Wilfred McClay on Historical Memory

First Things Podcast

First Things

Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 699 Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2021

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Editor R. R. Reno is joined by Wilfred McClay to talk about his article “The Claims of Memory.” They discuss the nature of historical memory, the assault on the past, and the importance of tradition.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, welcome to the First Things Editor's Desk podcast.
0:13.5	I'm Rusty Reno, editor of First Things magazine.
0:16.9	And this week, I'm joined by Bill McLeigh, who delivered the 2021 Erasmus lecture at the Union League Club here in New York at the end of October.
0:28.9	And we published his lecture, The Claims of Memory, in our January issue of First Things magazine.
0:37.2	Nope.
0:38.0	Was it the January issue, Bill?
0:39.7	Yes, it was.
0:40.5	Yeah, January.
0:42.1	And so I'm just so delighted to have Phil McLeigh here with me to talk about memory, history, and identity.
0:51.8	Welcome, Bill.
0:53.5	Rusty, I'm delighted to be here. It's always great to do anything with first things.
0:59.1	All right. Well, very kind of you. So memory, memory. It was a meditation. Your piece is a meditation
1:07.4	on, I think as you describe it, memory as the glue. Yes, that's the metaphor you used.
1:14.3	The glue that holds things together in our personal lives, but also in our social lives.
1:23.6	Yeah. That's right.
1:26.6	So in your piece, you use Alzheimer's as an image of the consequences of loss of memory.
1:37.8	And I mean, I think all of our listeners can understand the way of which Alzheimer's is such a threat to
1:45.9	identity of feared disease because it seems to cut us off from our very selves.
1:52.5	Yes. And one of the things that I tried to get at in the essay is that in some ways that this is true, even when memories
2:05.5	are not always 100% accurate, you can have a vivid, but somewhat erratic memory.
2:16.8	This is why I quote touchstone, you know,
2:19.2	it is an ill-favored thing but mine own.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from First Things, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of First Things and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.