you
Speaker 1: look at what's going on in Mississippi right for less money,
Speaker 1: they have higher reading scores than in California, that shows
Speaker 1: you that all it takes is a little political. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't take that much. Right now, it's Spencer pract
Speaker 1: going to do it in California. I doubt it. I
Speaker 1: really employed that superman at or whatever, right, but I do.
Speaker 1: I do think there is political will, and it only
Speaker 1: takes a decade or so. And I'll leave you with
Speaker 1: this this thought. The school choice movement does classical education.
Speaker 1: These civic institutes. There are young men and women already
Speaker 1: going through these places about to go and get an education.
Speaker 1: They'll get PhDs, they'll go into leadership roles. I think
Speaker 1: that in ten to twenty years you're going to see
Speaker 1: some pretty remarkable young men and women come out of
Speaker 1: these education institutions, and guess what we'll get. We'll get
Speaker 1: on the right, you're going to have really well formed,
Speaker 1: well educated leaders. And on the left, what will you
Speaker 1: get what we saw with Joe Biden and Kamrade Harris.
Speaker 1: You get puppet presidencies, right, you get weekend at Bernie's presidency,
Speaker 1: and then this DEI face for what is essentially, if
Speaker 1: you want to go that far a deep state right,
Speaker 1: you'll see how it works out. The real substance is
Speaker 1: going to be on the stage. And I think you know,
Speaker 1: we often as conservatives of one kind or another, put
Speaker 1: myself in the other category, but essentially, at one time
Speaker 1: or another we get very disheartened about the future of civilization.
Speaker 1: But there is a positive story to be told in
Speaker 1: which the quality and the power of leadership will be
Speaker 1: undeniable on one side because the other side has relied
Speaker 1: on institutions and not enough on individual formation. And that's
Speaker 1: just where the right has as a leg up. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, my summary of what the way you describe
Speaker 2: your step a minute ago is that what students want
Speaker 2: and need is rigor and challenge and you're right that
Speaker 2: they respond to that. So you may know this already,
Speaker 2: but you know so Hillsdale they're pretty rigorous, they're and serious,
Speaker 2: they're explicitly conservative. But leave that aside from their method
Speaker 2: of instruction. Why didn't you hear about Oliver Washington and
Speaker 2: elsewhere the Wall Street Journal? You know, the media said
Speaker 2: cut these Hillsdale grads. They're really smart and they're really
Speaker 2: able at age twenty two, age twenty three, and I'll
Speaker 2: bet uat X is going to get that reputation really fast. Right,
Speaker 2: we're going to take another quick ad break. But when
Speaker 2: we come back, Alex, I want to take you back
Speaker 2: to something you said in your initial description of the
Speaker 2: book to push this a little bit further. So, Alex,
Speaker 2: you talk about remedies, but I want to go back
Speaker 2: to one of the conditions you describe in a way
Speaker 2: have never heard it done before, but I think it's
Speaker 2: probably correct, profound, deeply serious. You said something like I
Speaker 2: was trying to make notes that when you get chaotic
Speaker 2: educational institutions, it ends up spilling out too or causing
Speaker 2: a chaotic regimes. So the point is is that what
Speaker 2: you say, the populars version of that thought to the
Speaker 2: extent that is the same. Is everything bad in our
Speaker 2: country starts in faculty meetings, right, It comes from the campuses, right.
Speaker 2: But boy, I mean it's one thing to start turning
Speaker 2: out some really smart, effective leaders from these isolated citadels
Speaker 2: of excellence that we're all trying to promote and help
Speaker 2: out with. But boy, that's a long time for that
Speaker 2: to drip feed through a political system and turn around
Speaker 2: this the ship of state that's you know, sinking, right,
Speaker 2: So that's a I don't know, I'm saying, yeah that perhaps.
Speaker 1: There's this there's this line where the ship of State
Speaker 1: is brought up and players Republic where he's talking about
Speaker 1: about how you know, you have this drunken ship owner
Speaker 1: and he's got these all these sophist sailors trying to
Speaker 1: be hot and awful, and then he says and the
Speaker 1: ship sales as you might expect, which is a very
Speaker 1: strange way you would say it sinks. Right. The truth
Speaker 1: of the matter is that even with very bad leadership,
Speaker 1: it kind of trudges along because there are these these pressures.
Speaker 1: So I would just say that there's you know, there's
Speaker 1: a bit of of of pressure against that, and I
Speaker 1: am struck how much the the average person, even who's
Speaker 1: who's fairly ideological, will start conceding points when when they
Speaker 1: it comes up and butts up against their own lives. Right,
Speaker 1: So I think I have just a word of caution
Speaker 1: on the too much of the doomsday stuff there. But yes,
Speaker 1: I mean, civilization is always a difficult thing, right, It's
Speaker 1: always very fraught, and it has its fragilities, and it
Speaker 1: can be lost on the one hand. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: you know, students are running away from the humanities. And
Speaker 1: what's interesting is I see So let me take my
Speaker 1: friend Shiloh Brooks in his class at Princeton. He taught
Speaker 1: that at CU, he brought it to Princeton, and this guy,
Speaker 1: who was not a tenured faculty member, suddenly went from
Speaker 1: a class that had I don't know, a dozen two
Speaker 1: dozen students to hundreds in his class because he knew
Speaker 1: how to teach, He knew how to speak to the
Speaker 1: deepest longings of students. He wasn't just giving prepackaged ideology,
Speaker 1: wasn't finger wagging at them in this homeownersh way about
Speaker 1: their race, etster and their privilege. He just talked about
Speaker 1: what it means to be ambitious And guess what, Prince students,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you think they're interested in ambition. They tend to
Speaker 1: be an ambitious bunch and what they want to learn
Speaker 1: about that part of themselves, the part that they deal
Speaker 1: with every single day. I think there's you know, my hope,
Speaker 1: to be quite blunt, is that the civic institutes will
Speaker 1: cannibalize students from the other discipline so that they will
Speaker 1: grow even as we have this population. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think we're going to see it. As long as these
Speaker 1: places are well run, there's going to be a shift
Speaker 1: and the students are going to flock to them because
Speaker 1: that's where real stuff is going on. They have money,
Speaker 1: they have interesting speakers. There's a debate happening. They're actually
Speaker 1: facing the questions instead of just talking down to you.
Speaker 1: And guess what where talent is. That's where smart kids
Speaker 1: will go and the best kids will go. So things
Speaker 1: like that, and we could go on and on about this,
Speaker 1: but I'm happy to see some counter pressure. I'm firmly
Speaker 1: believe that the education on offer by individuals in these
Speaker 1: places is uh leaps and bounds better and more relevant
Speaker 1: and addresses to real issues. And that's students eighteen year olds.
Speaker 1: They're not committed like their teachers are. They are flexible,
Speaker 1: willing to dye their hair different colors, they'll dress differently,
Speaker 1: they'll think differently. Provided that there are some decent arguments,
Speaker 1: you just got to put them right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it turns out competition works and right. You can
Speaker 2: tell by the way the established faculties at some places
Speaker 2: like Ohio State are freaking out about these tiny outposts
Speaker 2: and they're you know, so, yeah, that's going to be
Speaker 2: interesting to watch. Yeah, Lucritian, did you want to jump
Speaker 2: in on the No, you're you're happy. I mean, I
Speaker 2: usually Okay, I've diverted you during the break.
Speaker 1: A little bit.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Plato. I'm not sure we have enough
Speaker 2: time to because I mean, we could talk to you
Speaker 2: for hours about it. Uh, but you have written a
Speaker 2: book about Plato's Symposium that I have to confess I've
Speaker 2: not read. But I started thinking about the symposium again
Speaker 2: when you had this ruckus out of Texas A and
Speaker 2: m in a or so ago about a professor of philosophy.
Speaker 2: He's a total modernist. I looked at syllabus. It's all
Speaker 2: modern journal articles on silly things plus two excerpts from
Speaker 2: Plato Symposium, and that got him in trouble because I
Speaker 2: think he was using him for mischievous and incompetent purposes.
Speaker 2: But but you know, am I actually pretty weak on Plato.
Speaker 2: I mean the Gorgioas is the one I know best
Speaker 2: because I took my first seminar in political philosophy with
Speaker 2: Jim Nichols. Was translated. Yeah, and you know, we spent
Speaker 2: a whole semester doing it like Roni Berger does, going
Speaker 2: you know, two pages at a time. It was fantastic,
Speaker 2: And I go back to the Gorgias and look at
Speaker 2: my notes in the margin all the time. In any case,
Speaker 2: So the Symposium, though, I think it's pretty different from
Speaker 2: a lot of the other dialogues, and it's actually I'm
Speaker 2: not sure it's right to say less of a dialogue
Speaker 2: than most of them that we're familiar with. Is it possible,
Speaker 2: Alex me to give a little thumbnail sketch about what's
Speaker 2: the central not ideas, but you know, central purpose of
Speaker 2: the symposium and how it firs from the others, And
Speaker 2: what's one or two things that you think people ought
Speaker 2: to know about it and why they should read it.
Speaker 1: Well, it's about love. And it's so I have this
Speaker 1: thesis about Plato that I've written a bit here and there,
Speaker 1: and then I've kind of nudged at. But I'll just
Speaker 1: throw it out here that every dialogue attracts a certain
Speaker 1: kind of reader. It actively cultivates a certain reputation. Right,
Speaker 1: So the symposion literally called the banquet or the drinking party.
Speaker 1: Drinking together is literally what the tuitle needs. Now oddly
Speaker 1: enough that people don't drink in there, which is Plato's
Speaker 1: way of saying, I'm going to subvert your expectations. And
Speaker 1: if you've heard about the book at all, you'll you'll
Speaker 1: know who's in it. Socrates, Aristophanes, al Sabaiines, Agatha, all
Speaker 1: these really remarkable figures in Athenian politics and in Athenian
Speaker 1: intellectual life. Pausanius, Eric Simgus. These are known people. And
Speaker 1: so it has a reputation, a gossipy reputation, and it
Speaker 1: opens with gossip by people talking about it, right, and
Speaker 1: you think, oh, this is like being at the mech
Speaker 1: gala after party. Right, I can talk to you know,
Speaker 1: this person and that person or whatever. Creastia rolls her
Speaker 1: eyes if you have a fine of her deep psychic health.
Speaker 1: That's very good, right, But Trance a certain reader, and
Speaker 1: who is this kind of reader? They want to be
Speaker 1: part of the in crowd. They want to be part
Speaker 1: of this community, the sense of that there's something, there's
Speaker 1: a real gathering here happening. I want to be a
Speaker 1: part of it. And guess what. Socrates shows up late.
Speaker 1: He shows up rudely, he insults the guy there. And
Speaker 1: here's the problem. Agathon is a is an accommodating host.
Speaker 1: He creates a beautiful environment, and that's what you think
Speaker 1: you want to be a part of. But Socrates, how
Speaker 1: do you accommodate the annoying, petulant, difficult Maggie Socrist? You can't.
Speaker 1: And Agathon struggles, and of course what does you do?
Speaker 1: The second he gets a chance to speak, he starts
Speaker 1: asking people questions, trying to make it a dialogue. And
Speaker 1: then when it's finally his turn, he objects to the
Speaker 1: whole proceedings and he has this whole whole issue, and
Speaker 1: he tries to change it. And the question really at
Speaker 1: the heart of it is can this wonderful, beautiful community
Speaker 1: ultimately satisfied The most stringent of guests, right, the most
Speaker 1: demanding of guests, and the philosophic question there is whether
Speaker 1: the beautiful or the noble, right, this beautiful, organizational, organized
Speaker 1: whole can actually be good for you for the person
Speaker 1: who's most serious about what their own good is, about
Speaker 1: what living the good life is. And the answer is yeah, maybe,
Speaker 1: but probably not not on this social social level. So
Speaker 1: it's a delightful dialogue. It's full of speeches about love,
Speaker 1: very ironic, kind of un self aware speeches about love.
Speaker 1: It's titillating, it's sometimes a little gross because there is
Speaker 1: a kind of pedaph right about it, and it's politically remarkable.
Speaker 1: Alcibiz comes in drunk and vino very toss. He confesses
Speaker 1: is joked in love with Socrates, the fact that Socrates,
Speaker 1: here's something for you, Socri seems to laugh at him,
Speaker 1: at his naked body. That it doesn't take a master
Speaker 1: psychologist to know that that could be damning to a
Speaker 1: beautiful person, to have the ugliest man at Porson Athens
Speaker 1: laugh at the person that everybody wants at his naked form.
Speaker 1: And that's that's a uh if you, if you ask me,
Speaker 1: what's a philosophic text that's both delightful and deeply interesting.
Speaker 1: It's got to be the symposium. It was interesting. His
Speaker 1: favorite dialogue, maybe the most beautiful dialogue.
Speaker 2: Now I've got one more question for you about this.
Speaker 2: So again as back to our teacher Harry Jaffa, who
Speaker 2: like to direct our attention to the final paragraphs of
Speaker 2: the symposium, And now here I'm going by memory, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure I'm going to butcher it, but it's it's
Speaker 2: where as Jaffa used to put it, And you know,
Speaker 2: my own reading says, okay, I see why I said
Speaker 2: that Socrates speculates that there will someday be a great
Speaker 2: thinker or writer who can be proficient in both tragedy
Speaker 2: and comedy. And Java says that was anticipating Shakespeare. Does
Speaker 2: that strike you as plausible or is that unting too far?
Speaker 1: Let me let me put a finer, finer point on that.
Speaker 1: He says that the person who can make tragedy by
Speaker 1: art or by technical ability could also write comedy. Would
Speaker 1: I take this to me? So my book on this
Speaker 1: is called Musings on Plato Symposium. It just got translated
Speaker 1: into German, so that's from Political Animals. It got translated
Speaker 1: to German as politic des eros Gungen not on symposion anyways,
Speaker 1: if you like German, that's from Claustromod translated by Peter Traviny.
Speaker 1: It's a wonderful translation, with a really good introduction by
Speaker 1: the translator. Anyways, Setting that aside, the person who makes
Speaker 1: tragedy by art by technical ability can also make comedy.
Speaker 1: Tragedy has that it's heart the gods. Right, If you're
Speaker 1: making it by technical skill, you're essentially inventing the god
Speaker 1: of the play. It's not just inspiration from beyond and
Speaker 1: then you give it voice, but you're actually making it,
Speaker 1: and so you've got a bit of ironic distance on
Speaker 1: your own gods. So that's a kind of a comedian element.
Speaker 1: I would say that the first master of that, and
Speaker 1: the first persons Socras intimates is Plato. The way he
Speaker 1: invents the forms, the good, the one, the precise itself,
Speaker 1: depending on the dialogue. But Shakespeare is certainly certainly capable
Speaker 1: of that, I think, and it's it's very difficult to
Speaker 1: see in play in Shakespeare, I mean, where he's not
Speaker 1: in control of the plays and everything that's happening in them.
Speaker 1: So certainly a master of his of his craft and
Speaker 1: of everybody on the stage, even if it is the
Speaker 1: God and Lee or something like that.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, so Alex, we have barely scratched the surface here.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have to have you back two or three
Speaker 2: more times and keep going without this some other things.
Speaker 2: But we're gonna do our last commercial break and then
Speaker 2: we're going to come back and do our exit stuff.
Speaker 2: Stick around for this, Alex, as you can hackle and
Speaker 2: chime in. We do our best of the Babylon b
Speaker 2: for the week, and then I'm skipping my AI generated
Speaker 2: parody this week. But this has been fun, So let's
Speaker 2: as we ride back for our usual closing. Although I've
Speaker 2: got a couple of new ruffles and flourishes maybe, so
Speaker 2: we'll be right back. All right, Lucretia, what's the best
Speaker 2: of the Bee this week that you've seen so far?
Speaker 3: The best of the Bee? We're a short week actually
Speaker 3: because the last time we met was only four days ago,
Speaker 3: just five days ago. But I came up with some
Speaker 3: So first of all, we haven't talked at all about Iran,
Speaker 3: which you said we were going to do, because in fact,
Speaker 3: you're half Iranian half path are you half Iranian or
Speaker 3: half Persian?
Speaker 1: Half? Alright, my mother is from Iran. My grandfather, who
Speaker 1: he just buried, was the son of a cleric, I'm
Speaker 1: told in Iatola. But this is from very long ago.
Speaker 1: My father is from France. He's a Parisian. So I'm
Speaker 1: the first person born in the US on either side,
Speaker 1: hence Priu and not right, Yes, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: So Iran issues a serious threat that they have a
Speaker 3: massive reserve of more serious threats. That's very Since you
Speaker 3: brought up the the petrol relationships. Experts say engagement ring
Speaker 3: should cost at least two tanks of gas. Always thought
Speaker 3: that was like the dumbest thing, you know, Oh, you've
Speaker 3: just been too anyway, that's because I'm not one of
Speaker 3: those kinds of women that anyway. Tucker Carlson denies ever
Speaker 3: hearing of this.
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson, fellow, Oh that's gonna yeah, wasn't that didn't
Speaker 1: he He got caught ray Is that what I was referencing?
Speaker 1: He got caught saying I never said this thing.
Speaker 3: He went to he had did a really horrible interview
Speaker 3: with the New York Times, and I'm sure he wish
Speaker 3: was buried.
Speaker 1: But yeah, can I say to the Persians with serious threats,
Speaker 1: I can tell you As a matter of fact, this
Speaker 1: is when everybody says, oh, I'm so worried about the orions.
Speaker 1: Someone like, let me tell you, Iranian's talk a big game.
Speaker 1: I've seen it. I have. I have aunts and uncles
Speaker 1: up the wazoo. We got we got tons of cousins.
Speaker 1: They all have big schemes, big big ideas. And it's
Speaker 1: always Virgans like to talk a big game.
Speaker 2: It's saying rug merchant to slur.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I'm gonna start using it whenever
Speaker 1: one of my cousins gets big in his bridges.
Speaker 3: All right, Coder, I really like this one. Coder displaced
Speaker 3: by a I told he should just learn to mind Cole.
Speaker 2: Right, that's a good one to write.
Speaker 3: Okay, so this is only for my my Catholic friends,
Speaker 3: perhaps perhaps the Protestants out there. Jumping the Shark, I
Speaker 3: really like this one. Jumping the Shark. The chosen criticized
Speaker 3: for planning to kill off main character only to resurrect
Speaker 3: him next episode.
Speaker 2: Oh dear, okay, just I'll.
Speaker 3: You mentioned the met Gala.
Speaker 1: I'll do this one.
Speaker 3: Hubo hobo hobo with garbage can stuck on his head.
Speaker 3: Mistaken for met Gala attendee. Did you guys see that
Speaker 3: one note, Yes, the one in the wheelchair who was
Speaker 3: a black, transsexual LGBT cerebral palsy quadriplegic. I mean, and
Speaker 3: is now this the you know, the lead models of
Speaker 3: some modeling agency.
Speaker 1: Anyway, the next Democratic National Committee candidate exactly.
Speaker 2: Makes it easy. It's getting beyond parody. Now, it's gotten
Speaker 2: so out of hand.
Speaker 3: It really is last one compassionate, hoping everyone knows the news. Compassionate.
Speaker 3: Federal judge rules assassin should get one more shot to
Speaker 3: kill Trump.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, yeah that if Yeah, that's right. Okay, I'm
Speaker 2: done right, Yeah, all right. So I'm just going to
Speaker 2: compress our ending because normally John has a little speech
Speaker 2: and I'll just summarize it. He always says, always drink
Speaker 2: your whiskey and eat buy more books. That's one of
Speaker 2: our models. We have a hoarding problem when it comes
Speaker 2: to books. And then I usually come in and say,
Speaker 2: you have been listening to the three Whiskey Happy Hour
Speaker 2: sponsored by our friends at the Civitas Institute, the podcast
Speaker 2: dedicated to single malts singular metaphysics coming soon, microtonal punk.
Speaker 2: I know that it's my new way I'm going to
Speaker 2: torture you and John Lucretia stand by you will, you will,
Speaker 2: Those who know, we'll know, and others will find out.
Speaker 2: And with that, that's a rapper this week. Thanks for coming, Alex,
Speaker 2: this has been great.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. This is a great, great time.
Speaker 2: Ricochet join the conversation.