Short 494
Mass Uprooting, Guilds, and the Classics
“The Turning Point.” Carlo Lancellotti draws on the work of Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce to supplement recent sociological descriptions of our individualistic society: “Del Noce argued that in a…
Infrastructure, Our Towns, and Opioids
“The American Jobs Plan Will Make Our Infrastructure Crisis Worse.” Over at Strong Towns, Charles Marohn has a multi-part essay responding to Biden’s infrastructure bill. Chuck gets to the root…
Pedro Mendes with Ten Garments Every Man Should Own
My guest is Canadian menswear writer and broadcaster Pedro Mendes who operates the website The Hogtown Rake. I have followed Pedro for years on Instagram and also very much enjoyed…
A Book Club for Cooperatives
A few months ago, we posted an invitation to participate in a virtual book discussion. That group is now hosting a discussion of a second book. Below is Zac Blanchard's…
Current, Infernal Liberty, and Barry Lopez
“Rooting for the Future.” Current, a new website edited by FPR fellow-travelers Eric Miller and John Fea, is now live. Eric describes his vision for the website in his opening essay. Also…
Small-Town News, a New MFA, and the CSA Boom
“How Can We Encourage Doctors to Come Home and Serve Well?” Nicholas Brennecke draws on Wendell Berry to consider how the medical profession might encourage young doctors to serve their…
Uprooted with Grace Olmstead
My guest this episode is Grace Olmstead. Grace has done excellent work for several years on issues of localism, just the sort of thing we like to talk about on…
Aesthetics, Infrastructure, and the Rule of St. Benedict
“A Common Good Conservatism for the Common Man.” Anthony Hennen reviews a new edition of The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge and praises Coolidge as “a standard-bearer for a certain strand of American…
John de Graaf, Affluenza, and Stewart Udall
Summary Filmmaker John de Graaf pulls up a chair to discuss his 1997 documentary Affluenza; a forthcoming project on Arizona politician and JFK/LBJ’s Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall; the…
Small Colleges, Hank the Cowdog, and Phatic Protest
“Small-Town Natives Are Moving Back Home.” Gracy Olmstead writes about several college-educated young people choosing to move back to their hometowns, and she points to the work of organizations like…
Local History, Local Conservatism, and Local Pharmacies
“How Local History Can Save America: The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Frederick Douglass.” John W. Miller recommends an essay about the place where Frederick Douglass fought Edward Covey to a standstill. He…
Trades, the Digital Public Square, and Conservative Environmentalism
“Arguing with Success.” Rory Groves writes about how his dissatisfaction with the business model of the tech industry led him on a quest for more meaningful work: “Weary (and wary)…
Localism and the Church
As a student of Christian history and an off-and-on conservative, I continue to be confused by the combination of Roman Catholic identity and Front Porch location. The idea of localism…
Holly Ordway On Tolkien’s Modern Reading
Holly Ordway is Cardinal Francis George Fellow of Faith and Culture of the Word on Fire Institute. Her new book, the first from the new Word on Fire Academic imprint,…
Seeds, Meritocracy, and Kazuo Ishiguro
“Words and Flesh: Pastoring in a Post-truth World.” In this wise essay, Kurt Armstrong begins with Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, which narrates the long…
Right to Repair, Outrage, and Defining Progress
“John Deere Promised Farmers It Would Make Tractors Easy to Repair. It Lied.” Jason Koebler and Matthew Gault investigate to see whether John Deere followed through with its promise to…
Artist Elisabeth Deane & The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts
My guest this episode is Elisabeth Deane, a talented artist living and working in London with her husband Jethro Buck, also an artist. On a trip to India, Elisabeth was…
Local Democracy, Resilient Agriculture, and the Classics
“Vermont’s Superpower, Revealed: The Ability to Practice Local Democracy.” Susan Clark writes about the formative role that Vermont’s annual town meetings play in training citizens to practice democracy. (Recommended by…
Tech Critique, Simone Weil, and Visceral Lending
We've got a cover and table of contents for the spring issue of Local Culture. If you're a subscriber, you can expect to get your copy in March. If you're…
Friendship, GameStop, and James Herriot
"Eric Gill and the Integrity of Work." In a new preface to an edition of Gill's writings, Wendell Berry identifies the endemic flaw of industrialized technology: "Under the rule of…
Housekeeping, Epiphany, and a National Elite
“America’s Biggest Owner Of Farmland Is Now Bill Gates.” Ariel Shapiro writes about the massive consolidation of land ownership. Gates is focusing on farmland, but other billionaires own even more…
Books, Bibles, & Murder with J. Mark Bertrand
J. Mark Bertrand is the author of the Roland March mystery trilogy and the purveyor of the aforementioned Bible Design Blog. But Mark has seemingly been lying low the past…
Precedents, Technosolutionism, and A Hidden Life
“Why I Choose Rural.” Benya Kraus explains why she chose to move to rural Minnesota after graduating from college: “Though I spent my childhood summers and winters here on the…
Prospects for Localism: An FPR Conversation
The FPR leadership has decided to make a foray into a new medium (for us). And given this transitional moment in American politics, this seems like a good time. We…