Virginia's Podcast: Virginia Postrel interviews interesting people

In his essay “Beyond Academic Sectarianism,” Steve Teles applied the structural theories developed in analyzing racial disparities to the shortage of conservative scholars at American universities. We talk about his analysis and what it implies for universities that want to increase their faculty’s political diversity—and why they should want that diversity. This is the second of two conversations with Steve.Santa Fe Institute Greg Conti Greg Conti, “The Rise of the Sectarian University” Geoffrey Kabaservice, The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment Virginia’s essay, “The Ethics of Higher Education” Neil Strauss, Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? Michael Oakeshott, The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Skepticism Institute for Humane Studies Get full access to Virginia's Newsletter at vpostrel.substack.com/subscribe

This is the first of two conversations with Steve Teles, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University and the Niskanen Center. In this conversation, which was recorded on September 13, we talk about why American political parties need more factions, why the abundance movement needs to be one, and how scarcity emerged when, as Steve says, “we traded majority tyranny for minority tyranny.” Please subscribe to my YouTube channel, which includes my textile-history videos as well as podcasts and assorted other material.Come see me on SundayOn Sunday, November 3, I will be selling and signing copies of The Fabric of Civilization and The Power of Glamour at the Southern California Handweavers’ Guild’s Weaving & Fiber Festival (WeFF) at the Torrance Cultural Arts Center. Admission and parking are free. Doors open at 10, and it’s a fun day for anyone with an interest in fiber arts. I will be working in the members’ boutique, where you can also buy beautiful handwoven items that make great holiday and hostess gifts and vintage garments, made from the 1940s to the 1970s with handwoven cloth, at incredibly low prices.Virginia's Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Virginia's Newsletter at vpostrel.substack.com/subscribe

An earlier version of this podcast included multiple versions of the introduction. I’m a one-woman show and producing these podcasts is definitely a learning experience, involving several semi-compatible platforms/software tools. I’ve corrected the file.Please subscribe to my YouTube channel, which includes my textile-history videos as well as podcasts and assorted other material.I got very few responses to my survey about transcripts and those I received were from people who’d used the Substack version, so I’ll stick to it. Thanks to those who responded.Show Notes:Works in Progress Adam Smith Institute Articles on street votes:https://worksinprogress.co/issue/growing-the-growth-coalition/https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-britain-doesnt-build/https://worksinprogress.co/issue/a-place-in-the-sun/https://www.vpostrel.com/articles/californias-smart-plan-to-let-homeowners-be-homebuildersThe Housing Theory of Everything Foundations articleMaster and Commander seriesThe Canterbury Tales: A Retelling by Peter AckroydFabric of Civilization backdrop a gift of Pure Country WeaversVirginia's Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Virginia's Newsletter at vpostrel.substack.com/subscribe

With this podcast I’m experimenting with a transcript option. Substack produces a good transcript that includes all the ums and ahs. You can read it by clicking the “Transcript” button. Riverside.fm, the service I use to record the podcast, also produces an excellent transcript, which it ties to its editing capabilities. It doesn’t include all the ums and ahs but does include some. Because it combines two separately recorded tracks, it also sometimes seems to have trouble with the sequence of remarks. And it loves time codes. I’ve given the Riverside transcript a light edit and pasted it below the Show Notes. (This makes the post too long to show up in email, but you can click at the bottom to see the whole thing.)Please give me feedback on podcast formats and transcripts by completing a three-question survey. If I get at least 300 responses, I’ll do a drawing to give away five books. There’s a fourth question that allows you to enter.Virginia's Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Show Notes:Miller’s Book ReviewThe story of Joel’s current book-in-progressJoel's 2024 reading list of Classic Novels and MemoirsReview of Slaughterhouse FiveReview of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave GirlReview of Their Eyes Were Watching GodJoel’s books on AmazonPilot erasable FriXion pensVirginia’s post on listening to Middlemarch and Moby DickObituary of Moby Dick narrator William HootkinsA Movable Feast by Ernest Hemingway (audiobook)Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative by Jennifer Burns (audiobook)aeon.coreason.comArts and Letters DailyA Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty SmithThe Fabric of Civilization backdrop a gift from Pure Country Weaverskeywords: book publishing, audiobooks, author advice, reading goals, publishing process, Joel Miller, Virginia Postrel, literature, writing, book recommendationsTranscript from Riverside.fmVirginia Postrel (00:03.118)Good morning, Joel.Joel (00:05.078)Yes, thank you for having me.Virginia Postrel (00:07.14)Well, thanks for being one of my early guinea pigs. Your Substack is called MILLER’S BOOK REVIEW 📚. So I want to start with a question about the books that you write about. At the beginning of the year, you set out two challenges for yourself. One was every month to read and review a classic work and one was a memoir. How did you pick the books that you decided to do?Joel (00:46.274)I kind of have a running list of things that I feel I want to read or should read. And I'm almost philosophically committed to the idea that I'm only going to read books that I find interesting in some way or another. So I have to, the whim to read that book has to be there in the first place. So I keep this list and then I'm on Twitter and elsewhere and places where I just see wonderful book recommendations all the time. So I'm always adding to that list. And then at the end of the year, I look at that list and I usually share several suggestions with my readers and just say, here are 12 novels, classic novels that I'm thinking about reading. And in this case, this year I added 12 classic memoirs and I just said, you know, am I missing anything? You know, what would you recommend? And I take all that input together and you know, shake it up real good and out comes my list.Virginia Postrel (01:43.555)Right, we're three quarters through the year. What have you liked best that you've read?Joel (01:52.614)That's, it's so hard because there's so many great things. This might surprise, you know, anybody, I don't know, but everybody has read, I thought, Slaughterhouse Five. I somehow missed it in high school. I never read it, never read it in college. So I finally just said, this is the year I'm going to finally read some Kurt Vonnegut. And I put that down on the list and I was really surprised and delighted by that book.On the memoir side, I read Frederick Douglass's first memoir, his first autobiography, The Narrative, and I really loved that. There's so many great stories, though. I would say every one of the books I read in the list this year for both the novels and the memoirs have been surprising in certain ways.Virginia Postrel (02:27.676)Right, right. What is the value of setting that goal for yourself?Joel (02:53.262)Well, this is a little intangible. However, I'm fairly convinced that, and by fairly, I mean, I'm 100 % convinced that reading works that are considered canonical or adjacent to the canon, however that is fuzzily defined, is beneficial for a handful of reasons. One of them could be something as simple as just general cultural literacy.You know, walking into a group of people and somebody brings up a reference to, instance, Kurt Vonnegut, I'm, I'm, you know, in a worse position for not knowing what that is a reference to. And so it, it's just wise to, to be kind of current with things that are generally understo

In the inaugural episode of the cleverly named Virginia’s Podcast, which complements the cleverly named Virginia’s Newsletter, I talk with Dean Ball. Dean writes the excellent Hyperdimensional on Substack and is a research fellow in the Artificial Intelligence and Progress Project at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. It’s a wide-ranging conversation and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.Check out the show notes for an outline of the conversation and links to some of the things we mention. There’s also a transcript, thanks to Substack’s AI, which is astoundingly good at making a transcript. In the future, I plan to make transcripts a paid feature but I’m including everyone initially.I welcome your comments and ideas for the podcast.Show Notes:When I created the podcast, Substack showed the show notes in a sidebar, along with the transcript. But I don’t see where they might be so I’m adding them after the fact.Writing by Dean Ball:“California’s Effort to Strangle AI”: “How to Regulate Artificial Intelligence” National Affairs: “Learning to Love the Inscrutable” (review of How Life Works): Other references:SB 1047: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1047Virginia’s review of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson: Fei-Fei Li’s Stanford pageThe Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI by Fei-Fei Li: The Constitution of Liberty by Friedrich Hayek The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich HayekRationalism in Politics by Michael OakeshottTriumph of the City by Edward GlaeserVirginia’s article on materials librariesBrian Potter, Construction Physics: Patrick McKenzie, patio11How Life Works by Philip Ball Get full access to Virginia's Newsletter at vpostrel.substack.com/subscribe