The Close Read Podcast

The European Union’s crusade to eliminate so-called “harmful speech” has breached America’s digital boundaries. The Digital Services Act effectively gives EU bureaucrats the ability to curb Americans’ constitutional rights, doing away with free speech in today’s online public square. In this Close Read bonus episode, associate editor Spencer Klavan is joined by former professor of political philos...

Associate Editor Spencer Klavan reads “Empire of Music,” Vladimir Golstein’s review of Tchaikovsky's Empire: A New Life of Russia's Greatest Composer , featured in the spring 2025 issue. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claremontinstitute.substack.com/subscribe

Few could have predicted it at the time, but the massive surveillance apparatus designed in the wake of 9/11 to fight terrorism has been turned against Americans in the wake of COVID. The biomedical security state's militarized pandemic response has accustomed Americans to being watched, shepherded, and degraded. Like terrorism, germs are a potentially ubiquitous and invisible enemy, justifying a...

Associate Editor Spencer Klavan reads “ Make Speech Free Again ,” John Rosenthal ’s essay on how the U.S. can defeat E.U. censorship , featured in the spring 2025 issue. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claremontinstitute.substack.com/subscribe

Mark Twain’s life and work are representative of what it means to be an exceptional American. His writing is earthy, funny, and direct, but also profoundly serious about morality and politics. Contributing editor and repeat guest Christopher Flannery sits down with host Spencer Klavan to discuss this giant of American letters, whose life and legend are as grand as his own stories. This is a public...

Associate Editor Spencer Klavan reads “They Forgot to Sing,” Anthony Esolen’s review of Poetry as Enchantment , by Dana Gioia, featured in the spring 2025 issue. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claremontinstitute.substack.com/subscribe

Editor Charles Kesler and Associate Editor Spencer Klavan discuss the newly released spring issue. Kesler’s cover piece, reviewing a biography of William F. Buckley, Jr., gives insight into the life and profound impact of Buckley’s career; the virtues he emanated; and the long-awaited biography by Sam Tanenhaus . William Voegeli chronicles progressives' troubled attempts to build their way out of...

Alexandria: a sprawling metropolis, once the cultural capital of the Western world. It was ruled by the Ptolemies, whose queens—the Cleopatras—produced the unforgettable queen we know from Shakespeare and Plutarch. Yet their history was eclipsed by that of the Roman Empire and has lost much of its glamor in the public imagination. Spencer sits down with Hoover Institution senior fellow Barry Strau...

On the heels of a dramatic Trump victory in the 2024 election, Democrats scramble to get their bearings. Spencer is joined by senior editor William Voegeli to conduct a wellness check on the blue and battered Left, discussing both Voegeli’s recent cover essay and the eventful months of Trump 2.0 that have unfolded since it was published. Democrats remain uncomfortably yoked to their progressive wi...

Editor Charles Kesler and Associate Editor Spencer Klavan discuss the winter issue, hot off the press. William Voegeli’s cover essay delivers a bleak prognosis for a Democratic party unable or unwilling to cut loose woke deadweights. Kesler observes the terror struck in the heart of the administrative state by Elon Musk’s DOGE. Christopher Caldwell and Andrew Busch offer insightful analyses of pop...

Editor Charles Kesler and Associate Editor Spencer Klavan sit down to page through the newly released fall CRB and talk election results. Kesler’s essay discusses the possibility of a long-awaited Republican majority; William Voegeli tracks the humiliation of both Biden and the mainstream media; and Christopher Caldwell highlights the success of Trump’s arresting rhetoric in a post-rhetorical age....

With election day creeping ever closer, political predictions are everywhere already. Spencer takes the opportunity to sit down with Dr. William Voegeli, senior editor of the  Claremont Review of Books , to survey the history and prospects of realignment. Voegeli gives an incisive explanation of the current electoral landscape and what both parties need to do to capitalize on the opportunities bef...

Editor Charles Kesler and Associate Editor Spencer Klavan meet the afternoon before the first 2024 presidential debate to discuss the new Spring CRB. Kesler and Spencer spin insightful short-term prophecies--and Kesler calls Biden's flop in advance--using the editor's note as a starting point. Meanwhile, Lee Edwards' tribute to Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago does honor to an epochal work of diss...

Now that COVID is effectively behind us, it's increasingly easy to throw the hazy blur that was late 2019-2022 down the memory hole. Jeffrey Anderson's latest CRB  essay   shines a light on the COVID craze: government overreach, popular complacency, and collective amnesia. Spencer sits down with Anderson to continue the post mortem analysis and ask how we can prevent the same extreme policies from...

For a country that features so prominently in the news and so wildly in many conspiracy theories, Russia is a country that many Americans—especially many in the press—scarcely understand. Dan Mahoney’s new review essay in CRB gives a clarifying survey of major trends, challenges, and attitudes in Russian politics since the days of the Tsars. Without emotional theatrics but with moral clarity, Maho...

Editor Charles Kesler and Associate Editor Spencer Klavan meet to discuss the winter CRB.  Kesler’s cover essay covering the intellectual differences between national conservatism and Trump's brand of nationalism takes top billing. Michael Knowles's insightful review of Chris Rufo's new book invites us to consider where Rufo's project may be headed. Plus lots of other excellent material from the w...

Celebrated journalist Lord Charles Moore joins Spencer to discuss his  CRB essay on the history and prospects of Thatcherism and its implications for modern conservative movements on both sides of the pond. On the one hand, the forces arrayed against Thatcher's legacy have never been stronger. On the other hand, the attitudes she represented--including the "commonsense view that people would proba...

Editor Charles Kesler and Associate Editor Spencer Klavan meet to peruse the fall CRB.  Kesler’s editor’s note about the intellectual legacy  of Henry Kissinger considers whether foreign policy realism is gaining steam on the world stage as multiple wars rage on. Mark Helprin’s essay on the grinding conflict in Israel takes a practical look at the situation, and Bill Voegeli’s essay articulates th...

Algis Valiunas, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and contributing editor at  The New Atlantis , joins Spencer to discuss the great modernist and Anglican convert T.S. Eliot. In the spirit of the season, Valiunas explores how a mixture of tragedy, heartache, and providence led Eliot gradually from the sorrow and discontent expressed in his jarring masterpiece, The Waste Land , on thr...

Martha Bayles, frequent contributor to the  CRB and prolific author and essayist, joins Spencer to discuss the perils and pitfalls presented by AI, especially as it pertains to the entertainment industry. Bayles elucidates the challenge of AI in entertainment as it emerged during the SAG-AFTRA strike. Will the strike’s goals be met in the long term, or is an AI future inevitable? Plus: reflections...

Editor Charles Kesler and Associate Editor Spencer Klavan convene to survey the summer  CRB . Kesler's editor's note about the decline of West Virginia University proves timely as universities across the country reveal their funding priorities. Christopher Flannery’s cover essay on President James A. Garfield introduces a neglected American statesman, while analyses of everything from affirmative...

Wilfred M. McClay, the Victor Davis Hanson Chair of Classical History and Western Civilization at Hillsdale College, joins Spencer to discuss the virtues and the public perception of the Midwest. Professor McClay illuminates the "reservoir of idealism" hidden away in the Midwest's often unexplored but fascinating history. Plus: a deep dive into  why the Midwest is so misunderstood.   This is a pub...

Editor Charles Kesler and Associate Editor Spencer Klavan sit down to rifle through the Spring  CRB . There's lots to unpack, including but not limited to: Kesler's editor's note on the growing ideological divide among the states, Christopher Caldwell's investigation of unrest in France, and a new biography of MLK, Jr. Plus: incisive commentary on the Supreme Court's history with affirmative actio...

Spencer is joined by Jesse Merriam, a Washington Fellow at The Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life who specializes in anti-discrimination and affirmative-action law, for a very timely episode. The two discuss the playing field of affirmative action and how diversity came to define our constitutional order, as well as possible solutions. Merriam outlines what is likely to come...

Spencer is joined by Michael Knowles, celebrated host of “The Michael Knowles Show” at the  Daily Wire , “The Book Club” at PragerU, and “Verdict with Ted Cruz.” They discuss the manic decline of the West and its long history, as well as its present manifestation in the form of trans radicalism. Fortunately, Knowles and Spencer  also talk about how to cure what ails us, using selected portions fro...