Los Altos Institute Archive
by Los Altos Institute
Los Altos Institute is a non-profit socialist think tank based on North-Central British Columbia. We oppose intellectual property rights and so, consequently, we make the audio content of our online courses available for download for free. Learn about identity politics, economics, popular culture and a host of other themes on which we teach right here.
Episodes
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How To Do Your Own Research Course
This is our four-hour course on how to do your own research. You should download our course slides and reference pages here: Slides Reference Page
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Western Civilization - Episode #13: Course Conclusion
The class discusses the utility of the idea of Western Civilization.
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Western Civilization - Episode #12: Ukraine, Palestine and the West
In this episode, we return to the theme of the West in war propaganda, focusing on the ideas of JRR Tolkien and Edward Gibbon in modern war propaganda.
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Western Civilization - Episode #11: Post-Colonial Theory and the West
Post-colonial theory is largely a theory of and about the idea of Western Civilization. In this episode, we discuss the plurality of opinions and thinkers in this academic movement and outline some common positions.
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Western Civilization - Episode #10: The Neo-Spenglerians
We discuss the influence of Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West and its influence on the political movements of his day and those of the present, and how the idea of Aryanism interacts with ideas of "the West."
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Western Civilization - Episode #09: The 'White Man's Burden' and Rise of the US
In this episode we talk about how nineteenth century ideas of whiteness reshaped the idea of Western Civilization.
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Western Civilization - Episode #08: The Enlightenment
The Enlightenment was a global event that had peculiar and specific effects on the West.
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Western Civilization - Episode #07: The Age of Discovery and Rise of European Supremacy
We discuss the importance of Henry the Navigator and the highly contingent character of Europe's rise to global hegemony during the Age of Discovery.
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Western Civilization - Episode #06: Alfred Crosby and the Crusades
We discuss the Crusades from an ecological and intellectual rather than military perspective and tease out emerging features of the West in the Middle Ages.
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Western Civilization - Episode #05: The Victorines
We discuss the emergence of "Western Civilization" as a religious idea developed near Paris in the High Middle Ages.
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Western Civilization - Episode #04: Feudalism and Environmental History
We discuss how feudalism arose out of reforms designed to save the Western Roman Empire from structural decline and the Darkening of the Sun.
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Western Civilization - Episode #03 - Bouleteria vs. Baal
We discuss the competition between the Greeks and Phoenicians in colonizing the Mediterranean of the Axial Age.
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Western Civilization - Episode #02: Homer and Herodotus
We begin with the earliest texts of the Western Canon: the Iliad, Odyssey and Histories.
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Western Civilization - Episode #01: Introduction
This is the first part of our thirteen-part course on the history of the concept of Western Civilization.
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Wokeness as Religion - Episode #13: Is Wokeness an American Space Religion
Mormonism, Scientology, Nation of Islam, original Sandinismo: is Wokeness part of the lineage of American Space Religion?
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Wokeness as Religion - Episode #12: Canadian Wokeness, Jansenism and the Social Gospel
The particular history of Jansenist secularization in Quebec and the Social Gospel in English Canada prepared the ground for our extraordinary Wokeness.
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Wokeness as Religion - Episode #11 - Canadian Wokeness, Progressivism and Social Justice
This is the first part of a two-parter about the historical and theological underpinnings of Canada's unique susceptibility to Wokeness.
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Wokeness as Religion - Episode #10: Magian Dualism
Some people mistakenly call Wokeness "cultural Marxism" because it organizes the world into a binary. But that binary isn't Marxian at all. It is far more like the Kingdom of Peace/Kingdom of War Islamic idea or, closer to the mark, Manicheism's Sons of Light/Sons of Darkness.
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Wokeness as Religion - Episode #09 - Enemies of Wokeness
This lecture was requested by one of the students and caused the remaining lectures to be reorganized. It is the only lecture that does not contain a religious history component. Instead, it engages with movements in the present that are oppositional to Wokeness, radical feminism, black...
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Wokeness as Religion - Episode #08: The Rise and Fall of the University
Universities came into being in response to excessive orthodoxy in higher education. Could the same thing be happening again eight hundred years later?
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Wokeness as Religion - Episode #07: Woke Politics of Emotion
Wokeness seeks to resolve a central paradox of Protestant Christianity: the relationship between its two most prized emotional characteristics, restraint and sensitivity.
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Wokeness as Religion - Episode #06: Wokeness, Language and the Adam-God Heresy
Wokeness offers what appears to be a novel approach to language in religious tradition. But is it novel?
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Wokeness as Religion - Episode #05: The Postmodern Turn
Postmodernism is often blamed for the Woke moment, and unfairly so. Nevertheless, there is a complex relationship between the French poststructuralists, Wokeness and American traditions of popular literacy.
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Wokeness as Religion - Episode #04: Self-harm, Asceticism and Drag
This class was on self-harm and asceticism in the Western tradition. In the discussion portion, it turned into a lively discussion of drag.
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Wokeness As Religion - Episode #03: Progressivism and Time Consciousness
The idea of progress is a theory of sacred time based on postmillennial evangelicalism. Wokeness is one of its descendants.
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Wokeness as Religion - Episode #02: Donatism and Institutional Capture
This class elaborates on my essay on the Donatist movement, in which I explain points of resemblance between modern Wokeness and the new brand of orthodox Christianity we associate with Constantine, the Council of Nicea and the Donatist Crisis of the fourth century.
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Wokeness As Religion - Episode #01: Introduction
This is the course introduction in which the approach of the course is explained. We are examining Wokeness only one angle, the theological and looking at past events and movements that resemble its key doctrines.
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The 4th World - Episode #11: From the Longest Walk To Neo-Zapatismo
Indigenous actions in the Western Hemisphere 1978-92.
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The 4th World - Episode #04: The Arctic
The Arctic and Indigeneity: from the Sami and Inuit conquests to the Frobisher expedition.
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Ira Zbarsky Public Lecture on Fair Trade and Bioregional Organizing in Guatemala and Ukraine
Los Altos Institute sponsored a public lecture by Ira Zbarsky on his forty years of eco-anarchist bioregional organizing in Eastern Ukraine, Guatemala, Mexico and BC on November 28th. You can listen to it here.
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Latin America, Laboratory of Capitalism - Episode #13: Course Conclusion and the Future of Empire
In this final episode, we talk about the two schools of thought in American imperialism and their twenty-first century prospects.
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Latin America, Laboratory of Capitalism - Episode #12: The Honduran Coup and the Faltering of America
In this episode we wrap up the course narrative by looking at the 2009 Honduran coup and its consequences.
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Latin America, Laboratory of Capitalism - Episode #11: Argentina and the Rise of Structural Adjustment
In this episode we examine the rise of structural adjustment programs and their first tests in Argentina
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Latin America, Laboratory of Capitalism - Episode #10: The Pinochet Dictatorship and Neoliberalism's Arrival in Latin America
In this episode, we discuss the introduction of neoliberalism and its original testing not in the UK or BC but in Chile under Augusto Pinochet.
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Latin America, Laboratory of Capitalism - Episode #09: The Alliance for Progress, School of the Americas and Strange Case of Peru
We examine the founding of the Alliance for Progress, its spawning of the School of the Americas and the strange case of the Peruvian dictatorship of the 1970s.
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Latin America, Laboratory of Capitalism - Episode #08: The Brazilian Dictatorship (part 2)
In our second episode on the Brazilian dictatorship, we look at the "diversity politics" of the authoritarian junta.
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Latin America, Laboratory of Capitalism - Episode #07: The Brazilian Dictatorship (part 1)
We begin our two-episode look at the distinctive features of Brazil's 1964-85 dictatorship that made it the most successful of the US-backed bureaucratic authoritarian regimes.
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Latin America, Laboratory of Capitalism - Episode #06: ISI and the Brazilian Rustbelt
We continue our mid-course focus on Brazil, examining the building of its industrial sector in the 1930s and 40s and American attempts to deindustrialize the country in the 1950s.
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Latin America, Laboratory of Capitalism - Episode #05: Nicaragua and Brazil, the Coffee Republics
Nicaragua and Brazil have very different histories, geographies and cultures but both were reshaped by the coffee industry.
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Latin America, Laboratory of Capitalism - Episode #04: The Spanish-American War
The US changed dramatically as an empire when it seized Spain from Cuba and became the second in a succession of three empires to ruin Cuban cuisine.
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Latin America, Laboratory of Capitalism - Episode #03: The Banana Republic System
Like the term "third world," Banana Republic has come to be a pejorative description of an underdeveloped country lacking in democracy. But it has a more precise meaning. Such Republics had a specific pattern of development developed in Central American and the Caribbean.
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Latin America, Laboratory of Capitalism - Episode #02: Open Door Imperialism and the Remaking of Liberalism
This episode looks at the transformation of liberalism and, consequently, the Monroe Doctrine 1848-76.
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Latin America, Laboratory of Capitalism - Episode #01: The Monroe Doctrine
The course begins with America's oldest and most important foreign policy doctrine, the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which declared the US protector of liberty in the Western Hemisphere and the political conditions that gave rise to it.
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Los Altos Institute's Ukraine Panel
While LAI is not a Slavic studies think tank, we have enough knowledge on our board to organize a short panel discussion on the Ukraine crisis. This does not purport to be an analysis of the war and the Institute takes no official position on the conflict. Instead, we are simply offering those...
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Dune: Frank Herbert's Timeless Vision: Episode #08 - Course Course Conclusion
Leisl wraps up the course.
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Dune: Frank Herbert's Timeless Vision: Episode #07 - Gender in Dune
In this episode, Leisl Westfall puts together the various pieces of analysis that have been developing over the course of the class to look comprehensively at the evolving views and understandings of gender in the original Dune corpus.
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Dune: Frank Herbert's Timeless Classic: Episode #06 - Canonicity and Reproduction
Stuart Parker delivers a second guest lecture on canonicity, social reproduction and other key sociological ideas in the Dune series.
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Dune: Frank Herbert's Timeless Vision: Episode #05 - The Duniverse As Frank Herbert Left It
Leisl Westfall summarizes the last two Dune books and sets up for seeing gender as a central heuristic for interpreting the series.
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Dune: Frank Herbert's Timeless VIsion: Episode #04 - God Emperor of Dune
Leisl Westfall continues our synopsis of the series with God Emperor of Dune.
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Dune: Frank Herbert's Timeless Vision: Episode #03 - Dune
In this episode, Leisl Westfall begins her synopsis of the series with commentary.
About this show
Los Altos Institute is a non-profit socialist think tank based on North-Central British Columbia. We oppose intellectual property rights and so, consequently, we make the audio content of our online courses available for download for free. Learn about identity politics, economics, popular culture and a host of other themes on which we teach right here.
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Los Altos Institute