Episode 85 – Strong Towns with Charles Marohn
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
Release Date: 06/15/2021
153 – Full-Time with David Bahnsen
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
David Bahnsen returns to the podcast to discuss his latest book: . David holds a high view of work and, in an era where self-help gurus are teaching us how to work less to achieve a work/life balance, David wants to shift the paradigm to work/rest and celebrate the productive nature of our being. Also discussed in this episode are what the church gets wrong about work, how each generation brings different challenges and advantages to work culture, universal basic income (UBI), whether the Marxist are right and work under a capitalist system is exploitation, and what the future of...
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152 – Humanist Conservatives with Jeffery Tyler Syck
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
Fusionism—the viewpoint advocated by the likes of William F. Buckley and Frank Meyer of order and liberty mutually reinforcing each other—has been the dominant form of conservatism in the United States for a generation. In the era of Trump and the rise of nationalist populism on the Right, however, fusionism has steadily lost influence. Should conservatives double down on what’s worked in the past? Or is it time for a different approach that was advocated by some of the original critics of fusionism on the Right? Joining Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is...
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151 – The God of This Lower World
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
What is the single most important virtue for a leader to possess? What quality can make the run-of-the-mill politician into a statesman? Is it integrity, communication skills, resilience, courage, empathy, or wisdom? All of these things are important, of course, and if any are sufficiently lacking we wouldn’t call that a good leader. But what would you say is the chief virtue? Conservative thinkers from Burke to Kirk to Kristol to Strauss and even many of the ancient and medieval thinkers from Aristotle to Plato to St. Thomas Aquainis identified a single virtue...
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150 – We Don't Need No Indoctrination with Luke Sheahan
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
What is the purpose of higher education? Is it primarily to prepare us for the jobs of the future? Is it to ensure the leaders of tomorrow hold the right opinions on important issues? Is it to provide a safe haven for the pursuit of Truth? Thinkers on the Right have held differing—sometimes incompatible—views on the purpose of higher education. Joining Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is returning guest Luke Sheahan to explore these arguments and how conservatives might respond to the rise of radicalism and wokism on college campuses. About Luke...
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149 – The Legacy of Roger Scruton with Fisher Derderian
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
Having published more than forty books on an astoundingly wide range of topics and holding noteworthy positions at the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, the University of Oxford, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the University of Buckingham, Sir Roger Scruton was the quintessential British gentleman and scholar. He was also one of the greatest conservative intellectuals of the last century and the beginning of this century who died in 2020. Fisher Derderian joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis for a woefully incomplete exploration at the legacy of...
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148 – Conservatism in Practice with Gov Mitch Daniels
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
The Saving Elephants podcast has welcomed a wide array of incredible guests who are on forefront of the conservative political movement. But most of the guests discuss conservatism from the perspective of a theory or set of principles or idea. Few have had the opportunity to enact political conservatism as a practice. And few ex-politicians have been as successful as former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels in advancing conservatism as a practice. While Daniels is reticent to label his approach “conservative” or identify as part of red team vs. blue team, his practices...
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147 – Where the Religious Right Went Wrong with JB Shreve
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
One of the strangest political developments over the past several decades has been the devolution of the Religious Right and large swaths of politically active Evangelicals as they morphed from character counts moralists of the 1990s to MAGA Trumplicans. Regardless of the merits of where the Religious Right stands today, one could be forgiven for being perplexed at how they arrived here at all. Joining Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is JB Shreve, creator of podcast and blog, to demystify the Religious Right’s conversion to the Church of Trump. Both JB and Josh were...
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146 – The Myth of Nationalism with Samuel Goldman
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
What does is mean to be an American? And why do we Americans obsess so much over the question of what it means to be an American? This nagging question has plagued our nation since its birth and various national “myths” have been advanced to offer some form of national identity and cohesion. At times one myth has proven stronger than the others, only to be overshadowed as historical events call its sufficiency and truth into question. So where does that leave us today in an era of collective, existential crisis? Joining Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to...
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145 – Smoking Yule Logs and Donning Gay Apparel
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
In 2021, Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis joined three other veteran podcasters on a new podcast endeavor: Are We Right? Cal Davenport, Brooke Medina, and Calvin Moore, and Josh debated a wide range of topics from politics to religion to culture and invited the audience to weigh in on whether or not they’re right. While the show was tragically short-lived, a number of excellent episodes were produced and this is a re-podcast of their Christmas episode to commemorate the holiday season: In the spirit of the season, Are We Right presents an epic Christmas-themed episode unmatched in...
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144 – Conservative Historian Redux with AD Tippet
Saving Elephants | Millennials defending & expressing conservative values
Earlier this year Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis was on AD Tippet’s podcast, . This episode is a re-podcast of that conversation that covered a wide variety of conservative topics from both the past and today. About AD Tippet AD Tippet (the podcast formerly known as Belisarius Aves) is the founder and publisher of the Conservative Historian and . “History is too important to be left to the left,” writes AD. “The Conservative Historian provides content and opinions on conservative thinking through the prism of history.” You can follow Bel on Twitter @BelAves...
info_outlineFor thousands of years the ways in which cities and towns developed has provided us with a of blueprint for what human habitats need to flourish. Yet today many of our cities and towns have forsaken these tried-and-true methods and instead imposed rational planning and an overreliance on pricey infrastructure projects to foster growth and further development. What are the potential downfalls of departing from these practices of the past?
Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is joined by Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns to traverse the world of urban planning and discuss the need for a return to the ancient models of development, the terrible costs of over-indebted infrastructure projects to younger Americans, whether or not Wal-Mart is a net boon or detriment to local communities, and how conservatism can help us form a more prosperous and enjoyable world.
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About Charles Marohn
Charles (or “Chuck” to friends and colleagues) Marohn is the founder and president of Strong Towns, a nonprofit that supports thousands of people across the United States and Canada who are advocating for a radically new way of thinking about the way we build our world. Marohn is a professional engineer and a land use planner with decades of experience. He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning, both from the University of Minnesota.
Marohn is the author of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity (Wiley, 2019). He hosts the Strong Towns Podcast and is a primary writer for Strong Towns’ web content. He has presented Strong Towns concepts in hundreds of cities and towns across North America. Planetizen named him one of the 10 Most Influential Urbanists of all time. He is a long-time commentator on KAXE Northern Community Radio. He currently co-hosts KAXE’s Dig Deep program, a monthly examination of public policy issues affecting Minnesotans.
Marohn grew up on a small farm in central Minnesota. The oldest of three sons of two elementary school teachers, he joined the Minnesota National Guard on his seventeenth birthday during his junior year of high school and served in the Guard for nine years. In addition to being passionate about building a stronger America, he loves playing music, is an obsessive reader, and religiously follows his favorite team, the Minnesota Twins. Chuck and his wife live with their two daughters in their hometown of Brainerd, Minnesota. You can find him on Twitter @clmarohn
Listener Mail
Josh responds to a listener’s question about conservatism’s challenges with appealing to minorities and whether our nation’s institutions are worth conserving given the history of American slavery and other past sins.