Blame Theory
Blame Theory
Geoff Shullenberger
Anchored by Geoff Shullenberger and Ashley Frawley, Blame Theory takes a seriously playful look at the ideas that have shaped our minds and our world, to ask: How have we ended up here, and whom or what can we blame? compactmag.substack.com
Blame the Frankfurt School? (Part 2)
Ashley and Geoff discuss “The Concept of Enlightenment,” the first section of Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment.This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
May 31
1 hr 27 min
Blame the Frankfurt School? (Part 1)
Ashley Frawley and Geoff Shullenberger discuss Geoff’s article “The Frankfurt School Myth,” A.J.A. Woods’s book The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy, and Ashley’s own gripes with the School.This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
May 15
1 hr 36 min
The Epstein Intellectual Complex
Ashley Frawley joins Geoff Shullenberger to discuss her essay, “Jeffrey Epstein’s Necrophilia—and Ours,” and the significance of Epstein’s interests in transhumanism, eugenics, and related subjects.This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
Mar 2
1 hr 38 min
The Crisis of Liberalism (Part 7): Nick Land’s Paleoliberal Accelerationism
Geoff Shullenberger and Ashley Frawley discuss the career and thought of the philosopher Nick Land, accelerationist, neoreactionary, and advocate of “paleo-liberalism.” Read Geoff’s recent profile of Land here.This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
Oct 21, 2025
1 hr 54 min
The Crisis of Liberalism (Part 6): The Persistence of Eugenics
Ashley Frawley and Geoff Shullenberger discuss the long afterlife of eugenics, from sociobiology and The Bell Curve to today's online right.This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
Sep 22, 2025
1 hr 31 min
The Crisis of Liberalism (Part 5): The Origins of Eugenics
In conversation with Geoff Shullenberger, Ashley Frawley explains how eugenic thinking and practices emerge out of the crisis of liberalism. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
Jul 22, 2025
1 hr 22 min
The Crisis of Liberalism (Part 4): The End of Woke?
Geoff Shullenberger and Ashley Frawley discuss Andrew Doyle’s new book The End of Woke, which Ashley reviewed in Compact. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
Jun 2, 2025
1 hr 14 min
The Crisis of Liberalism (Part 3): The Trans-ing of the Political Subject
Ashley Frawley joins Geoff Shullenberger to discuss her Compact column, "How Society Got a Sex Change," and its relevance to the evolution of liberalism. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
May 15, 2025
1 hr 15 min
The Crisis of Liberalism (Part 2)
Geoff Shullenberger and Ashley Frawley continue to explore the crisis of liberalism. They begin by discussing recent reversals around free-speech debates in the United States and the odd fact that ostensible post- and anti-liberals have often positioned themselves as defenders of a central liberal value: free speech. They then begin to explore the postliberal critique and other blame narratives that have arisen around liberalism in recent years and ask whether the problem with liberalism is that it grants too much freedom, or too little. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
Mar 17, 2025
1 hr 8 min
The Crisis of Liberalism (Part 1)
Liberalism is in crisis. Its parties and institutions are suffering one setback after another across the West, and forces described as “illiberal” are on the rise globally. But when did this crisis begin? Was liberalism ever not in crisis? Is liberalism itself a kind of crisis? In the first episode of a longer series on the meanings and legacies of liberalism, Ashley Frawley and Geoff Shullenberger lay out the themes and questions that will inform their exploration of an ideology that has received plenty of blame from both the right and the left—in part because it has been the dominant one for hundreds of years. In this conversation, Ashley explains why the conflict between social and political liberalism and economic liberalism is foundational to the modern world, and constitutes a crisis that liberalism has never been able to transcend. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit compactmag.substack.com/subscribe
Mar 7, 2025
1 hr 15 min
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