Show Notes:

(0:18) Michael’s languages background

(3:41) How Latin operates as a gateway drug for appreciating the general structure of language

(6:50) Why philology is the atomic element of historiography

(8:26) How Michael sent a letter to every federal minister in Canada

(14:48) The dangerous and precarious dynamics of a life in policy

(19:08) Anything the government says or does is technically policy and all policy has both an operational and a political aspect

(20:10) The artefacts of policy work

(25:30) Michael’s connection with Nassim Taleb and an argument for how we should think about multiculturalism in the context of history.

(35:44) How this connection led on to a connection with Tom Holland

(38:11) Expanding our knowledge of history as the route to better understanding of a broader multiculturalism

(39:36) Spengler and how a historian can remain truthful but still say interesting things

(45:28) The vision of the Sassanian empire as the continuation of the Near Eastern tradition of civilisation

(50:34) Michael’s new book In Defence of Civilisation

(58:38) The foundations of civilisation evidenced in old kingdom Egypt: Clarity, Beauty, and Order

(1:05:14) Homer as the preservation of a high culture that was no longer present

(1:15:30) How our subjectivity has triumphed over our sense of a universal humanity

(1:20:54) How relativity, and chaos theory have affected art

(1:23:41) China’s present day attempt to recapture civilisation through a return to Confucianism

References made in this episode:
- Michael’s personal site. He’s also active on Twitter
- Jason Kenney, a Canadian conservative leader and the former premier of Alberta
- Nassim Taleb, the cantankerous defender of statistical accuracy and the author of The Black Swan
- The infamous Mary Beard Tweet, Taleb’s response and Michael’s article on the topic
- Oswald Spengler and The Decline of the West. This lecture gives a great summary
- Michael’s most recent book The Last Empire of Iran and his next book In Defence of Civilisation (set for release in April 2023) here’s a teaser Michael released