I gave up about 2/3rds of the way into the Tom Tugendhat interview — hearing him call hereditary peers "a system of lottery that injects randomness into the House of Lords" and really meaning it (ie. not an attempt at irony) was genuinely bizarre.
Yes, I think one of Tyler's weaknesses when it comes to thinking about the UK is that many of the most outwardly impressive MPs are Tories, and those are the ones he likes hanging around. But their actual policy ideas strike me as trite and often silly
I feel like you would agree with 90% of Tom's policies. Tom is pro-market, voted remain, and wants to build more stuff. I can see why his "private schools benefit the community" takes piss you off, but it's just high tory vibes right. What of substance do you disagree with him on?
I am not claiming that I disagree on substance, nor the opposite, because I haven't looked into it. I really did just mean that some of his answers were silly and didn't really answer the question. Which I guess is related to why politicians don't normally make good podcast guests
Which answers did you think were evasive? I think his answer on the Tonbridge School was odd (who cares about access to the athletic field or the theatre?), but is the reason you thought it was evasive because he didn’t actually talk about the education delivered by the School plus he didn’t *really* address the equality-related objections other than shrugging and saying there were vouchers or scholarships on offer?
The House of Lords point seemed interesting to me. I don’t think I’m *persuaded* by it, and I think the analogy to a lottery is completely wrong (unless you think a lottery only gets won by a particular class of people, who probably have all have pretty correlated beliefs on most policy issues), but it was an interesting answer.
The reference to lottery was probably top of mind because there's an ongoing campaign in the UK to replace the House of Lords with a sortition-based chamber (sortition being a stratified lottery). Probably just equated the two given that this is being discussed there at the moment, even though nationally-stratified sortition and hereditary peers they are literally exact opposites, which is what made that answer of his particularly stupid.
As Tyler mentioned in a recent interview, the worst guests are the ones that say the answer they think you want to hear rather than what they actually think is the right answer, but that's what politicians often do and why they aren't as interesting as guests on podcasts like Tylers. I was very aware throughout the interview that he sounded like a politician rather than someone sharing their unique professional experience.
Also when Tyler asked "What did you learn from active service in Afghanistan that most people would be surprised by?", Tom replied "Be kind", which was a jarringly strange answer (it's rare Tyler replies the guests answer right back at them verbatim, but I took this as a sign of Tyler's own bewilderment at this answer too).
marvellous round up, many thanks!
I gave up about 2/3rds of the way into the Tom Tugendhat interview — hearing him call hereditary peers "a system of lottery that injects randomness into the House of Lords" and really meaning it (ie. not an attempt at irony) was genuinely bizarre.
Yes, I think one of Tyler's weaknesses when it comes to thinking about the UK is that many of the most outwardly impressive MPs are Tories, and those are the ones he likes hanging around. But their actual policy ideas strike me as trite and often silly
I feel like you would agree with 90% of Tom's policies. Tom is pro-market, voted remain, and wants to build more stuff. I can see why his "private schools benefit the community" takes piss you off, but it's just high tory vibes right. What of substance do you disagree with him on?
I am not claiming that I disagree on substance, nor the opposite, because I haven't looked into it. I really did just mean that some of his answers were silly and didn't really answer the question. Which I guess is related to why politicians don't normally make good podcast guests
Which answers did you think were evasive? I think his answer on the Tonbridge School was odd (who cares about access to the athletic field or the theatre?), but is the reason you thought it was evasive because he didn’t actually talk about the education delivered by the School plus he didn’t *really* address the equality-related objections other than shrugging and saying there were vouchers or scholarships on offer?
The House of Lords point seemed interesting to me. I don’t think I’m *persuaded* by it, and I think the analogy to a lottery is completely wrong (unless you think a lottery only gets won by a particular class of people, who probably have all have pretty correlated beliefs on most policy issues), but it was an interesting answer.
The reference to lottery was probably top of mind because there's an ongoing campaign in the UK to replace the House of Lords with a sortition-based chamber (sortition being a stratified lottery). Probably just equated the two given that this is being discussed there at the moment, even though nationally-stratified sortition and hereditary peers they are literally exact opposites, which is what made that answer of his particularly stupid.
As Tyler mentioned in a recent interview, the worst guests are the ones that say the answer they think you want to hear rather than what they actually think is the right answer, but that's what politicians often do and why they aren't as interesting as guests on podcasts like Tylers. I was very aware throughout the interview that he sounded like a politician rather than someone sharing their unique professional experience.
Also when Tyler asked "What did you learn from active service in Afghanistan that most people would be surprised by?", Tom replied "Be kind", which was a jarringly strange answer (it's rare Tyler replies the guests answer right back at them verbatim, but I took this as a sign of Tyler's own bewilderment at this answer too).
You left out the funniest part of the Hinton interview - what Metz said when they *resumed* after the hangup.
in terms of art books, I found The Shock of the New to be a good intro, and quite absorbing. Big plates, too