The Brass Spittoon

Jeff Bilbro's Convivial Quest

The editor-in-chief of the FPR website discusses the recent conference in Grand Rapids and his latest book, Words for Conviviality. 

Highlights

1:00       Pacific Northwesterner in western PA

8:00       Prospects for localism and trad wives now

11:00    Bilbro’s obsessive bibliography

17:00    Printing press 2.0 and Postman problems

25:30    Frederick Douglass, cancer patient

30:00    Margaret Fuller, proto-podcaster

35:00    Melville’s pilgrimage and Jeff’s truck stop oats

40:00    A convivial reading

Resources

Jeff's bio and buy the book (and some more books)

FPR’s excerpt (suitable for nailing on church doors)

Exploring Ivan Illich on the podcast

John reviews Jeff’s early works here and here

Wendell Kimbrough helps us find our way home

Yuval Levin on Our Constitution

The AEI scholar and author of American Covenant joins John to talk about a document that he believes could unify we the people, again. 

Highlights

1:30       Second home

8:15       The national “we”

13:45    A dignified basis for unity

21:00    Changing culture by changing institutions

25:00    Make Congress boring again

29:00    What women want

32:00    Cheese pizza and Tip O’Neill

37:00    Think Tank U

41:00    A hunger for scallops and solidarity

47:00    Plausible deniability?

50:00    A hopeful Constitution Day

Resources

Yuval's bio and buy the book

FPR’s review

Yascha Mounk, Yuval, and the back of John’s head at AEI

Wendell Kimbrough helps us find our way home

Ghost Stories with Nancy French

Longtime ghostwriter Nancy French tells her own tale in the Ghosted:  An American Life.  French was raised in rural Tennessee and would later provide the words behind famous talking heads but found her own enchanting voice amid political and personal tumult.   

Highlights

1:15                Mud pies for Parisians

6:00                Hillbillies on the run

9:30                Romney/Palin ‘08

11:00              Prison break with the Kardashians

13:30              Pulling political punches

20:00              Google University School of Journalism

27:30              French Holy Ghost revival

31:30              Befriending a critic

38:00              Laker girl

39:30              Trusting God with cancer

42:00              Back on the case

Resources

Nancy’s website and buy the book

John’s review

Wendell Kimbrough helps us find our way home

Family Time with Timothy Carney

Timothy Carney, an AEI senior fellow and the author of Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be, talks about the village it takes to raise a child and the metaphorical (and sometimes literal) rise of “No Children Allowed” signs.

Highlights

2:30       A lively home and coffee shop

4:00       Trumpy Christians?

7:15       Find a secular van fam, win a free book!

16:30    Was Hillary right?

22:15    Trickling down to Fishtown?

29:30    House plans, town plans

36:30    Work from home

43:45    Childless for the planet or better by the trillion

54:00    Ponzi scheme or Korean contagion

57:00    The sporting life

Resources

Tim’s bio and buy the book

FPR at 15

Churchy Trump resistance column

Nancy Pearcey’s  “Common Good Men”

Korean “Child Free”Zones

Wendell Kimbrough helps us find our way home

Living Outside the Machine

Ashley Colby, founder of the Rizoma Field School, digs up inspiring true stories of resistance and restoration (with references to donkeys, elephants, and our 49th state).   Bill Kauffman, author and regular conference closer, weaves Wisconsin professors of the past and the robo-umps of tomorrow into a seamless and side-splitting localist garment.  Rory Groves introduces the duo and ponders a porch free of PhDs.    

 

Highlights

1:30       Rory Groves, unlikely agrarian

Ashley Colby:  “Doomer Optimism: Life Adjacent to the Machine”

5:30       Adjacent, whether we like it or not

7:45       Donkey driving, mastodon ranching, hospitality boot camp

12:00    Alaskan laundries and cider-sipping city dwellers

Bill Kauffman:  “Off the Empire, On Wisconsin”

17:15    A thieving historian

22:00    Rural drama

26:00    Little things mean a lot

33:00    You’re out!

38:30    A midnight tale

 

Resources

Speaker bios and conference videos

FPR Books and bookshop

Conference co-sponsor Plough

Thanks to Wendell Kimbrough for our theme music

Brian Miller on Kayaking with Lambs

Brian Miller visits the porch to talk about his new book chronicling life on a Tennessee farm.

Highlights

1:30       Bayou Bengal Volunteer farmer

5:45       A monastic text

11:15    Man of letters

14:00    Pesto chango

15:30    Remote control

18:00    Growing pains

23:00    Lamb on the lam

27:15    The rest of the story

Resources

Buy the book

An excerpt at FPR

Brian’s farm and blog

Paul Harvey’s “So God Made a Farmer”

Humane Politics

Adam Smith, a philosopher at the University of Dubuque, counterattacks the disenchanted War on Suffering.  FPR President Mark Mitchell goes biblical to bring down a heightened politics of insanity.  Brass Spittoon podcaster John Murdock looks at a key architect of religious politics and wonders what might happen if his blueprints were followed.  Gerald Ford groupie and FPR perfect attendance award winner Jeff Polet opens by reflecting on political goats.    

 

Highlights

Jeff Polet:  Introduction

1:30       Statistical sirens

3:00       Humane oxymorons

5:15       Dirty politics

6:15       Animal farm

9:45       Oh yeah, the intros!

Adam Smith: “The Politics of Reenchantment”

10:15    A reading from St. Aldo’s almanac

11:45    Frontlines in the War on Suffering

20:00    Enchanting politics with fairies and green fire

24:00    Institutionalizing flatness

31:00    Supernaturally small

Mark Mitchell: “Politics in Babel”

33:00    Towers trump?

38:00    Name callers

42:00    Crashing symbols

46:00    Abraham skips the bricks

47:15    Hope in failure

John Murdock: “Back to the Future of the Religious Right”

51:45    “The Poll” and holy holes

57:00    Franciscan biography

62:00    White and wrongs

66:00    The limits of integrity

69:00    Polyface politics and ravines made for walking

 

Resources

Speaker bios and conference videos

FPR Books and bookshop

Conference co-sponsor Plough

Thanks to Wendell Kimbrough for our theme music

Human Responses to Technology

Jeff Bilbro, FPR’s super-beaver EIC and Grove City College professor, looks to ancient mythology to assess modern technology and fiction of the future.  Cassandra Nelson of the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture is stuck in the middle, a bit like AI itself.  Author, teacher, and mother Tessa Carman looks for life in abundance in Minnesota and Maryland.  Writer and Berry Center board member Kate Dalton Boyer introduces the speakers.

 

Highlights

1:00       Kate kicks things off

Jeff Bilbro:  “Where Now Are Wayland’s Bones?”

3:30       Kingsnorth and Norse smith explained

12:30    Tempted by ease and justice

15:00    AI amigos for the autonomous

19:00    Computerized convocations

22:00    Wise touch

Cassandra Nelson: “Median Humans and the Life That Really is Life”

26:00    Harboring a secret subtitle

29:15    A hallucinating average machine

34:30    M.A.D. results

41:00    Fancy tooters over computers

45:00    Against photocopies

Tessa Carman: “The Joy of Tech Resistance”

46:30    FPR Match Game

48:00    Manifestos and better tools

51:00    You don’t have to!

55:00    Postman knocks, people dance

63:00    Better names and best practices

 

Resources

Speaker bios and conference videos

Interview with Jeanne Schindler on Postman Pledge

FPR Books and bookshop

Conference co-sponsor Plough

Thanks to Wendell Kimbrough for our theme music

Imagining Life Beyond the Machine: Eric Miller and Jason Peters

Eric Miller, biographer of Christopher Lasch and a professor at Geneva College, plus longtime porcher Jason Peters of Hillsdale College address the role of imagination in shaping our shared reality.  Matt Stewart, an associate editor of the FPR website, introduces this duo that has impacted his life in important ways.

 

Highlights

1:00       Matt Stewart, teacher’s pet/pest and herb connoisseur

Eric Miller:  “The Instructed Imagination” 

6:00       Hannah Coulter v. Mark Heard

13:30    Collegiate conscience and imagination

16:00    Augustine’s commonweal

20:00    O’Connor’s name calling

23:00    Walker and Wendell looking for hope

Jason Peters:  “Imagination: Not Whimsical but Fatal”

27:45    Last year’s speech and this year’s joke

29:30    The propositions begin

35:00    Stoves and stand-up

38:00    Rainbows on the run

43:00    Unified Kauffman and computerized thinking

50:00    Fatalities and old farts  

 

Resources

Speaker bios and conference videos

FPR Books and bookshop

Conference co-sponsor Plough

Thanks to Wendell Kimbrough for our theme music

Paul Kingsnorth: Blizzard of the World

Paul Kingsnorth delivered the keynote address at the 2023 FPR conference in Madison, Wisconsin.  With help from a diverse band of fellow travelers including Jewish-Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen, Anglo-Catholic social critic Malcolm Muggeridge, and the prophetic French-Egyptian Sufi Rene Guenon, the unexpectedly Irish Orthodox Kingsnorth takes listeners on a tour of techno-mirages, holy wells, and green deserts in a search for culture-seeding saints.   

 

Highlights

2:00       Jeff introduces Paul

3:30       Paul introduces his thrift shop shirt

7:30       The disquiet of machine things

12:30    Surface debates and the depths beneath

19:00    Mumford and some on the suicide of the West

25:00    Anti-culture and real culture-making

29:00    Who is on the throne? (Or Paul as a sociological Bill Bright)

35:00    Transhumanist candor

38:00    Signs of light and darkness with Guenon and Spengler

47:00    A reluctant convert

50:00    Leaving the broken center for the margins

60:00    Short on saints 

 

Resources

Paul’s Substack and an interview at FPR

On "AI Demonic" at Touchstone

“The Cross and the Machine” at First Things

Conference videos

Conference co-sponsor Plough

Wendell Kimbrough helps us find our way home