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From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true and the beautiful are taught, nurtured and honored. This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.
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We want people to take seriously what they are doing in terms of their culture, what they're doing in terms of their art. If their art turns sour sooner or later, and usually sooner, their lives, their society, their politics will turn sour.
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This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale Cottage Podcast network. That was Dr. Alan Gelzo, author of the Golden A History of the Western Tradition of We'll talk in depth with Dr. Gelzo about that later on in today's program. Also coming up, Michael P. Foley, his new book, abstaining with the no and Low Alcohol Beverages for Sober Souls. That's later on in today's show. First, we're joined by Dr. Alan Gelzo. He is a professor of humanities at the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida, also a best selling author, most recently, Robert E. Lee Alberto A Life. He's back with a brand new big two volume book, the Golden Thread. He writes the second part on the modern and contemporary West. Dr. Gelzo, thank you for joining us. All right.
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B
Very good to be speaking with you today, Scott.
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This is a massive undertaking. If people haven't had the chance to see the books yet, it's two volumes and each are around 1,000 pages. Now you've spent a lifetime writing about American history and Western civilization. What about this project felt necessary right now? And give people an overview of what they could expect across both volumes.
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The volumes are written in conjunction with my long, long friend James Hankins of Harvard. Jim and I go back over five decades. We were actually in the same high school together. We were even in marching band together. And over the years we have stayed very close in touch. And you might say that although the actual mechanics of writing these books occupied four or five years, we've really been writing them for five decades because the kinds of things that you'll find in this book are things that we have talked about every time we have connected. What are we trying to do in these books? We're trying to give a picture of this thing we call the Western tradition and we use the running title, the Golden Thread because that takes us back, first of all to classical mythology, but in particular takes us back to the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. After Theseus had slain that monster, the way that he was able to escape from the cave of the Minotaur was by a golden thread that he followed to the daylight. So I think in a similar sense, what we have tried to do with these books is to offer the Western tradition as a golden thread which can be followed to the light of civilization.
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Let's take three of these terms, Western tradition, civilization. What do we mean by them? And why is now the time to have a discussion about those terms?
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Let me do the easy part first. When we talk about the Western tradition, what we're really talking about is a collection of civilizations. Think of this Western tradition that the golden thread is laying out before people. Think of it as something of a layer cake. And one layer is the civilization of the Greeks and the Eastern Mediterranean that is then succeeded by the civilization of the Romans. And that in turn is going to be followed by the civilization of the Middle Ages, and in its term, also the civilization of the European Enlightenment, and so on to the present. So we regard the tradition element of this as something which is handed on from civilization to civilization. It's not a case where the Greek civilization kind of winks off and the Romans have to start all over again. No, the Romans builds on what the Greeks provided as a foundation, and then the civilization of the Middle Ages, of Christendom is built upon the inheritance of both Rome and Greece, and so on through the Enlightenment and to the present. So we regard this as an accumulation of, let's call them, civilizational moments. And this is what makes up this Western tradition. The west is, by and large, what we are speaking of when we talk about Western Europe. I would go so far as to say that people who would like to make a distinction between Western Europe and Russia, as though Russia belonged to a different civilization, are fundamentally mistaken. That is a view which is adopted by the current power structure in Russia under Vladimir Putin. He would like to talk about Russia as this uniquely Eurasian civilization. I think that's fundamentally flawed. So when we speak about the west, we're really talking about Europe, but we're also talking about those places which reflect the transplantation of European culture and civilization. So that takes in a very large part, if not all, of the Western Hemisphere and large portions of the rest of the world as well. Through the Pacific, through the subcontinent of India and and so on. What we talk about when we talk about a Western civilization actually turns out to be much more than just something that can be isolated and called the West. It is west and every place that the west has informed civilizational development. So those are Our terms, we're giving you a history of the Western tradition composed of these civilizations.
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Dr. Kellen. So the question now becomes, why write these volumes and why preserve? Why Western civilization?
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Well, I think in large measure because Hankins and I are convinced that we do face a moment of civilizational crisis. In fact, you might say that almost all of our lifetimes have been involved in a questioning of Western civilization. And you can say that there's some good reason for that, because after all, in the last hundred years and hundred and slightly plus, we have seen the west, however we want to draw that boundary. We have seen the west plunge itself into two nightmare world wars of colossal proportion and of deadly results, and much of it predicated on the foolishness of the leadership of the West. So if people are having some doubts and some question about this Western civilization, that there's unfortunately ample reason for that. Add on top of it the legacy of the Holocaust of totalitarianism and the hideous butcher bills that have proceeded from that. Add to it the misbehavior of Western governments in creating empires and subjugating other peoples. And by all means, not with any kind of gentle consistency when you take those together. Yes, there are some very good reasons for saying, well, what about this Western tradition? Is it really all that great? Well, yes, we are at a moment when that questioning is there. And sometimes, as I say, there's legitimate reason for opposing the questions. At the same time, though, there are also people who have what I might regard as more malevolent intent. And that is there are people who are frankly the devotees of an anti civilizational outlook. These are people for whom this thing called civilization is, as Karl Marx would put it, purely a matter of superstructure. That the real thing which identifies people and describes how history moves is really economics. It's the getting and spending, it's the exchange. It's the material substances that are swapped around. Hankins and I could not disagree more strenuously that all of those things are in fact subservient to this thing called civilization. So what we want to do is whether the questions about civilization arise from that kind of ideological hostility or whether they arise from a simple questioning that says how can we still talk about a civilization? How do we still want to conceive of the desirability of a Western tradition when there have been so many colossal disasters. My response to that and Jim's response to that is really twofold in a very broad sense. One is the Western tradition has undergone similar moments of civilizational crisis. There was a great moment of civilizational crisis at the end of the Roman Empire and the collapse of Rome, there was a great moment of civilizational collapse in the wake of the bubonic plague of the 14th century. There was another moment of near civilizational collapse and really of similarly colossal, devastating warfare in the Thirty Years War of the 17th century. But with each of these moments of crisis, the Western tradition has, so to speak, bounced back. And that resilience is one thing that is worth noting as a unique aspect of this Western tradition. So it has had these challenges before. This is not some new thing. It's not where we woke up one moment in 1918 or 1950 and somehow said this was all a big mistake. No. We have been through moments like this before. Why have we come back? Why has there been this resilience?
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That's Dr. Alan Gelso. His book the Golden A History of the Western Tradition. We discuss part of that Western tradition in Western civilization is music. And it's a great time to sign up for the new Hillsdale College online course, the History of Classical Chopin through Gershwin. Classical music is beautiful. It is one of the greatest achievements of Western civilization. Hyperion Knight is your teacher for this course. You might have seen him in the first history of Music course. He plays piano, he plays excerpts, he tells the stories about some of these great men and and great compositions. It's a joy to watch him teach. This second course picks up where the last one left off. Hyperion has great energy and great charisma. He opens the enjoyment of classical music to absolutely everyone. Now is the time to sign up. Hillsdale. Edu Newcourse. N E W C O U R S E Hillsdale. Edu Newcourse for the history of classical music, Chopin through Gershwin. Hyperion Night. Your teacher. You won't regret it. Hillsdale. Edu Newcourse. We continue learning about Western tradition, western civilization with Dr. Alan Gelzo, his book the Golden A History of the Western tradition. Dr. Gelzo, where do we see the value of Western civilization? Why has it been resilient through crises? And where do we see redemption through time?
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I would isolate several of those moments in these terms. First of all, the Western notions of government and law. And I bracket those together and Jim brackets them together with me, because you can have government, but it can be perfectly lawless and malevolent. You can have law and have it be nothing more than pious desire. What the west has done has been to find ways of linking in important ways government and law together. And in this case particularly so the government is subservient to Law. The moments of real crisis in our history have been the moments when government has galloped away from law, but the subservience of government to law, and yet law, needing the implementation power of government to secure the good things that law attempts to describe. So there's one major aspect of how we find this Western tradition, something desirable, something to bounce back with. Another aspect is its religious content. It's the monotheism. And within that monotheism, this embrace of disagreement of what is sometimes called argument for the sake of heaven, and from it a tremendous flowering of religious and theological ideas that range all the way from technical aspects of theology to the concept of religious toleration. All of these things are part of Western monotheism. And that has been an important and I think a highly desirable aspect of the Western tradition. Then there's the music and the arts of the Western tradition. There are some civilizations in the past of human history which have had next to nothing in the way of art, sometimes have been militantly hostile to the arts. The Western tradition has loved the arts, and it's loved them whether they are the arts in terms of depiction, the arts in terms of music, the arts in terms of literature. And I might add, too, that one tremendous asset of the Western tradition has been its commitment not just to literature as literature, but to literature as written literature. So that we not only have, let's call it tribal memory that gets recited, significant moments, but we capture it in writing so that everybody can share those things and in many cases disagree about them. So those are some examples of some of the great strengths of the Western tradition that we believe are worth expending the effort to write two volumes, presenting these to people anew. And in a way, the Western tradition is. The Golden Thread is an invitation to come back, to resample, to understand all the remarkable things that are available through the Western tradition, yet at the same time recognizing that these have not always been implemented evenly, certainly not always perfectly, at some points unwisely, but yet to understand with the kind of. Let's call it the kind of sober gratitude that one experiences. For instance, when you're thinking about your parents, when you're thinking about your ancestors, no one is going to argue that one's parents were absolutely perfect. But at the same time, even with the imperfections of parents, you experience a sense of gratitude for what has been given to you. So it is that reasonable gratitude that we seek to cultivate in the Golden Thread.
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Now, the Golden Thread doesn't look like a typical textbook. There is more of a story. There is a narrative of the west. And as you allude to, there's a lot of arts and literature, and of course, primary sources and primary voices are woven in. Did you consider speaking specifically not just how you wanted to present the story, but perhaps how readers, how they wanted to learn about this story?
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Yes, exactly. Because there are many ways of using these books. You can sit down at page one and read the narratives that are contained in both volumes. And I believe. I don't think I'm exaggerating. I think you will have a good time with narrative writing. But at the same time, if you're not someone who wants to devote as much time as it might take to get through the narrative itself at one sitting, then there are different sections, shorter sections, you might call them, almost short stories. The technical name that the publisher has used is threads, and these focus on particular individuals or particular stories. We have, for instance, in volume two, we have biographical stories. We have stories about some specific events. If you, for instance, are working through volume two, you will encounter some interesting sub chapters, some separate threads that will describe the music of Claudio Monteverdi, that will describe the founding of the Jewish Hasidic culture through Baal Shem Tov of the 18th century. You will even find a small subchapter that we entitled Unsinkable on Sinking of the Titanic. So that's there as well. You can pick those separate sections up and enjoy those as being very short, easily digestible, and yet all of them connected at various points to the overall narrative. So that's a second way. The third way is through the use of the primary sources and primary images. So we include all through these two volumes, some shorter and pithier and some longer and more involved extracts from documents that run all the way from Pericles Oration over the Dead of the Peloponnesian War to Winston Churchill's famous speech from June 1940 about how we will fight them on the beaches, we will fight them on the landing places, and so on like that. Now, these separate sections will give you the voices of the people who we are describing in the narrative and will allow you to pick up those documents and use those and read them and savor those as well.
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Not only that, Dr. Gelzo, but if you have the book, you pick it up, you see it. Brilliant, beautiful images throughout help tell this story.
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There are pages upon pages of great art. There are some, in fact, sections where we include a series of reproductions of paintings so that you can see how a particular artistic school develops. One example I might use from volume two concerns Impressionist art. So we move through Impressionist art in France, we move through it in Russia, we move through it even in the Netherlands. Bengal, for instance, is an example about that way. So this is. This gives us a way of appealing to readers at a variety of levels and gives you an opportunity to enjoy these volumes in more than one way.
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Alan Gelzo with us, a co author along with James Hankins of the Golden Thread. There's two volumes, Alan Handel's volume two, the Modern and Contemporary west, which begins with the Reformation, the Fracturing of Christian Europe. It ends with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. And you explained this a bit, I think, in the introduction, but I was curious. How long do you think it takes for history to solidify? One of the reasons that you don't carry on past the Soviet Union collapse is it's all a bit too recent and perhaps it's not quite solid yet. How long does history take to solidify?
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It never does. We'll start arguing about the consequences of the Battle of Marathon. So I don't think history is ever set in such a way that there's only one possible way of describing historical events. There are certain fixed items. The American Civil war begins in 1861. It does not begin in 1776. It does not begin in 1939. The American Civil War begins in 1861. That is a simple fact that is not budgeable. What we want to say about how we understand it, how it was conducted and how it was carried on, that's another subject. And that can vary. So with these books, what you're hearing are the voices of two historians who have dwelt with these issues for a long time. And I will not be the first, and I hope not the last, to say there are things in these volumes where we are reflecting on our own understanding and interpretation. You are free to disagree. And I make the comment, the note to the reader that begins volume two simply. We say that if there is a question in your mind why we didn't include this rather than that. My instruction, my encouragement, very polite but very firm, is eclive vulture propre livre. Basically, write your own book because you're.
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The book encompasses this time in which the west is capable of incredible creativity and beautiful art, as you mentioned, but also incredible destruction through war, and particularly in the world wars of the 1900s, was it difficult to capture that tension between those two sides?
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One of the great difficulties in this is, first of all, to impress upon people the sheer destructiveness of these events of the 20th century. When we talk about World War I, yes, you can run up long figures of casualties, you can estimate costs, you can describe sunken ships, and we do all that. But what do those abstractions, what do those amount to in the terms of their impact on people's lives and how they understand themselves and their relations to each other? That is the most difficult thing to convey, I think, in many ways, a lot of historical narratives sometimes fails because it does nothing more than the first. It's not looking for what the impact really is in the way that people think. This is why so much of these two volumes weaves in and out between describing events. That's a fairly straightforward thing. Again, the Civil War in 1861, but also the culture, how the poets wrote about it, how the novelists write about it. With World War I, yes, you can run up those long chains of figures, but if you want to understand the impact it made on how people understood themselves, then you have to go to those horrible lines. When I say horrible, I mean horrible, because they make the blood run cold. Those horrible lines of Ezra Pound. Well, what was this war about? Pound asks for a few thousand books, for some broken statues, for what he calls an old bitch gone in the teeth, for a botched civilization. If you want to know what the impact of the war was, there it is. If you want to know what the impact of the war on the lives of the people who fought in it, read Eric Maria remarks. All quiet on the Western Front. So in these books we talk. Yes, here were the events, here was the Western Front, here was what happened in 1914-1918. But also here's what it did to people. Here's the confidence that it shook, a shaking of confidence that is realized not only in the literature, but also in the art, in the architecture as well. And we offer examples of all these things. These are, I want to say, more than simply the usual chronicle that you would expect from a textbook. They are an attempt to tell the story about a civilization, a civilization where the political and the military and the artistic and the literary all are bound together as a single whole. Now, can we cover every detail of it? Well, of course. As soon as I've put it in those terms, you realize you can we do our best to point people to those directions and those moments which we think are the most revealing. There's always room for more, and we hope to invite people to explore that more.
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I guess I'll close with this question, Alan. The golden thread is so evocative of a. It's such an evocative title. It allows the reader to understand there is something that draws the soul together, and yet it is fragile. What keeps that golden thread intact? And what is the greatest danger to keeping it in place?
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I think the greatest danger is taking it for granted. Some people might say that the greatest danger comes from people who are overtly hostile to civilization. No, I don't think so, because I think that can be spoken to, that can be disagreed with, that can be refuted. And sometimes you have to do it simply by asking a few questions. I think the real danger comes when we simply assume that these things have always been there, that they always will be there, and they have a message which is sometimes interesting, but nothing that we really need to concern ourselves about. Hankins. And I will say no, to the contrary. We need to take seriously all of these things. We need to take seriously. What do we do? What do we do in our music in the West? Plato once said a long time ago that if you wanted to understand the politics of a society, listen to its music. Now is Plato exaggerating? Yeah, a little bit, but not more than a little bit. We want people to take seriously what they are doing in terms of their culture, what they're doing in terms of their art. If their art turns source sooner or later, and usually sooner, their lives, their society, their politics will turn sour because these things are all of a piece. They are all bound together. So what we want people to do in picking up these volumes will be, first of all, people who will say, I know these various movements, these various artists, this music that described here. I am so glad to see this again. In fact, I might even differ with it. I wish you had more about Mahler and less about Tchaikovsky. Well, sorry, that's my volume. Those are the shots. I call on that one again, write your own book. All right, so some people will do that, and they will just have fun with these, because it'll be like making again the acquaintance of old friends. For many others, it will be a surprise. It will be. I never knew these things were connected like this. And they will be seeing suddenly connections all around in the daily lives they lead that they didn't really suspect were there before. So they will see. They will see on these pages, let's say, the reproduction of Thomas Cole's great series about the rise and fall of civilizations. They will look at that and they'll say, those are telling me a very important story I need to learn something from. In fact, I might feel tremendously motivated to pay a visit to the National Gallery, where the originals of Cole's paintings are. And see these, I would like to see these because seeing them, oh my goodness, what a world of difference it is just from looking at things on the pages of a book. I had an experience a little bit like that over the summer when the Yale Museum of British Art put on a special exhibit of its collection of the paintings of Turner, and they have a substantial collection of them. I walked into the exhibition and the first thing agreed to me was a Turner I had never seen before. I looked at it and I said, oh my goodness, that's exactly what Turner does with this other painting. It's exactly what he does with this different painting over here, with this etching, with this drawing and so on like that. I'm standing in front of this with my jaw open and saying, I haven't seen this particular thing before, but I see where it all comes together, that kind of realization, that kind of awakening. That is another thing that we hope that these books will invite people to. So whether you are a of the arts or whether you are someone who is coming at this thing because of your anxiety, your curiosity about where our culture and our society are going, these are the books that will speak in these very different ways to exactly those needs. And we'd like to see it done. I mean, if Hankins and I have a choice, we'd like to see it done particularly in two constituencies. We'd like to see it done for people in upper division advanced courses in high schools, 11th or 12th graders who are doing AP of various sorts. We'd like to see them in first year university and college surveys, but we're not going to limit it to that. I think these are books that anyone with curiosity is going to pull down from the shelf and spend some time with and feel satisfied with. So yes, we've got some particular targets, but in the larger sense, we think that these are books that will speak to the interests and needs of a very broad spectrum. And we want to encourage that as strenuously as we can.
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Alan Gelzo is Professor of Humanities at the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education. Also the co Author of the two volume series, The Golden Thread, Volume 2. Alan Gelso writes the Modern and Contemporary West. Alan, thanks so much for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
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Thank you, Scott.
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Up next, after all that info, we relax a bit. Michael P. Foley joins us. His book, Obscene Sustaining with the Saints. I'm Scott Bertram, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
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Hi there, it's Bill Gray. From Hillsdale College. Before you skip ahead, can I ask you a question or two? If you could teach 50 million Americans one thing, what would it be? Would you teach our great American story that this nation is unique, founded on self government and individual liberty? Maybe you would teach the truth about free enterprise, how hard work and opportunity allow anyone to rise? Or would you teach the gospel and the Christian faith that helps us live good and meaningful lives? At Hillsdale College, we're doing exactly that. Teaching the best that's been thought and said. Through our free online courses, K12 programs, Imprimis, podcasts, and more, we reach and teach millions every year with the principles of liberty that make America free. And with your help, we can reach even more. Your tax deductible gift today will help us teach millions more people to pursue truth and defend liberty. Just text the word give to 7 1844. You'll get a secure link to make your donation in seconds. That's give to 718 44. Thank you for standing with us. Now back to the show.
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Hillsdale College is a small Christian classical liberal arts college that operates independently of government funding, and we want you or your son or daughter to apply. At Hillsdale, students grow in heart and mind by studying timeless truths in a supportive community dedicated to the highest things. Hillsdale College costs significantly less than other nationally ranked private liberal arts colleges and receives regular recognition as a best value. And nearly all students receive financial aid. Our robust core curriculum, vibrant student life, and 8 to 1 student to faculty ratio make for an education like no other. For more information or to fill out an application, visit hillsdale.edu info. That's Hillsdale Edu Info.
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Welcome back to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. I'm Scott Bertram. Be sure to follow us on Xillsdale Radio. The Hillsdale College Podcast network is there. At podcasts, we're joined by Michael P. Foley. He's a professor in the Great Text program at Baylor University. Also the author of a few books. The new one's called Abstaining with the Saints. No. And Low Alcoholic Beverages for Sober Souls. Michael, thanks so much for joining us.
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Hey, thank you for having me.
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A
This is the third in a trilogy, Drinking with the Saints, Dining with the Saints. I think we might have talked about each of those previous books. How do you see Abstaining with the Saints fitting into this pattern?
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Well, it's kind of a natural progression. So I wrote three cocktail books, Drinking with the Saints, Drinking with St. Nick, which is drinks for Advent and Christmas, and then drinking with your patron saints. And then after that, I co authored a cookbook with Father Leo Padalinghug called Dining with the Saints. I figured after all that drinking, I should probably have some food. And abstaining with the saints kind of follows the same logic. It is kind of responding to what is called the soberish movement, which is different than going completely sober. But especially after the COVID lockdowns, there are a lot of people who said to themselves, gosh, I drank too much during those lockdowns. Alcohol consumption went up 35% in 2020. And a number of those people actually said, I don't want to become. I don't want to abstain entirely from alcohol, but I do want to cut back. And a lot of those people actually then became pioneers of non alcoholic distilled liquors. And so now we have things called Sober October, Dry January. There is a renewed interest in moderation and abstaining with the saints is meant to help with that.
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I just saw recently, and I don't think for the first time a study saying that at this point now we're drinking less alcohol than ever before. So I know you talk a little about the sort of counterweight to what happened during COVID but are there other reasons you think people are perhaps ingesting less alcohol these days?
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I think there are two others. One is Gen Z just doesn't drink very much. I'm not sure why, but they have very low percentages of daily or weekly consumption. And then another reason could be increased worry about the health side effects of drinking alcohol. Medical opinion used to be, oh, just two drinks a day and you're fine. And now they're being more stringent about that, oh, any alcohol is a poison and any amount is not good for you. So the pendulum right now in the medical community is swinging against even moderate amounts of alcohol. Personally, I dispute those claims, but it would explain why people are seeking alternatives.
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Michael P. Foley with us. His new book, Abstaining with the no and Low Alcohol Beverages for Sober Souls. And I'm holding the book it. Man, this is a gorgeous book. I mean, this is a beautiful book if people have an opportunity to pick it up. Now, one of the great delights of the book, which you can read any way you like, you know, front to back, pick a date, pick a chapter. But the way you weave that history, the saintly history into these recipes. Did you discover anything about these saints this time around that surprised you or you were especially enthusiastic about including in this book?
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I was surprised because I wanted to find particular non alcoholic beverages a suitable partner if you Will in the Communion of Saints. And so some of the saints are familiar figures. They appear in the earlier editions, the earlier cocktail books. But there were some new ones, and some of them are pretty wild. I think my favorite discovery was St. Paula the Bearded. This was a female saint. And there are a couple interesting morals to the story. She was a peasant maiden, and she was out alone in the woods, and she saw a nobleman that she knew was a bad egg and that if he caught her alone in the forest, that he would sexually assault her. So she ran into a country chapel and she prayed, God, please spare me from this man. And God in his mercy made her miraculously and suddenly grow a beard. And the man ran in and said, hey, buddy, have you seen a young woman? And she replied, honestly, I have not seen anyone except myself. And then he ran out. And I don't know if she had to keep the beard.
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Michael P. Foley with us, the book Abstaining with the Saints. No. And Low Alcoholic Beverages for Sober Souls. Take us through the process a bit. You've mentioned trying to find the right match, the right drink to go along with the saint or the story behind the saint. How do you put that stuff together?
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I will use any means necessary. I will look at the saint's hometown or region and see if there is a regional traditional drink associated with that place. If they're associated with a certain symbol in Christian art, then I'll go with that. For example, in the Renaissance, strawberries were associated with the Blessed Virgin Mary because they're one of the few plants that both fruits and flowers at the same time. And this was seen as a symbol of the Blessed Virgin Mary's virginity and motherhood. So I have several strawberry drinks for Marian feast days. It's a lot easier to pair drinks with modern saints because we know their drinking habits. For example, we know that unlike most poles, Pope St. John Paul II did not favor vodka. He drank very moderately when he was pope and still young and vital. He used to summer in the Italian Alps, and he for his lunch, he would have a little bit of the local white wine cut with mountain stream water. And we have all these details because of one very good authority, the KGB. In the 1950s, the KGB had a file on every Catholic cleric in Poland in the hopes of finding some dirt on the cleric by which they could blackmail them. And they were very disappointed that they couldn't find any dirt on Karel Wojtya.
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Now, Michael, you might have the exact number. I estimate there are hundreds of recipes in this book. Abstaining with The Saints. How do you ensure that each of them is unique enough to deserve a place inside the book?
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Well, I sampled most of them.
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That was my next question. So good. Take care of that. Yeah, well.
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And you know, honestly, for the abstaining book, that was a lot better on the liver than taste testing for the other three cocktail books. But yeah, trial and error tested them. Some of these are original cocktails, but I would say the majority are recipes that I took from other sources.
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A
You allude to this earlier. People think about these mocktails or no alcohol beverages as just being juice drinks, essentially. What did you learn perhaps about crafting some genuinely interesting alcohol free or low alcohol beverages?
- [41:58]
E
What I surmised and discovered is that they can be really delicious. Even a very simple thing like a very common formula for a generic mocktail is some kind of flavored syrup, sparkling water and lemon juice. It's really good, it's refreshing, it's somewhat complicated because it's got both sweetness and tartness. And these mocktails and know and low alcoholic beverages can not only be used for complete abstinence, but there's also something today called zebra striping where you alternate between an alcoholic drink and a non alcoholic drink and this contributes to moderation, it contributes to your hydration while still being delicious.
- [42:49]
A
Did you discover through the trial and error any particular recipes that are now go tos for for you when you're hosting parties or get togethers or celebrations or feasts?
- [43:00]
E
Well, and I, I'm not being deliberately guilty of product placement when I say this because they're not paying me anything, but there, there were a couple of beverages that I thought were really good. There is a non alcoholic aperitif called Wilfred's. I think it's made in England. It's a little bit expensive. I will be honest. One of the things that surprised me was how expensive some of the non alcoholic versions are. They are as expensive as alcohol. And I was thinking, come on, you can't charge the same amount if there's not as much bang for your buck. But it's reasonable because they have to put in the same amount of time and effort and ingredients and aging that a normal distiller has to do. So fair enough. So Wilfred's was very good. There's another company called Sentia that produces a Gaba kinds of beverage and they have like a gold and a red and a black and they're really tasty. Desoi or it's de Soie, probably the French pronunciation, also has some good stuff that's just off the Top of my head. But yeah, some, some companies are producing complicated beverages out there that are very interesting and tasty.
- [44:18]
A
I'm going to put you on the spot because I don't think he's in the book. I think it would be very hard to have made the book. Pope Leo, an American guy from Chicago. If you were going to make some sort of non or low alcohol beverage, what concoction might you come up with? Now I'm from Chicago, so I know Malort is very popular there. It tastes like gasoline, but people like it. Is there something like that maybe fits for Pope Leo?
- [44:46]
E
All right, so you're going to have to tell me more about Malor.
- [44:49]
A
Oh, it's terrible. It's the worst.
- [44:52]
E
I hate to confess my ignorance, but what is it? Is it a beer? A malt liquor?
- [44:57]
A
It's a liquor and I wish I had taken enough time to discover some of the details about it. It's a Wormwood based Swedish style liquor. It tastes terrible.
- [45:12]
E
Okay, maybe because it tastes terrible, it's not in any of my books. So forget my ignorance. So are there any sodas that Chicagoans particularly love?
- [45:24]
A
For a long time it was an RC town, an RC Cola town. Every pizza place would have an rc. And I guess I should mention too, it's a big old style town too for beer. I don't know if that helps you at all.
- [45:35]
E
Yeah, yeah, well, I would, we mentioned beer. I would, I would ask are there any, you know, really good non alcoholic breweries in Chicago? Because those are popping up everywhere now.
- [45:48]
A
Yes, yes.
- [45:50]
E
And breweries themselves often have a non alcoholic version in their, their list. So I would look into that. I would try to combine, and this may be hard to do, something associated with Chicago with something associated with Peru where he spent a good deal of his adult life, and then maybe something associated with Rome. There's a classic carbonated non alcoholic beverage associated with Italy. But anyway, maybe some kind of combination there.
- [46:22]
A
All right, maybe for the next edition, the paperback edition perhaps.
- [46:28]
E
Well, and he's also got to prove his sanctity for me. Sorry, but I have high standards abstaining.
- [46:33]
A
With the no and low alcoholic beverages for sober souls. It's really a gorgeous book and wonderful recipes inside. Michael P. Foley, professor at Baylor University, also author of a few other books on alcoholic drinking too. Michael, thanks so much for joining us.
- [46:51]
E
Thanks for having me. It's been great.
- [46:53]
A
That will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to Dr. Alan Gelzo, co writer of the Golden Thread, along with James Hankins a history of the Western tradition, and Michael P. Foley, his book Abstaining with the Saints. Remember, you can hear new episodes every week on this station. You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews or listen anytime to the podcast. Find it at podcasts, Hillsdale, Edu, or wherever you get your audio, including YouTube. Until next week. Hi, I'm Scott Bertram, and this has been the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.