Paul’s off doing ideology (aka public lectures), so Sean sits down with higher ed labor organizer (and friend of the show!) Timothy Tia. Sean and Tim discuss the wave of union organizing campaigns currently sweeping Florida colleges and the challenges of building fighting unions in right-to-work states. Longtime listeners may remember Tim as “the guy who made us watch the Karl Marx anime.”
Sean is back from France and Italy and has THOUGHTS. (He also cheers for France over team USA in the World Cup, so take with a grain of salt.) The guys also discuss the uninspiring first Democratic debate and additional ways Twitter sucks before ending with Paul exploring the origins of the term “Judeo-Christian.”
Paul got in a Twitter fight about his relationship to the Kochs. In response, the Impolitic boys do a thorough postmortem on the spat, exploring everything from funding’s role in shaping knowledge to the effect of social media on political discourse. At the episode’s end, they talk about Ben Shapiro’s misadventures with mood affiliation.
This week, after a short discussion of the Mueller Report, Paul and Sean do a little more arguing than usual as they debate the Green New Deal’s vision of a carbon neutral future. It’s a must listen if you love either salt mines, ducks, or cement. (As you can tell, Impolitic specializes in giving the people what they want, as long as what they want involves heavy industry or quacking.)
This week, Paul and Sean discuss what the conversations surrounding “alt-ac” jobs get wrong and what graduate programs in the humanities can do to help alumni navigate life after tweed. Then, in a follow up to their two-parter on Karl Marx anime The Leader, they take a deep dive into the comic strip version of Friedrich Hayek’s libertarian classic, The Road to Serfdom.
Paul declares his affection for Beto O’Rourke and becomes the object of Sean’s ribbing. Then Paul argues that Andrew Yang is, surprisingly, the most significant candidate in the 2020 race. Finally the guys discuss the rest of the Chinese propaganda anime “The Leader” about the life of Karl Marx. (We can only imagine that the title of the inevitable Hollywood remake will be “Jenny’s Deathbed.”)
Impolitic gives the people want they want, which in this case meant watching the first episodes of The Leader, a Chinese Communist Party produced anime about the life of young Karl Marx, his love of Jenny Westphalen, and turgid philosophical one liners. Then Sean and Paul discuss Simon van Zuylen-Wood’s article (29:45) about socialist hipsters in fair Brooklyn before Paul describes (58:30) his idealized health insurance system in the magical land of Libertopia. Finally, the guys wish (1:32:05) Bill Weld well in his Presidential aspirations.
