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Rob Mottram is a scholar of modern European literature and culture, and senior lecturer in German studies at Whitman College.

Rob and Dave chat about sandwiches, nostalgia, encountering computers as kids in the 1980s and early 1990s, AI (including AI term papers and AI podcasts), the overwhelming power of aesthetic experience, Goethe’s Faust Pt. II, and Rob’s transformative melding into Caspar David Friedrich’s “Mountain Landscape with Rainbow.”

Rob’s Recommendations:

Don’t Go to Montana and Don’t Enter Academia!

The Flaming Lips, “At War with the Mystics” and “Embryonic” (Albums):

George Steiner, “Real Presences” (Book)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit deadbeatphilosophy.substack.com