Old School with Shilo Brooks

Dante Alighieri is one of the most consequential poets in human history, and his The Divine Comedy is essential to understanding Western civilization itself. And yet, though most of us have heard of Inferno, Dante remains one of the least read of all the greats. His masterpiece unfolds in three parts—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—charting a journey from despair to redemption. For literature professor Joseph Luzzi, this journey was not abstract. After his wife was tragically killed in a car accident while eight months pregnant, leaving him widowed and a father on the same day, the epic poem helped him overcome his grief and build a new life. In this episode, Shilo and Joseph sit down to discuss Dante’s genius. Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. If you believe in the importance of civic education and want to help prepare the next generation to carry on our democracy, join us at JackMillerCenter.org. Become a paid subscriber to The Free Press today to enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and reduced ads. Click here to subscribe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Middlemarch is George Eliot’s (real name Mary Ann Evans) masterpiece. The 900-page Victorian novel is about the people living in a fictional English town in a time of enormous changes. In this episode, Shilo Brooks sits down with Dominican friar Father Jonah Teller to discuss what makes the book worth reading. Their conversation tackles the novel’s major themes: marriage in all its mismatched forms, political upheaval around reform and the rise of liberalism, the promises and limits of scientific progress, and the facets of human nature revealed in ordinary domestic life. They highlight Eliot’s conviction that there are no truly insignificant lives—that quiet, “unhistoric” acts and small, private decisions are of great importance. Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. If you believe in the importance of civic education and want to help prepare the next generation to carry on our democracy, join us at JackMillerCenter.org. Become a paid subscriber to The Free Press today to enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and reduced ads. Click here to subscribe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” This famous line from The Leopard has become a shorthand for moments when a ruling order senses its own looming downfall. And it feels eerily relevant now, in an age when the liberal order we cherish seems increasingly unsteady. We are living in a moment when we shout “regime decline” from the rooftops. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s classic novel is about what it feels like to live inside history—inside the collapse of a social order and the disorientation that accompanies the fall of a ruling class. In this episode, historian Dominic Green joins Shilo Brooks to explore why today’s American and British establishments resemble that fading aristocracy: oligarchic, overregulated, technologically backward, and increasingly contemptuous of the people they rule. Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. If you believe in the importance of civic education and want to help prepare the next generation to carry on our democracy, join us at JackMillerCenter.org. Become a paid subscriber to The Free Press today to enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and reduced ads. Click here to subscribe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most of us have read 1984 or Animal Farm. But fewer know of George Orwell’s first great work—an unvarnished account of his descent into the world of society’s outcasts. In this episode of Old School, Shilo Brooks sits down with Rob Henderson to discuss Down and Out in Paris and London, which is inspired by Orwell’s real-life plunge into the slums of two great European cities. Henderson draws on his own trajectory from foster care and poverty to the rarefied worlds of Yale, Cambridge, and elite culture. Their conversation examines why people with privilege so often misunderstand the realities of the poor, how poverty shapes the mind and spirit, and what Orwell ultimately discovered about the divisions—and the common ground—between classes. Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. If you believe in the importance of civic education and want to help prepare the next generation to carry on our democracy, join us at JackMillerCenter.org. Become a paid subscriber to The Free Press today to enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and reduced ads. Click here to subscribe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why do we believe what we believe? And how do those beliefs shape our politics? Thomas Sowell, one of the world’s most influential economists and social philosophers, set out to answer this question in his 1987 book, A Conflict of Visions. In it, he traces the underlying logic behind all modern political divides—why it is that knowing someone’s position on one issue, say gun control, makes it easy to predict their position on a totally unrelated issue, like abortion. In this episode, Shilo Brooks sits down with Coleman Hughes to discuss the book that Sowell himself calls his favorite. Their conversation—recorded well before yesterday’s election of Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani—illuminates why some of us buy into utopian projects of remaking society, while others trust the quiet power of incentive structures like free markets. Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. If you believe in the importance of civic education and want to help prepare the next generation to carry on our democracy, join us at JackMillerCenter.org. Become a paid subscriber to The Free Press today to enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and reduced ads. Click here to subscribe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is justice? And why should we live justly? These questions lie at the heart of Plato’s Republic, the foundational text of Western philosophy. In building his utopian city, Plato reveals how the quest for perfect justice can slip into tyranny. Yet his call for relentless self-examination—for resisting nihilism and seeking meaning—remains a starting point for us all. In this episode, Dr. Cornel West joins Shilo Brooks to discuss why ancient Greek philosophy remains relevant for all of us, regardless of race or background. Together, they argue that confronting Plato is a universal rite of passage for everyone seeking to overcome despair and live a good life. Plus: West critiques the corruption of American universities and political parties—especially the Democratic Party, which he declares “beyond redemption.” Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. If you believe in the importance of civic education and want to help prepare the next generation to carry on our democracy, join us at JackMillerCenter.org. Become a paid subscriber to The Free Press today to enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and reduced ads. Click here to subscribe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Few people have turned a love of the wild into a cultural force quite like Steve Rinella, the outdoorsman and author behind the MeatEater empire. Jim Harrison’s Wolf, published in 1971, changed Rinella’s life. In this episode, Rinella sits down with Shilo Brooks to discuss this stream-of-consciousness novel replete with chaos and male angst. He reflects on growing up in rural Michigan and seeing himself in Harrison’s protagonist—a bitter, damaged, self-destructive young man on a quest for meaning in the wilderness. Rinella lays bare the novel’s darker undercurrents and why it has appeal for young men lacking purpose. Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. If you believe in the importance of civic education and want to help prepare the next generation to carry on our democracy, join us at JackMillerCenter.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices