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How to Maintain a Stable Government
Robust institutions must constantly be guarded from elite capture. Diverting the government away from its public mission is a reliable way to radicalize…
Feb 16
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Christopher Gerlacher
1
How Crowds Go Wrong
William Bernstein's exploration of periods of mass hysteria shows how we fall for convenient stories and badly project the future.
Feb 9
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Christopher Gerlacher
3
How Flexible Ideologies Contribute to Political Success
The Chinese Communist Party is not a model for democratic movements, but the CCP's history shows how political movements succeed or fail.
Feb 2
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Christopher Gerlacher
1
A Practical Guide to Navigating Hell
R. F. Kuang's Katabasis is an exploration of not only the author's fictional Hell, but also the myriad Hell myths we've created over thousands of years.
Jan 26
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Christopher Gerlacher
2
Why More Information is Bad for Us
Yuval Noah Harari's history of information shows how much more important the use of information is than producing more of it.
Jan 19
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Christopher Gerlacher
3
How a 1,000-Year-Old Poem Undermines the Iranian Regime
Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat celebrates earthly pleasures that, like the author, remain banned under Iran's revolutionary government.
Jan 12
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Christopher Gerlacher
4
What is Politics For, Anyway?
Francis Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order paints a clear picture of why the politics we practice today is a huge improvement over the…
Jan 5
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Christopher Gerlacher
5
How Movies Make the World Feel More Real
The Moviegoer is an exploration of the search for meaning and the disconnect between a well-crafted world and the real one.
Dec 29, 2025
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Christopher Gerlacher
2
Who Government Workers Really Are
The federal government is more than just the clerks working in government buildings. Some of them have solved intractable problems and built meaningful…
Dec 22, 2025
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Christopher Gerlacher
2
How We Lie to Ourselves About Our Inherent Goodness
Albert Camus' book The Fall is a challenge to confront the worst parts of ourselves that may never be tested in the real world.
Dec 15, 2025
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Christopher Gerlacher
2
How Extremists Give Permission to Relinquish Moral Responsibility
Salman Rushdie's fifth novel is a family saga warning of the dangers of political extremism and how quickly societies can change.
Dec 8, 2025
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Christopher Gerlacher
2
Mephisto, the Critic of the Digital Age
The Devil's manipulative abilities in Goethe's play, Faust, reveal frailties that remain common two centuries after its publication.
Dec 1, 2025
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Christopher Gerlacher
2
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