PODCAST · society
The Brass Spittoon
by frontporchrepublic
Thank you for gathering at the Brass Spittoon, the podcast of Front Porch Republic. We chew on issues timeless and timely, with a focus on place, limits, and liberty. Find out more at frontporchrepublic.com.
Episodes
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Russell Moore on how Wendell Berry Made the Cover of CT
The former editor in chief of Christianity Today stops by to talk about his love of Port William and the AI infused world to come. Highlights 1:00 Biloxi boy and Berry man 5:30 Unlikely CT choice? 11:00 Wendell at his most metaphysical 16:30 Crowning Kingsnorth (or not yet) 26:00 Carl Henry and…
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Bill McKibben with Sunshine on his Shoulder
The author, activist, and grandfather who once warned of The End of Nature has a brighter disposition these days. Highlights 1:15 Dirt roads and tricorne hats 3:15 Protesting with the life-changing Wendell Berry 6:45 Paneling over real problems 16:30 Evacuate the building! 19:15 Looking back,...
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Marvin Olasky on the Press, Presidents, and Pivots
The longtime editor-in-chief of World magazine discusses the Zenger Prize, his new gig at Christianity Today, the temptations of conservative politics (compassionate or otherwise), and his memoir Pivot Points. Highlights 1:00 Aspiring galactic editor and globe trotter 5:45 Street level reporting…
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Tri Robinson Looks Back in Thanks
After a life of physical and spiritual adventure, an innovative homesteading teacher and pastor turns green with gratitude. Highlights 1:00 California to Idaho (before everybody was doing it) 12:00 The plane, the plane! 19:00 Picture pages, picture pages 26:00 Raising the dead with his students...
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Jeff Bilbro's Convivial Quest
The editor-in-chief of the FPR website discusses the recent conference in Grand Rapids and his latest book, Words for Conviviality. Highlights 1:00 Pacific Northwesterner in western PA 8:00 Prospects for localism and trad wives now 11:00 Bilbro’s obsessive bibliography 17:00 Printing press 2.0…
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Yuval Levin on Our Constitution
The AEI scholar and author of American Covenant joins John to talk about a document that he believes could unify we the people, again. Highlights 1:30 Second home 8:15 The national “we” 13:45 A dignified basis for unity 21:00 Changing culture by changing institutions 25:00 Make Congress boring...
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Ghost Stories with Nancy French
Longtime ghostwriter Nancy French tells her own tale in the Ghosted: An American Life. French was raised in rural Tennessee and would later provide the words behind famous talking heads but found her own enchanting voice amid political and personal tumult. Highlights 1:15 Mud pies for Parisians...
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Family Time with Timothy Carney
Timothy Carney, an AEI senior fellow and the author of Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be, talks about the village it takes to raise a child and the metaphorical (and sometimes literal) rise of “No Children Allowed” signs. Highlights 2:30 A lively...
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Living Outside the Machine
Ashley Colby, founder of the Rizoma Field School, digs up inspiring true stories of resistance and restoration (with references to donkeys, elephants, and our 49th state). Bill Kauffman, author and regular conference closer, weaves Wisconsin professors of the past and the robo-umps of tomorrow…
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Brian Miller on Kayaking with Lambs
Brian Miller visits the porch to talk about his new book chronicling life on a Tennessee farm. Highlights 1:30 Bayou Bengal Volunteer farmer 5:45 A monastic text 11:15 Man of letters 14:00 Pesto chango 15:30 Remote control 18:00 Growing pains 23:00 Lamb on the lam 27:15 The rest of the story...
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Humane Politics
Adam Smith, a philosopher at the University of Dubuque, counterattacks the disenchanted War on Suffering. FPR President Mark Mitchell goes biblical to bring down a heightened politics of insanity. Brass Spittoon podcaster John Murdock looks at a key architect of religious politics and wonders…
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Human Responses to Technology
Jeff Bilbro, FPR’s super-beaver EIC and Grove City College professor, looks to ancient mythology to assess modern technology and fiction of the future. Cassandra Nelson of the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture is stuck in the middle, a bit like AI itself. Author,...
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Imagining Life Beyond the Machine: Eric Miller and Jason Peters
Eric Miller, biographer of Christopher Lasch and a professor at Geneva College, plus longtime porcher Jason Peters of Hillsdale College address the role of imagination in shaping our shared reality. Matt Stewart, an associate editor of the FPR website, introduces this duo that has impacted his…
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Paul Kingsnorth: Blizzard of the World
Paul Kingsnorth delivered the keynote address at the 2023 FPR conference in Madison, Wisconsin. With help from a diverse band of fellow travelers including Jewish-Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen, Anglo-Catholic social critic Malcolm Muggeridge, and the prophetic French-Egyptian Sufi Rene…
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Paul Kingsnorth’s Opening Prayer
Paul Kingsnorth, the keynote speaker at the 2023 FPR conference in Madison, Wisconsin, begins things with a bonus talk on the power of prayer in a desecrated western world. Highlights 1:15 Mark Mitchell’s welcome 4:00 Paul flies in 5:30 A long list of labels 7:30 Roots and power 8:15 My neighbor...
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Bill Kauffman in Conversation
Bill Kauffman, author of multiple books including Poetry Night at the Ballpark and long the closing speaker at FPR conferences, talks about the origins of Front Porch Republic and his unique life of letters. Host: John Murdock Guest: Bill Kauffman Highlights 1:30 Defending the homeland 2:30 The...
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After Virtual: Civic Life
The After Virtual conference podcast series closes with a focus on civics and cemeteries. Mark Mitchell, author of Plutocratic Socialism, talks on, well, plutocrats and socialism (plus the importance of property ownership to maintaining the republic). Rachel Ferguson, author of Black Liberation...
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After Virtual: Health
The penultimate session from the FPR conference After Virtual: The Art of Recovering Lost Goods addresses health. Philosopher Adam Smith from the University of Dubuque and medical doctor Brian Volck, author of Attending Others: A Doctor’s Education in Bodies and Words, take on the...
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After Virtual: Chris Arnade
Chris Arnade, the keynote speaker at the After Virtual conference, has traded global finance for skid row photography. Chris discusses his journey from Wall Street board rooms to a booth at McDonald’s and the associated rejection of careerism and self-definition. Speaker: Chris Arnade—An Address…
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After Virtual: Education
The second episode from the FPR conference After Virtual: The Art of Recovering Lost Goods looks at education. Jeff Polet discusses walking away from Hope. Angel Adams Parham talks about the elementary power of a rapping Homer. Jason Peters goes back to the future of the educational machine....
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After Virtual: The Church
For the first of our episodes from September’s FPR conference After Virtual: The Art of Recovering Lost Goods, we go to church. Carl Trueman, Gregory Hogg, and Charlie Cotherman share thoughts on technology and embodied worship in a time of pandemic. Speakers: Carl Trueman, Gregory Hogg, and...
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Mark Mitchell on Plutocratic Socialism
Mark Mitchell, author of Plutocratic Socialism: The Future of Private Property and the Fate of the Middle Class and President of Front Porch Republic, joins the podcast. Mitchell and Murdock discuss the origins of FPR and the importance of widely-held productive private property in an era when…
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Matt Stewart on Wallace Stegner
Matthew Stewart, author of The Most Beautiful Place on Earth: Wallace Stegner in California, sits down (literally) with host John Murdock to discuss Stegner’s complicated relationship with the American West. A mobile youth left Stegner yearning for deeper roots. In the 1940s, he landed in the…
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Katharine Hayhoe Talks Climate Change
Katharine Hayhoe is a professor at Texas Tech and the Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy. Her most recent book is Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. Dr. Hayhoe, a Christian, swings by the Porch to discuss faith and science; effective…
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Chuck Marohn on the Human Errors of Traffic Engineering
Chuck Marohn, the founder of Strong Towns and author of Confessions of a Recovering Engineer, discusses streets, roads, “stroads,” and the perils of the American traffic system. A trained engineer himself, Marohn once imbibed the discipline’s dominant dogmas. Today, he advocates for cities and...
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Poetry and Politics with A.M. Juster
Michael J. Astrue has earned degrees from Yale and Harvard. He had a long and distinguished legal career and held several government positions as well as leadership posts in biotech companies. From 2007-2013, he served as the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration. A.M. Juster has...
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Will Hoyt‘s Ohio River Journey to the Middle Ages
Host: John Murdock Guest: Will Hoyt Will Hoyt, author of The Seven Ranges, discusses his journey along the Ohio River into the physical, historical and philosophical interior of the strip-mined region where he lives. In the book, Hoyt transforms the area’s colorful past into a lament over the…
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Joseph Loconte on War, Friendship, and Imagination
Guest Host: Jeff Bilbro Guest: Joe Loconte Front Porch Republic editor Jeff Bilbro sits down with Joe Loconte of The King’s College for a spirited discussion of the book-turned-film A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War. Bonded by war and steeled by friendship, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien…
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David Cayley on Illich and Institutions
Canadian radio broadcaster David Cayley pulls up a chair to discuss Ivan Illich, a renegade priest and professor who argued against schools, missionaries, and modern medicine. Cayley, author of Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey, walks listeners through Illich’s thought and its applications to...
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Os Guinness on Liberty and Hope
Prolific author and social critic Os Guinness discusses the current challenges for liberty and his hopes for the future. The Chinese-born, English-educated, Irish-rooted scholar who lives in America also shares insights from his time at L’Abri and talks some Arsenal football. Highlights 2:00…
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John de Graaf, Affluenza, and Stewart Udall
Summary Filmmaker John de Graaf pulls up a chair to discuss his 1997 documentary Affluenza; a forthcoming project on Arizona politician and JFK/LBJ’s Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall; the politics of beauty; and a whether John Muir should be cancelled. Singer/songwriter Wendell Kimbrough...
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Prospects for Localism
The FPR leadership has decided to make a foray into a new medium (for us). And given this transitional moment in American politics, this seems like a good time. We hosted an on-line discussion that, hopefully, provides an interesting and unique take on current events. For years now we have sought...
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