Eric Scheske

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Eric Scheske

Eric Scheske

Why Curb Your Enthusiasm is Funny

Why Curb Your Enthusiasm is Funny

Good-Bye, CurbThe last Curb Your Enthusiasm aired Sunday. It will be sorely missed, even if I think this last season hasn’t been as good as the previous ones. Britannica has a great entry about Curb basics. I don’t think you’ll need a subscription to access it. Two

Partial Payments: Essays on Writers and Their Lives, by Joseph Epstein

Partial Payments: Essays on Writers and Their Lives, by Joseph Epstein

A Micro-Review/Essay “I am indebted to these writers.” Paean. Nineteen of them. An essayist removes his hat, lowers his head, and says “thanks.” The essayist convinces us these subjects are great. We then understand that the essayist is great. Like recognizes like. Max Beerbohm’s prose is difficult to

Are We Really Supposed to Believe Psychedelics Gave Us Our Souls?

Are We Really Supposed to Believe Psychedelics Gave Us Our Souls?

A mushroom? Or God? I didn’t fully appreciate the implication of The Stoned Ape theory until listening to Lex Fridman’s interview with Brian Muraresku. Muraresku recently published The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name, which claims psychedelics, in particular psilocybin, has made huge,

Mint Julep: The Percy Battle?

Mint Julep: The Percy Battle?

Poet Will Percy provided this recipe for the Mint Julep in his autobiography, Lanterns on the Levee: First you needed excellent bourbon whisky; rye or Scotch would not do at all. Then you put half an inch of sugar in the bottom of the glass and merely dampened it with

Jimmy Buffet: Hymnographer

Jimmy Buffet: Hymnographer

How Jimmy Buffet can help cultivate the virtue of detachment I started listening to Jimmy Buffet songs when I was in law school. Though I was ambitiously studying hard so I could get a job with a powerful law firm, I was drawn to Buffet's music because it

How to be a Good Agrarian

How to be a Good Agrarian

I hung out with Michael Jordan outside Chicago about twenty years ago. No, not basketball Michael Jordan. I'm talking about Michael Jordan, the English professor from Hillsdale College. We met at a Touchstone conference at Mundelein Seminary. He saw my name tag and said he enjoyed my articles.

Russia’s Freaky History with the Cult of Mother Earth

Russia’s Freaky History with the Cult of Mother Earth

The Russian digs Mother Earth. This has been the case from Russia’s earliest years when dark and brutal paganism soaked her culture in blood.[1] The Russian venerates Mother Earth for her black depths, for the crops of life she provides, and for the resting home she gives at

Listening to Podcasts at Oxford in 1374 and Kansas in 1974

Listening to Podcasts at Oxford in 1374 and Kansas in 1974

Why do we love those conversational podcasts? If you were a student at a medieval university, you listened to lectures. And listened and listened and listened to lectures, often more than ten hours a day. But they weren’t like lectures at today’s universities, where hundreds of students sit

Lady, You Have One Ugly Kid

Lady, You Have One Ugly Kid

If you haven't heard, you haven't been listening: Europe is grossly under-birthed, and the United States isn't far behind. For a society to replace its population, demographers say each woman needs to average 2.1 children. The last time I looked, Germany was at