About today's guest—

He's here with us to discuss his recent book, A Road to Nowhere: The Idea of Progress and Its Critics.

A visiting assistant professor of politics and public affairs, political science, and international relations at Denison University and former fellow at the James Madison Program at Princeton, Matthew Slaboch is an insightful scholar of political philosophy, focusing on notions of progress in the history of political thought. With the shattering of peace in Europe and apparent decline of democracies around the world, his book and conversations about the nature of progress are especially relevant.

About today's topic—

Due to untimely neighborhood leaf-blowing, we were back in the closet to record this one, but thankfully it wasn't as hot as last time, when we talked with Daniel Aldrich. However, our conversation was just as lively and interesting, ranging from discussions of philosophy to deliberations on the roots of Putin's thinking regarding Ukraine and international relations. We enjoyed our time and are sure you will too, and if you'd like to skip around, here's a table of contents.

00:00— Getting started
02:07— What is "progress"?
06:32— Do you especially  identify with one thinker in the book?
11:30— What's the relationship between progress and democracy?
21:46— What about progress and nationalism?
28:43— Where does Putin get his inspiration from? Is he just another in a long line of Russian thinkers to reach similar conclusions about the world?
36:10— What's the point of participating in politics if progress isn't real?
42:40— Movie recommendation on the topic of progress  
46:34— Wrapping up

If you're interested in purchasing Professor Slaboch's book, you can find it here.

Enjoy the conversation, and a special thanks to Professor Slaboch for sitting down with us!