Provocative insights from an unapologetic classicist | Liza Libes

0:00It's fall in Jeep country and during the driving to fall sales event get a great deal on 4x4s that refuse to be contained like Jeep Wrangler. Confidence built into every drive with the most awarded SUV ever, Jeep Grand Cherokee, and freedom that can't be denied with the open air freedom in Jeep Gladiator. After 85 years, it's no surprise that Jeep became America's SUV brand, get a great deal during the Jeep driving to fall sales event. Jeep is one more awards over its lifetime than any other SUV brand, Jeep and the Jeep Grill or Registered trademarts of FCA US LLC. Lisa, how come people aren't reading? Yeah, so I mean, comes down to a couple of things. Obviously the obvious answer is the social media world, the technology world, we're all scrolling on our phones. I want our books to basically be like TikTok, but I think there's a less obvious answer that isn't talked about as much and that is what is happening in the literary academy today. The way that literature is being presented to so many people, you know, students, professors and everyone else kind of in the world of the humanities is it's being taught through these sorts of ideological lenses through Marxism through postcolonialism through gender studies.

1:11And that starts the academy. It's deep down to the high school level, it even will see down to the middle school level. So the first time that young people encounter these literary texts, they're taught that you know Shakespeare was racist or Jane Austin was complicit in Imperial six mentioned, which is what what am I professor said about Jane Austin. So of course that's going to, you know, bring people away from this tradition of classic literature from these really great books that tell us something about what it means to be human and something about the human condition because they're presented these books in this kind of lopsided way based on all of these ideologies. The third is that the reason that people aren't reading is they're not taught to value books in the way that we've always valued literature as a civilization. And you know, I think that's a big problem. And that's why I'd like to do something about that. So is that bad or is it just that there's more entertaining stuff to read or to watch on TV I'm watching something fantastic TV will now, which means that that I'm spending my time watching, for example, dark matter as opposed to reading a book, which I would have done 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago.

2:22Sure. So I mean, there's obviously all these new new forms of media cropping up and you know a lot of TV is done really well a lot of films are really spectacular and you can call them works of art on their own. But I think reading specifically cultivates a way of thinking that you can't find in TV or in movies, which is mostly I would say passive consumption versus reading is very much an active activity. And I think because reading requires a little bit more brain power than you know these Netflix shows that they're now currently telling you exactly what's happening in the show right because people have their Netflix on them and they're cooking dinner and then they're also scrolling on their phone at the same time. We have as the society started to abandon our attention and you know we live in this very ADHD culture. And I think reading is the sort of direct antithesis to all of that. So there's a place for movies and TV obviously I engage in both of those activities. But I think there's also a place for reading for cultivating kind of this more intellectual imagination.

3:25And we've definitely stopped viewing reading as entertainment, I think broadly as a society. And I think that the beauty with a lot of these great works of literature that I love is that they are entertaining and they are fun to read. But because you know we have the sort of mass entertainment coming at us because we're all scrolling on our phones all the time it's more difficult for us to sit down and appreciate the beauty of our work of literature. Yeah, do you think that reading is the best way to cultivate and intellect? I do. I think that there are very few other ways that I can think of that will bring you to the sort of intellectual standards that reading demands, you know maybe solving math problems as well or solving some sort of puzzles. But I think there are very few active ways of cultivating intellect. I think reading is one of them writing kind of goes hand in hand, you know solving math equations is maybe another. I think you know the brain requires some sort of active stimulation in order to be healthy solving crossword puzzles, let's say. And I think again we've moved towards the sort of model of passive consumption in our society.

4:32And when you're just receiving information rather than actively engaging with it, it does tend to you know dull your senses and make us all a little bit stupider. Yeah, so it's interesting the whole field of literary criticism seems to be ideologically captured. That's right, that's right. So yeah, I mean when so when I was at Columbia, I got to Columbia when I was 18 years old, I was a big lover of classic literature. That was my whole thing in high school. I read basically every single classic novel that you can think of and I wanted to make it my mission to get through the kind of Western literary canon. At a young age, so I get to Columbia, I'm expecting this sort of call to the humanistic tradition, you know literature to me is about understanding what makes us human and understanding how do we live, you know good and moral lives in our societies. And I was expecting so much of that and I get to Columbia and the first day, you know we're talking about oppression, we're talking about gender, we're talking about pronouns, we're talking about you know whether certain author was racist or whether you know he had problematic view.

5:36I mentioned you know Jane Austen and imperialist expansion the first day of one of my seminars, we read this essay by Edward Said about this novel called Mansfield Park by Jane Austen and Said basically argues that Jane Austen was complicit in British imperialism because she has this character who owns a slave plantation in Antigua. And this really comes up only maybe for two sentences in the entire novel like the novel is very much about you know family and relationships like Betty of Jane Austen's novels and he writes this whole 40 page essay about how you know Jane Austen is a British imperialist and everyone is evil and even you know the estate itself represents the colonialist economy. And I'm sitting there thinking I'm 18 years old like this is this is ridiculous. I don't know what we're studying and I didn't yet have the vocabulary back then to articulate what was going on. But part of what you know set me on to this sort of you know big catastrophe in the humanities is you know you guys did the the grievance studies affair and I started to realize that you know so much of what was being published in these academic circles which is complete bogus.

6:50You could say whatever you wanted to about basically anything and no one was going to tell you that it's wrong because it's the humanities everything is so so subjective. And I think we've you know lost certain standards of academic rigor in our academies and I really do think that that needs to be brought back. Yeah that's the nicest that's the nicest way to say it I guess where we differ is or maybe we don't differ. I don't think it's possible to bring it back. So you're going to say to the person who believes thinks that about Jane Austen I mean you think all of a sudden you're going to say something like well you know I've been harboring delusions about literature and I've been looking through some lenses that I shouldn't be listening to looking through. And I realized that I made some fundamental mistakes in my interpretation that my brain was hijacked by an invasive parasitic ideology and now I'm going to change my ways. I don't think that's realistic. Yeah so I do share some of your pessimism about the literary academies specifically right I think it's we're so far down the rabbit hole.

7:55You know one of the things that I always criticize online is this idea that marks should be read in English classrooms and what people always tell me the kind of leftist who come at me. And they always say well marks is literary study is just a way of studying literature so how are you going to perform Marxist literary criticism without reading marks. And it's like well the the fact that you have an entire field called Marxist literary study is the problem in the first place so yes in many ways were so far down the rabbit hole that I think it will be very difficult to extract ourselves. Maybe the academy is gone and you know there's nothing we can do about it, but I do still have hope outside of the academy you know I started my Instagram page which is where I started going the most on the basis of helping people return to literature and find literature from again this humanistic standpoint without all of this you know Marxist whatever. So just think about my Instagram page is not like my Instagram page at all say go ahead sorry no no it's you know and everyone told me no one's going to follow you there's no audience for people who like literature who aren't radical leftist there are Marxists you know they all go to Columbia University and then you know they reach a experiment decide he's racist and that was largely my perception as well.

9:19When I because I was very much immersed in the Columbia University or the York MFA circles whatever you want to call it and I said well you know let's try and I'm nearing 200,000 followers on Instagram now of people who are fed up with what's happening in the literary academy who want to read great literature who want to come back to books and understand literature on its own merit rather than you know all these toxic ideology. Toxic ideologies and that has just proven to me that there is an audience for this sort of thing there are enough people who appreciate literature who like the humanities who want to return to more this classical education model and I think that you know again it might be difficult to accomplish that within the literary academy but I do think that there are institutions outside of that where people are just bursting to have this brought back. So it shows as an appetite it's not clear to me why you need to do that in within the traditional academic framework but let's say that that was a goal seems maybe we diverge in our goals there how do you take back the humanities.

10:29Yeah I mean I think so I think part of the problem is that you know our institution still do have control over public discourse like it or not and I think that that is sort of what's happened in the in the general world you know the. Everyone talks about this this woke is them right the woke mind virus between kind of 2015 and let's say 2024 right the last decade or so it's maybe drawing away a little bit some people are saying but all of that was happening in the academy 30 years before the term woke had really entered our mainstream culture so I like to think about it as you know what happens in the academy sort of stews in the academy for a couple decades and then it eventually will enter the public discourse and make its way to kind of mainstream. Society and I think that's very much what you saw with the whole woke thing is in many ways these ideologies were around for decades before again we had the vocabulary to describe woke is i'm so I think that. In many ways our academy still do dictate the public perception of everything else around us and so I I would like to save them maybe again maybe you're less optimistic about that but I still think that there are people who.

11:40Are entering these fields who have these sort of heterodox viewpoints who you know maybe were once classical liberals would no longer consider themselves as such because you know it's just they've just been pushed out of that sphere but I think the way to take it back is to just encourage as many people as possible to. View literature as a humanistic project as a way to understand ourselves as something that tells us something universal about the human condition rather than you know constantly write about Marxism and post colonialism and whatnot and I think that it is possible to at least introduce a couple of academics into the academy who believe these things and. In many ways again the vocal minority I would say has captured academic discourse and I think that a vocal minority can start to take it back and at least take us back to to the middle or some sort of normalcy. So I guess i'm still unclear why should revitalizing the humanities we've done within the context of the academy so it doesn't clear to me.

12:49Sure it doesn't have to be but you know I think that we can I think that it's very difficult to make a large institutional. To have as much of a footprint as these kind of large institution so again what i'm doing my work is very much outside of the academy I. I decided not to pursue my PhD because of this and that was kind of my my overall life plan was to become a literature professor so i'm very much outside of the academy but you know I like to shed light on what's happening in the academy because there are people inside the academy who do have power to make these changes and I. I think that they make them well I think that they're scared I think a lot of people are scared there's a lot of pushback you know I get messages every day from people who say well I I believe these things but i'm scared of losing my job right or i'm scared of speaking out so again it's a very vocal minority that's controlling discourse controlling hiring part of it is you know you have these d i administrators who are.

13:49They're making calling all the shots in the academies we're starting to see some of that falling away right a lot of schools are starting to maybe fire some of these d i people so you know I think it will be very difficult to restructure the academies I I do share some of that pessimism in that sense but. I do think that there are people still within these sorts of mainstream institutions who want to see a return to normalcy and you know many of us go through these institutions and I think it's our duty to have a kind of public forum for open discourse and you know in my view that's always been the university. And we can create we can create a new sort of public forum and in many ways the internet has already given us that platform and it's given me a platform. But I think if there's you know anything to do to at least call attention to these problems then we can at least try.

14:57And now for great deals during the ram driving to fall sales event excludes fully electric vehicles apply to 2026 model year vehicles non transferable visit moapar.com for complete details and a copy of the powertrain limited warranty come into the register trademark of comments and ram and hammy are registered trademarks of FCA US LLC. And what's the these problems in that sentence with which problems you for. So I think the ideological takeover of the humanities and you know the the dumbing down of our culture which I think they go hand in hand I think people tend to view it as two separate things I tend to view it as the same problem you know you have these folks at the Atlantic were always talking about oh you know the death of reading the death of literary culture. But they don't realize that that happened in tandem with these words of ideological takeover in the academy so I think it is very much the same problem. So do you make a living from this now. Almost I'm getting there you know I sort of split my time 50 50 between you know just kind of public commentary on the humanities and I also work with students to edit college essays that's my second job you know that used to be full time now I'm kind of part time on both so I'm kind of 50 50 split I work with you know students help them learn to write that's another problem that we can discuss the declines.

16:24So student writing yeah so I have so many questions have emerged how does the dumbing down of culture have to do with ideological takeover versus just having dumb or people. So I think that when you put ideology on a work of literature you're no longer asking people to actually engage with the work of literature if you create an anything goes culture if you say I can say anything about Shakespeare that I want then you don't you no longer need to engage rigorously with the idea of the language. So I think that's the actual text right so if you can say I can just you know call this Marxism or post colonialism or whatever then in many cases you don't actually have to read the work or understand what the author was trying to communicate there's this idea in the literary academy that we call the death of the author right so very very much in folk today kind of cropped up in the 70s where the argument was the it doesn't matter what the author was trying to say it just matters how you feel about the work of literature and the very post modern idea and so if you accept that framework.

17:24In order to analyze literature then you no longer have to engage deeply with these texts you can just come in with your pre established assumptions and you can insert them onto the text so I think that is what's happening is that you know these leftists women in many cases let's just put up on Lee are coming into the academy they believe you know society is oppressive they'll read a book and they won't take the time to actually critically engage with the authors trying to say they just are really good. Looking for one sentence that'll prove to them that society is actually oppressive right so that makes us all dumber because we're not actually being asked to consider what the author meant we are only asked to read what to read our own thoughts into a given text and of course that's going to you know destroy critical thinking in our society because we're no longer you know engaging critically with the great works of literature. That makes humanities dumber not all culture I mean and that's yeah go ahead.

18:27Yeah I mean I think it's making the humanities dumber but I think that you know the people in our culture who are engaging with the humanities who are choosing to interpret these texts they are the people who are spearheading cultural discussion in you know our society right in the reason that people I would say so I think there's a reason that people today associate with the people who are in the world. They are the people who are in the world today associate the humanities with leftism it's because these people have started to control the discourse and so I'm actually I'm working on getting my nonfiction book published right now and if you're working with a big publisher and one of the big pushbacks that they've given me is that they've told me that we can't find any other books that are about literature and culture but that are geared towards a right of center audience. So you know having trouble publishing this because we don't think that there's going to be an audience for what you're saying. So even these publishers and this is a conservative publisher this is not you know leftist by any means they're telling me that we don't have this kind of audience of conservatives who like literature which I think is completely false because I found so many of them.

19:44But I think it's because again the people who are doing the humanities they're controlling the discourse that creates a public perception that only people only leftists are the ones who like and appreciate the humanities because you know if you pull up any sort of literature website organization it's basically run by leftist and because all of these kind of big institutions are very much leftist run. And the public starts to think that only leftists appreciate literature and then you know that narrative sort of reinforces itself with the sorts of books that are getting published it reinforces itself with the sorts of professors that are being hired in the academy and the reality is that everyone else is just sort of being shut out. Do you do you think that conservatives are on average Dumber? Absolutely not. I think that you know conservatives have unfortunately been pushed out of academic spaces so there's this perception that they're Dumber or whatnot and you know I've met a lot of dumb conservatives I've also met a lot of dumb liberals I don't think that political orientation necessarily predicts IQ right I mean there have been studies that show oh you know leftists are more higher IQ what I'm not going to say.

20:59Higher IQ whatever I don't I don't know if I necessarily believe those studies are how they've done their sampling because there are a lot of kind of factors to account for right you have the people are going into universities a lot of them are just being brainwashed out those universities right so they come out believing certain things so that's why a lot of university educated people tend to lean more left not because you know smart people are inherently leftist but because they're being fed a set narrative so you know I think that's what I'm going to say. So you know I think with something like our conservatives dumb I think that's a myth I think people across the political spectrum can be dumb and people across the political spectrum can be quite intelligent right it's just again the people controlling the discourse want us to believe one thing over another. Okay so how would you respond to this claim the left is mentally ill and the right is retarded. Well I mean there's maybe some truth to that I you know I think the the main I don't want to say the mainstream right there is that there is an arm of the right that is retarded let's say and we're starting to see a little bit more of that I don't think that is the majority of the right by any means again I think it's the people who are controlling the discourse in many ways on the right I think that the left does tend to I mean they pride themselves.

22:25I mean they pride themselves on being mentally ill right they're all screaming about how they're all on SSRI's and that's that's a good thing or they're you know melt a whole therapy culture so I mean I think there's some truth to that statement but I think it's it's definitely an over generalization there are a lot of non mentally ill people on the left and there are a lot of very bright young people on the right. We could delve into that with considerable plumb we could really go down that rabbit hole but instead I I'm thinking about this idea that if the universities didn't participate or weren't in the orbit of critical social justice but we still had AI slop TV you know romanticy books if you will would you think would still see the dummy down of culture. So yes and no I think it would be a little bit better. I think that if we still had you know an institution that seriously approached the humanities I think that there would be at least be a segment of you know very well read and educated people who would be guiding the discourse and helping you know other people.

23:31I'm going to make good decisions in their lives the problem is that it's a combination of all of these things and part of the reason that this you know romanticy slop is getting published is again it's it's very much I know a lot of people in publishing I know a lot of writers. Romanticy is one of the most left leaning genres out there it's all just an excuse to push a certain political ideology so again I think these things are very much connected. And I don't think you would see as much what's going to be published yeah. Sorry sorry interrupt you but that's what what political agenda is it pushing. So you know you'll see a lot of editors at these big publishing houses they'll say oh you know I want these like romanticy stories with polyamorous centares and you think I'm exaggerating but what's what they're asking so it's not just there's a romanticy story and you know it's it's a very important thing. It's a traditional whatever heterosexual couple it's romanticy story and it's a you know gay queer centaur and then they're in a polycule with a fairy.

24:36I think I'm making these things up but that's the sorts of things that they're looking to publish today and I wrote a piece for the daily wire actually where I looked at these sorts of literary agent wish lists that are being put out and that affect the sorts of books that we're publishing today. And it is just you know astonishing what these agents want to publish and what they don't want to publish they'll say you know we don't want to publish anything that has to do with traditional relationships or we don't want to publish. Yeah you know military stories is another big one so it's it's very much controlling the sorts of books that we have access to. Yeah I don't know I read something by Sarah J. Mass I don't know if you're familiar with her she's the number one best selling romanticy but she said romanticy is about dominant elf men having sex with young human girls. Sure I mean I think her and I don't I don't sit here reading romanticy so I'm not maybe the expert on romanticy.

25:37Yeah I think there's the traditional male dominant whatever narrative but her books are a little bit more mainstream there are other kind of romanticy novels that are really really crazy that are being put out there and I think that you know in many ways I had a piece I wrote where I looked at sort of wire women reading and in many ways these women are reading for the same reasons that I think I'm not going to publish. Yeah for the same reasons that man watch pornography right is that they are just reading to get off and the romanticy is sort of feeding into these fantasies that they're having so you know in many ways these novels don't resemble the sorts of traditional relationships that you might see because the women are reading to escape from their traditional relationships and they want something spicy. I feel a lot of again I'm very much in this like book talk community whatever and I see a lot of people talking about oh you know my novel got an award because of this like spicy scene the sex scenes that they put in there or you know this editor wanted me to add more spice to my novel and it's just becoming this sort of pornographic culture that people are basically reading these books in order to consume pornography rather than reading for the sake of reading.

27:03And so again that's another aspect of the dumbing down of our entire culture. Yeah so if it is the case that and again I am this is by intent to weigh outside my area of expertise or even my area of interest so you'll excuse my my lack of knowledge but if mass is correct and it's you know these dominant elf men and young human girls then that's a monogamous straight couple that's not left wing correct. Sure but you know I had a professor in college who would argue that it's very traditional well it represents kind of queer desire because you know it actually it's not it's an elf and it's a it's a young human woman so there's a sort of whatever taboo there yeah I mean it's a I think Sarah Jay Massigan is maybe a little bit more in the traditional side but she's also criticized by other people in the romanticist space that you know her books don't have enough LGBTQ characters or whatever because again the romanticity community wants to see these racial and LGBTQ diversity points right in in their book so again I think that it's very unfortunate that we've we've gotten here I've actually

28:30just pulled up Sarah Jay Massigan's Wikipedia page and she has a controversy section and a controversy Wikipedia yeah no but the controversy says Massage books have been criticized for poor handling of racial and LGBTQ diversity it's an issue that she doesn't have enough of it in there yeah so do you think straight men having sex with straight women represents queer desire? No no but I think I think they are they're trying to push queer desire in all of these books to the point where you know they'll find something queer about everything I mean this is a big problem in English departments right every single character in in literature is gay according to English professors right I had an English professor in my Shakespeare course claim that a mid-Summer Night stream was a play about queer desire you know Shakespeare's a mid-Summer Night stream because because Queen Titania was into bottom who got turned into a donkey and it's supposed to be you know this like hilarious trope from Shakespeare but you know the professor has this whole lecture about how that was an example of queer desire

29:37so I think they they like to make everything queer even if it's not clear yeah okay you know my my final thought was on that was you know she's she's the the traditional number one so the mainstream one traditional stuff but so moving on so a few years ago so moving on so a few things I keep getting caught up in that word spice when interesting you you from ism that was so fewer and I can't just read a stat on this fewer and fewer people are reading and I've had some professors of literature from UATX and others on the show what are three novels you think people should read like three important novels yeah I think the first one is a crime punishment by Dostoevsky I think that that is probably the most important novel for most people to read because especially for young men because the novel is about a young male who's in college and he feels very isolated and removed from

30:41society and I think that's a really big problem that men are facing today and his response is I'm going to commit a murder in order to you know make the world a better place so I think very very relevant to us today there have been you know comparisons with him and Luigi man Joan but what Dostoevsky attempts to communicate in the novel is that that is not the answer and that there's also an opportunity for redemption and that there's something deeper that I think there's something deeper that you ought to find in your life beyond just you know I'm depressed I'm going to go becoming an insult basically and I think that that book has changed so many people's lives it also launches an attack on this sort of utilitarian thinking that has become very popular today amongst the DSA socialist crowd so I think that's my probably first recommendation crime punishment the second one is Anna Krenna by Tolstoy I'm very much into Russian literature and I think that the Russian grades were very much onto something so Anna Krenna is a novel about a young woman who was essentially bored of her married life and then goes often has an affair and of course that doesn't go very well for her and then all those sort of traces her downfall from that and I think that Tolstoy really presents an apt commentary on morality and

32:06the idea of kind of living a good and virtuous life and again that's something that we have forgotten as a society and the third book that I really like to recommend to people that's maybe not as well known is called the World of Yesterday by Stefan Spig Spig it actually appears it appears in the intro of Douglas Murray is the strange death of Europe actually he references it in that opening chapter and it's it's essentially about the the downfall of European culture in Spig's time so Spig was Jewish and he was Austrian so you know he had to flee Austria and he moved to South America and he wrote the book from South America and it kind of reflected on the disappearance of European culture that he had witnessed throughout his lifetime and it's just a beautiful expose on the way that Europe in many ways contributed to our civilization and the way that you know in many ways not the Nazis started to destroy all the world

33:06and not see started to destroy all of that so I think it's you know very again very relevant to what we're living through today not necessarily through Nazism but definitely the kind of assault on Western civilization yeah that's something I've been fascinated by for a long time and not not the good way so you know I'm still I'm still lingering on our previous conversation you about Romanticie the terrible thing to to clog up my my bandwidth but that's okay I'll give myself that effortless indulgence for the purpose of this conversation Lisa you think states should ban Romanticie and the way that states banned pornography no I don't I'm for maybe I'm a little bit more libertarian in this sense I don't think we should ban anything I think that we ought to teach people what is good for them rather than banning things you know I think bands are often resulted the kind of opposite thing happening and that you know people start to consume more of the thing that is banned because it's suddenly forbidden

34:15so I don't think we should ban Romanticie I think that we should show people good literature I often you know criticize Romanticie on my page and the reason for it is it's you know it's poorly written it's it's basically just pornography at this point and if the reason that it appeals to people is because they don't know it's it's kind of like Plato's cave right they're seeing the shadows of what could be great literature but they've never actually opened a grape novel in their lives and I think that a lot of people who do I actually was just I just I just wanted to say that I just wanted to say that I'm not a good way to do it and they're live and I think that a lot of people who do I actually was just I just got a message right before I hopped onto the show today got a message from someone on Instagram who told me you know I just started reading Doreen Gray on your recommendation by Oscar Wilde and I understand now it's it's a wonderful block and you know this this person told me I understand now why you recommend these books and why you hate Romanticie so much is because once you read this stuff you can't go back to the right person Once you read this stuff, you can't go back to the romantic. It's like, you know, once you've had a good stake, you're screwed.

35:20Is it, are any straight men reading this or is it all, is it, do gay men read this? Is it all women? Who's reading romanticity? So it's 80% women. So it's interesting I was looking at publishing stats. So women account for 80% of fiction book sales. And 80% of the books that are being sold are romanticity. Books are romance novels more generally. So it's mostly women. I'm sure there are some gay men who are reading it as well. I do not know a single straight male who is reading romanticity. If they are, then we ought to send help their way. Intervention. We need an intervention. But it's mostly young women. It's mostly young liberal women. And because they account for the book sales or the romanticity book sales, that's really the only data the publishing industry has on what sells. So they continue to push out these books for young liberal women.

36:21And basically ignore the entirety of anyone else who might read a book. What happens then is that men stop reading. I had a piece I wrote called the strange death of literary men. And what happened there was that publishing industry is controlled by women. The books that are being pushed out are consumed by women because women control the publishing industry and only want to publish books for other women. These men who would otherwise be reading feel isolated. They feel pushed out. They don't want to read these fairy elves, whatever, running around and stopping each other. They want to read a good work of literature or at least an adventure story that would appeal to them. And they're not given the opportunity to read any of that. And I think that you could tell them to read classic literature. But for many people, contemporary literature is kind of a segue into classic literature because it's easier to read. And a lot of people will start off.

37:22They'll pick up maybe an easier contemporary book. And then they'll get into classic literature from there. So I do think there has to be some sort of stepping stone. And there's no stepping stone right now for young men to get into reading or literature because what's being published is just so alien to their sensibilities. And again, even if there were your force-fed those interpretations that everything is racist, everything is ableist. There's some kind of oppression going on. And how many romantic books have you read if you don't mind me asking? Your golf game might not turn heads, but your gear absolutely can. Pins and Aces is the People's Golf brand. With premium head covers, polo's, golf bags, hats, and accessories made to bring personality to every round. And with standout gear like their player preferred golf bags, rated 4.9 stars, Pins and Aces makes it easy to look like you belong in the featured group. You've seen Pins and Aces in Forbes, Golf Channel, and Sports Illustrated. Now see what your bag's been missing at PinsandAces.com.

38:22That's pins and Aces.com. I read the openings to them so I can critique them. I think I've read half of a court of thrones and roses or something like that, that serotonous one, just so I can figure out what's going on. You know, I read passages from them, but I don't know if I've ever sat through an entire romantic book from start to the end because frankly, I have better things to do. Okay. Well, that leads me to my next question. So would you be more concerned if you found your son compulsively consuming pornography or if you saw your daughter compulsively consuming romanticy? Oh gosh. I think I would be equally as concerned for different reasons. I think I would expect my daughter to be reading something more, let's say, intelligent.

39:24And I think I would be expecting my son to maybe develop a healthy relationship with a young woman outside of the internet. I've unfortunately seen young men go down the pornography rabbit hole and it's not great. It's not healthy. But I think that the repercussions of men going down the pornography rabbit hole are clear to us as a society versus I don't think it's as clear to us the effect of women going down the romanticy rabbit hole because we don't, first of all, we don't see it as a problem because it's reading, so we think it's good. And second of all, it's a fairly new phenomenon. These very sexually explicit books have really only cropped onto the stage in the last decade or so. So we haven't really had a chance to look into it yet. But I suspect that they're almost as bad as the kind of watching pornography.

40:25I mean, I didn't expect, my admission is I didn't expect to talk about romance and see it all. I remember who started it. I'm a victim of my own brain. Isn't romantic? Is it just the modern iteration of Penny dreadful? And what makes it uniquely bad? I mean, why is that uniquely bad as opposed to the modern version of escape fiction? Yeah. I mean, so I think the issue is not that it's escape fiction. The issue is that it's just pornographic to the point of not even resembling anything literary. I think we make a distinction in our society between a film which may contain a sex scene, right, and pornography, which is just sex scenes, right? And it's written for the purpose of sexual gratification rather than for the purpose of enjoyment. And I think our romantic novels are starting to be in the direction of just pure pornography

41:26rather than there's a story that contains sex because the sex is so over the top, it's so in your face, it's so unnecessary to the progression of the story that it's very clearly there just in order to titillate rather than making a statement or being part of some sort of romance plot. So I think that a lot of these books are just more pornographic than people realize that they're very, very explicit. There was this controversy a couple of months ago with this book called Sibling, which was a young adult book. And it was about this like academy of some sort, like kind of Harry Potter-esque. But one of the final chapters, I read it, I looked at it, and this was again a book written for young adults like 12 to 17, was a necromanic three-some. So it was just basically necrophilia.

42:28It was a dead body. It was two characters having sex with a dead body. And it was very explicit. And it was written for teenagers, right? And so, and you had language that doesn't appear in many adult novels. And it was just so unnecessary. And it was very clear that it was there because the author has some sort of perversion or the author wanted to give children some sort of perversion. So that I think the problem is that a lot of adults now are consuming these young adult books. So authors are either pressured to putting these sex scenes, these very graphic-deserving sex scenes, in young adult literature, or they just authors have these perversion themselves. They write it into their books and then they push them out to children. So I think it's beyond a problem of just should a book be graphic or not.

43:31It's now it's seeping into our children's literature, which I should not be happening at all. So how come the literary can't be pornographic and the pornography can't be literary? So I think it can be. I think that there is a distinction between showing a sex scene and describing it in a literary fashion and having a sex scene just in order to take away. And I think you can usually tell the difference. A good example is Lady Chatterley's lover is a fairly graphic sex scene in a novel by D.H. Lawrence. But there is still a literary sensibility to the prose and it's still not the only thing happening in the story. It's part of the story. It functions as a vehicle for the progression of the story and the story is about sex. Like versus a book that is purely pornographic doesn't in many cases have much to do with

44:38the story. It's just kind of there. Or if it does have something to do with the story, it's very clearly written in order to make a kind of sexual point or because the author was horny in some way. So a scene I think can be sexual but not pornographic. I think it also matters how the particular scene is written. Again, if you read Lady Chatterley's lover, it's very explicit but it's beautifully written versus the second is just vulgar. You think it's possible that there's a radical within the emotional depth of Dusty Aski? There's a radical. I don't know if I would say there's a radical. I think that there are several illusions. There are several erotic illusions in Dostoevsky notably in the brothers' parama. Not within with. I'm not within I meant with.

45:40Sorry. You think it's possible that there's a radical with the emotional depth of Dusty Aski? Oh. Yeah. Sorry. No, no. I was thinking. Yeah. Yeah. So. I think I think if it's possible, I don't think anyone has pulled it off yet. Like again, you take something like 50 shades of gray. I think there's there's a lot of great writing about sex that carries that emotional depth. I think much of it is not pornographic for too long. Because if you dive too deep into the pornography rabbit hole at a certain point, it becomes impossible to achieve that literary depth. I think literature has to be beautiful and it has to have some sort of overall meaning. And the more you veer away from beauty, the less literary you become.

46:41And you know, I vulgarity and beauty are in many ways polar opposites of the spectrum. Well, I was not expecting to have this conversation. I mean, either. I'm not expecting to have this conversation today. All right. So just just a few other questions. Where do you live now? I'm in Chicago. Actually, we recently moved out here from New York. I do miss. I do miss the big apple. Miss the city. But you know, it says the there's quite a literary scene in New York. Oh, absolutely. And that's the primary reason I miss it is that I feel like I'm away from my career in many ways. But it's okay. I, you know, I have family here. So about to get married and have kids. So, you know, wanted to be. Congratulations. Thank you. That's a great life journey. Congratulations. That's. It is. It is utterly, utterly awesome, awesome experience. I did that. I did that. Kids have two kids.

47:41Okay. A few more questions. Is there anything that I should have asked you that I didn't ask you? I'm sure that there are. I'm sure that there are many, many things. But is there anything we should have talked about? Yeah. I mean, I think the, the other thing I'll just briefly mention is, you know, I'm working on a couple novels as well. I am very much working against the grain of the publishing industry today. And I was actually on a podcast this morning and one thing that we were talking about is some of the reasons I've gotten rejections have been. Let's say a kin to the sorts of things we've been talking about. So one publisher recently told me that they didn't want to publish my book because it didn't sufficiently discuss privilege. And that readers today would be quick to pick apart class and access.

48:42And that my novel contained too many depictions of supportive men. So, you know, I think that so much of what is happening today in the academy is also seeping into the publishing industry. So it's, it's very much a difficult problem in that sense as well. Yeah, that's fast saying I wonder if the way then isn't to just give up on the traditional route and go sub stack or publish your own book or because the whole industry is, is comprised, you know, it's funny. You mentioned 50 shades of gray. My buddy. You ever read the onion? Uh, yeah, sometimes yeah. Yeah, my buddy was one of the co-founders of the young and he told me that his, his girlfriend was reading 50 shades of gray. And he told me this a long, long time ago. And he read it. He said, he said, he said, he was the singularly the worst book he's ever read his whole life. That's terrible.

49:42Yeah, he kind of reminds me of you. He's like a voracious reader. Like he just reads every, he's just constantly reading. And just his utter disdain and disgust would discuss in that book was so, so funny to me. Yeah, sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, okay. So, uh, so I was going to ask you about so the publishing industry, you know, I had, I had another conversation with someone about the publishing industry being captured. Um, so what are you going to do? I hope you don't compromise the integrity of your book. Yeah, so I, I write on substark. I'm on substack with my, my weekly essays. So that's kind of where people have been finding me in my writing. And I, I've been talking to a couple of indie publishers right now that's sort of in, in the process. Um, I do have the nonfiction book in the work. So I think it's my plan right now is it seems to be a little bit easier at least to push out nonfiction.

50:45There are still some kind of conservative, or there are still some presses that are devoted to conservative works. And you know, I'm hoping that if I get a nonfiction book out there, publishing industry might be a little bit more amenable to my fiction. Um, that's. Let me pause you and say private name seven, nine, three, six wants to know what's your handle. At pens and poison. That's a great handle. Yeah, thanks. Let me ask you another question. I'm curious about. I, uh, you know, you know, Andrew Doyle had a long conversation. Hi, baby. The little dogs. Oh, there's this little dog. Uh, Hi. Yeah. I'm just a dog. Travis. Oh, Winnie. Winnie. Winnie. Winnie.

51:45Winnie. Winnie. Winnie. Winnie. Winnie. Winnie. Now, so those are the other dogs now. Oops. Um, So I had a, I had a question. I had a, I had a question. I had a conversation with my buddy, uh, Andrew Doyle about this. Um, Oh, Travis, we have a super chat. Uh, Um, Uh, Uh, I was in the, In your view, what are some downgrades that you've observed in the qualities of writers from the Victorian world of authors to contemporaries? Oh gosh. Just on the sentence level. It's terrible. Also, she had it managed to fully undo the button yet. No, of course, it's the answer you want. He said, then she kissed him. He didn't recoil like he was horrified. But he did pull away and said, no, come on. Let's go upstairs.

52:45She said, yeah, we actually are upstairs. I want you to f me. Wow. So I mean, we're just, we're just seeing this decline on the sentence level. And this is a New York Times bestselling author in literary fiction. That's not even romantic. That's literary fiction, which is supposed to be this. Serious type of literature. I just think that, you know, most authors just can't write anymore because they get published if they say they are Marxist. And that's it. Ben. So I've noticed this. Maybe this is a little too far field, but I want to really experience your expertise. That I call it a begotions first law of film and TV. Every time there's any sexual interaction between a man and a female between the years of, oh, I don't know, like maybe 2013 or 14 to 2026, it is always 100% of the time the woman who initiates. I've yet to see a single example.

53:48I just saw a dog star last night. It was the same thing there. And I every single time. Was that the case in traditional literature as well? No. Well, the thing is in traditional literature if you read like the Quran literature, you don't get those scenes in the books because they're not there. They're kind of what we call behind closed doors. They're implied. So you see in kind of literature in the 20th century, I mean, you see variations, I would say, but I wouldn't say that there's this rule that, you know, a woman is always initiating. I think it's mostly the man leading things in most literature and this kind of feminist culture that we've created has created some different rules in our art, let's say. Yeah, someone just wrote a private name, seven, nine, six, sort of good comma. I think that's correct. He said age gap relationships are like that too. It's okay if the woman is older, but if a man is somehow a predator.

54:50So, you know, my buddy Andrew Doyle, who's a cultural commentator from the UK, he has a PhD in, yeah, Travis, you can pull up things. He has a PhD in English Literature, specialized in Shakespeare. And I told him, when there's short period of time, I think AI will write better. I don't know the time landscape, I'm guessing two years will write better than any living human and within a year or two after that, it will write better than anyone who's ever lived, Shakespeare, et cetera. I think we were drinking at the time, and he spit out his drink. Interesting. Do I take it you disagree with my assessment? I disagree with that assessment, and I was actually explaining to one of my friends who works at the American Emptu Surprise Institute. We were talking about this yesterday, and he said that, you know, I worry that AI is gonna take my job within a couple years,

55:50and I told him that maybe for analytical writing, the sort of writing that he does, which is very much like serious research, maybe that's true, I don't know if that's true for creative writing, and I'm less worried about it because part of what fuels my writing is this sort of crazy emotion that has guided artists for the entirety of human history, like you have to be a little bit unhinged to be a novelist or any sort of artist, right? And I'm not worried about AI writing good creative writing because AI is very rational or it synthesizes information very logically, and the AI is never gonna be as crazy as I. It's never gonna be able to write the sort of, you know, works of literature that we've written for many centuries because, again, if you take all great novelists, they're a little bit crazy, and I think the AI is just never gonna be as crazy as human beings can get. Yeah, interesting. Well, we beg to differ, we'll find out in a couple of years, but I guess we will. Yeah, someone has a question for you at one door to,

56:52do you think social sciences can be saved? I think unequivocally not, and what's your response, Lizo? So I think it depends on the social science. I think that there is a lot of hope for economics because there are a lot of very, very smart, intelligent people in economics, I think the social sciences that still require sort of rigorous logic and evidence can still be saved. And there are, again, a lot of people in social sciences, let's say, economic fields who are more or less normal, horse, mart thinkers, something like sociology, probably not. Hold on, before you go on, before you go on, can I push back on the economics? Sure. You know, are you familiar with the replication crisis? Yes, yes, I am. What percentage of papers and economics do you think cannot be replicated? I'm guessing a large number. 70.

57:53But even if it's 50 and somehow that's... Yeah, that's not great. So would that cause you to change your mind? Yeah, I mean, I'd have to look into that a little bit, but that isn't alarming statistic. That's not great. Yeah, it's, yeah. I cut you off, we're coming to that, often people say no to this, but is there anything you'd want to ask me? What inspired you to go through with the grievance studies affair? That's something that I always wondered. What was the moment where you were like, we got to do this? Well, for Lindsay, it was reading the glacier paper. For me, it was just a combination of a wide range of things. It was so obvious that the field was corrupt. All these fields were corrupt. Gender studies in particular. It was so obvious that we needed to do this right, and it wasn't being done, and there are aspects of human knowledge.

58:57We just weren't excavating them, if you will. We weren't talking honestly about them. I think it was doing a disservice to students, like the literature that you said. Hey Travis, pull that up real quick. So thanks for private name. And private English, a funny name. 7936, SuperSticker, thanks. We appreciate that. We're not small non-profit here, so we appreciate that. We have nice guests like Lisa, come on. So, and it was just a combination of, I had just had it. I had had enough of people pretending to know things. They don't know faking the ideological capture. At that time, I was polyen. I did think that the university system could be saved. I did think that they would just say, like the so-called original so-called paper, they'd say, wow, maybe something is the problem, and maybe we should take a look at this, and maybe we should be honest about this because we care about what's true. But I no longer believe that. Right, because of the response.

59:57Yeah, I can see that. Well, again, I'm maybe somewhere in the middle. There, I do retain some hope that we can save these institutions, but I also, you know, do you see the argument that, again, we're so far down this rabbit hole that no one wants to even talk about the fact that there's a big problem. Yeah, anything else you want to ask me, are we good? I think we're good. Just thank you so much for having me on this. It was a wonderful conversation. Again, I didn't expect to be talking about Romanticy and Ferry Alves, but that was a good interlude in my day. Someone said it was like a, I read some of the comments, someone said it was like a cross, a crossfit lecture crossfit conversation. I've grown, I've turned these, I've, I, I, I, I, I try to grill my guests a little more. Just I think it's a little more. And after would keep your browser open because the guest always tell me that was so fun. And thanks, I appreciate that. So well, we appreciate having you on. And where can people find your work?

1:00:59Yeah, so I'm at pensandpoison.org. That's, that's me on X. I'm at pensandpoison. You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube. I'm also pensandpoison. Very easy to remember. It's a great name. It's a great name. Aliza, thank you very much. Keep your browser on. Thanks everybody for coming and, and joining the chat and supporting the channel. And I'll see everybody later. Thanks. Thanks.