From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.

In this day and age, we think that the only, or many people think that the only kind of way of knowing, the only legitimate way of knowing is like nonfiction or data, numbers, or facts.

But fiction is another way of knowing about the world.

This is your host, Scott Bertram.

Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network.

That was Christopher J. Scalia. He's the author of the new book,

13 novels conservatives will love, but probably haven't read. We'll talk more with Chris a little bit

later on in today's program. First, we're joined by Dr. RJ Pastrida. He is Dean of the Graduate

School, Professor of Politics, and Charles and Lucia Shipley Chair in the American Constitution here at Hillsdale College.

Dr. Pistrido, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

And more, most to the point today, he is your teacher for the brand new Hillsdale College online course, the Federalist.

You can find it at Hillsdale.edu

slash new course. What would you say to someone who perhaps hasn't read the Federalist

papers since school or maybe never at all? Why should they explore them now?

Well, if they haven't, if it's just that they haven't read the federal's papers since school,

then good for them because they probably had a good school because it's the case that

they're not often even read in school anymore, unfortunately.

But what the federalist does is to address the timeless principles of American government, right? So the Federalist is a book that's made out of a series of papers that were published in the newspapers during the debates about ratification of the Constitution of 1787. And so it goes through the constitution.

It lays out the principles of government. It talks about how the different institutions are

supposed to work to achieve those principles. And you could ask, well, why is that very old

question still relevant to us?

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