Reenchanting the Canadian Culture War

A thematic overview of some recent podcasts, and a couple of reviews and recommendations

Manuel Guzman

It’s been a while since the last time I put out a ‘recent podcasts’ notification; I don’t like to spam your inbox every time I’m invited onto someone’s show to chat about whatever, which is why I prefer to bundle several of them together in an occasional digest. That said, I’ve fallen a couple months behind (I foolishly accepted a couple of side quests recently, which have largely distracted me from Substack the last couple weeks...), and have four – yes, four – podcasts to share with you

The first was all the way back in January, when

Johann Kurtz

invited me on to discuss the sociopolitical implications of Iain McGilchrist’s hemispheric hypothesis. That’s something I’ve written about at some length a few times now, for instance in The Internet is a Brain With Schizophrenia or Political Conflict in the Age of Psychic Warfare, so long-time readers will have some idea of McGilchrist’s description of the cognitive differences between the hemispheres, along with the vast range of implications that emerge from this. If you don’t, this episode is great introduction to the concept. We also got into The Reenchantment of the World, which Johann was particularly eager to talk about (and of course, tied this directly back to the hemispheric hypothesis).

State imposed autism w/ John Carter

Manuel Guzman

Next up, I was greatly honoured to be the inaugural guest on the first episode of

Kulak

’s new podcast. It was a long, wide-ranging conversation, during which I only got slightly drunk, covering the Canadian annexation question and the absolute state of the Mediocre Browning North, American imperial decline (or rise?), the Christmas H1B War, “anti”-discrimination laws, and a Hearts of Iron 4 mod that gamed out the Second American Civil War (which, much to Kulak’s disappointment, seems so much less likely to happen, now). My hostess was absolutely delightful to talk to, and I think you’ll enjoy this long, wide-ranging discussion.

Ep 1: Canada, The US, and Other Parts of the Subcontinent w/ John Carter of Mars

Manuel Guzman

My third podcast was a three-way conversation on Counter-Currents Radio with

Fortissax

and our host,

Endeavour

. This was a highly structured conversation – Endeavor’s a pro, he knows what he’s doing – focusing on the Canada Question: the deplorable state of Canada’s military; the desirability (or undesirability) of statehood; Trudeau’s Liberal Party outflanking the Conservative to the right on immigration; the role of China; Canada’s status as the pre-eminent Davos sandbox state; and if I recall, the lack of an effective populist alternative on the Canadian political landscape.

https://counter-currents.com/2025/02/counter-currents-radio-podcast-no-625-canada-edition/

Manuel Guzman

Finally, last week my good friend

Daniel D

invited me on to discuss the current state of the culture war, largely motivated by my first essay of 2025, The Blitzkrieg Through the Institutions. It seems some people took exception to the optimistic tone I struck here. How dare I celebrate when we rack up some wins? Don’t I realize it’s all a trick? That when we win, we’re actually losing? Am I trying to deradicalize people? To get them to stop fighting? Am I being paid by Peter Thiel?

Unfortunately for my modest finances, I am not being paid by Thiel. It sounds like a sweet gig. Sadly, I am merely a humble anon essayist, and the only people who pay me, dear readers, are you. Well, some of you pay, anyhow (most do not, c’est la vie). For the record, somewhat fewer pay now than were paying at the beginning of the year ... my impression is that times are hard, Christmas bites deep into the credit limit as it always does, people have too many subscriptions, and humble anon essayists are the first luxury expense to feel the pinch. Indeed, some have sent very nice messages saying precisely this. I’m not complaining, mind you. Well, that’s not quite true, but the point is, I’m not getting paid by billionaires to write things they like. I write what I want to write about, and the freedom to do that is one of the things I like about being, er, ‘employed’ as a humble anon essayist. I try to say only things that I think, or feel, to be true, and where I’m speculating (which, yes, I love to do that as well), I try to make that quite clear.

In any case, as I hope I make clear in this conversation with Daniel – which actually covers quite a bit more ground than Blitzkrieg – I don’t for a moment think we should stop fighting. Merely that the character of the arena, and therefore of the contest, has changed dramatically in a very short period of time, and we should therefore update our sense of the possible to include the possibility of different – more aggressive and assertive – tactics than we have heretofore been in a position to adopt. Now is not the time to rest, but the time to push even harder.

A New Phase in the Culture War?

Manuel Guzman

Since I’m writing about podcasts, I’ll take this opportunity to tell you about one that I recently discovered: Cost of Glory, a classics podcast by Alex Petkas. Alex is a professionally trained classicist who abandoned academia out of frustration with, as he put it to me, the complete collapse of paideia, the rampant careerism, and the petifoggery bedevilling those caught up in the narrowly-focused research paths demanded by academic culture, abandoning the crumbling ivory tower for the open wilds of the digital frontier, where he can teach what he wants, the way he wants. I’ve been listening to his summary of Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars in the gym for the last week; his renditions of Caesar’s martial feats make for a great accompaniment to heavy compound lifts (Alex further tells me the idea to cover the Commentaries was born in the gym).

Petkas isn’t only a podcaster, he also has an online school, the Rostra, where he trains his students in the lost masculine art of persuasion and oratory that was once recognized as the high political science of rhetoric. I’ll be popping in there in a couple of weeks to chat with his class (about what, I have no idea yet). Every summer he’s been gathering some of his students for a men’s retreat, usually in Italy, but this year in Greece. The idea to spend a week intensively improving your ability to move men’s hearts and minds with the power of rhetoric by training with a group of like-minded men, while taking inspiration from the sights and locales in which Western civilization was born. The retreat isn’t cheap by any means – the basic package runs to $4500 (which can be paid in instalments), not counting the flight – but Alex has offered a promo deal for my readers: the code BARSOOM will get you $300 off, savings with which one can afford quite a bit of ouzo.

Manuel Guzman

A couple of months ago I started a promo thread for right-wing artists on X, inviting readers to drop names in the replies, and retweeting the art that I liked. All of the art featured in this piece comes from Manuel Guzman; you can find him @LolosArt on X, and you can see more of his whimsical, captivating artwork by following the links here.

Manuel does commissions, such as the cover art for

Alexander Hellene

’s wonderful sword and planet trilogy The Swordbringer, but he also creates his own books. His first (that I’m aware of) is the richly painted, dreamlike fairy tale In Search of Sacha, which is available on Amazon, although Manuel strongly prefers that you use his own store (apparently there’s a used copy that comes up first on Amazon, which he doesn’t get paid any money from). You can see one of the paintings from the book in the picture above. The story follows two ethereal woodland guardians searching for their lost son, penetrating ever deeper into a dark forest as they attempt to determine where he is, and why he has gone missing ... but in the end, despite their best efforts, their son must save himself. It’s a story told in the language of symbolism, exploring themes of despair and forgiveness, of romance and redemption, of overcoming the selfish desires of our base animal instincts through understanding and love. It is not explicitly Christian, but it is a story that emanates from a profoundly Christian relationship to the world and the people in it – and this is to be expected, as Guzman is himself a man of faith. The one critique I’d make was that I found the text a bit hard to read at times (probably a sign that I need to get over my vanity and start using glasses), but honestly that didn’t really matter – Guzman is such a skilled artist that his beautiful imagery tells the story quite powerfully all on its own. You can see a trailer for In Search of Sacha here.

Guzman also has a forthcoming art collection, which he recently successfully funded on Indiegogo ... which makes me very happy, because I’d intended to help promote the campaign here, but didn’t get around to writing this promo piece until now (sorry, Manuel!) Lolo’s Art Book is a work in progress, so you can’t actually get it yet on Amazon, but copies are available for pre-order at the Indiegogo page.

Manuel Guzman

As always, dear readers, thank you for taking time out of your busy days to gift me with a few minutes of your valuable attention. I hope you found something above diverting enough to give it a bit more of your attention. And again, as always, my deepest gratitude for my patrons, both for your generosity and your patience. Posting has been a bit light recently, partly due to the side quests I mentioned at the beginning, and partly because I’ve been working on a couple of longer pieces that aren’t quite ready for publication yet, though I hope they will be soon. In the meantime, because Substack will complain if I don’t do it, I’ll just leave this here:

And I will see you again soon.