The Brass Spittoon

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

Paul Kingsnorth’s Opening Prayer

Paul Kingsnorth, the keynote speaker at the 2023 FPR conference in Madison, Wisconsin, begins things with a bonus talk on the power of prayer in a desecrated western world.   

 

Highlights 

1:15 Mark Mitchell’s welcome 

4:00 Paul flies in 

5:30 A long list of labels 

7:30 Roots and power 

8:15 My neighbor Vinny (and his dying cousins) 

12:30 Centering work 

14:00 Citizen culture 

19:00 Two trinities 

23:00 Our like will not be here again 

24:30 Candles to blow 

37:30 The still point in the turning world 

30:00 An Orthodox Texan’s sermon 

32:45 Closing hymn  

 

Resources 

Paul’s Substack and an interview at FPR 

“The Cross and the Machine” 

Conference videos 

Wendell Kimbrough helps us find our way home 

Bill Kauffman in Conversation

Bill Kauffman, author of multiple books including Poetry Night at the Ballpark and long the closing speaker at FPR conferences, talks about the origins of Front Porch Republic and his unique life of letters.   

Host:     John Murdock

Guest:  Bill Kauffman

 

Highlights

1:30      Defending the homeland

2:30      The Closer

7:45      Muckdog memories

12:15    Perfectly sized

15:00    First Man and Senate staffer

18:00    Morning drinks and Mormon journeys

22:15    Life on the fringe

24:00    Not a murderer

26:15    Jimmie Foxx found dead

29:30    Paying the bills

31:30    A Barber in the House

34:30    Bucket listless

36:00    See you in Madison, but I digress

 

Resources

Bill’s work at FPR, TAC, and The Spectator

Poetry Night at the Ballpark

The Congressional Journal of Barber B. Conable

Liberty Fund

Wendell Kimbrough helps us find our way home

After Virtual: Civic Life

The After Virtual conference podcast series closes with a focus on civics and cemeteries.  Mark Mitchell, author of Plutocratic Socialism, talks on, well, plutocrats and socialism (plus the importance of property ownership to maintaining the republic).  Rachel Ferguson, author of Black Liberation Through the Marketplace, highlights the historic role of roads in undermining minority communities and current efforts at neighborhood stabilization.  Regular conference closer Bill Kauffman regales the crowd with tales from the crypts of Batavia. 

Speakers:  Mark Mitchell, Rachel Ferguson, and Bill Kauffman 

Highlights 

2:30 Mark Mitchell — Why Property Matters 

3:15 FPR, born in apocalypse  

9:00 Plutocrats and socialists, a love story 

19:30 What would the Founders do?  

22:15 Rachel Ferguson — What’s Wrong with the Roads? 

23:30 Housing many things in the Black Church 

26:30 Eugenics, red lines, and roads 

30:00 Cars explained, Ike appalled 

38:00 Neighborhood Stabilization (and its All-Stars) 

46:30 “Paid to talk to me” v. the Jesus people 

50:00 Bill Kauffman —The View from the Cemetery 

51:00 Grave matters with Walt Whitman 

54:00 Masons and monuments 

58:30 Wings are overrated 

1:00 Barry Goldwater and friends 

1:04 Ontologically speaking 

1:07 Baseball R.I.P. 

Resources 

Speaker bios 

Conference videos 

Save the (new!) date:  2023 Conference in Madison, Wisconsin (October 21, 2023) 

Thanks to Wendell Kimbrough for his musical talents 

After Virtual: Health

The penultimate session from the FPR conference After Virtual:  The Art of Recovering Lost Goods addresses health.  Philosopher Adam Smith from the University of Dubuque and medical doctor Brian Volck, author of Attending Others: A Doctor’s Education in Bodies and Words, take on the medical/industrial complex (with assists from Alasdair MacIntyre and Wendell Berry). 

Speakers:  Adam Smith and Brian Volck 

Highlights 

2:15 Adam Smith—Medicine After Virtue 

3:15 Medicine in the New Dark Ages  

5:00 Out of practice 

11:30 The medicalization of everything  

16:00 Infected with emotivism  

20:00 Curing the disease of freedom in 1851 

26:00 De-medicalizing birth, death, and more  

29:00 Brian Volck — Hospitality, Responsibility, and Presence: Practicing Medicine as if Bodies Actually Mattered  

31:00 Bad metaphors and good definitions 

33:00 The trouble with trolleys and telemedicine  

41:00 Patients in the flesh 

45:00 Paleo-Benedictine hospitality 

48:15 Stewarding stethoscopes 

51:30 Q & A 

Resources 

Speaker bios 

Conference videos 

Save the date:  2023 Conference in Madison, Wisconsin (October 7, 2023) 

Thanks to Wendell Kimbrough for his musical talents 

After Virtual: Chris Arnade

Chris Arnade, the keynote speaker at the After Virtual conference, has traded global finance for skid row photography.  Chris discusses his journey from Wall Street board rooms to a booth at McDonald’s and the associated rejection of careerism and self-definition. 

Speaker:  Chris Arnade—An Address in the Universe of Meaning 

Highlights 

3:00 Prayer time around the world 

6:45 The liberal emancipation project (of destruction) 

10:30 Transcendent values first seen in a traffic jam 

16:00 “Everything we believed was wrong” 

27:00 Place and the giant sucking sound of NAFTA 

30:00 Family ties 

32:00 The “meaning” address and its replacement 

 

Resources 

Speaker bios 

Conference videos 

Save the date:  2023 Conference in Madison, Wisconsin (October 21, 2023) 

Dignity:  Seeking Respect in Back Row America  

The Substack home of a traveling man 

An NPR story on Chris Arnade 

Arnade’s work at The Guardian and The Atlantic 

Thanks to Wendell Kimbrough for his musical talents 

After Virtual: Education

The second episode from the FPR conference After Virtual: The Art of Recovering Lost Goods looks at education.  Jeff Polet discusses walking away from Hope.  Angel Adams Parham talks about the elementary power of a rapping Homer.  Jason Peters goes back to the future of the educational machine. 

Speakers:  Jeff Polet, Angel Adams Parham, and Jason Peters 

Highlights 

1:15 Jeff Polet—Why I Left the Academy 

2:00 The news from Nineveh  

5:30 Signs of declines 

8:30 Searching for a pony  

16:30 Jargon, gymnasts, adjudications, and generals  

23:15 Gerald Ford comes calling  

25:00 Angel Adams Parham—Education for Flourishing: K-16 and Beyond 

26:30 Cultural canons and tug-of-war 

28:15 Classics and community 

32:30 Taking creative license with the gods 

34:00 Disturbing images of beauty 

40:00 Rapping Homer, Reading Frederick Douglas, and Rediscovering Sundiata 

45:00 Resources for Learning 

47:00 Jason Peters—The Sin Against the Body: For This They Wept Not 

48:30 March madness and the managerial class 

51:45 Phone sex prophecy 

55:00 Would not a storm by any other name smell just the same 

58:00 Even better than the real thing? 

64:00 1909 all over again 

70:00 Truth buoys up 

 

 

Resources 

Speaker bios 

Conference videos 

Save the date:  2023 Conference in Madison, Wisconsin (October 7, 2023) 

Thanks to Wendell Kimbrough for his musical talents