While Our Students Are Sleeping: the Theory & Politics Podcast

It’s our latest – and last! – episode on Curtis Yarvin, aka mencius moldbug, a key intellectual presence behind the Trump administration courtesy of his blog-slash-book, Unqualified Reservations. In previous episodes we snarked our way through some of Yarvin’s epistemological concerns around things like history, economics, and race. In this discussion, we turn to his prescriptive vision for the future state and how to get there, touching along the way his interdiction against lynchings, his call-out to Confucius, and why El Salvador may be the first state to align itself with Yarvin’s corporate model. Join us as we bid adieu to the powerhouse thinker who furnishes the rental unit inside J.D. Vance’s head.Get in touch with us by email at rolfandreed@proton.me, or follow us on Rolf’s substack “Under the Aqueduct” or at Reed’s Bluesky. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

Rolf and Reed are back with more on their ongoing exploration of the blog-turned-political-manifesto Unqualified Reservations by the self-proclaimed über-reactionary Curtis Yarvin. In this episode we consider Yarvin’s argument regarding climate change (a hoax), Keynesian economics (a form of theft) and “Human Neurological Uniformity” (don’t even ask). As we explore, many of Yarvin’s contrarian and reactionary postures around these core issues appear to be informing current US politics, making their consideration as timely as they are alarming. Get in touch with us by email at rolfandreed@proton.me, or follow us on Rolf’s substack “Under the Aqueduct” or at Reed’s Bluesky. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

In this episode of While our Students Are Sleeping, Rolf and Reed continue their exploration of the thought of Curtis Yarvin aka "moldbug," the political thinker for the modern techbrocracy. We look at his interpretation of several major historical events, as outlined in his blog-turned-book Unqualified Reservations: the American Revolution, the US Civil War, and World Wars I & II. If you think you know a thing or two about history, think again! Get in touch with us! Email us (rolfandreed@proton.me) or check out Rolf's substack (https://rolfstromolsen.substack.com/) and Reed's Bluesky (@reedvanschenck.bsky.social) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

Some works are notable for the power of their ideas; others for the power of those attracted to their ideas. Curtis Yarvin (aka “moldbug”) was for many years a contrarian, libertarian-adjacent blogger calling for a new world order, unknown to most, but curiously popular with the techbro and billionaire class – Peter Thiel was an early enthusiast. With the arrival of the second Trump administration and the ascendancy of the billionaire-techbrocrats, Yarvin’s ideas have been politically mainstreamed, providing a political-theoretical lens through which many in the MAGA sphere see the world, and helping to shape the future they wish to bring about. In this episode, the first of four on Yarvin, Rolf and Reed explore the strange intellectual world that he inhabits, diving into the first section of his blog-post collection-turned-book entitled Unqualified Reservations: A Gentle Introduction to Reactionary Enlightenment, in which Yarvin exhorts us to take a red pill and follow him into the world of the darkly enlightened. You can get in touch with us at rolfandreed@proton.me This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

This third episode of our new podcast continues our exploration of the thought of Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), the notorious German jurist and political theorist of the Nazi regime.We discuss Carl Schmitt’s 1932 treatise The Concept of the Political and suggest that his definition of politics – as the existential distinction between “Friend and Enemy” – is highly relevant to the volatile polarization of modern Western politics. We examine how Schmitt criticized liberal democracy for trying to replace decisive sovereign power with endless parliamentary debate and economic administration, a process he viewed as “depoliticizing” and ultimately weak because it ignores the reality of conflict. We also apply this lens to current events, including the rise of right-wing populism and the recent “healthcare assassin” case to explore whether liberal democratic societies are reverting to a “Schmittian” state where political groups are once again defining themselves by who they are willing to fight and negate rather than with who they can find political compromise. You can get in touch with us at rolfandreed@proton.meº This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

This second episode of our new podcast continues our exploration of the thought of Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), the notorious German jurist and political theorist of the Nazi regime. One of his most famous works, Political Theology lays out Schmitt’s argument for a clear expression of executive sovereignty, anchored by its famous opening declaration: “Sovereign is he who decides upon the exception.” We review the background to this work in the ideas of Max Weber, as well as Schmitt’s rejection of the neo-Kantian idea of constitutional authority, and consider why Schmitt saw the need for a clearly defined executive sovereignty as the political imperative of his time. Along the way, we note the similarities between Schmitt’s arguments and the emerging discourse in our current politics surrounding the need for strong executive leadership. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

My colleague, Prof. Reed van Schenk, and I have started a podcast! Our plan is to offer an in-depth exploration of various thinkers whose work we see as relevant to our current political climate. This inaugural episode launches our exploration into Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), the notorious German jurist and political theorist whose unrepentant support of the Nazi regime casts a long shadow. Despite his pedigree, Schmitt’s work remains highly relevant as one of the most decisive intellectual challenges to the legitimacy of modern liberal democracies.Join Reed and I as we explore Schmitt’s early, influential text, “Roman Catholicism and Political Form.” In this work, Schmitt sets out his case for the Catholic Church as the ideal template for political legitimacy. We consider his argument that the Church, due to its inherent capacity for definitive and authoritative form, provides the necessary structure and basis for a universal, stable, normative political order. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

In this first of what may – or may not – be an occasional podcast series, I sit down with my colleague and fellow historian Patrick de Oliveira to discuss the impact that AI tools such as ChatGPT are having in our classrooms. In higher education especially, AI has already proved very disruptive as students are increasingly using cleverly-crafted, hard-to-detect AI-generated work in lieu of their own efforts. How seriously should we take this problem? What measures are reasonable to protect the integrity of learning in the classroom? And what does the appearance of AI portend for the future of university education. Join Patrick and myself as we grapple with these and other questions. Read Patrick’s article published in Inside Higher Ed, “The Case for Luddism Against ChatGPT.” If you have any thoughts, please leave a comment. Thanks for listening! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

Friedrich Engels famously described civilization as a “world-historical” catastrophe for women, since it subjugated them within a patriarchal system, burying their agency inside male-dominated households and excluding them from the historical structures of the last ten millennia. In this episode, we consider the foundations of patriarchy, and ask how human beings may have crafted their societies before the emergence of post-Neolithic patriarchal structures. Drawing on the pioneering work of Sara Hrdy and Gerda Lerner, we try to unpack the dynamics of sex and gender across the Palaeolithic/Neolithic divide to ask how and why the subordination of female reproductive agency became an integral feature of the rise of civilization. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

The experience of the Huron, an Iroquoian-speaking indigenous people of the Eastern US and Canada, provides an example of what I term “exogenous market logic” and shows how markets can function, not within, but at the boundary of society. In this episode, we delve into the details of how the Huron (or Wendat) emerged as a distinct society in land between Lake Ontario and Lake Huron. Drawing from the work of the eminent anthropologist Bruce Trigger, we trace the evolution of indigenous cultural, social, political and economic practices over many thousands of years, culminating with a turn toward sedentism enabled by the adoption of horticulture. In particular, we explore how the shift in social logic from a patrilineal to a matrilineal system was a major impetus for the development of a distinct “national” identity. Along the way, we’ll discuss the famous Dunbar number, the importance of prestige activities, the logic of conflict, and even the social importance of organized sports! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

At the halfway point of the course, we pause to consider the meaning and power of paradigms, what it means to live inside of a paradigm, how they have shifted in the past, and what we can and should do to help change our paradigm going forward. The concept of paradigm shift comes for the work of Thomas Kuhn, in his book the Structures of the Scientific Revolution. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

In this episode we explore the truly mind-blowing exchange system prevalent in the Trobriand Island complex off the East coast of Papua New Guinea, known as the Kula Ring. This elaborate trading system, long invisible to outside eyes, was described at length by the legendary Polish anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, who spent years embedded inside the local tribes to discover how the overlapping complexities of the trading scheme operated to create political and social outcomes for the Islanders. His resulting book, Argonauts of the South Pacific, remains a classic of anthropology, while his approach to ethnographic research transformed the entire methodology of the field. We explore some of the features of Trobriand society, its economy, social rules, and the Kula Ring itself, drawing on the insights of Polanyi and Marx (see Episode 9) to help explain how the trade in seemingly insignificant, non-utilitarian objects serves to cohere an entire society. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

In this episode, we offer a very abbreviated review of two key ideas that will inform subsequent discussions in the course. The first is Karl Polanyi’s idea, sketched out in his famous work, The Great Transformation, that prior to the Industrial Revolution, markets were always embedded in human relations. The second is Karl Marx’s similarly celebrated concept of “the fetishism of the commodity,” which is the concluding section of the opening chapter of his epic (and largely unreadable) work Das Kapital. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

In this episode, we look at the civilizational complex that emerged in the Andean river valleys of North Central Peru (commonly called the Caral-Supe Civilization). The set of culturally-linked settlements that sprang up, prior to the emergence of agriculture, along the river valleys in what is today Peru, while not widely known, is a remarkable example of a so-called “pristine” civilization – that is the rise of a sophisticated cultural and social complex without any known outside influence. Beyond its social and cultural forms, however, we will explore the idea that the Andean River Valley Civilization was enabled by some kind of developed political system, one that could make feasible sedentary communities through the coordination of a logistically-complex food supply system. We also consider how this example reminds us of the basic fact that a world of Palaeolithic coastal or littoral communities, now vanished due to sea level rise, may well have been central to our human journey. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

In this episode we look at the startling distinctions in the lives of far northern Inuit communities, as explored by the famous French ethnologist and anthropologist Marcel Mauss in his book Seasonal Variations of the Eskimo. Using the concept of antinomies, we explore the sharp contrasts of architecture, authority, ownership, ritual life, and even sexuality that characterises Inuit life in the Summer and Winter seasons. The lecture explores the claims for what Mauss called “social technology in making a society viable, and ask what we can learn from this experience looking forward.To see the images referred to in this lecture, visit the podcast website. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

In this lecture, we explore several examples of how “primitive” peoples have come up with extraordinary cultural responses to overcome the challenges of environmental instability and uncertainty. In so doing, we consider the possibility that Palaeolithic people developed technological responses to solving the problems that their communities would have faced, and thus used social innovation in ways that challenge how we think about our own modernity as exclusive to ourselves. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

In this lecture, we explore the fascinating essay written by the eminent American Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, “The Original Affluent Society.” (A version of the text can be found here.) By exploring Sahlins arguments in favour of a “primitive” economic confidence, we also go some way to resolving the problem left outstanding in the previous lecture regarding the so-called “Sapient Paradox.” Sahlins essay forms the first chapter to his more general study, Stone Age Economics. Works referenced in the lecture include J.K. Galbraith, The Affluent Society; Vaclav Smil, Energy and Civilization; and John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. For a good historical overview of Proto Indo-European, see David Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

In this lecture, we explore the question raised by the eminent British archaeologist Colin Renfrew in his book Prehistory: the Making of the Human Mind, which he terms the “Sapient Paradox”: why the intelligence of homo sapiens does not seem to have made itself manifest for the first 150k years of our history. We also consider the significance of the way we have divided our past into both a “prehistory” and a “history.” The temperature record during the Quaternary Glaciation can be viewed here (Wikipedia). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

This lecture provides an overview of the evolution of hominids, from our first bipedal steps through to the development of language. Along the way, we will consider the importance of fire and the impact of expanding brain size, along with the consequences these had for the social and cultural behaviours of early (archaic) humans. As an excursus, we will also explain why new fathers are often told their infants look just like them!Different phenotypical features are illustrated here (teeth) and here (skeletal structure). The book by Robin Dunbar referenced in the lecture is The Science of Love and Betrayal. The PTBD hypothesis mentioned in the lecture was devised by Dean Falk in her 2004 paper “Prelinguistic evolution in early hominins: Whence motherese?” A good book on the role of fire in driving human evolution is Richard Wrangham’s Catching fire: how cooking made us human. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com

This is the second half of the introductory lecture to my Markets & Society course. You can read more about Pigovian taxes here (Wikipedia). The Arctic death spiral can be viewed here. Bjorn Lomborg’s “7 Myths about Climate Change” can be watched here (the excerpt played in class is “myth” #2). The Keeling Curve can be viewed here (Wikipedia). Data on global energy use is taken from Our World in Data. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rolfstromolsen.substack.com