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 Dec 09, 2019
Monday Dec 09, 2019
101 – Patrice O'Neal died in 2011, but his comedy is still hot. Stories that turn a bitter reality into laughter is this week's subject. Should there be a limit on what comedians can say for a joke?
Monday Dec 02, 2019
Monday Dec 02, 2019
100 – The hosts reflect on the last 100 episodes. What have the learned about each other, and about the issues they've discussed?
Monday Nov 25, 2019
Monday Nov 25, 2019
099 – The cliché goes that "laughter is the best medicine," but the idea's been around for thousands of years, so it's probably best to call it "wisdom." How can comedy help us cope with trauma?
Saturday Nov 16, 2019
Saturday Nov 16, 2019
098 – There's laughing at yourself, and then there's laughing at others. While the former is virtuous the latter is indispensable to group cohesion. In this episode the hosts talk about Jim Jefferies and Louis C.K. What are the limits of comedy?
Monday Nov 11, 2019
Monday Nov 11, 2019
097 – The hosts take a personal look at what they find funny and why. Fair warning, political sensitivities aren't off-limits.
Monday Nov 04, 2019
Monday Nov 04, 2019
096 – Even though the country's racist history still troubles the present, there are reasons to look up. What can we take away from @NYTimes 1619 project?
Monday Oct 28, 2019
Monday Oct 28, 2019
095 – The history of racism in medical care is not surprising, but the impact it continues to have on contemporary medical treatments is shocking. How do unscientific racial biases continue to distort evidence-based medicine?
Monday Oct 21, 2019
Monday Oct 21, 2019
094 – The hosts talk about the history of food production in the United States and its connections to poverty, race, and slavery. How is the legacy of slavery connected to the contemporary obesity epidemic? Listen and find out.
Monday Oct 14, 2019
Monday Oct 14, 2019
093 – The hosts discuss the history of "performing blackness" in music, as well as other forms of media. What does it mean to "co-opt" another culture's music? What's fair and what's foul in artistic expression?
Monday Oct 07, 2019
Monday Oct 07, 2019
092 – The legacy of slavery is long, but should the criticism of it extend to musical appropriation? What exactly is musical appropriation, and what can Warren G's Regulate teach us about it?
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.