The American Age
What if your favorite college professors were willing to talk about everything from philosophy and politics to pop culture and love with the same kind of consideration and enthusiasm? Each week C. Travis Webb, Seph Rodney, and Steven Fullwood discuss life, culture, and art, and challenge their listeners to take fewer things for granted and all things more seriously.
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Episodes
Monday Feb 17, 2020
Monday Feb 17, 2020
111 – Part 1 of 2. We are shaped by the communities we escape from, and the communities we find. What does it mean for a social primate to be "an individual"?
Monday Feb 10, 2020
Monday Feb 10, 2020
110 – There are communities we belong to by birth and circumstance, and then there are communities we want to belong to. How important are aspirational communities to our sense of self?
Monday Feb 03, 2020
Monday Feb 03, 2020
109 – We all belong to communities--political, familial, academic, religious, cultural, etc. But what is the balance between individual identity and communal identity? How individual are we?
Monday Jan 27, 2020
Monday Jan 27, 2020
108 – With the 2020 Presidential Election heating up, the hosts check-in with each other. What's the current state of the Democratic field, and can any of the candidates match the Trump campaign's financial juggernaut?
Monday Jan 20, 2020
Monday Jan 20, 2020
107 – Concluding their conversation about gender expressions, the hosts reflect on what can be gained by being culturally tolerant and linguistically flexible. What are the concrete benefits of pronoun tolerance?
Monday Jan 13, 2020
Monday Jan 13, 2020
106 – The hosts walk through the variety of terms for gender expression, and discuss their own responses to them. Given the variety of ways that it's possible to be a human being, why do new terms make us so uncomfortable?
Monday Jan 06, 2020
Monday Jan 06, 2020
105 – The hosts agree there should be more room for alternative gender identities, but wonder what other options there might be besides new pronoun mashups. Is language what constrains us, or is it something more fundamental? Are our cultural imaginations the issue?
Tuesday Dec 31, 2019
Tuesday Dec 31, 2019
104 – Our end of the year theme returns--again. What do we do with those few days each year that seem to fall off the calendar entirely? That time between Christmas and New Years when the Western world teeters precariously betwixt possibility and failure. We call them "unlucky days."
Tuesday Dec 24, 2019
Tuesday Dec 24, 2019
103 – The fervor over pronoun usage might seem silly to some. Is it "he," "she," or "they"? But language has never been fixed, and how individuals refer to themselves is in constant flux. There's nothing wrong with negotiation, but there might be with something wrong moralizing.
Monday Dec 16, 2019
Monday Dec 16, 2019
102 – What can you learn about a culture through comedy? What can you learn about people, and maybe more importantly, what can't you learn about them through comedy? The hosts agree it's time to stop canceling people for trying to be funny.
Why does the American flag look like this?
As you can see, our flag is different.
We believe in the American idea that all men and women are equal before the law and enjoy rights that are intrinsic and inalienable. We also believe, along with Thomas Jefferson, that because men and women are imperfect, and their wisdom is limited and fleeting, that this idea must be renewed periodically in order to remain vital...
Discover The American Age
The American Age is a salutary response to the disease at the core of American civic culture. It is a rejection of intellectual cynicism, historical amnesia, and the politics of dread. It is a rooster call to stir our fellow humanists awake.