Underconsumed Knowledge

Why The First Amendment Is Rightly First

Nov 16, 202100:06:25Tap to summarize

Much politically-minded discourse today argues in favor of censorship to combat “misinformation,” and ultimately, against the spirit of The First Amendment of The Constitution of the United States. Amongst mainstream outlets, there is a paltry defense mounted in favor of the First Amendment. So, as a starting point,Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.The idea of democracy is that The People rule. Today, this remains the First Amendment’s most compelling defense, even if our supposed self-rule may seem suspect at times. If the United States is a democracy, free discourse must be allowed to exchange and flourish. That we have actual lawmakers at the Federal level calling for internet censorship is an atrocity. If it turns out that the United States is, in fact, an oligarchic dystopia and not a democracy, how then are we to fix it? Should The People want review-panels at Facebook, bribed Congress-people, or both making calls on what is and is not accurate “information?”How do you fix problems you can’t talk about? Therein lies the problem of any form of speech regulation or censorship. In Thomas Edsall’s recent NYT op-ed, political scientist Richard Hanania is quoted as saying,Women are having more of a role to play in intellectual life, so we’re moving toward female norms regarding things like trade-offs between feelings and the search for truth.Whether or not you agree with Hanania’s assessment of truth being a non-female norm, there can be a hard-heartedness to the truth. The truthful answers to a lot of questions in life are not always pleasing or pleasant, if someone honestly answers. Furthermore, teasing out the truth is not always a straightforward task.If we are to care for one another as human beings, and indeed, to run our own government, free discourse is tantamount. If answers to questions are written off before they can be asked, potentially correct answers dismissed from the get-go. “Blaming the victim” suggests that everyone with a problem is always a victim of some external cause. If potential suggestions to fixing problems (personal or political) are deemed hateful Wrongthink (things which, “You just cannot say”), how do We The People run the government and regulate ourselves? If it is deemed “racist” to suggest that the Coronavirus could have originated in a lab in China, a strong contender for the virus’ origin is eliminated. If it is deemed “marginalizing” to suggest there is a strong correlation between methamphetamines and homelessness, potential solutions to fix homelessness will remain forever feckless.The idea that words can cause harm is easily brushed aside by brash types like Joe Rogan. Yet, the pop-psychology books I read offer compelling evidence contrary to this dismissal. But the diagnosis and the prescription are two different things. The lifeblood of a liberal democracy is freedom of expression. Without it, the road to Orwell’s Oceania is but a blip in the history of humanity. In the words of Jonathan Rauch, “[T]he liberal intellectual system, whatever else it may be, is not ‘nice.’” Some might retort, “Well, it should be nice!” But therein lies the problem; some third party then gets to decide what is nice and what is not, and potential avenues for problem-solving are off the table. And in the blink of an eye, the oligarchy that already basically controls everything actually controls everything, and life becomes a permanent afternoon in line for Josef K. at the California DMV.“Words aren’t violence, violence is violence” is thus a more nuanced statement than it might seem. In a liberal democracy, words must never be violence, by definition. If words are violence, any thought, idea, or dream can be contorted to be violence, as defined by some third party; potentially the same third party that does not want to relinquish political power. If words are violence, democracy cannot exist; there can be no self-rule. Without the First Amendment, slavery would never have been eliminated, nor would have separate water fountains. The only way these terrible things ceased to be was through the free exchange of ideas that were once considered heretical by then-subsets of the population. One of the staunchest defenders of freedom of expression, Noam Chomsky -- a man who could find a problem with the way the United States glanced at a cloud -- has gone so far as to defend the rights of French anti-Semites to freely express their views. Chomsky, a Jew, knows that the antidote to bad ideas is more ideas, not a restriction of expression. Speech that is political in nature, however factually incorrect, is not libel, and is not crying fire in a crowded theatre. To regulate such speech, whether by a regime of tech oligarchs or through government intervention, is the undoing of democracy.If you have a problem -- say, that globalization gutted the American Heartland (a claim some might dispute), and it led to the rise of a “populist,” “racist,” “demagogue” like Donald Trump -- trying to censor the symptom of the problem does not make the original problem go away. Furthermore, free speech is a release valve to indicate that things are going wrong. If you restrict the ability to speak, problems fester, and solutions cannot develop.If we are to rule ourselves politically, we must be able to express ourselves freely. If you stand against oligarchic power, as does Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and you argue in favor of speech censorship, you are a walking contradiction. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underconsumed.substack.com

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Biking from Santa Monica to New Hampshire

Jul 9, 202100:50:33Tap to summarize

This is an interview with Andrew, a fellow car-less cyclist, who rode his bike from his current home in Santa Monica, California to the opposite coast where he is originally from in New Hampshire. I thought the photos of his trip were amazing and wanted to learn more about it from him. Here is the link to Andrew’s trip photos and all his trip stuff: https://linktr.ee/andrewsbicycletour. Andrew just started riding a bike as a means of transportation less than five years ago, and I think his cross-country story is incredibly inspirational. “I think a lot of people think they can never do something like that. It sounds so difficult. And as flippant as it might sound, it was surprisingly not that difficult.” Listen to our talk above and be sure to check out Andrew’s own trip photos as you listen along.Andrew’s mother in her mid-sixties did over 800 miles with him! From Ohio to New York: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underconsumed.substack.com

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Jerry Springer's 2008 Northwestern Law Commencement Speech

Jun 15, 202100:07:35Tap to summarize

Yesterday I saw a re-run of Jerry Springer on a television at a restaurant. The episode was about "Sex With a Pregnant Stripper." This led me to do some Googling about Jerry Springer, and I discovered that he delivered Northwestern Law School's 2008 Commencement Speech. I couldn't find the video online, so I have reverse-transcribed it to audio. The text is hosted on Northwestern's website. It regards life, ethical considerations, and the American Dream. Forty years ago this week I sat where you now do, degree in hand, the prestige of this great law school on my résumé and, perhaps immodestly, a real sense of achievement in my heart, but no sense of what my future would be or if in fact there would even be one.Please understand, I was not alone in my uncertainty — for this was 1968, and America was unraveling.Our cities were burning, and Vietnam was beckoning. Martin Luther King Jr. had just been assassinated, Bobby Kennedy was about to be, and within a few months and a few miles from here, Chicago would explode around the dysfunction of the Democratic National Convention. I remember thinking that our sheltered existence at law school, however prestigious, seemed totally detached from the chaos that consumed the world outside.There were 190 of us in my graduating class, and believe it or not, only two of the 190 were women. Of the 188 men, only one was African American. As a class we were too white, too male and too privileged. And though it certainly took too long to change, what comfort it is today to look out at all of you and see the racial, gender and ethnic diversity that really is America.But as happy as I am to look out and see all of your faces, I understand there are a number of you who aren't too happy to see mine.To the students who invited me — thank you. I am honored. To the students who object to my presence — well, you've got a point. I, too, would've chosen someone else. But once asked it would've been kind of arrogant, or at least unappreciative, for me to have said "no." So, here I am.I've been lucky enough to enjoy a comfortable measure of success in my various careers, but let's be honest, I've been virtually everything you can't respect: a lawyer, a mayor, a major market news anchor and a talk show host. Pray for me. If I get to heaven, we're all going.Let's assume that your prime discomfort with me is based on the ethics of what I do for a living. Well, that's a fair question, worthy of a serious response. I can tell you with some confidence that you, too, will likely deal with these very same ethical considerations, no matter what path your career takes.Surely, in every one of my chosen professions there were ethical "red flags" rising virtually every day. When I was Cincinnati's mayor, there were two or three issues I really wanted to focus on. But how much would I compromise on other legislation just to get the votes I needed on my priorities? And how much pandering would I do to the voters, rationalizing that if I didn't get re-elected I wouldn't be able to get anything done?Then for 10 years I became a journalist — perhaps the most ethically challenging profession of all. You see, I knew that 90 percent of what's in the paper or on the television news, we don't really need to know. And yet, how often do we go with a story anyway because it will make a great headline, sell papers or drive up ratings, even if we know it might embarrass or hurt the business or career or family or reputation of the person we're reporting on? That is a daily ethical question that I can tell you is almost always ignored.And then, of course, there is my profession now as host of a crazy talk show. Well, at least I can rationalize that the show is only open to those who really want to be on it, and they get to choose the subject matter, what is revealed and what must not be revealed. Even with this I grapple with ethical questions.What about the career most of you will be choosing, that of an attorney? Think of the ethical issues you will have to deal with. Will you work for a corporate client who perhaps is polluting? Will you walk into your senior partner's office after having been asked to prepare a memorandum in support of this client's case and say, "I'm sorry, I'll have to leave and find another place to work," and then explain to your family why there won't be a paycheck coming in this month?I'm not suggesting that these moral dilemmas don't have answers. But what I am saying is that whatever you plan to do with this diploma, the ethical questions will never stop.Welcome to life. Unavoidably, you will all join me on this witness stand of conscience, trying your best to figure it out — never perfectly but, hopefully, always sincerely.It is perhaps inevitable that we are inclined to always judge others. But let me share this observation. I am not superior to the people on my show, and you are not superior to the people you will represent. That is not an insult. It is merely an understanding derived from a life spent on the front lines of human interaction. We are all alike. Some of us just dress better or have more money, or perhaps we were born into better circumstances of parental upbringing, health, brains and luck.On this great day when we honor your achievement, we might also say thank you to God in full recognition that whatever we achieve in life is 99 percent a gift.Life is a gift — as is living in America. And I know that from personal experience. You see, I am not the first lawyer in my family. My dad's brother was. His practice was cut short, as was his life — in Auschwitz. My grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins — they met their end as well in Chelmno, Theresienstadt and in camp after camp, Hitler turning my family tree into a single vine. Mom and Dad, by the grace of God, survived, enabling them to bring my sister and me ultimately to America.With four tickets on the Queen Mary, January 1949, we sailed into New York Harbor. In silence, all the ship's passengers gathered on the top deck of this grand ocean liner as we passed by the Statue of Liberty. My mom told me in later years (I was 5 at the time) that while we were shivering in the cold, I had asked her "What are we looking at? What does the statue mean?" In German she replied, "Ein Tag, alles!" (One day, everything!)She was right. In one generation here in America, my family went from near total annihilation to this ridiculously privileged life I live today because of my silly show. Indeed, in America, all things are possible.So as we honor your achievement, may it be for you as it was for me, "Ein Tag, alles!" One day, everything!Thank you for having me. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underconsumed.substack.com

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Questioning Life Assumptions (Audio Version)

Jun 12, 202100:21:28Tap to summarize

This is the audio version of a blog post I wrote in May 2021.Everyone eventually reaches a point in life where the need to question assumptions arises; this may manifest in different ways at different points in life. Whenever I pass the apartment nearby my girlfriend’s house where the teenager loudly plays the electric guitar, I like to joke, “You don’t understand me, mom!” My girlfriend says the teenager and the mother actually seem to get along quite well.A lot of people might look around in their twenties and say, “Why are all these people doing this?” Or, they might pose this question’s twin sibling, “Why am I not?” Cultures, beliefs, assumptions evolve over decades, centuries, millennia. The end result for beings who can think and feel is, ultimately, the perpetuation of the human race, the reward of evolution. So, if you feel like something is “missing” or if you aren’t happy, maybe it’s time to take a step back and evaluate, because evolution doesn’t necessarily reward us with happiness.Karen Horney was a psychoanalyst. I, decidedly, am not, nor am I a psychologist or a therapist; I’m just a person trying to figure things out. I excitedly read Karen Horney’s 1950 book Neurosis and Human Growth after finding it as a footnote in another book by a social psychologist named Carol Tavris (I would recommend both her books Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion and Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)). I really liked Neurosis and Human Growth, though I am told by Dr. Tavris, whom I emailed about it, that psychoanalysis has fallen out of vogue and is quite dated. But, I still find a number of things Ms. Horney has to say to be extremely compelling.She talks about our expectations of life, of others, and of ourselves, dubbing this, “The Tyranny of the Should.” This is how things “should” be, as we esteem them, as individuals, societies, and cultures; I “should” be doing this, you “should” be doing that, you “should” be treating me a certain way. She illustrates what she calls a “neurotic claim” (Dr. Tavris also informed me psychology students today would no longer use the word “neurosis”) with an example about a train not being available when she wants to take it, and the resulting frustration that can result. The train “should” be available at 2:30PM, when I want to take it; how stupid that it is not available then! Certainly some injustices in our day-to-day life are more grave than others, but when you learn to see how you think about little things such as the dawdling pedestrian crossing the road or the driver who is having a hard time parallel parking, you can start to calm down a bit and go through life giving other parties a bit more benefit of the doubt.People often assume they are omniscient, as any connoisseur of Fox News or CNN might notice. We think we have all available facts, that if you just do X, Y, and Z, life will fall into place, and a magical happiness and utopia will result. And in a lot of ways, if you do the things you “should” do, you might be setting yourself up for success. But, evolution didn’t reward human happiness; it rewarded the conditions that led to seven billion humans on Earth, a number that has increased over 10-fold in the last 500 years. If you’ve ever been to the natural history museum, humans are really old;like hundreds of thousands of years old. So, you don’t have to be a math whiz to gather that modernity and civilization are, relatively speaking, kind of a new thing.In light of this, if you are feeling unsatisfied, unfulfilled, unhappy, maybe that, actually, makes quite a bit of sense. Modernity isn’t quite as soul-crushing as history was, so we have a lot more time to think, take it easy, and ponder what exactly is going on. If you are feeling “something is missing,” maybe a personal re-evaluation of your philosophy of life, your “shoulds,” so to speak, is in order. My friends are all doctors, lawyers, engineers, are having children, have expensive real estate, and here I am holding a uniform from Hot Dog on a Stick and I live with my parents. To a certain extent, a lot of “should” can put humans in a place where they can achieve happiness; it is easier to be happy when you have a little extra money in the bank. But if you become addicted to a certain kind of lifestyle, that potential for lasting and intrinsic happiness can morph into a form of slavery, and then you’re stuck making boat payments.To be sure, many people genuinely like having a boat, others maybe would be just as happy without one. I am sure there are just as many satisfied and happy parents as there are parents who wished (or think they wished) they had never had children; and surely their answers will differ ten and twenty and forty years from now. Different things have different meanings for different people; what do you want your life to mean for you?Jonathan Haidt and Carl Rogers both point out how inescapably social creatures humans are; if we did not care what others thought, we would be sociopaths. But, as you get older, you can start to question some of the assumptions that are core to our historical human function. Yes, it is impolite and rude to fart loudly on the subway, and we really ought not to shoot other people in the head for cutting us off in traffic; I think most people, on any given day, would feel these to be simple truths. But humans are no longer on the savanna with prehistoric creatures, and a lot of the impulses and feelings we evolved with have overstayed their practical welcome. You might start to question, as you get older, the up-keeping of appearances, and start to do the things that you want to do. Social isolation can be lonely, but it is fair to assume we will still have friends and be allowed at the grocery store if we pull up in a Nissan Versa instead of a BMW. Carl Rogers said, “When an activity feels as though it is valuable or worth doing, it is worth doing... I have never regretted moving in directions which ‘felt right,’ even though I have often felt lonely or foolish at the time.”Learning to trust what you want from life doesn’t have to mean a descent into booze-fueled nihilism coupled with a fast car and lots of drugs. A lot of the post-WWII pop-psychologists like to talk about listening to your inner dictates, being your true self, self-realization, so on and so forth. What they’re really saying is that you need to do some things with your life that you genuinely want to do. Rob Kurzban is a psychologist who writes about the “modular mind,” and how we evolved with different brain “modules” that achieve certain evolutionary goals; there is no “self” in there, in our brains, running the show. This is another way of saying that all of the potential things which could be considered humanly good do not necessarily add up to all being compatible. There is no final life solution. Life has paradoxes. There is nuance. And, there are tradeoffs.What do you want from life? What do you want from the World? These are big questions. Humans are sexually reproductive creatures. If you want the pretty girl, a BMW might help. Others will tell you that if you are relying on the fancy car to get the girl, you’re getting the “wrong” kind of girl. Do you want to start a family? If you aren’t sure, maybe you should put the idea on ice until you’ve better sorted out your personal life philosophy.We have some modern society-wide assumptions that go like this; you should go to college, you should have nice stuff, you should have a family, and you should get a good job. And if you want things from the world, and from other people, a lot of these things will be mutually complementary.I did all of the things. I was married at 23, I had a mortgage not much later, and a graduate degree in marketing. And all I wanted to do was to sock away enough money so that we could pay off the mortgage so that I could “stop working.” I felt this deep hatred for my work, which for me was a career in internet marketing that eventually became somewhat lucrative. Eventually, couples therapy failed, my marriage went kaput, and I entered a fumbling figuring-myself-out in my late twenties; things people like my own parents had to figure out while being married to one another and having two young children. And it took about ten years of fumbling and doing the same thing until I finally had saved enough money to say I could quit my job, if not forever, at least for a good long while. I had had enough and wanted to embark on “something else.”My something else wound up entailing a lot of reading. I started with “Winners Take All” by Anand Giridharadas. I read a lot of non-fiction books, books about politics, something which I had an undergraduate degree in and had always been interested in. Then I found my way from political books to pop-psychology books, since politics involves people, as well as philosophy. I eventually wound my way to literature, having previously deemed the genre of fiction as mind-smut, and non-fiction as the way one learns things. And in the course of all this reading, I accidentally found my own, better, personal philosophy of life, and realized some life lessons of my own.Dostoevsky, a Russian literature author, pointed out that existence is in fact slavery, and while this sounds like a bleak assessment on the surface, it is objectively true, in a sense. We have to eat, thus, we need to get food; it so happens that now food comes from the store and not from the savanna. I think a lot of the modern discontent which exists is a rejection of this fact, a desire to spit in its face, the dislike of reality. Philosopher...

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George Orwell's The Road To Wigan Pier (1937) On Class & Power

Mar 18, 202100:51:04Tap to summarize

Orwell explains in 1937 the disposition of the typical “socialist” living in England, and why it is so many people become averse to socialism because of these people alone, comprised of bourgeois intellectuals who have no actual affinity for the working classes, and working-class scribblers who work their way into the intellectual literati but are so hostile to everything that it seems they just want to burn it all down. Orwell questions, what is it these people, these “Socialists”, really want? When they seem to have no love for their fellow man. He suggests that, for many of them, socialism is a way to institute control on society, to implement order amongst those who do not share their cultural values. Orwell begins with descriptions of working conditions for miners in Industrial England, whom he went to live among and observe; it sounds like very difficult and back-breaking work, indeed, and their living conditions do not sound so great; many went without luxuries such as sheets, taken for granted across the world today for many years now. In the second part of the book, he gets to the meat on class and the reigning economic order of things; though I believe his beliefs that central planning and “socialism” are not the answer, he thoroughly explains issues of class, and why it is that socialism so quickly morphs into Fascism. He explains how the average socialist does not see what socialism would actually be as truly revolutionary – which, it is, in theory. The socialist, whether he is of proletarian origin or middle-class, imagines a World much like the existing one, except one maybe with less poverty, but still having the pub down the street, and the corner store selling all the wares you would want. In England, the bourgeois classes would disdain someone more “conservative”, who spoke of the superiority of England to other nations; but those same people would speak of the superiority of their own region in England to the other regions as if it were nothing. He outlines how little actual commitment to the idea of brotherhood and love for one another there is amongst the ranks of socialists, hateful men such as George Bernard Shaw who disdain the non-intellectual classes, and whose “radical” ideas “change to their opposite” at the first sight of “reality.” He explains the typical middle-class socialist as a 1937-era stereotypical Ultimate frisbee-playing type hippie, a “Sandal-wearer” who wants to go around doing yoga and ordering others about. As Dostoevsky points out, the normal human response to such a person is to give them the middle finger and to tell them to pound sand. If you look beyond the fact that Owell was not an economist, his argument is really that we ought to love our fellow man, which is in essence his argument for socialism. His illustration of class difference points out the inherent fact that humans have values. These value judgments are made from the conservative religious classes to the woke vegan-cheese eating, Prius driving classes. Orwell really argues for the need for mutual toleration, at the very least. * “A thousand influences constantly press a working man down into a passive role. He does not act, he is acted upon. He feels himself the slave of mysterious authority and has a firm conviction that “they” will never allow him to do this, that and the other. Once when I was hop-picking I asked the sweated pickers (they earn something under sixpence an hour) why they did not form a union. I was told immediately that “they” would never allow it. Who were “they” ? I asked. Nobody seemed to know; but evidently “they” were omnipotent.” * “A person of bourgeois origin goes through life with some expectation of getting what he wants... “educated” people tend to come to the front... their “education” is generally quite useless in itself, but they are accustomed to a certain amount of deference and consequently have the cheek necessary to a commander. That they will come to the front seems to be taken for granted...” * Thus, expectations of what ones role in society is inevitably has a role on how someone acts in it. Whether or not one is willing to try and buck authority has less to do with being educated, and more to do with ones mindset. This parallels some of the points made by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliars about children who learn to “come to the front” and insert themselves in situations that will further their interests. * "Talking once with a miner I asked him when the housing shortage first became acute in his district; he answered, ‘When we were told about it,’ meaning that till recently people’s standards were so low that they took almost any degree of overcrowding for granted. He added that when he was a child his family had slept eleven in a room and thought nothing of it, and that later, when he was grown-up, he and his wife had lived in one of the old-style back to back houses in which you not only had to walk a couple of hundred yards to the lavatory but often had to wait in a queue when you got there, the lavatory being shared by thirty-six people...” * On efforts to try to alleviate these conditions, there are premonitions of Arnade’s Dignity. “...are definitely fine buildings. But there is something ruthless and soulless about the whole business. Take, for instance, the restrictions with which you are burdened in a Corporation house. You are not allowed to keep your house and garden as you want them—in some estates there is even a regulation that every garden must have the same kind of hedge. you are not allowed to keep poultry or pigeon. The Yorkshire miners are fond of keeping homer pigeons...” Thus, you can take the help, but it is a bargain with the devil where you can no longer determine how your own life is lived. * Of his time spent with the miners, who were of a different class and culture than him, “I cannot end this chapter without remarking on the extraordinary courtesy and good nature with which I was received everywhere. I did not go alone—I always had some local friend among the unemployed to show me round—but even so, it is an impertinence to go poking into strangers’ houses and asking to see the cracks in the bedroom wall. Yet everyone was astonishingly patient and seemed to understand almost without explanation why I was questioning them and what I wanted to see. If any unauthorized person walked into my house and began asking me whether the roof leaked and whether I was much troubled by bugs and what I thought of my landlord, I should probably tell him to go to hell.” I think this mirrors experiences of traveling in the Midwest, of people who are extremely nice and generally welcoming, despite what is depicted in the media about their politics and thoughts. * On anonymity and the city, “Until you break the law nobody will take any notice of you, and you can go to pieces as you could not possibly do in a place where you had neighbours who knew you.” * “...you can’t command the spirit of hope in which anything has got to be created, with that dull evil cloud of unemployment hanging over you...” * “It is a deadly thing to see a skilled man running to seed, year after year, in utter, hopeless idleness. It ought not to be impossible to give him the chance of using his hands and making furniture and so forth for his own home...” * “But no human being finds it easy to regard himself as a statistical unit. So long as Bert Jones across the street is still at work, Alf Smith is bound to feel himself dishonoured and a failure. Hence that frightful feeling of impotence and despair which is almost the worst evil of unemployment—far worse than any hardship, worst than the demoralisation of enforced idleness...” * “A human being is primarily a bag for putting food into; the other functions and faculties may be more godlike, but in point of time they come afterwards. A man dies and is buried, and all his words and actions are forgotten, but the food he has eaten lives after him in the sound or rotten bones of his children. I think it could be plausibly argued that changes of diet are more important than changes of dynasty or even of religion. The Great War, for instance, could never have happened if tinned food had not been invented. And the history of the past four hundred years in England would have been immensely different if it had not been for the introduction of root-crops and various other vegetables... and... non-alcoholic drinks... and... distilled liquors.” * “The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food... when you are unemployed, which is to say, when you are... bored and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit “tasty.”” When you have nothing else, you can at least have food that you enjoy. * “There exists in England a curious cult of Northernness, a sort of Northern snobbishness. A yorkshireman in the South will always take care to let you know that he regards you as an inferior... the North... is ‘real’ life...”* “Here you have an interesting example of the Northern cult. Not only are you and I and everyone else in the South of England written off as "fat and sluggish," but even water, when it gets north of a certain latitude, ceases to be H2O and becomes something mystically superior. But the interest of this passage is that its...

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All episodes

Why The First Amendment Is Rightly First

Biking from Santa Monica to New Hampshire

Jerry Springer's 2008 Northwestern Law Commencement Speech

Questioning Life Assumptions (Audio Version)

George Orwell's The Road To Wigan Pier (1937) On Class & Power