The Little Prince - TEASER

Gaslit Nation

Trump, Politics, Left, Democracy, Resistance, News, Society & Culture, Progressive, Liberal, Kendzior, Chalupa, Resist

4.8 • 4K Ratings

🗓️ 2 August 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to the opening discussion of this past week’s thought-provoking salon on The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Though often labeled a children’s book, The Little Prince, translated into over 500 languages and dialects, second only to the Bible, sparked a wide-ranging discussion that revealed its deeper, more political dimensions.

In our discussion, Gaslit Nation listeners drew connections between the book’s themes and the current tragedy and disinformation war on Gaza, while others reflected on the absurdity of adulthood depicted in the story. Our conversation touched on the divine feminine, the corrupting influence of institutional power, especially within the Catholic Church, and the existential weight behind Saint-Exupéry’s deceptively simple prose.

We began by exploring the historical context in which the book was written: a time of fractured resistance to fascism, eerily reminiscent of our own era. Just as the French Resistance struggled with internal divisions and the desperate need for leadership, so too does America today, caught between rising authoritarianism and a detached political establishment.

Most amazingly, this conversation took place on July 31st: the 81st anniversary of Saint-Exupéry’s death during a reconnaissance mission off the coast of Marseille. His little plane crashed into the sea, just two months before the liberation of Paris.

UPCOMING BOOK CLUB EVENTS:

August – The Lives of Others and I’m Still Here
Two films where art challenges dictatorship—from East Germany to Brazil. Book club: August 25 4pm ET
September – Harriet, the Moses of Her People by Sarah Hopkins Bradford
Harriet Tubman’s story, in her own words based on interviews with The General herself. Book club: September 29 4pm ET
October – Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky + Total Resistance by H. Von Dach
Poetry and guerrilla strategy: tools for survival and defiance. Book club: October 27 4pm ET
November – Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Indigenous wisdom and science for reconnection and gratitude. Book club: November 24 4pm ET
December – The Forest Song by Lesya Ukrainka
An eco-feminist Ukrainian play that sings of love, rebellion, and resilience. Book club: January 29

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome, everyone to the July 31st, 2025 Gaslit Nation Salad, where we are discussing Antoine
0:19.0	St. Exuberies, Leetit Prince, the Little Prince,
0:23.5	written in exile in the United States in 1942 by the author, who at this time was a famous pilot
0:35.9	and also a famous writer and was considered a towering French intellectual
0:42.6	forced into exile by the Nazi regime. France had fallen very quickly. So World War II breaks out
0:51.9	thanks to the Nazis and the Soviets, invading Poland together.
0:56.1	The Nazis go first. The Soviets come in two weeks later.
0:59.1	Britain, France declare war. This is September 1939. September 1939. And France falls in 1940.
1:06.8	France falls in 1940. And then Pearl Harbor gets bombed in December, 1941, dragging the U.S.
1:16.8	finally into war. But at the time that our author of the July 2025, a book of the month club
1:26.9	pick, The Little Prince, remember, we're reading books
1:30.6	all year to try to stay grounded in this larger, spiritual, physical, practical struggle
1:39.4	that we're all in against fascism again in the world, not just on U.S. soil, not just the occupation of our White
1:48.4	House by a Russian-backed tyrant, but obviously the larger global fascist war in a time of
1:55.1	blazing disinformation, ignorance, apathy, nihilism, and so on. So how can the book, the little prince, wake us up today?
2:03.9	What can it teach us? What can it remind us of? And obviously, for anyone that's read the book,
2:10.0	it is considered a children's book, but it's hugely popular, translated into something like 250
2:15.8	languages around the world. it took off like wildfire
2:19.2	for its very simple, magical parable lesson of a little boy around six years old, who is the prince,
2:28.7	who comes across the author, the pilot, stranded in the desert with a simple request of draw me a muton, draw me a sheep.
2:38.2	And the pilot's like, I'm a pilot stranded in the desert. And where did you come from, child?
2:42.7	And that begins their friendship. And the little prince explains that he came from a small little
	...

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