Who’ll Ever Forget Them? https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p...

Tomorrow, the two of us—Sesame and Lily—will be talking to David Albertson and Jason Blakely about their new book Utopia for Our Century: A Manifesto of Hope. As ever, we are releasing a preliminary bit of chatter between the two of us, touching lightly upon tomorrow’s interview, but mostly taking stock of the current state of things, weighing it in the balance, and finding it wanting. We discuss the sad story of Jason Arday, the current political situation, the disappointing quality of today’s political scandals, blue books, surgery, the failure of perfect beauty and perfect moral goodness to establish any stable relationship between themselves, Ross Douthat’s odd estimate of the relative proportions of evil on left and right, 60 Minutes, time and tide, tide and time, POTUS and Natalie and First Love, and many things beside.

Episode #37 - "Tom Holland's School Days" - Eugene McCarraher and David Bentley Hart

That was the closest thing to a clever title we could think of https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p...

Tomorrow, deo volente, we shall record a conversation with Tom Holland, despite having discovered at the last moment that he is not, in fact, the fellow who plays Spider-Man or Telemachus, but rather the distinguished British historian. As is our wont, we have recorded some idle banter on the Vorabend. Our topics, as ever, were no better organized than our wandering wits. We discussed, among other things, J. D. Vance’s recent “memoir” of his “conversion” to “Catholic” “Christianity”, Integralism, Christian Nationalism, Post-Liberal Orderlies, J. D. Vance’s natural resemblance to the demonic titan at the end of Ghostbusters, the mystery of American white Evangelicalism, the Great Library of Alexandria, the World Cup, the utter spiritual vacuity of J. D. Vance, J. D. Vance’s blood-and-soil resentments, Rhode Island’s ethnic mix, Tom Holland (not the historian, the actor who plays Spider-Man), and Tom Holland (not the actor who plays Spider-Man, the historian), and much much more.

Capitalism, Myth, Helen of Troy, Jonathan Pageau's Hysterics, Automated Vistas... https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p...

Eugene McCarraher and David Bentley Hart resume their monthly conversation after a hiatus occasioned by David's house move and the submission of Eugene's manuscript, The Automated Vistas, to Yale University Press. The conversation begins by touching on AI-generated correspondence, David's recent translation of the Tao Te Ching, and anecdotes about Thomas Aquinas. David and Eugene also discuss Sven Beckert's recent historiography of capitalism, which Eugene compares to Trevor Jackson's The Insatiable Machine, and proposes a distinction between industrial and "super-industrial" society. The discussion then turns to J.D. Vance's conversion memoir Communion, Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, and Malcolm Muggeridge. The conversation concludes with an extended critique, led by Hart, of the right-wing cultural commentator Jonathan Pageau's objections to Lupita Nyongo's casting in Christopher Nolan's upcoming Odyssey adaptation, including a detailed discussion of the etymology of "Helen."

Forthcoming on the podcast is a conversation with Tom Holland (not the one playing Telemachus in The Odyssey).

Episode #35 - "On the Road to Christman" with Eugene McCarraher

A Wandering Conversation https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p...

Eugene McCarraher, PhD., is an Associate Professor of Humanities at Villanova and author of The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity.

Episode #33 - "Before Minniecon" with Eugene McCarraher

A desultory exchange between two elderly man wearied by the interesting times they live in... https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p...

Eugene McCarraher, PhD., is an Associate Professor of Humanities at Villanova and author of The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity.

Episode #31 - "Before Seymour" with Eugene McCarraher

The Moment We Are In https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p...

Eugene McCarraher, PhD., is an Associate Professor of Humanities at Villanova and author of The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity.

You may notice that neither I nor my interviewer made any attempt here to appear especially elegantly turned out. The recording was for an audio article, but I have been given leave to use the video record (though, if I had any sense of shame or style, I would not).

The young man interviewing me is named Gabriel Ellison-Scowcroft, a journalist for the CBC in Montreal (though on Anglophone radio). Our conversation began with a consideration of the changes the smartphone has made in our lives, personal and social, but soon expanded into any number of related topics, including philosophy of mind, information theory, the progressive dissolution of human experience in the solvent of virtual space, the ubiquity of the algorithm, and (of course) dogs and otters.