#36 - "Capitalism, Myth, Jonathan Pageau's Hysterics & Other Distractions"

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).