Conservative Conversations with ISI

In this episode:

• Alexandra Hudson joins the podcast to talk about her new book, The Soul of Civility
• how Burke and Locke come together with the “vertical” and “horizontal” social compacts that capture the social and political relations of society
• the difference between politeness and civility, and the limits of politeness in our personal and political life

Texts Mentioned:

• The Soul of Civility by Alexandra Hudson
• A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes
• The Maxims of Ptahhotep
• Federalist 51 by James Madison
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Beyond Order: Twelve More Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson
• On The Beautiful and the Sublime by Edmund Burke
• Civic Renaissance

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In this episode:

•  A special Q&A between Johnny and Tucker following Tucker’s keynote address at ISI’s annual Gala for Western Civilization at our new Linda Bean Center on campus in Wilmington, DE
• Tucker reflects on a career in journalism and the role of individuals in a democracy. Join us as they discuss the future of America and what ISI is doing for students across the country. 

Texts Mentioned:

• The Long Slide by Tucker Carlson

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In this episode:

• Jesse Merriam, professor of constitutional studies at Patrick Henry College, joins the podcast to talk about how we got our antiracist Constitution
• how Brown v. Board’s jurisprudence unleashed a diversity regime that has usurped the written Constitution and the principles of a free society
• what we can expect for the future of affirmative action in light of the recent Supreme Court decisions challenging affirmative action

Texts Mentioned:

• How We Got our Antiracist Constitution by Jesse Merriam
• Brown v. Board of Education
• We The PeopleThree Volume Trilogy by Bruce Ackerman
• Government by Judiciary by Raoul Berger
• The Warren Revolutionby L. Brent Bozell, Jr.
• “Originalism and the Desegregation Decisions” by Michael McConnell
• “The Originalist Case for Brown v. Board of Education” by Michael McConnell
• “The Original Intent—As Perceived by Michael McConnell” by Raoul Berger
• Thomas Jefferson to Henri Gregoire, February 25, 1809
• Plessy v. Ferguson
• “The Affirmative Action Regime” by Jesse Merriam
• Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard
• Grutter v. Bollinger

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In this episode:

• Catherine Pakaluk joins the podcast to discuss her forthcoming book, Hannah’s Children, about women having large families amongst a culture of childlessness
• the limits of economic and family policy in reversing the falling birthrates, and what really drives our demographic decline
• Marlo and Catherine talk about the various joys and challenges that come with motherhood, both of one child and of many children

Texts Mentioned:

• Hannah’s Children: The Stories of Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth by Catherine Pakaluk
• The Birth Dearth by Ben Wattenberg
• “Jordan Peterson Interviews Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy”
• Coming Apart by Charles Murray
• Get Married by Brad Wilcox
• The Two Parent Privilege by Melissa Kearney

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In this episode:

• Zena Hitz joins the podcast to talk about the enduring value and necessity of a liberal arts education
• how class and economic considerations describe the shifts towards “practical” studies and coursework to the neglect of “the fundamental questions”
• the connection between ascetic practice and proper reasoning, and how education requires retreat from the present things

Texts Mentioned:

• Lost in Thought by Zena Hitz
• catherineproject.org
• Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
• Sophist by Plato
• Phaedrus by Plato
• Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
• City of God by Augustine
• Republic by Plato
• Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
• Confessions by Augustine
• Genesis

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In this episode:

• Tom Shakely, Chief Engagement Officer for Americans United for Life, joins the podcast to discuss the case for making birth free and charting a pro-family agenda
• why Lincoln’s insights on shaping public opinion about slavery should analogously inform the pro-life movement’s thinking about protecting the unborn
• how the logic of abortion could lead to a dystopian regime that promotes euthanasia as a right and a good

Texts Mentioned:

• “Make Birth Free” by Elizabeth Bruenig
• “Make Birth Free” white paper by Catherine Glenn Foster and Kristen Day
• “Why Voting on Life is Absurd” episode of “The Based Catholic”
• Get Married by Brad Wilcox
• “Conservative Conversations” episode with Brad Wilcox
• The American Way by Allan C. Carlson
• “The Forgotten History of America ‘Making Birth Free’” by Allan C. Carlson
• “A Constitutional Vision: Lincoln Proposal” by Catherine Glenn Foster
• Death, Dying, and Euthanasia by Dennis J. Horan and David Mall
• aul.org
• x.com/aul

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In this episode:

• Michael Anton joins the podcast to discuss his book, The Stakes, about the state of the country in 2020 and what could be lost and gained
• How the progressive ideology that rules California’s politics has turned the state into a nightmare, from education and cost-of-living to immigration and crime
• Where we could be headed in America’s short-term political future with the coming 2024 election, or even the long-term prospects near the end of the Republic

Texts Mentioned:

• The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return by Michael Anton
• “The Flight 93 Election” by Michael Anton
• Rigged by Mollie Hemingway
• The Dying Citizen by Victor Davis Hansen
• https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/
• Regime Change by Patrick Deneen
• “Modernity and Its Discontents” by Michael Anton
• The Narrow Passage by Glenn Ellmers
• Machiavelli’s Effectual Truth by Harvey C. Mansfield
• Florentine Histories by Niccolo Machiavelli

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In this episode:

• Jay Richards joins the podcast to talk about the political machine that drives the transgender ideology that has captured the American public square
• how fighting gender ideology offers an opportunity for conservatives to make allies with others across the political spectrum to defend reality
• practical advice for how to become an expert in any topic

Texts Mentioned:

• Chloe Cole testimony before Congress
• Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier
• Cass Report
• “gender unicorn” diagram
• Book of Joel
• Buck v. Bell
• When Harry Became Sally by Ryan Anderson
• The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman
• Strange New World by Carl Trueman
• Love Thy Body by Nancy Pearcey

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In this episode:

• Sohrab Ahmari, author and founder of Compact magazine, joins the podcast to discuss his new book, Tyranny Inc. about private coercion and its role in harming the American working class

Texts Mentioned:

• “Sohrab Ahmari on the Unbroken Thread” episode of Conservative Conversations
• The Unbroken Thread by Sohrab Ahmari
• Tyranny, Inc. by Sohrab Ahmari
• A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes
• Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII
• The Age of Jackson by Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
• The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 by Charles Sellers
• The Rise of American Democracy: Jackson to Lincoln by Sean Wilentz
• compactmag.com

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In this episode:

• Acclaimed journalist and activist Christopher Rufo joins the podcast to discuss his new book, America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything
• why language is an essential tool in driving social and political change
• what the Right can do to reform and change the institutions that have been captured by Leftist priorities

Texts Mentioned:

• America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything by Christopher F. Rufo
• “The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism” by Aaron Renn
• rufo.substack.com

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In this episode:

• Brad Wilcox, the Director of the National Marriage Project, joins the podcast to talk about marriage, family formation, and children
• The important keys to successful and happy marriage, and what elites tell us that we need to reject
• why men and women are alienated from each other, and what each sex should go to recover a calling to family life

Texts Mentioned:

• Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization by Brad Wilcox
• “Women Who Stay Single and Don’t Have Kids are Getting Richer” by Molly Smith
• “Should Couples Merge Their Finances?” by Joe Pinsker
• “One Key to a Happy Marriage?: Joint Bank Accounts” by Jenny Olson
• “Where Have All the Good Men Gone?” by Brad Wilcox, Emma Fuentes, and Michael Krieger

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In this episode:

• Glenn Ellmers joins the podcast to discuss his new book, The Narrow Passage, about the permanent political problems that stem from reason in politics
• how the modern project rejects the humility of the classical tradition, and has ushered in the philosophic tyranny of the modern administrative state and woke ideology 
• why the Left is built upon a contradiction between postmodernism and a belief in rational post-political expertise

Texts Mentioned:

• The Narrow Passage: Plato, Foucault, and the Possibility of Political Philosophy by Glenn Ellmers
• “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid” by Jonathan Haidt
• “German Nihilism” by Leo Strauss
• The Soul of Politics: Harry V. Jaffa and the Fight for America by Glenn Ellmers
• claremont.org
• “PODCAST: Glenn Ellmers on Harry Jaffa and the Soul of Politics” by The Anchoring Truths Podcast

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In this episode:

• Joseph DeReuil, a student at Notre Dame and editor-in-chief emeritus of ND’s Irish Rover, joins the podcast to talk about being sued by a Notre Dame professor
• what life is like on a Catholic college campus like Notre Dame, and how ISI and the Collegiate Network has helped him make a difference
• what aspiring journalists should pay attention to when honing their skills

Texts Mentioned:

• “No Man Can Serve Two Masters” by Mary Frances Myler
• “Keough School Professor Offers Abortion Access to Students” by Joseph DeReuil
• “Tamara Kay Explains Herself to Notre Dame Democrats” by Luke Thompson
• “We Will Not Be Silenced” by The Irish Rover editorial staff
• irishrover.net

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In this episode:

• ISI’s Conservative Book of the Year Award Winner Daniel Mahoney and former attorney general and senator Jeff Sessions join the podcast for a live interview with Johnny about Dan’s book The Statesman as Thinker
• whether the Founders were too successful in setting up a system of checks and balances that ultimately undermined statesmanship of “great-souled men”
• the pathologies of American education, and the need for alternative institutions to excite the “life of the mind” and a serious commitment to the pursuit of truth

Texts Mentioned:

• The Statesman as Thinker by Daniel J. Mahoney
• The American Commonwealth by Lord James Bryce
• Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
• The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
• The Life of George Washington by John Marshall
• On Duties by Cicero
• His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph Ellis
• The Logic of Liberty by Michael Polanyi
• “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” by Frederick Douglass
• Winston Churchill MIT Commencement Speech
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

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In this episode:

• Lee Edwards joins the podcast to celebrate 100 episodes of Conservative Conversations and talk about the history of ISI
• how fusionism remains a vibrant approach to conservative politics and scholarship in bringing together seemingly disparate persuasions
• the importance of Bill Buckley not only as an intellectual or a political actor, but as an organizer in creating many of the central institutions in the conservative movement

Texts Mentioned:

• Educating for Liberty by Lee Edwards
• God and Man at Yale by William F. Buckley, Jr.
• “For Our Children’s Children: A Fifty Year Program” by Frank Chodorov
• The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk
• The Roots of American Order by Russell Kirk
• The Quest for Community by Robert Nisbet
• William F. Buckley, Jr.: The Maker of a Movementby Lee Edwards
• What is Conservatism? edited by Frank Meyer
• “Consistency in Politics” by Winston Churchill
• Victims of Communism

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 In this episode: 

• Claes Ryn joins the podcast to discuss his most recent book, The Failure of American Conservatism and the Road Not Taken
• why the imagination of a culture is central to its political disposition, and why the Left has been successful in dominating the American imagination
• how Strauss, particularly his critique of historicism, has eroded American traditions, and ultimately been unsuccessful against left-wing attacks on American traditions

Texts Mentioned: 

• The Failure of American Conservatism and the Road Not Takenby Claes Ryn
• The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945by George Nash
• Democracy and Leadership by Irving Babbitt
• Rousseau and Romanticismby Irving Babbitt
• Treatise on Law by Thomas Aquinas

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In this episode:

• Zak Slayback, Marlo’s husband and a partner at 1517 Fund, joins the podcast to discuss the critical distinctions and concepts regarding discussions about technology in the modern world
• what “scale” and “time-frame” considerations do on a social scale with different technological disruptions, especially in the information age
• how techno-realism charts the right course for conservatives between techno-optimism and techno-pessimism

Texts Mentioned:

• “How Tech Works” by Zak Slayback
• That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
• “Living in a Tech Age” with Jon Askonas
• The Epic of Gilgamesh
• “The Optimistic Thought Experiment” by Peter Thiel
• Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII
• A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller, Jr.

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In this episode:

• a Modern Age panel on the release of Patrick Deneen’s newest book, Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future,featuring Patrick Deneen, Senator JD Vance, Kevin Roberts, and Christine Emba
• how the classical tradition of mixing “the many” and “the few” in a regime gave way to the modern liberal project of unending progress, to the detriment of the common good
• what regime change would actually look like in terms of the American economic, political, and social order

Texts Mentioned:

• Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future by Patrick Deneen
• Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen
• Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance
• Rethinking Sex by Christine Emba
• The Kevin Roberts Show
• “Liberalism is Loneliness” by Christine Emba
• Humanae Vitae by Pope Paul VI
• “The Sun Has Set on Global Europe” speech by Kevin Roberts

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In this episode:

• McKay Stangler, ISI’s Director of Foundation Relations, joins the podcast to discuss Richard Weaver, one of the luminary figures of the early conservative movement
• a crash course in the themes of the southern agrarian tradition: practice, place, and solidarity
• how to recover a sense of the shared use of language, and the social solidarity that accompanies it

Texts Mentioned:

• Ideas Have Consequences by Richard Weaver
• Visions of Order by Richard Weaver
• Boomers by Helen Andrews
• After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre
• “Up from Liberalism” by Richard Weaver
• “House Divided Speech” by Abraham Lincoln

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 In this episode:

• Alexander Salter, professor of economics at Texas Tech University, joins the podcast to discuss his new book, The Political Economy of Distributism
• how capitalism does or does not support the common good of society, and how the re-emergence of discourse about the common good in politics can be bolstered by returning to the distributist writers
• what Wilhelm Röpke contributed to both economic science and towards creating a “humane economy,” and why we need to read him today

Texts Mentioned:

• The Political Economy of Distributism by Alexander Salter
• “Catholic Social Doctrine and the Dignity of Work” by Sen. Marco Rubio
• The Servile State by Hilaire Belloc
• The Outline of Sanity by G.K. Chesterton
• A Humane Economy by Wilhelm Röpke
• awsalter.com

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