Libsyn Directory

The Knowledge Machine How Irrationality Created Modern Science

We Are Not Saved

This was my entry to the 2026 ACX Book Review Contest. Given that it was, sadly, judged inadequate to the high standards of the ACX readership, I must now inflict it on you. Hopefully, with your obviously lower standards, you’ll enjoy it. It is ridiculously long. These warnings aside, I would urge you to at least read parts one and two. The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science By: Michael Strevens 0. Why This Book? Out of the tens of millions of books ever written over the centuries, why review this one? Because science is the secret to the creation of the modern world...

Let Him Have Thy Legos Also - [Essay]

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I. If you don’t live in Utah, you may not have heard that the Great Salt Lake is in trouble. It’s been rapidly dwindling in size and depth, and while it’s never going to disappear entirely (though look at the ), there are always issues when an environment goes through a rapid transformation. The big worry is that the lake will become so salty that even brine shrimp and brine flies can no longer survive. This would eliminate a major source of food for migrating birds, while at the same time a shrinking lake also removes the wetlands they use for mid-migration habitat. There are other...

The Desecration of Man - Say No to Nietzsche

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The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity By: Carl R. Trueman Published: 2026 256 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? In the standard story of the transition from the premodern to the modern, the world has gradually been disenchanted. Depending on who you are, this is either a good thing, a sad thing, or a mixed thing. Trueman’s contention is that disenchantment has, over the last few decades, transitioned to desecration. In his telling, the modern world hasn’t just outgrown the sacred, it’s rebelled against it. Much like a headstrong teenager might...

Four Books on the End (Or at Least the Plateauing) of Civilization

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Do Not Go Gentle - State Provided Death is Incoherent

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Do Not Go Gentle: The Case Against Assisted Death By: Kathleen Stock Published: 2026 304 pages Briefly, what is this book about? The general topic is right there in the subtitle, but Stock separates out two distinct ideological foundations. There are those who consider assisted death (a term she prefers over “assisted dying”) to be a way of eliminating suffering. And then there are those who view it as a principle of liberty: If we allow people absolute bodily autonomy, why should someone be prevented from choosing to end their life? One problem with having two ideologies is that they...

Annihilation – A (Very French) Biography of the "Last Man"

We Are Not Saved

Annihilation: A Novel By: Michel Houellebecq Translated by: Shaun Whiteside Published: 2022 (English translation 2024) 544 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? Houellebecq is a well-known French author, and this book felt very French to me. What does that mean? Good question… Certainly there is a lot of wine drinking, a fair number of R-rated sex scenes, and French politics plays a major part as well. Mostly I think there’s a lushness, and a lack of action or even conclusion, which reads more as European decadence than the typical American delusion I’m used to. I opened with a...

Picky How Modernity Completely Screwed Up (Part LXVII)

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Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History By: Helen Zoe Veit Published: 2026 304 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? Stop me if you’ve heard this one… Up until the beginning of the 20th century we never ever did this one thing, and then starting in the 20th century attitudes and culture gradually changed until now, this very new thing, that basically never existed historically, is accepted as a fact of life. For this go-around it’s children being picky about food. The whole concept only began to emerge in the 1930s and back then it was just used to identify...

Last Branch Standing - Honey Badger References and Case Analysis

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Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today's Supreme Court By: Sarah Isgur Published: 2026 416 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? A deep dive into the Roberts Court, with a historical framing of the Court as a whole. Two main themes run through the book. First, while people want to evaluate the Court on the single axis of liberal vs. conservative, there is a second, perhaps more important axis that tracks the institutionalism of the justices—respect for precedent, maintaining the legitimacy of the Court, congressional deference, etc....

Four Short Classics for the Lazy Pseudo-Intellectual

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Against the Machine - Steelmanning Modern Luddism

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Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity By: Paul Kingsnorth Published: 2025 368 Pages Briefly, what is this book about? Before Kingsnorth can tell you how to be against the Machine, he first sets out to define it. The Machine is multi-faceted, but Kingsnorth distills it down into four S’s: Science, The Self, Sex, and the Screen. To take a position “against the Machine” he urges a return to the four P’s: People, Place, Prayer, and the Past. But before you grasp this simple heuristic too firmly, it turns out that not all P’s are good, and not all S’s are bad. He is opposed...

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