Welcome back to the new Thinkery. I'm David Barr and with me as always is my good friend, good baldheaded friend Alex Prio. How are you Alex? Doing well.
How are you? I'm well and Greg McBrayer. How are you Greg? Doing great David good to see you.
Greg and still I'm happy you're still the cast member on Duck Dynasty. Your beard will just survive well into the summer or what is this? Well you know it's snowed five inches here last week so the and I've just got my second shot so I'm I think it's time to shave the beard I have to admit. Yeah my kids are running out.
Yeah yeah yeah whatever your wife commands. She likes the beard then keep it. Keep it. Just you know social norms don't matter anymore.
We don't go into offices. So today I'm particularly excited for a guest. It's a great honor. He hired me some years ago to the magazine that he founded the Weekly Standards.
So like if for all this talk about his his study which we'll get into of Aristotle and Prudence and things like this he's committed at least one in Prudence Act but I'm grateful and so today we have Bill Crystal how are you Bill? I find David what's good to do with all you. It's really a pleasure to be on this. Hi it's prestigious and I've told it's like gathering not my usual you know fair but so this is I look at this zoom screen here of Greg and Alex and David and as of this was the one place that's I've entered Eddie had coffee alone.
Well Bill you're a you're to blame actually for this. You may not recall this meeting but Greg is now that's right at the Weekly Standard and you have a sense of your yeah you had us into your office just for half an hour and we asked your opinion on starting a podcast and you remarked look just do what interests you and don't worry about downloads or things like this and and go for it and then you gave a little bit of the history of your the show that you host conversations with Bill that's done remarkably well and which are all fans of and he said look if you want to do stuff on Shrausian books and the great books go for it and so that's what came of it. You're playing you're playing me for this now I've listened to some not all the podcasts and you guys are great I'm really pleased with you. Yeah thanks so Bill look we you can interview all the time for your political opinions but the history we're kind of interested in having you want to talk about your interest in political philosophy because that's an itch that I know you like to scratch and I always joked with other members of the Weekly Standard that you kind of the xenophon type like half-practical half-theoretical is that too high of a compliment we'll just call you Churchill.
They're both so high that as to be high I'm not serious though I can therefore laugh at them. Yeah but you always have kind of a hand especially I think Mansfield has to be your most you see the high see the guest you've had on most. Yeah true the conversation really started with the impetus and Andy Zwick who you met I think it was also was a master of student at Snodagadret and didn't go on a political philosophy but was very influenced by Harvey 20 years ago and so part of it was really we thought you we've heard these terrific classes he's a great teacher you know if you read him it can be pretty difficult and a little daunting and people should have a sense of what he's like too and so that was really the original impetus was somewhat Mansfield centric I'd say yeah so he has yes he's been that I mean we've done a million other things obviously and I don't mean to what do we say these days privilege him particularly it just happened that he was my teacher of course and but I think yeah good to see his mind working as opposed to simply meeting the front on the page. The other thing that I like about your show and it's one thing that we try and do here especially so this interview with you is we kind of we want to preserve older voices and the kind of approach to political philosophy that we care about so you know we have Jan Blitz you know we'll have a Butterworth we're just going to kind of go down the line for people people we admire to capture their stories not to mccobb but before it's too late and so so he's our bar he's our guest man I don't know.
He's a question if I can. I find all right all right all right all right all right all right all right all right so Alex are going to face the other 60-60-70 minutes on the uh you know all right all right all right so so Bill I'm sure I'm sure Bill's doctor is far greater prognosis for him than you wish those for you David. Well Bill I used to go to Trump's doctor the guy at the lung here for you know for that so Bill your background your your parents obviously are well known I don't you don't like to talk about too much but um maybe we could start with what's the earliest memory you have of kind of reading and you're um when you came in chanted with with books and that kind of theoretical life. Yeah you know that's good um so I'm just be clear I you know I studied political philosophy some I really decided pretty quickly that I wasn't really up to it at the highest level I did some sort of more modern you know the federalist to talk about the district to be very close and high level but I started as much as you know America the relation of American political philosophy taught for a few years realized I was in I was an okay teacher but I was a good great teacher I didn't really have been to be a great scholar so I ended up leaving the academy so my interest is sort of amateur and partly maybe nostalgic for grad school we used to start discussing these things endlessly partly like yours I think in terms of sort of helping from the outside in my case preserve and amplify a tradition that you know people who don't get the recognition they deserve and doing my little bits to sort of get them a little more attention and it's been a lot of fun I took last 10-15 years I've gotten back into it a little more I suppose and some reading groups and and stuff so anyway just to be clear I'm not claiming to really have great expertise I mean so I grew up my you know if they're sort of very far from me as they are for us people I suppose it's hard to just integaly once on case what one owes them and how they shake we might be laughing ass get sometimes ass it wasn't like it's electoral high house New York City apartment it's electoralism I mean a little bit of that but honestly very little I was a big sports fan my father was doing we used to watch sports on TV so I park on place for most of my days after school I played on school teams and not very well but I played and it's only all weekends and it's a huge so for me though someone said what's the most memorable thing of your you know pre-college years days years probably was 1969-70 which is why so I graduated high school in 1970 so my junior year into your medical meds it was the yes the 69 was the the maths the miracle maths when the world series October 69 January no so January 69 my junior years on the Jets I was a mess in Jets fan because I didn't like the established powerful teams I was like yeah I got a guy somehow and this was on principle I can't find when I was seven years old there's nothing so I rooted for the mess and the Jets not the Yankees and the Giants you know established very good teams when I began being a fan and so the Jets won the huge world upset in January 69 which I named as the mess won the world series also huge upset and October I guess it would have been at 69 the beginning of my senior year and then the next one fantastic NBA championship against the Lakers in June I guess May June of 1970 so I that was like that was my culmination of my high school and my culmination of my years of living in New York City I honestly felt that as a way I became less of a sports fan in a sense because I mean everyone does probably you go to college and you get less time and then get married and work and so forth but also so it felt like I never could quite replicate those you know that's the year and half of of satisfaction so Leo Strauss wasn't at your house smoking cigarettes hanging out what's that well so Leo Strauss and Bloom they just weren't my father was smoking I'm a cigarette my mom gave up much earlier so I think Bloom later told me that he did need me when I was you know sort of in I don't know junior high or high school or something and they can talk about some memory of of my parents coming up with his parents who were very good friends of my parents and meeting being introduced by my father Bloom is this kind of trial prodigy who's Nathan was like you know what's he years old and was the smartest key thing you're at Roxas or is he Proxidines I think maybe or Cybertonic and which one I think for exciences and so he so yes I met Bloom I mean I didn't I didn't know he was really and I don't know that I ever met Strauss I don't know if he came by he was in Chicago at that point in Claremont and I don't think he was traveling to New York that often my father met Strauss very much earlier and published him I found my father in the 60s was better known now for the obviously magazines he edited public interest especially and for his own writings essays but he was vice president of AC books really the editorial director of AC books which when he went there was a gather very small but oh I didn't know that it's specialized in psychology and I think it published some of the maybe some of the translations of Freud that were early on in the 50s or something but he was very interested in political philosophy or interest in Strauss I'll come back to that in a minute and so he published Bloom's translation with the Republic that was a basic book uh Ages and Moderns the uh The Fisher for Strauss the liberalism collection a liberalism ancient modern um and other other such things some of the sessions as well so I sort of vaguely knew I guess just from that I would have known something about Strauss' journalism and all that so my parents had both of us in one lesson I got them both were reviews essays on Strauss' reviews in commentary way back early on my mother reviewed on tour and he really very good review I gotta say I mean she didn't know Greek she didn't know much about that she was an intellectual historian of Britain she'd been a PhD thesis on acting um but she had friends which didn't Strauss my father's picture and you know those days I guess I don't know some book came in some was saying you know this book being kind of scurorous being godless who published even that first edition but um you know would you give it a little you know review to me he deserves to be noticed why don't you take this one you know someone who has my mother's like totally not her field she did not even you know the literature on Santa Fonnes at least and she wrote a pretty perceptive review I think that was really early like 49 or 50 I kind of think it was one of the very few reviews of that book to you know appear anywhere that beyond I got anywhere probably has to be on sublatable theory and classic straddle scholars are they refuted either you know and my father wrote a piece on Strauss that's in both these pieces of his collections of my parents writing uh which is and that's more like 52 53 I want to say in commentary and that's a fair more of an appreciation and stress has been more stuff at that point um they both studied Strauss a little bit and some I never really got I wish I got the word the story of this and some reading group with Yachos Talbus I believe who was a real eccentric and somewhat disturbing actually but quite brilliant I don't usually student of Strauss but he was in that circle student of Benjamin or something like that and left Germany and whatever and was in New York at that point and so there was a lot of this kind of somewhat some of these doppling kind of interesting stuff and I didn't know anything that I I bet he did those pieces but my parents still the same years later left college but um the most of my father's piece was he had a real sense he was himself a super close student of tax but a real sense of the importance of what Strauss had accomplished and how much he'd revolutionized the reading of tax and the whole history of political philosophy and that's early I think it's around 53 or something so so when you got a Harvard bill sorry sorry I don't know what I was sorry so the one thing I think I always think I always think I always think I always think I always think I always think sometimes what I really learned at home of course I probably had to run books around I probably got a little more than an average kid but I wasn't a book or anything I do think from my both my parents I learned a day and they were both uh contrarian in terms of the standard I guess what we call a progressive liberalism of the 50s and 60s they were both critics of that in different ways while being fundamentally I think you would still say defenders of liberalism broadly understood uh I think I was probably a little bit stressed about many many other influences too of my other various historical figures um my father's all kinds of writers he read in uh in the army actually in that after college and and some religious writers and stuff so they were both I think I did take off from them a certain suspicion about the kind of standard as I say progressive maybe is the best word for it um account of things which one for Gats I mean this is where Strauss had such a massive influence despite the fact Strauss means maybe having to you know think I've gotten all the words they deserve but um you know the kind of standard history political philosophy was so you look at it now it's really always jaw-droppingly you know silly of the accounts of the ages especially but the whole thing to save on was the big book you know the history of political and everyone's haven't looked at that it's really unbelievable that was being taught college courses and and it is very much you know this person didn't understand this but the next thinker I saw that I mean it's like incredibly diluted you know dumb down in his eyes buzzing and so um that you know my parents sort of had been against that in different areas in different fields and and so I sort of had a suspicion of liberal progressivism I would say that was probably one of the main things I took away from just from growing up with my parents as my parents and you know but then not a real dogmatic conservatism as they remained they were father was palm free but at least on that in 1968 they were kind of for civil rights they were you know Cold War liberals I guess you would say and national view came into the house I was like I was like I'm a parent-subscribed or I'm not a wealthy gay I suppose a couple of hundred and I kind of read it as a 10-12-14 year old and enjoyed it it was slightly it's often what was both fun and kind of stuff worked to be honest and I was 14 years old so I like stuff more things you know Buckley was a big you know a big you know a paté the liberals type and I like that kind of thing and a lot of it I look back on it's like you know grimace some positions they took and all that but I will say very much to his credit and stuff sort of vindicates this in that letter to national view I mean the fact that Buckley you know stood sort of thwart history yelling stop I mean that's impressive and I think that had a big influence on me that that somehow was a good thing to do to not just go along to not try to be on the right side of history as people say to not try to get me guess the next step but to just say look this is what I think is right this is what I think is a better way to arrange a society or whatever and I don't care if everyone tells me that history is going in a different direction I think that for people like me at my age I think Buckley had a very important influence in that respect regardless of and then the joy and the kind of jwadavivor which he handled himself and did things and you know it's very right he's right he's still just very grippy you know fun and all that I think all that had a big influence on many me but not just me much more than any of the particular issues or arguments that's great your father's piece on Strauss was actually one of the first things I read I took a course on conservatism and we read that collection of essays well some of the essays in at the new conservatism autobiography of an idea I said I remember reading that Strauss piece and it was my first sort of glimpse at it so it was a really wonderful piece now it was you know when you went to Harvard was Mansfield on your map at all or was that just a thing because your first year explained to us before he was on sabbatical and you took courses with Mark Blitz right but my parents were pretty careful not to say you should study this and study that having said that they knew had a lot of friends there I'd be my father and Nathan Glaser and Daniel Bell were extremely old friends Glaser and Bell but he had the public interest at Banfield was a good friend of my dad's Jim Wilson was a Clayton sworn in so that was the world that was a bit that he knew better and those were people I had seen occasionally that was because I was interested in politics I knew those names not more than I'm sorry about no and some of the others were somewhat well known Banfield's on Ebony City I think about 69 or 70 and very controversial and so the political theory slides I think I had a sense that I was supposed to study that that was a serious thing and I think my father might mention to Mansfield and we do so much slightly but um didn't emphasize it so really what I showed up at Harvard in those days it was kind of amazing they let you have sophomore standing if you had I don't know like three AP scores of four and about something pretty some honestly not very hard to get you know and I can't believe they don't let you do this I'm sure anymore I mean they make you do an individual you know credits so you can skip the introductory math course if you've done math AP obviously but they don't let you skip all your college you know and hold your tuition just because you took some AP classes but that was different year after tuition wasn't as much and I guess I vaguely thought I might go to grad school so I'm gonna make my book pay for four years that we've been to tuition so much less if I'm gonna still go on down to some v the grad school of law school anyway so I got applied for you can always give it up so I got applied for and got sophomore standing the way Harvard the government department then works and I think it's the center major government you have to declare your major at the end of your freshman year so coming in I had to declare a major you could have changed it I said government I think you got to choose one of the areas American politics international relations etc I chose political theory and I ended up in mark blitz's sophomore tutorial that's eight of us the way I was arranged that is at the swall you know it was a good arrangement seminars for these you know the majors distributed among faculty assistant professors professors grad students as well teaching levels market there was works first years as a professor so I never heard him you know he was 26 years old something and we all wondered in there and mark said well we're gonna read play the public in the fall and then you should go by the translation by Ellen Bloom which came out a couple years before and we're gonna read shows beyond good and evil and spring and I think I said like millions pretty easy course on you know just one book each year I know I'll teach you Harvard because the Harvard can see this you know let's have a reading list with you know 18 books or something and there's a few kids are really enough then people of course don't read all of it but so so there so we each I think the way we're talking about once a week for two and a half hours was like a seminar person and I remember just being blown away by what you could what I didn't see and what Blitz saw and what Blitz saw went to the back and met Blitz commentary and then of course I mean I didn't know what the time what Strauss is the you know I've other people seem to you know in the republic I mean he just reading though I mean it was the I mean it was the substance of the chorus and each some others and this and that you know philosophy politics but really for me I think it's just a fair number of people who fall into the strumptons or a bit they're not all it was just the the revelation of what serious close reading could teach you and therefore the mastery of the author and therefore the implication how much the author had thought of these things through because if you master it at this level you're thinking you know eight levels below the normal kind of and I remember just being so charmed by you know by by the republic and by Blooms commentary on the republic honestly which I totally defer to you guys on how it stands up as a man I don't think it's intended to be exactly a definitive work but you know as a level of commentary he's at how much he's writing for students and how much you know he didn't had to quite figure it out or whatever but um certainly for me as a 17 year old it was very compelling the commentary that is and then Mark himself was so smart and enjoyed discussing it and finding more things even the blue hands probably had seen the blue didn't put in the tennis in the text so I really was a so that was my real introduction to sort of you know blitz and the mass was a bit on Lee was on Lee and came back then actually and taught the uh state electric course which now called I think 1060 1061 was that one or six a day one or six b even like everything else the whole the numbers of these courses got inflated by a whole you know that's a you know one that's called you know tenfold and um and that was the agency in the details of the moderns standard but not state of business man's fields electric course I remember also being just you know jaw dropping how much was in these lectures just scribbling to try to get everything down and then talking to those other few people but there were more than the couple who you know had also fallen into this kind of group of people who wanted to study political philosophy so that was sort of you know what's that mill you like Bill because we know so much about the mill you at the University of Chicago and it's kind of it's like it's it's this weird magical moment re-ofist incredible intellects all together at the same time it's actually a snout it's astound to me when I think about it sometimes but when you were at Harvard um are there any other graduate students uh in you know when you became a graduate student but even when you were an undergrad that stand out aside from Mark or any uh guest lecturers or rather visiting professors of note.
I think that's an early thought of the Harvard versus Chicago thing I mean I think of the Chicago thing's been at a whole different level because of the Chicago stuff being there of course and you know that anyone else but um Chicago is so much more of a college I mean it's University but a college with you know a social thought and great books and they're intense Harvard has an opposite at least affect which is you know supposed to work super hard you know supposed to look like a nerd you're supposed to be you know there's the kind of at least in those days it's not much more of the gentlemancy and of course you could be quietly you could do a lot of work but you weren't supposed to look like this is what you lived for you were there and have a good time to be you know get your degree as well as and come off and come in the world like so um so I think it was a different milieu but now there wasn't big circle because there were some of us undergrads but more importantly there were a ton of grad students some of whom there were some grad students as professors who had been Harvey students as undergraduates called Cantor into a thousand but then there were a ton of bloom students who had come to Harvard a big expoement suggested they do start studying with Mansfield and and well and be because Harvard degree was only a little more than uh Cornell I guess I have almost done that so and so we've been going out somewhat saying I suppose so um I guess we said going to Toronto but anyway that's the same thing we're all there so yes we had Cliff Warrman was a grad student my first TA when I took ten what a six a I think it was that's Mansfield's ancient course he lectured I guess there was a discussion section and then which the TA ran into the paper and Cliff Warrman I regretted my very poor I'm sure papers for that course so yes there was a lot of Nathan Tarkoff Cliff Warrman Arthur Bell's are these were all different stages there's so many different agencies people but you know people who were in grad school already when I got there coming into go into grad school as I entered college and then people who continued to come into grad school in my year there were people who came there were bloom students and of once a quarter and other not just bloom students there were some other places too but bloom had a very disproportionate number of I'd say of these of these students so um yeah so that was a pretty big circle yeah so there was there people you could talk to which was good you know no no no no I was just gonna ask the bill if there any of those any books that you read back then that sort of stayed with you through your life that you've returned to maybe they've helped you or maybe in your work or maybe they just helped you to sort of uh see things more clearly to fulfill or the federal I mean it's sort of scary how much I still go back to the ones that I read that makes you wonder around me maybe you had wonderful maybe I was well guided at the time or maybe I'm just you know it's kind of pathetically just going back to the ones I sort of already know and have a very much in the in the decades since but I became very yeah I mean so my undergraduate thesis you read a little see if thesis is hard was on tokville who my last one was in america you know and it was in the late 60s early 70s new left the assault on democratic capitalism a little democracy the notion that it couldn't stay in attacks from the left wait that that's what your thesis was on and then going back to the 30s of course that was all that I didn't know I just worded it up to never 52 but you know my parents generation and therefore for us and how you're affected by your parents generation that's your own I mean you know the whole question of totalitarianism and crisis of liberal democracy was very much of an issue so that was always from me the what what was the driving set of questions and as some of it was practical the kind of neoconservative critiques of the great society and the government and economics and foreign policy and the communism of the long we're gonna lose could be still because of the war but more fundamentally the kind of you know the regime and could it defend itself and so forth so so I was interested in so talk to I got it I liked when I ran and so I brought my seat in San Tocco I'm sure it's not looked at I'm sure it's no good it was on actually the end of the on the Indians when the American Indians and Native Americans and I think it was more than that than on the I mean that chapters on the free races but I don't know that I dealt with I dealt some of it all frequently but it's focused on the on the American Indians and I was like to my credit I had a slight inkling that this was like deeper than it looked and it wasn't just hey look I'm coming here to America it's kind of just a good reason and I mean that it was somehow about something a little more both in terms of taking through the what so I wrote on that and I massed with a begun to study Tocco a little seriously then which he laid it very seriously and I think he later went a piece much later literally 10 years ago uh intimations of philosophy I think it's called intimations of philosophy and Tocco which he sort of so I think I had slight tiny intimations of intimations of philosophy and Tocco and but he and Delba went and really worked out so much of that stuff and went way beyond what I did and then um there were my PhDs on the federalist kind of I think it was called the judicial power the American judicial power and the American regime so it was some federal Sunday but separation powers fair amount of sexual commentary on the federalist but again I think it wanted two things out but most of it was pretty tedious I think it's just not pretty obvious and then some pretty blind introduction chunk on disputes at the time about sort of the judiciary that was a huge issue judicial activism and so forth standing I actually just kind of interested in a kind of weird the topic of you know why do people have what makes the case in case the controversy was to tell us about the legal system so neither thesis is anything to write about but that was kind of my the area I was mostly focused on I did you know I was intrigued by real political call that real philosophy I took you know starts one year of greek in grad school so I thought you know I got to be able to at least have a little level kind of knowledge of being able to look at the text and I took a year of german um in grad school I knew some friendships from high school so yeah I was serious enough to think that maybe I should know these lectures a little and and I did a job and they certainly teach you include a class of eight and so but then I just kind of realized I wasn't quite either I mean I think it was up to a quite intellectually the level of seriousness and focus you need but also just hyper-mentally I enjoy doing a lot of things and I just didn't wasn't I just started off the library for six hour stretches or a really quick build I loved looking at books reading books I love reading books I love having that feeling interesting I bet it's not work that out it'd be fascinating so now I'm not quite that I think I'm pretty good at that honestly and so I'm good at these like really good participating reading books was I've sort of you know hey that's kind of it's going on there but I'm not actually I don't have the patience or I haven't thought of the discipline to make myself have the patience to actually work out these intriguing things that I occasionally glimpse but that can't I want to circle back because when we did I don't I do want to capture from you a few words on mansfield and in the mansfield as a teacher because he's the great teacher in the background here at Harvard but uh you you went you sped over this so quickly you got a job at another Ivy League school this is kind of in so this has always been an insane part of your bio I can never understand you walked away from a job at Penn you have to go work in your partner the room the two of us and um and uh someone else had left so mark I think frankly just pick me and they said okay Harvard looks respectable you know what's the point out um it was crazy we talked to the most popular several of us popular courses in the department but they had no interest in political philosophy and mark was denied tenure there then in 1981 or so and uh I didn't know close but yeah I went off to the government and spent 10-15 years doing other things than then teaching me as an excellent teacher and also in writing anyway so I got that I tried the nerve that I did and took down little politics so I could say to you fully that I could teach kind of law which I did actually to my thesis who was related to kind of law and I could even teach those general america politics I did to teach assistant for James Q Wilson I had worked on the one hand game in summer 76 when I was in grad school for a couple months in New York so you know from the political science professors for one of you I was a little less I might be able to help out a little bit with some other things not just with political philosophy so I taught at Penn for five years I mean I like living there uh a student was going behind it but you're not in college I do um end up she got their classic PhD and got a job at Penn which was really amazing a good fortune it was quite a span of the job market that it is now but it's already getting so student taught classics and I taught politics and then we both then Harvard Kennedy School offered me a job and I went and taught there for two years and student got a friend I was teaching classics so that's where we're happy academic couple and filling in then in Boston and then in 85 like yeah they'll let it ask me to come work from Washington I thought that would be interesting and uh one thing that's one other and I never stayed there I stayed here I'm sitting here I'm sitting here I'm so watching it so as we speak 35 years later so yeah that's interesting was there was an interesting in american things you think a kind of inkling of this desire to get back toward practical politics over and again you know studying moquivoli or the greeks or something like that yeah I just think I thought yes I liked politics I worked a little bit and I mean on free camp aint 68 as I'm a 15 year old you know volunteer and commissioner so a bit you know and then you know they involved in a couple of political things on campus and followed politics when my parents didn't actually know that many people in real politics the new york director was still pretty far from Washington definitely but mornin was a huge influence and I worked from the summer of 70 because this is an assistant at quant over kent state and I don't know I can be the other so I am 17 years old so I literally get to watch my two months and some aunts you know was more aunts specialist it was really just meant I mean answering the totally unimportant mail-offs so be up and create internet pre you know for anything right this was literally typewriters and so forth someone had to sort of help him or I don't do very very manual stories but it was exciting work for one hand he was in the white house yeah so I had an interest in politics and I think um and the american thing just related to that also you know my father was interested in his best friends I mean he was very friendly with some of these professors including blue and others but his best friend among the stress students was Marty Diamond would have been his best friend in high school I think and uh and Marty I'm already did come to the house quite a lot I really remember him being there and um and he you know was a very good work important work on the federalist and people just began before Diamond just restoring Burns Jaffa this was that I'm working on american stuff it was just the kind of don't be either progressivism or a little bit of maybe the other right just more I don't reference a lot of towards the fed to the founder but no one actually studied them I mean no one actually studied their fault you know maybe they started there was smart politicians John Rosch's fellow i wrote a book about you know they were clever barge compromises and so forth and you know they were respected it wasn't but not so much well marces but but uh you know that you would actually learn something from reading these books that I was really new and that was a huge achievement of the stressors americanist students and they probably had more from somebody if I read them more you know it's more up on what they were writing than the more strictly philosophic type so I respected occasionally would read may as well as different because I knew him of course the study was in but cannington better daddy who were still youngish then and so hadn't written most of what they were to write but were around and had written some things I mean that was over I just you know that was I was extremely respectful that and didn't really read much but so bill could you talk a little bit about mansfolk is he's uh he's a kind of high uh he does have that american that american side to him but he's a bizarre kind of hybrid creature that can seemingly do anything uh it's just american in that man's field if you look at what he wrote from your high school to the 60s I mean there's a lot of important essays that were very but since first book of the bowling brook and the fan forming of broken broken broken broken broken broken broken broken broken broken and they're forming founding of party government really that's a minor classic part of the party government no it's fantastic book and that was it's like yes but he wrote a party the part I mean he meant to sort of invented he he discovered so many of these institutional aspects of modern liberalism party government indirect government the executive power you know he had a sort of x-ray understanding of these things and I mean these are things I vaguely was interested in I thought I'd do a tan about you know where I took a course on political parties and then you'd hear mansfolk talk about well what is it really what's really going on and you try to think through parties and that respect that was extremely impressive and then I do think he and that respect not having been a direct student drowsing but that way having been a part of you know vhd who I think came across jobs when he was working mess was working on berg and he came across the chapter and that's right history and then that's other strals so obviously and then went off and then stuck with him a little bit when he was like menssel was it I gave her an out Berkeley and stress is a Stanford for years I write in 59 something like that yeah yeah yeah something like that there's something anyway menssel was a some really good process but um I think menssel coming to it that way in a sense there was like it wasn't formulaic fan I mean he really saw and it wasn't simply textual not that that that's simply right where it wasn't primarily about oh this thinker is very interesting it was these thinkers are helping me understand the attire was phenomenon of the major form of government that has existed in the void you know in the modern world probably and the discoveries or the invention of these different institutions and forms as menssel would like to talk about so I think he's always had a real interest in what these both in the thinkers and their thought but also in reality they shaped and how that and why they wanted to shape it that way and chose to work and how it happened the most and he's oh he has a personal history and stuff like so yeah so I think that influenced me but maybe it's more that I was already inclined that way and plenty of other man so students you know were more struck by you know this deep reading of text and when often become deep readers of text that I'm interested in politics and practice which he incidentally when you started moving into practical politics how much of a touchstone demands I know you guys are cognitive actually this I know you're quite soon you're extremely close but did he remain kind of um an unnamed touchstone for you when you were in the White House serving as honestly you call them up and you're like hey you know we have this not really you know okay stories and some like the balloon would talk a lot to you know yeah well maybe that's where I'm getting this kind of stuff from I didn't really I mean honestly I'd say my own view I think I was asked about this at some point in the early 90s when I'd done my student government people would say well you studied all this book philosophy how to help you and I'm already more puzzled than I maybe should have been by this question it says I wasn't obvious I mean I have a high regard for philosophy if it's a study and I gotta think it helped into our science thought I was decent at handling politics I guess I must have thought it helped me somehow but I remember thinking it's hard to specify really and I remember telling someone shocking some more pious and earnest Australian friends that when I said you know I didn't know that there was people I met in Washington I thought I had the best judgment the best sense of things put things in perspective a lot of them in study history some of them it's just politics some of them talk about a bit of this tradition of studying to be a physician obviously and then I thought the key was having some distance on what you were doing and some perspective on it and therefore some judgment about what really mattered what didn't but you can get that a lot of different ways and I guess I continue to think that I'm a little on the you know I'm not so sure that someone who really has studied history in a thoughtful and serious way which I would say there is probably a way somebody influenced by but probably Strauss theans who don't simply have a history and stuff for it and say so seriously but if you study history that way you could be as good a political you know as good at politics but that way I mean as good a political actor as someone who studied more the kind of classics of political philosophy I'm a little bit of a doubt or about the direct impact of these you know great works but I think the the the you know the the yeah just except the perspective and the judgment I think is is important to get that from studying great literature you know so I don't think any particular thing and in terms of personally I just hope is a year and little kids and then you know working very hard in government and honestly I think if I called him up I'm of course I was in touch with him and I tried to go back and see him occasionally speak there and all this and you know have very nice dinners with him and but I think he would have thought it was a little ridiculous if I called him off because of I mean he's he's been a believer in the Gulf for distinction between theory and practice and the fact that you have a very deep understanding of Machiavelli doesn't tell you what you should do at the budget of 1990 or whether you should go on to Baghdad in 1991 or stop the war when you've kicked him out of kicks it out out of Kuwait and stuff like that so I think you know it's funny all those things we do so much talking about the distinction correctly I think it's a theory of practice and practical judgment and you know it's a lecture will sort of things then of course half of them just decided if they can brilliantly apply whenever they're you know studying to practical politics with not even a sort of moment of pausing so but but in this world isn't that way I always thought you had a team of the Princeton degree that you were analyzing executives as you had a member of them stuff it's so hard to do that I mean what does it mean I honestly you get a busy watch I didn't be much political philosophy those years I would say I you know I probably read a little more in the last 10-20 years and I was not government in a little more time at the magazine what you're supposed to be to be reading because I did review my one good deep political philosophy on the Washington was reviewing Alan Bloom's closely with the American mind for the Wall Street Journal in 1987 and giving it a good review but also I think I've ever seen that I think people's noticed a little bit I was a famous the famous review of God I think it was in New York Times book where God surprisingly a famous review of people that went on and it was just a call from itself but I think I reviewed it in a way that made it sort of intelligible why it might be important to your you know this intelligent business when it was reading the Wall Street Journal or to consider it an academics and other fields we read the journal those days and so much smaller and it's horrible page they had one book review I think it was one a day it was like one or two week but anyway I did I think I asked the book review and they did so I feel like that was my I did my duty was to help and promote that book no can I ask a follow-up question so if political philosophy wasn't particularly informative for your political career when you look around do you see patterns in the sort of political actors you admire and in this sort of education that they had what what are the things that you think contribute to these folks being able to do the job well yeah that's a good question and I don't know that I have you know I'm just thinking about the ones I admire and what connects them I mean it's a little hard to put ones to my finger on one or two things I'm not wrong over stated what I say it's not yeah it was very important for me to go across so I am going to answer a little myself and say well I have the difference I know who knows but you know there you know some more sort of people like me I remain close to respect a lot of things I use more academic but John McCain who I really worked you know pretty hard to try to help in 2000 and then 2008 and I've very had a very opinion of it was a different type of the all these people studying something I will say this I think there's something you know McCain actually was quite a vivacious reader that admired various historians and statesmen and a little stoicism I think because that was kind of a big thing he stocked out we revered and done a lot of work on that when he had been working on it but it's important when he was in prison of war and then you go to bed when he got out so you know having something that you look up to and it puts politics in perspective and puts political fights in perspective and it gives you some distance maybe on the immediate moment this gets back what I was saying about my folks are back in the 50s 60s so some liberate you from a kind of simple-minded progressivism for most of my life I was the main thing I thought that was necessary to be liberated from it can also liberate you from civil-minded reactionary authoritarianism I would say you know it's properly studied but I think that I think is a common trait I would say that I'm McCain or Moynihan or other people of my admired and many people who aren't famous who were you know staffers and so forth and it's a say you can do that by the history of philosophy of literature or just by being a certain type of person honestly and having certain qualities and certain virtues and take that Aristotle what were we gonna say Alex yeah I think that was a certain kind of I don't think he has made recommendations to political actors to beat a lot of philosophy you know so so go on go ahead do it well I just um I didn't know how much we wanted to talk about you know you're the founding of the the Great Weekly Standard people know so much about it I'm more curious about kind of your current initiatives especially as they dovetail with a renewed if not interest so you more time to kind of study political philosophy so you're your great thinkers and contemporary thinkers and I noticed this push with you Bill at least when I was at the weekly standard I contemporary thinkers and great thinkers those websites had already been up and running but was in the past 15 years or so what is this new push or where was that coming from those were the original projects of the foundation of the government and we felt the conversations which has become better known were complementary to them and they we started those and I made around 2012-2013 pretty recently though most of them got up I think 14-15 something like that and then then a few that have rolled out since and so I could a classical thinkers it was a sense of look I mean I'll back up when I was in I think grad school some earnest I should be comes in they but what I was learning is to obviously an grant student somewhere but not at our rooms I can't I you know produced like a compendium of every house the thing that had been written this is pre-internet though and free google of course at all so it was like 400 page you know manuscript that was do-go-free Xerox I think well but I don't think I have it anymore and it was you know and of course if you wanted to know um it was written you know there were all these figures what I'd heard of when hadn't had these again traveling with us common and stuff and so you know and you sort of had a guide to different things you could mean about different thinkers I mean stress crossing in a way is the you know the the the the kind of little uh you know example of this you know but it's small I guess but um anyway so the idea of the websites into the great thinkers was I mean not to be particularly strausy and dominant or anything they're not actually they have a lot of more resources and they're funny obviously places you can go and find out what's been written on locker like you know earlier uh is that a fun or anyone but to have one of you know someone we respected to kind of curate this and put it together in an intelligible way we thought we held for some student in the main impossible to find that and really could everything in conversations was not everyone has a good luck to study with every minute so you don't let everyone's a good luck to study with you guys honestly and you know what if you're smart kid somewhere you have kind of not a great teacher or not a great department or they don't teach political class we all got no yes on places what and you stumble across something you think that sounds kind of interesting I'd like to know more about it it would be great if when you went online to look you found something that would genuinely be both educational and enticing to really get you if you're a intelligent person into it so that was kind of the idea behind it also obviously to be a general resource for a lot and so forth and so forth and you can't have to do it build I think that's what makes it cool for me as a young young youngish person you didn't have to do it I mean your career is already yeah well we got that so we had to do most 99.9 percent of the work but I mean the contemporary thinkers was a little more sense that a lot of people who were worth reading were kind of disappearing this was slightly an interesting thing I do think that if you were if you were classic you're classic that your books are preserved as a volume of collected works or so on so or you know what are two volumes at least two reciting courses and that's why if you were post-19 what would it be 95 I guess that 2008 really you know your stuff is a republic since online or accessible online at least you know but there's a huge gap there of people who really had people's on the very much worth reading I came up with a particular I think people like storing in diamonds maybe some of the lesser known ones too kind of faded or they died in 78 you know but gee and they've been books but I put out a nice book of money diamonds writings I don't know if you're really in print or if you could find somewhere but anyway and so we couldn't be produced all these other websites and we didn't have rights to it and so at least people would know what to look for and then people could go find stuff to care and often so that was kind of the it's a lot of the contemporary thinkers aren't quite contemporary they're more you know late last half for the 20th century I'd say I mean all I'm someone lying chilling them had I haven't quite won the whole course and some don't get the websites to be honest I suppose to you know it's different people to find out what a lot about them but anyway so that was the idea that the conversations we started as kind of a um I say something originally to the website the first two or three were literally they weren't really conversations they were kind of about the thinkers who were you know on the website when they put them up on the website but then the people liked having the conversational mode and I did a couple of Harvey and that one thing that's one other and so now it's kind of trying to run along it's been fun honestly it's telling me keep my hand in the family coming back in I think this was kind of I'm not sitting up but it was less than these other things less than anything to make this way but this way then Strauss was a great thing over I mean you know Strauss was self because I met Steve Linser who was a graduate student Harvard for quite a long time and has never published much unfortunately but um who was one of the first I gotta say really see how the Strauss had to read the way he read others and it's now I think I'm pretty widespread I'd say among your generations of students and a lot of the work has been done but it was much rare if you look back better daddy saw it clearly from the beginning it didn't always talk about it I would say but hinted at it certainly um can't even maybe Harvey saw him I mean obviously I'll do this like super brilliant and obviously you can't write all these pages about the art of writing and not I mean these are like people right so he's telling him that's right else right else right but he's sort of writing this right but it didn't really get pushed I would say Nathan talked about the question as much as anyone in that essay he wrote on uh stresses which he you know ahead of time stressing is whatever that kind of clever review is which I've now forgotten the actual author he was wild is that right he was sort of stratification attack a while which Nathan's nervous to be that quick the warning to Strauss he is not the good answer that and it's quite convincing once you read it and some Nathan always had a taste for this or an instinct to this but lenses are actually informally and he's a lot of friends and acquaintances and sort of proselytizing on the need to take Strauss seriously how to be given so I was in a lot of reading groups um pre-zoom they were actually pursuing that but you have money to do them out of clear on other places uh on different things to Strauss and that's been very it that's been again I you know claims to work it all out but and I don't know the text often that all well that he's writing about and we have to really look at them both and all that of course but it's still great you know fun and interesting to do that I do feel like it's kept me a little bit more involved in things and thinking about things and people I mean I probably had never read I mean I wasn't literally never read until 25 years ago they didn't Harvey didn't teach it wasn't about my generals in grad school it looked to me I mean some of it looked kind of like fun reading but obviously it's been a lot of it was really going on in the you know in the educator's sirens in the Christmas week you know fun books and the song just looked totally bewildering and bizarre you know and Strauss and stuff wasn't exactly like easy to figure out what you know I wasn't didn't take you into it does like the late stuff on Santa Feynote least and I didn't even know about it it'll be fantastic I say from 39 on Santa Feynote the taste of Sparta um there's one reason for having the website though right I'm not saying it's never been preserved in a book so you wouldn't know about it in a way but if you go to the Strauss and what's that right I guess is that a website you could find it so um we're reading that kind of thing as a group of very smart people um somewhat diverse types that all Strauss and different kinds of Strauss and that's been really interesting and so some of it is letting you go back to somebody's like just themselves not go back in some super serious you know take a look at them or be interested in them and then I thought I was the only thing that I'd say that it's not as much but I taught at Harvard some in the 2000s um I guess I know Harvard they didn't mind and I went I took a couple classes of Harvey and my old roommate Steve Rose and I found a policy and so you know just being out there too we kind of gave me a little more of an interest in finding out what's going on and you know so with contemporary thinkers Bill is some of what you're doing and even with some of your guests on conversations with Alex's teacher Ron Berger on is some of this um a way to kind of preserve our approach to political philosophy I mean that's up very much in in intent of our podcast actually is to try and keep this approach alive Alex and Greg No Best obviously what the the state of Strauss-Inism is in the Academy I just it seems to me to be you know flickering out but but again I don't know and so some of this a labor of love is a way to kind of give thanks to great teachers from your past. I guess yeah I think the Academy is stresses aren't so great the Academy is doing so great and more importantly and I really did the mean this I feel like a little bit of indication last year with the pandemic and zoom experience I mean I sort of did have an insight I think quite a walk 10 years ago or something while a lot of people were trying I mean and I support these efforts to let's make sure we get you know help the good professors we have and get them a little some more resources for Harvey George Princeton Harvey and Harvard and others and I'm all four of them and get people jobs we can help them postdocs Jack Miller Center I've been involved a lot of these things and and I'm for them so don't get me wrong I also had the instinct that look we don't know what's gonna happen to you Kathy and we shouldn't just let everything hinge on that and that part of Bloom's book I would like to taught it somewhere for the her job program I also been involved a little bit in the stuff I guess that kept me looking at me interested again I got interested in some of these summer programs as ways to get two students who may not have great teachers only have one or two and this is a way to get really sort students in front of other faculty from other places and to get them with other students and so there's Hudson program and her job and others and so you guys have probably involved in all your sense students to them absolutely yeah some of them have been very good and I think that's been a very worthwhile thing but that was animated very much by a way it's a long way around of what I was gonna say about the going outside the established universities I did have this insight that people spending huge time and effort to try to help our professors which is good get to speak to more students that's to say again additional professors somewhere but you know what you can do it the opposite way and you can bring students from 20 different schools if you can find 20 you know 40 good students two professors for summer not like the same as having obviously 14-week classes or something on a topic but they can learn a lot and then they can follow up on their own if they're really good that it could really open their eyes and that's all doable it's cheaper it's manageable and online stuff similarly you know with the conversations and then the websites and so I'm very much of a our purpose is not to save the academy I'm good I support good it's to educate students and that can be done through the through you know is done mostly through established institutions of higher education but indeed can be done that way it hasn't been done that way always for all of history most of the people we studied didn't go to the kinds of colleges and universities that many that we that we have gone to or and that sort of and we really can't make everything in John saving the college's university. The Blue Moon's book has slightly bad influence that way actually it's so now in love to talk about so much he loved his own experience there's so much you couldn't really imagine I was want to say it happening in any other way and so is this wonderful tribute to a certain golden age that existed for like two years you don't want college but anyway as if it existed you know much more broadly the American mind was actually closed you know most places most of the time if we can be honest and opened by a bunch of emigres for like 10 years in Chicago anyway Alan had this sort of view you know this wonderful kind of something to feel at all but I do think he's he closes it's very powerful I can't remember you know defensive universities where those important things can must happen you know if the future I sort of probably would be that it would be more than ever if we could do it versus the not but you can't make everything in Georgia accurately and so that's why I've been so interested in all the alternate modes of education I guess that's the easiest way to say and that whether it's summer programs or podcasts or or reading groups formal and informal you know in person or remote and zoom but somehow making it possible for young men and women in not just here but around the world of course these days with the internet to have access to the kinds of exciting educational experiences we did and not tilting on them running into army men's schools or Alan blue and one of the those trials because that's you know a that not everyone had to do even when they were alive and at a great universities and certainly it's you can't count on that so yeah so I'm very much I think it's important to disentangle is that we're education from from the institutions that we happen to have now that's entangled but at least be willing to run and run them which is why I like your podcast and all these other things that's why I'm more friendly or two new modes of you know stuff like you know all this stuff on twitter is not serious obviously even look if some kid is reading twitter and you know follows a link to something and he means something serious and disadvantaged twitter is a 99% of that no one follows anything to anything and everyone just reads you know tweets that's kind of silly but you know if three really smart kids read something we wouldn't have otherwise read I feel like that's also that's not so bad and you know a lot of you get those email I don't know if you guys have a lot of effort getting lectures which they really think are going to reach what three or five or seven kids in this semester anyway so if you can I don't think I'm reaching but if if generally one can reach people that way if we put this up on the fix of a line and I tweeted other people do and some people learn something from what I read something they hadn't heard of or thought of you know that's that's a good thing so yes I am interested this is my sort of little non academic way of trying to keep the flammable eye I guess. Can you just tell us those websites again it's contemporarythinkers.org and the great thinkers conversation with Bill Crystal.org the overall yeah I think it's just a can't say everything because bookmarks right now it's 10 years it's 10 years it's 10 years and great thinkers I think that's the great thinkers but it's not great thinkers they're working yeah it's like great thinkers when you get some like you can buy like audio courses something isn't it yeah yeah foundation for constitutional government is the you know the ownership of the whole for sure.
You know one thing Greg David and I have spoken of occasionally I don't think on the podcast but separately is how for each of us getting interested in this felt like a chance encounter that can change your lifetime you know I was a physiology neurobiology major I was a med school I was staying in state and then I just got a little tired of it and I took a you know a political theory course for fun because I was interested in politics just sort of personally and it was just no turning back you know and I read you know Bloom and I started reading Plato and Nietzsche and all this sort of stuff. It was just a professor who works it's the works I end up as a teacher you know who is introducing them in a you know a decent fashion and I think given Greg had similar experiences and you know doing the podcast for less than a year I mean sometimes it feels really tedious in a lot but doing the podcast for even this little bit of time the emails we get in everything it feels good to know that there's something out there and that there's a way and I guess what I want to know from you is what kind of effect you think this is having do you think you're reaching people who are in sort of intellectual wastelands and because I know that when you're you have an episode out of Machiavelli with Mansfield or it's the Federalist or Tocqueville or Blitz is just the reason episode you did with Mark Blitz on Reason in Politics it feels momentous because there is something substantive there so I was wondering what kind of feedback you've had on that. No that's nice for you to say I mean I don't know I really we get a lot of quite a lot of feedback a lot more now because we just want people to know about it than beginning like anything else you build up an audience and stuff and some of these people pretty well know too so it's if you do a Mansfield it's not like we're introducing someone they never heard of to the public I probably should be more systematic about this and also it isn't entirely put across a bit of stress you know it's not like I should probably in this case without it anyway I'm quite a recent we decided to do other stuff as well but um maybe the funders wouldn't want to just a straight political philosophy or stress. I find I listen to all of them I find the other stuff just as interesting ports.
Well that was a different people in the closet. The guy you had on the COVID the last couple episodes he's been getting those are fantastic I mean several economists that you've had on to think you know that so that's one so we're gonna take a point to make which is that we can all talk about the closet as we're interested in it but yeah that's the only way to learn to be an educated and intelligent person and certainly not in terms of public policy making even in terms of real intellectual life right there's lots of lyrics for various white people who live before Strauss and Edward Strauss and don't aren't stress the ins and they're just an extreme don't so I mean I think yeah so that's one reason we haven't narrowed it quite as much I'm not against other people narrowing it that's in the gym with the gym with the gym with the gym too but um now so thank you for yeah for mentioning that but um what was I about to say on this I can't remember the uh closure question yeah yeah yeah yeah but yeah the next one been good but you know I also figure I don't know I mean of course most of the people who watch it are people already are kind of in that world and sometimes you won't know for a long time who you know some some student has the courage you had but it's not that person is telling me and they won't be having even know frankly how serious he is or whatever I'm gonna play no back and and maybe who knows where he is in five or ten years from now and also of course the stuff the great thing about the internet is it's online and someone can watch it five years from now so you know I'm not sure we've hadn't done it perfectly at all but I have slight you know the more the merry a lot of thousand flowers will be here and I and this is sort of Greg's one I don't think we know exactly people be act to get educated by different things in different ways and they are likely for uh they get in transit or enticed by different thinkers different people's presentation and look it's very useful for a lot of people to learn how to think like an economist you know I mean that's one thing I used to say to my political theory trends a little bit is you know if you ask me one thing so much a kind of question knowing I'd say basic economics you know cost and benefits supply and demand opportunity cost or vice-filler trade officers things a free lunch kind of a useful thing it's just a very hard headed way you know it's kind of underrated and um stage from a lot of tramps and a lot of trouble same with foreign policy basic historical understanding of sort of some truths of foreign policy great to read Thucydides I personally love Thucydides from like venomous pentecays but um you know I don't know maybe for every read Thucydides that seriously you read a lot of history of international history make a little trick or something can we just as good so yeah so I'm a believer you're both in a kind of multiplicity of approaches and styles I guess you'd say and subjects honestly now we said all that I do have a slight special spider I aren't I guess with the political philosophy and the surrounding side of it and I think that is also more there's no danger that people that economics is going away you know other economists aren't going to be famous and teaching people how to be decent economists I don't think we personally worry a lot about keeping economics alive first the serious study of philosophy we've learned can semi disappear let's just say and it was revived or we weren't almost and um and but you know that it could itself become a dogma to it and it kind of ossified and stuff so this is why I think you guys do a very good job keeping it fresh and alive and and inquisitive and not just you know what's the Strauss and doctrine on intris and moderns or this and that especially the more you study at the more you see these doctrines are not really the last word well thanks for that I mean I'll just say I've assigned a couple of them in my classes like when I'm teaching Machiavelli a couple of them and so the ones are just spot on and just give it to them as something to sort of shore up whatever it is we're doing in class now I mentioned this to you before but we we sort of we tend to end with Greg has these little lightning round questions he likes to ask so oh yeah I'm not sure how good first car is going to be growing up in New York City but you were probably in your 30s or 40s when you started driving but well what's your first car that's my parents never learned didn't know how to drive and never learned to drive but that's awesome that's okay yeah yeah like we're up in New York and they lived in New York and then they came to Washington when they were my age now you know they didn't learn here he didn't learn that they're probably in the DC so that's yes I did not go with the car so my wife Susan got in the suburbs like a normal American learned to drive at 16 or 17 so we were getting married we're both at Harvard grad school so she was just a college that was sort of like okay I got it like I don't know if it was usually I said this thing but I had to make sense of I can't fly back I just be right but I did not drive throughout college I got rides doing from you know New York from friends what we didn't take the train I guess and so I did learn to drive in Cambridge Massachusetts which was kind of a ridiculous place I mean not to have you know it's kind of people that are crazy so maybe that was good for me to have to learn to drive but anyway and so I learned to drive in my mid-20s I think I first grabbed some little Volkswagen Beetle yeah six-year-old from that learning to drive in a six-year-old so that's good that's the only way to learn you have a favorite work of literature I mean it's just such a cliché to say Shakespeare but I guess that would be true I mean I'm not that well-read in literature and I love some sort of popular novels mystery novels Donald Westlake these comic straight away yeah but plug your detective novels Bill the Westlake I mean it's like I mean it's a private underrated and the mystery novels the genre underrated and says it really the best of them are close to not quite at but close to the level I think of the serious novels certainly the slightly sensitive not the level of you know Jane Austen or so I like Austin like all of us dressing so far supposed to but I'd say Austin the way you read her she is so not what she appears to be you know in terms of being subversive and I mean I read a skinned a book recently as a radical interpretation Jane Austen which is the kind of thing I mean climb not to like feminist you know Marxist sort of and he has the wheel really what's going on but I got sappied enjoyed and found it so half convincing you know that there's a lot of she's a very shrewd observer of things but Shakespeare is is unique and I did teach I take a pen when I you taught the major course and I guess it's this way a lot of places I kind of like you teach what you want on the upper level seminar sometimes I did it's your fourth or fifth course of the year so I taught measure for measure I had you know her dancers lectures on it you better not find the unmeantraggle and it's very influenced by mecky valley especially for measure for measure and maybe by my drag itself actually is applied but anyway um so I I think yeah such as doing that when I was in 25 or 28 or 30 I mean it showed out so deep that stuff is and then if you read serious novels you see that there's a lot of great novelists who you can learn a lot from as well it always struck me that the reputation of Jane Austen as like pream and proper and a little prudish couldn't be right I mean nobody like that names a character fanny price right it's also just if you just read if you just put yeah if you never put that out of West Mine it's so deep now that's hard to do so I mean literally I've been fighting that for 80 years you know the Jane ites and stuff and their intelligence is by truly nobody else is saying oh con that's of course the truth but I was even the intelligent I say maybe don't fully appreciate sort of how we really stop and meet them think about them for a minute what she's saying about it's it's it's it's a it's a it's what um the cold I isn't quite the way it's a very realistic I would say sober luck I mean that's your I would say I'm a Shakespeare student but in this future I'm a great writer around that area but the late 18th century early 19th century really is pretty amazing you got I think first you know if you think about the statesmen here in America but also elsewhere think about Burke you think about you know Jane Austen and other novelists you think about Mozart you know Mozart Hamilton not quite Jane Austen I guess Burke or all contemporaries you know and didn't think it's no each other but um we could have they love each other somewhat I mean that's a really pretty you know the record revolution and Hamilton's writing the fellas papers at the same time the Mozart offers are debuting in the Hind Progg and you know and I don't know there's something sort of I do think that period is very is underrated honestly just a certain kind of this is a sub-stouse you know orthodoxy of well the enlightenment coming out of just luck to all this rest of joy and then of course there's some sort of a race with that which is both deep but also problematic and there's a lack of appreciation in this sense of course as other people but of the kind of quality of thought of some of those Adam Smith you know types and I think and some British enlightenment types and and then also literary people at that time who were and then well too into talk though I mean that's a very high it's a very sort of 1750-1850 it's very high quality literature thought as a champion yeah it's really my favorite you mentioned people being contemporaries the favorite time I encountered I was in grad school and I came across a letter that marks it written to Lincoln that was the one that kind of blew my mind yeah that's amazing I didn't know that yeah I said congratulations sort of uh congratulating him on the emancipation proclamation yeah and uh Charles Francis Adam I think was ambassador at the time and he wrote the response for Lincoln uh we should have anyway that's just kind of odd yeah I think we know the answer to this but what's your favorite sports team? So I was a Mets fan as well as like I was I was a um in your fans I was a Mets fan and 69 World Series stuff for me is special but then I came to Boston and those names of course that wasn't in your league play so you could kind of have a team in each league and I was always anti-yankies but slightly indeterminate about I just like to I was competing with them basically in the American League and like real affectionate was the best so I became a reslex fan since I was one of Boston's a reslex fan and Fenway was very close and you could go and it was cheap and went quite a lot actually college for special grad school when we were trying to avoid doing any work and I was at the 75 World Series six game to come on you know I wanted to meet my wife Susan got two tickets to have roommators on her hauls had some big relationship with one of the team owners and they didn't want to take it she was just like a college student who didn't get on my job so I was there on college fiscuit on running the 12th inning where were your seats they were okay because they were from this you know relative of an owner or something and they were reserved seats but they were fine yes I remember was a car bus on my d8 and then fiscuit and great field in place and I didn't send them on running the 12th so I was always since then sort of red sax fan out of loyalty to that experience too and that's too now or no uh not really yeah but they're impressive yeah um you know all right ferna um so to have a major league baseball team and yeah for sure we had to get to the Orioles there were no there's no washroom major league team for most of their I guess you know middle school junior high high school years so we took them to Baltimore to Orioles games yeah I never could really get into the Warriors fan but it's no no it's a great park though game it is a great part yeah yeah I lived in DC when they got the team 0.5 I was really excited now we got a brave fan you guys have pets we had a dog patches who we got when I was at the start of a college since like in a place you know I got a 15 years he died about two or three years ago kind of amazing um it's three or four years ago and we had a cat who would appear a little before that and they overlapped for quite a long time so I didn't grow up with any pets so as we grew up with a dog not a cat I think though so we really liked our dog it was a very um I think intelligent so many Australian chatebards not that many like 35 pounds but not the really big ones but there's Chinese shepherds like you know most of these kind of uh shepherd type dogs colleagues and stuff are smart I mean they're very early they're returning instinct at all but they're so I was so neurotic but very intelligently we believed kind of understood like half of what you were saying it seemed like you know that's pretty do you have any tv shows you watch? So actually I got I watched plenty of tv as a kid one of other parents for all the intellectual stuff and all they loved Colombo and Perry Mason and I love Colombo yeah so we got I still watch them when I was home you know when I was a kid at home you know and gonna watch all week nights because of the homework or something but you know it's sort of watch them and weekends um so then I really drift away from tv I really watched your stuff for sports very very little I don't know if i'm pretty busy working in Washington it's just more fun to talk to friends and be stuff but the land probably is in the pandemic a little bit before then um because with a new technology and you know we like millions of Americans my podcast kept telling me how great tv was and I have to start watching tv it was now you know six for a while right right right there so I mean I did but I didn't really take on that so I miss most of those great shows with the nyds and the aughts and stuff that Paul talks about but in the last few a couple years we've watched a lot of like British police shows especially British I saw like the British and like you know very useful and glofilia coming back I guess and ever since well done and fun and so you know vlog church and there's so many of them obviously by now in outland and um we're watching by now this one uh two female detectives it's kind of clever anyway it's just the quality of the acting the quality of the just kind of the characterization of the minor characters I think is much maybe I'm not even enough American shows make this general but it's they feel to me like they're still much better much more so just intelligently done I was like mysteries so um I actually have come back and watch some colombos which are on tv year sometime yeah they're on amazon I think yeah and they're um I don't know you have to say sort of it's amazing how bad a lot of these tv shows were I mean that's not quite the right where they were good for their time I guess but but somehow you know they look so stilted I guess just the stats and everything now that just the mechanics of it are so much easier to do obviously then you get a little spoiled and you look at the colombos and you think this is really kind of the very first one I think called up pretty well it was in black but once it was in black and white and he was a psychiatrist you murder someone yeah I vaguely remember that so colombos do you know colombos modeled on Socrates yeah this is around you know someone said this right this is true or is this just like some I found a tv guy that the guy from polombos said he modeled on uh patro which the detective from prime and punishment and I thought I saw something else that's a troll which was modeled on yeah anyway but yeah all right these things are like jokes and stress made they got to take it yeah yeah yeah yeah this is quite a stupid one I found a tv guy it's okay no unless that's a real story so let's try it out let's try it out let's try it like don't smoke you know that's not something a little ridiculous anyway yeah all right yeah one final lightning round question for you have you ever had any nicknames not really actually it'll take some okay fair enough well billi we all like to um thank you very much yeah you have so much that you're doing it's a very very important yeah interesting for me to reflect all these things which I get I've done that much so yeah well it's important to capture your voice so thank you thanks and good luck with the new thinkery and the whole thing and thank you for seeing michael davis and other people who actually have very important things to say about classical works as opposed to this one we'll take you up on this lecture on the right hand relay but this was fun for me at least so thank you for coming to see you yeah yeah bye everybody