Episode 4: Summer Romance

This week, Max calls in from Italy, where he is traveling with his European in-laws. We regale you with tales of the original summer vacation, the so-called "Grand Tour" taken by young British artistocrats to sample the beautiful scenery and classical sites of the Continent. Ethan discusses how the young, rich, and sexy authors behind English Romanticism (Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, et al.) made spending summers in Rome into a thing. Later, Max discusses the recent book "Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power" by Byung-Chul Han, which argues that the economic arrangements of our time completely separate our present moment from all of history.