If you’ve been enjoying Contra but haven’t picked up a subscription, here is your chance to do so at a discount. Twenty percent off for one year, running from now until the end of September.
The podcast has been my favorite thing in a long time, and I’ve got a few great guests coming soon, now that I’m back from visiting family in Germany. I’m going to write about that eventually.
Contra started as a primarily political endeavor, but, as you know, it has evolved into something more focused on culture—but not the culture war, which has very little to do with culture. I’ve even been talking with a few different talented authors and artists who live abroad, and I’m looking forward to bringing them on the show for you to hear from.
I think the appetite for political content in the media market will always be greater than the demand for non-political content. But I would ask you to think about that term in a more fundamental sense, in the sense that the Greeks thought of themselves as practicing political government in contrast to their Asiatic neighbors, who did not. “Politics, they thought, could only exist in self-governing city states—in a polis or a republic, and under the rule of law,” writes Alan Ryan in On Politics. “There was no politics in Persian because the great king was the master of slaves, not the ruler of citizens.” Different regime types also had different relationships to art. For the Persians, art conveyed power and the dominance of rulers, who were depicted as rigid, divine, and colossal figures demanding total authority. In contrast, the Greeks, who made the gods in their image, focused on the individual, nature, and the human form. Greek art was, in other words, focused on examining human life, and that is what all great works share in common, whether it is a painting, a story, or a children’s book.
These things are worth your time even though and perhaps especially because they have no connection to the news cycle that wants to enslave your attention with ephemera. If you agree, I hope you will consider subscribing to Contra.