Institutional Living in 2025, 1776 . . . and 1202 (w/ Ross Heintzkill)

Dave sits down with marketing writer, air force veteran, and medieval history aficionado Ross Heintzkill. Dave and Ross talk about institutions and bureaucracy—the good and the bad, in the US and in Germany. They chat about the US founding fathers (especially Hamilton), the value of reading primary historical texts, the 4th Crusade (1202–1204), and about Ross’s relationship to death, as a veteran, a partner, a dog-papa, and a human being.

Ross’s recommendations:

Jonathan Phillips, The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople

Become a deadbeat philosopher, and read Dave’s deadbeat philosophical scribblings, at https://deadbeatphilosophy.substack.com

Deadbeat philosophy = sideways investigations into philosophy, politics, and the contradictions of modern life—from a former professor, future skeleton.

Podcast. Books in progress. Weird stop-motion. Modern life dissected.

New podcast episodes drop every Thursday. New writing posted all the time.

Historical philosophers on the table include, among others: Lao Tzu, Confucius, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Augustine, Boethius, Hildegard von Bingen, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Montaigne, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Voltaire, Franklin, Rousseau, Kant, Jefferson, Wollstonecraft, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Darwin, Kierkegaard, Thoreau, Douglass, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Kafka, Leopold, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Benjamin, Adorno, Sartre, Arendt, Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Camus, Sellars, Fanon, Foucault, Derrida, Rorty, and many more.

Topics on the table include, among others: the meaning of life, ethical dilemmas, theoretical frameworks, domestic and international politics, institutional analysis, education, religion, mental health, arts and literature, environment, nature, animals, climate, and extinction, race, gender, and the politics of race and gender, racism, colonialism, sexism, fascism, capitalism, socialism, nationalism, stoicism, daoism, confucianism, buddhism, pragmatism, feminism, rationalism, German idealism, romanticism, transcendentalism, environmentalism, modernism, postmodernism, phenomenology, critical theory, deconstruction, German culture, history, and politics, expat life, and much more.

A co-production with the Museum Hegel-Haus, Stuttgart

Deadbeat headquarters

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit deadbeatphilosophy.substack.com/subscribe

Institutional Living in 2025, 1776 . . . and 1202 (w/ Ross Heintzkill)

Deadbeat Philosophy

Where can you listen?

Episodes