Show Notes
Welcome back to our jaunt through Alejo Carpentier’s “El siglo de las luces”, a maritime escapade in the Americas at the time of the French Revolution. With some of the literary theory covered already in episode 1, where we made the case for why this is a unique example of historical realism, we finally enjoy retelling the arc of the story and reading sections of its lurid prose. A deserted island boar feast, a guillotine being rowed into Guadalupe’s bay by starlight, former revolutionaries r...
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Welcome back to After the End of History. This discussion was recorded on August 27th, 2026. The many false starts and stops of the war on Iran tell us, unhappily and perversely, that this conflict will stretch well into our future – just as we recognize its long past continuity from the 2016 strikes on Syria to the war on Iran in 1980 just after its revolution. This follows recent episodes where we talked to Brandon Wolff -Hunnicutt about the Iraq wars, and Nicholas Mulder about sanctions ...
[Recorded 31 January 2025] A continuation of our discussion on Marx's "forgotten text," Herr Vogt: A Spy in the Workers' Movement. Support the show
[Recorded on 29 July 2025.] We sat down with the always insightful Christopher Mott of the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy to talk about the patterns of American culture and their effects on foreign policy. His distinctive blend of cultural criticism, global history, and strategic thinking were on full display. Listeners will enjoy our discussion of the deep history of Eurasia in his 2015 book The Formless Empire: A Short History of Warfare and Diplomacy in Central Asia. We asked him ...
Welcome back to our mini-series on realism and the Latin American novel. In this episode, we provide a thorough engagement with the late Peruvian master, Mario Vargas Llosa, an author of major works from all the way back in the 1950s to the current decade. Pat speaks with Neil Larsen, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, about his seminal essay, “Mario Vargas Llosa: The Realist as Neo-Liberal.” What makes Vargas Llosa revolutionary as a storyteller, but a reactionary ideologue? We ca...
[Recorded on 15 December 2025] In this opening installment of our series on literary realism, we focus on Alejo Carpentier’s El siglo de las luces (Explosion in a Cathedral). This work holds particular significance for the show, as host Pat dedicated a substantial portion of his dissertation to Carpentier's life and literature. We approach the novel as a primary example of how literature can map the "grand epochal changes" of history. After a brief biographical sketch of Carpentier, we presen...