Alexandra Hudson On The Struggle For Civility
The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan
4.6 • 836 Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2024
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Alexandra is a journalist and public speaker. She’s the founder of Civic Renaissance, a newsletter and intellectual community dedicated to moral and cultural renewal. She’s also an adjunct professor at the Indiana University Lilly School of Philanthropy. Her first book is The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves.
For two clips of our convo — on the moments when being civil is impolite, and the importance of indifference to others’ opinions — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: being raised in horse country in Canada; having “Judi the Manners Lady” as a mother; moving to DC in the fall of 2016 and hating it; working for Trump in the Department of Ed; the rude awakening of being loathed by her peers as an appointee; the difference between politeness and civility; a story of Queen Victoria’s bad manners; how personal boundaries are often crucial for civility; Arnold Bennett’s book How to Live 24 Hours a Day; the virtue of curiosity toward those who seem boring; hypocrisy vs. inauthenticity; Tom Holland’s Dominion; when the love of others and the self are in tension; online anonymity; the ever-growing need for forgiveness and gratitude; Aristotle and “the magnanimous soul”; the Stoics; Isocrates as the Miss Manners of ancient Greece; Erasmus; the “respectability politics” of the Civil Rights Movement vs. the crudeness of pro-Gaza protesters and the January 6 mob; empathy toward road-ragers; defenders of Gay retaliating with plagiarism charges of their own; Slow Horses and the crude authenticity of Oldman’s character; the cult of authenticity in Gen Z; how civility and toxicity are contagious; zealous extroversion; why Alexandra wants to kill the phrase “let’s get lunch”; me pressing her on how anyone praising civility could work for Trump; and why auto-didactism is the subject of her next book.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Jonathan Freedland on the war in Gaza, Jennifer Burns on her new biography of Milton Friedman, and Abigail Shrier on why the cult of therapy harms children. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other pod comments to [email protected].
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Hi there. Welcome to 2024 for what it's worth as we look towards this insanely bleak view ahead of us. I'm back in D.C., as you probably all know, had a nice break, although I was sick for most of it and stayed in bed, which was nice though. |
| 0:45.0 | Got a lot of sleep. And, you know, here we are. Got a great season coming up. We also had a great end of the year. We had a huge burst of traffic and of subscriptions at the end of the year, |
| 0:56.3 | for which we are intensely grateful. We now are, I think, at basically our record numbers that |
| 1:02.0 | we've ever had, basically. We don't want that much more. We're not aiming for world domination. |
| 1:06.8 | We're just interested in having the right group of people thinking about the right things in the right way. |
| 1:12.5 | And as part of that, this week we're going to talk about a subject that has popped up many times on this podcast and is pressing for our political life this year. |
| 1:25.5 | And that's civility. |
| 1:27.4 | How do we conduct ourselves with each other in a way that is civil, that is worthy of citizenship |
| 1:34.8 | in a republic that is worthy of us as human beings when we live in such a polarized, ideological, |
| 1:41.0 | nasty, rude, ill-mannered world. And Alexandra Hudson has written a book, The Soul of |
| 1:49.4 | Civility, Timeless Principles to Heal Society, and Ourselves is Out, is published by St. Martin's |
| 1:55.1 | Press. Alexander, or Lexi, as her friend's caller, is an award-winning journalist journalist, author and speaker, as well as the founder of Civic Renaissance, a newsletter and intellectual community dedicated to moral and cultural renewal. |
| 2:10.7 | Alexandra, thank you so much for coming. Welcome to the dishcast. |
| 2:15.0 | Andrew, really thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me. |
| 2:18.0 | Let me start with what we usually start with, which is tell me where were you born and |
| 2:23.5 | where did you grow up? |
| 2:26.2 | I was born in Los Angeles and kind of Hollywood area, born at Hollywood General and Van Nuys. |
| 2:32.7 | And then I was raised in Vancouver, Canada. That is my |
| 2:36.0 | true home. I got married there. My coming of age was there. A lot of my family is still there. |
| 2:41.5 | And my soul is most at home when I have mountains and ocean in the same eyeline. And there are a few |
| 2:49.0 | places in the world other than Vancouver where you can have that. So I love, love, love, passionate love for Vancouver, Canada. You said the same eye line. And there are a few places in the world other than Vancouver, where you can have that. So I love, love, passion, love for Vancouver, Canada. You said the same |
| 2:54.8 | eye line? What did you say? I'm sorry? You can, yeah, you can look out and you see the ocean and use |
... |
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