The Aaron Renn Show
Episodes
JOEL KOTKIN: Our Feudal Future
04 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Leading cultural analyst and policy maven Joel Kotkin will join me to discuss his book The Coming of Neo-Feudalism, as well as the state of California...
A Field Guide to Chambers of Commerce
31 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Many Republicans love to criticize the "Chamber of Commerce." But what is the chamber of commerce? In this podcast I answer that question, a...
You Can't Beat Something With Nothing
24 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Conservatives haven't tended to oppose things. As William F. Buckley famously put it, to "stand athwart history yelling Stop!" But pu...
Beyond Economic Piety
10 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
So many arguments today de facto reduce the definition of societal flourishing to some economic definition such as GDP growth, per capita GDP, or per ...
How to Start Creating a Productive Urban Household
02 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A listener asked how people who don't live on homestead farms can start creating a productive household. I share some thoughts about how people w...
Passing on Our Patrimony Redux
27 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Returning to the theme of passing on our patrimony, I discuss the great patriotic and folks song of America, using Columbia the Gem of the Ocean as an...
SEAN CLIFFORD: Fighting Back Against Pornography
14 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Sean Clifford is the CEO of Canopy, a company that produces software for blocking pornography on phones and other devices. We'll discuss the prob...
Are You Willing to Be the Elite?
06 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Everybody today likes to complain about the failures of elites. There's a lot to complain about. But are we willing to be elites ourselves? Are w...
RORY GROVES: Durable Trades
01 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Occupations are regularly created and destroyed in modern industrial America. But Rory Groves went back to the jobs that existed at the founding of th...
An Elite Church for the Elite
29 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Tell people you are starting a church to reach the homeless, a new immigrant ethnic group in town, a neighborhood, etc. and you'll be praised. ...
Don't Give in to Apocalyptic Thinking
22 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As we approach the US Thanksgiving holiday, I again remind people not to give into despair, to apocalyptic thinking, etc. Things are in some ways fa...
MICHAEL FOSTER & DOMINIC TENNANT: It's Good to Be a Man
18 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Foster and Dominic "Bnonn" Tennant join me to discuss their web project and forthcoming book It's Good to Be a Man. We discuss:...
Lessons from the Way Mormons Choose Elites
16 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Religion is in decline in America, but there's an exception: the Mormon church. Mormonism is growing, has strong family formation dynamics, healt...
JOHN MOODY: Resistance Is Fertile
11 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
John Moody is Kentucky a homesteader with an M.Div. who founded an organic food buying club in Louisville. He joins the show to talk about equipping y...
Passing on Your Patrimony
09 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Using the recent celebrations of Reformation Day and All Saints Day, I discuss why the church (especially the Protestant evangelical church) needs to ...
Who Are the Evangelical Elite? And Are They Failing?
02 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There's been a recent flurry of articles and podcasts discussing the failure of evangelical elites, whether they have in fact failed, wondering w...
Kids These Days
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There's a low grade moral panic about the state of Generation Z, fueled by bizarre Tik Tok videos, stories of teen girls suffering depression fro...
Women Openly Dumping Their Husbands for Selfish Reasons
19 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Women initiate the vast majority of divorces. It used to be that women felt the need to give a justification for divorcing their husbands. For example...
Protecting Your Opponents from Themselves
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In my previous podcast series on American conservatism, I observed that they have a pattern of jumping into the breach to try to defend their opponent...
The Small Mindedness of the Middle Class
06 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The upper class and the intellectuals have always particularly loathed the middle class. The novels of Sinclair Lewis or the essays of H. L. Mencken e...
Learning from Marcuse
29 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
American conservatives rarely read or engage with leftist thought outside of the mass media. This is a weakness because if they did do so, they'd...
The Cultural Contradictions of Conservative Values
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If you made a list of what a right wing fantasy utopia would look like for someone with localist leanings, you'll discover that the only people w...
What to Think About When You Think About Moving
07 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Americans are relocating, for economic, political, religious, or lifestyle reasons. But what should we think about when we think about moving? This po...
Do the Collapse
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Mars Hill Church collapsed suddenly. The American backed Afghan regime collapsed almost instantly as America withdrew. The Berlin Wall fell unexpected...
Mars Hill and Complementarianism
17 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week I weigh in with some initial thoughts on the Christianity Today podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. Although there are some legitimate c...
Why You Need to Know What's On Your Rap Sheet
10 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What are people saying about you when you aren't in the room? Everybody has a rap sheet. The only question is whether we know what's on ours...
Succession Planning in Churches
03 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 2013 Bill Hybels foretold a looming succession crisis for churches. He ended up being more right than he knew. He observed that there had been an e...
How We End Up With Pews Full of Older Singles
20 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The media glamorizes people making the choice to defer marriage and children in order to focus on other priorities like career. While this is a free c...
What We Can Learn from the Rosenberg Case
06 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's been 70 years since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were found guilty of spying for the Soviets and sentenced to death. The left continues to d...
Classical Education Is Not Enough
29 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Conservatives and Christians are very enamored of classical education. Studying the classics, the American founding, etc. are important things to do. ...
Playing for Keeps
22 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Darren Beattie once noted that "there is a profound psychological gulf between playing for scraps and playing for keeps." This podcast is ...
What Does It Really Mean to Be Red Pilled?
15 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
People on the internet throw the term "red pilled" around a lot. It obviously derives from the film the Matrix. But how should we think abou...
A Different Kind of Conservatism
08 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this final podcast installment looking at the fall of the old WASP establishment, we'll compare sociologist E. Digby Baltzell's conservat...
A Man In Full
01 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This episode looks at the implications of the fall of the WASP establishment by looking at the life and career of J. Irwin Miller, a WASP industrialis...
The Decline of the Gentleman
25 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Conservatives today bemoan the fact that men no longer behave as gentlemen. Yet their exhortations on the topic are without effect. E. Digby Baltzell&...
The Consequences of the Fall of the Establishment
18 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This episode in my series on the historic Protestant Establishment in the United States looks at the role the collapse of that establishment played in...
The Evolution of the American Upper Class
11 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This episode discusses the evolution of the American upper class from a local and familial to a national and associational community. It describes the...
The White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) Establishment
04 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Social class has fallen off the radar in America, but remains key to understanding many of the problems we face today in society. This includes everyt...
The Cost of the Decline of Mainline Protestantism
27 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The decline of Mainline Protestantism, that is the historically prominent American Protestant denominations, had profound consequences for America and...
Two Virtues of Fundamentalism
20 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Everybody likes to beat up on fundamentalists. I grew up in a rural, fundamentalist, pentecostal church. And while I am not a fundamentalist today and...
A Report from the Gospel Coalition
13 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Gospel Coalition is the flagship organization of the New Calvinism movement. They hold their major conference every two years in Indianapolis. Sin...
Metaphors of Race Relations
06 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In their book Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson noted how our language, and very way of perceiving the world, is saturated with met...
Don't Let the News Cycle Set Your Agenda
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In our 24x7 media and social media saturated world, it's very easy for us to spend too much time engaging in the controversies of the day and not...
Organic Community
23 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Our relationships in life can often be characterized as organic or inorganic, as naturally occurring or as artificial, consciously chosen or construct...
The Composition of Bodies
17 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
People tend to look at the compositions of bodies like legislatures or boards of directors based on attributes like party affiliation or race and gend...
Perceptions of Time
09 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Our perception of time and relation to it radically shifts over the course of our lives. Our perception of the flow of time accelerates as we age, for...
Once More Into the Breach
02 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Conservatives have long rushed to the defense of institutions and people who are threatened, even when those people and institutions were hostile to C...
Changing Evangelicalism's Deal With the Republican Party
23 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode I wrap up my series on conservatism, summarizing the previous installments and encouraging conservative Evangelicals to rethink their ...
Rethinking Free Trade
16 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Continuing with my series on conservatism, I note again that far from standing firm on timeless principles, conservatives have in fact changed their m...
Shills for Donors?
09 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Are conservative pundits just shills for donors? We'll look a bit at the role of money in the conservative intellectual world. While money plays ...
Two Cheers for Neoconservatism
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For some critics of conservatism, the neoconservatives are a sort of bogeyman to which they often attribute conservatisms' flaws and failings. Th...
Christianity, Conservatism and Crude Oil
26 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Who financed the rise of conservatism? A large amount of funding came from independent oil producers who were keen to avoid government regulation of t...
The Social Origins of American Conservatism
19 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The American conservative movement was founded by people who were largely socially outside the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) establishment of Am...
The Founding of Conservatism
12 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Many if not most conservatives in the United States have very little idea where the conservative movement originated and how it developed. This episod...
The Republican Party Hates Your Guts
05 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Evangelical Protestants and socially conservative Catholics have been among the most loyal voting blocks for the Republican Party. The electoral base ...
Why It's So Important to Keep Your Morale Up
30 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Too many Christians today evince an attitude of hopelessness and despair. Such attitudes can drain your morale and make it likely that you will preemp...
Legitimizing the Illegitimate
23 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Liberal groups have always treated non-incumbent conservative positions as illegitimate. Thus they do not substantively engage with them, debate or en...
When Conservatives Won the Institutional Battle
16 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The most consequential conservative Protestant victory of the last 100 years was likely the battle to expel liberal theology from the Lutheran Church-...
The Methodist Church Split Is a Terrible Deal for Conservatives
09 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Conservatives have long tended to underestimate the value of institutions, and to get out maneuvered by liberals in institutional battles. As a result...
Urban America's Labor Exploitation Racket
02 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This week's episode is a look at how major coastal elite cities have created an economic model that depends on the exploitation of a largely immi...
Regarding Tim Keller
25 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
No one is more associated with the rise of the urban church than Tim Keller, founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC. Increasingly, how...
Urban Christian Buddhism
18 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Catholic neoreactionary writer The Social Pathologist drew on the work of G.K. Chesterton to note how and de facto form of Buddhism had grown in the C...
Love Your City, Not Your Country
11 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this concluding episode of the series "Urban World, Urban Church" we look at several odd things about the urban church.The first is how n...
The Urban Church Has No Cultural Influence
04 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Donald Trump shined a light that exposed a fundamental rift inside Evangelical Christianity which was previously hidden to most people. This shows the...
The Post-Secular City
28 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Contrary to the popular belief that elite global cities are extremely secular, they are often much more religion-friendly than commonly advertised. Ne...
In the City for the City
19 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One characteristic of large coastal, elite cities, and their international brethren, is high population churn in their gentrified precincts. People ar...
The Theology of Pride
08 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Because elite cities have such a big role in creating and shaping culture, it's easy for Christians in them to fall into a theology of pride. The...
The Rise of the Elite City
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
American cities looked like they were headed for the scrap heap in the 1970s and 80s, but some of them, particularly the elite cities of the American ...
The Great Global Urbanization Wave
18 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This episode begins a series called "Urban World, Urban Church" looking at the trends in global urbanization and the church's response ...