From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle.

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get political news from across the spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of our take.

I'm your host for today's episode, Tangle's managing editor, Ari Weitzman, and we have a guest interview with Tyler Austin Harper today, staff ready for The Atlantic and former professor at Hamilton College.

Tyler has a story in the most recent edition of the Atlantic about the Mellon Foundation,

a multi-billion dollar foundation that has an outsized role in the humanities at institutions of higher

learning. So why should we care about this? Also, why is it happening?

And what do we think is going to happen next?

I get to have a really thoughtful conversation answering all those questions and more with Tyler,

as we have a conversation that spans the bounds from why humanities matter

to whether or not we should be focusing on them in the first place,

all the way to what we want out of colleges. And should we even be learning humanities at these

universities? It's a great conversation, I think, especially on the heels of the Friday edition

that Audrey Moore had wrote about literacy rates at universities and among university students. In essence,

what are the things that we really want our young people to be learning about? When we just

ask who's funding humanities at our universities, the story might seem a little narrow and not

that interesting. But when we stop to consider really what's at stake in education, it can become pretty interesting, pretty fast.

I really enjoyed talking to Tyler about all of these issues and more.

And I think it was a really interesting conversation.

I think you guys are going to enjoy it.

So without further ado, here's my conversation with Tyler Austin Harper.

Thank you. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Tyler Austin Harper. Okay, I'm here today with Tyler Austin Harper, a professor at Bates College and a staff writer

at the Atlantic who has a piece out this month about humanities and funding across the United States.

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