If you have suggestions for guests who would be a good fit for this project, or would like to be a guest yourself, DM one of us on Substack or email Jason at unsung.substack@gmail.com.

Tune in on Substack at Charley Horse Radio on the first and third Saturday of each month at noon eastern/11am central time.²

Support us on Substack at Charley Horse Radio for $5/month or $50/year.

Jason McGinty has a long-form history podcast at The Unsung Podcast.

John, Son of Dick writes at Bright Sunny South.

Jason is also an audiobook narrator:

• Medicine Woman

• The Boys’ Book of Western Stories

Below is a list of the essays, the guest featured on the show, and a brief overview of the topic:

• “Reconstructed but Unregenerate,” John Crowe Ransom

will be live to discuss, what Ransom says, is the, “peculiar tradition of the South.” We will primarily be focusing on industrialism and agrarianism, and how these two worldviews, in their entirety, collided along the Mason-Dixon Line. While this essay does act as a second introductory essay, it is far from being merely that. Ransom again says, “I wish that the whole force of my own generation in the South would get behind [the unreconstructed Southerners] principles and make them an ideal which the nation at large would have to reckon with,” it will be the goal of this episode to define these principles and discuss practical applications of them with one of the most Unreconstructed Southerners on all of Substack.

• “A Mirror for Artists,” Donald Davidson

The author of this essay was, arguably, the beating heart of the Southern Agrarians. It is fitting that he would discuss art in all of its forms. Art, we may well rightly call, the proof of life of a civilization. will be live to discuss art generally, what form it took in the Old South, its influences, and how the post-War South turned to Romanticism as a form of rebellion against the artless and ugly society that followed the Yankee’s wherever they trod.

• “The Irrepressible Conflict,” Frank Lawrence Owsley

joins Jason and John to discuss the great cultural differences between the Southerners and Yankees, whether or not the War was inevitable, the supposed peace that followed the surrender at Appomattox, and the reconstructive effects that loss in mortal combat had on the South.

• “Education, Past and Present,” John Gould Fletcher

What makes a proper education? Does everyone need to be highly “educated”? And does it matter who educates you? Charley Horse Radio will be joined by to discuss how education was understood differently in the Antebellum South and North respectively, and how the education system was nationalized and weaponized against the South during Reconstruction.

• “A Critique of the Philosophy of Progress,” Lyle H. Lanier

Lanier says, “Progress is both a slogan and a philosophy, a device for social control and a belief in the reality of a process of cosmic development toward ‘some far-off divine event.” will be live to discuss what is meant by progress, how this concept shaped the Yankee since the Mayflower first landed, and how the unprogressive backwardness of the Old South fueled Yankee progressivism into an all destructive fury.

• “Remarks on the Southern Religion,” Allen Tate

For this particularly difficult essay, Fr. Nikolai Meyers, an Orthodox priest from Topeka, Kansas, will be live to discuss the broad and important topic on religion in the South. If you have ever wondered what religion was like in the Antebellum South, how it was affected by Reconstruction, or what future Southern religious development may look like in the South today, then you will not want to miss this most special episode.

• “Whither Southern Economy?” Herman Clarence Nixon

A yet-to-be-determined guest will join live to discuss economics; particularly, Southern Economics and the destruction of the old economic system of the South and the installation of the new one. Nixon warns that “The distorted picture of industrial ‘progress’ or ‘prosperity’ is about to become part of the Southern mind…It is deplorable that this spread of the Southern worship of industrial gods after the World War, comparable to the Northern tide after the Civil War, is taking place at the time when dollar-chasing industrialism is being weighed in the balance and found wanting in America… by such strong critics as John Dewey, Stuart Chase, [and] John A. Hobson…” What are these industrial gods? And how can we, who do not wish to worship idols, tear them down and erect in their place as noble and humane an economic system as was enjoyed in the Old South?

• “The Hind Tit,” Andrew Nelson Lytle

Lytle speaks these prophetic words, “So long as he lives in a divided world [the Old Southern Farmer] is rendered impotent in the defense of his natural economy and inherited life. He has been turned into the runt pig in the sow’s litter. Squeezed and tricked out of the best places at the side, he is forced to take the little hind tit for nourishment; and here, struggling between the sow’s back legs, he has to work with every bit of his strength to keep it from being a dry hind one, and all because the suck of the others is so unreservedly gluttonous.” will be joining to discuss how the noble Southern farmer of old was reduced to the runt of the litter as the powerful story of this farmer’s demise makes the listener homesick for a world that he never knew.

• “The Briar Patch,” Robert Penn Warren

will be joining Jason and John to discuss the Negro and his life in the Old its difference to that which he experienced in the Reconstructed South. After emancipation, “It is not surprising,” Warren says of the Negro, “that the idea of freedom meant eating the cake and keeping it, too. In the old scheme of things… he had occupied an acknowledged, if limited and humble, place. Now he has to find a place, and the attempt to find it is the story of the negro since 1865.” It is almost universally accepted that this “old scheme” better for the White man; but was it better for the Negro too?

• “The Life and Death of Cousin Lucius,” John Donald Wade

Wade presents for us a beautiful story of an old Southern planter who was beloved by all and spent his life fighting hard to preserve the way of life that made his home and people capable of recognizing the dignified grace of a man of his nature. He and his kind were aging out of relevance, or, rather, progress was passing them by and they were being forgotten while their strength to chase the beast down and kill it was dwindling. joins to discuss this essay from the perspective of a Pacific Northwesterner who can see, in his own people’s history, “Cousin Lucius’” who suffered the same fate.

• “William Remington: A Study in Individualism,” Henry Blue Kline

Kline begins the story of Remington when, “He was graduated [from college] with two potentially weighty handicaps. The first was some knowledge and appreciation of literature, history, music, and the decorative arts. The second was a deeply rooted determination to live his life, in so far as he possessed free agency to control it, on terms dictated by his own critical intelligence, and nothing else.” Another to-be-decided guest will join Charley Horse Radio live to discuss the broad topic of individualism. From Thomas Jefferson to Lysander Spooner, this highly complex philosophy is made even more complicated when one realizes that to Jefferson and Spooner, individualism meant two very different things. The conversation will attempt to differentiate between the radical individualism of the North and the deeply rooted individualism that came to be associated with the Southern man.

“Not in Memoriam, But in Defense,” Stark Young

Mr. Young makes it clear that we can never go back to the Antebellum South; those days were theirs, and these are ours. Yet, just as the Ship of Theseus remains the same ship in spirit though her parts are different; so too the South must remain the same in Spirit though her physical conditions have changed radically. Young says, “That a change is now in course all over the South is plain; and it is as plain that the South changing must be the South still, remembering that for no thing can there be any completeness that is outside its own nature, and no thing for which there is any advance save its own kind.”2 joins Jason and John to, not memorialize, but defend the old Cavalier spirit of the South and discuss how adjust to our new physical conditions while retaining such an undaunted and glorious nature which has existed in the hearts of our people for so long.

If you have suggestions for guests who would be a good fit for this project, or would like to be a guest yourself, DM one of us on Substack or email Jason at unsung.substack@gmail.com.

Tune in on Substack at Charley Horse Radio on the first and third Saturday of each month at noon eastern/11am central time.²

Support us on Substack at Charley Horse Radio for $5/month or $50/year.

Jason McGinty has a long-form history podcast at The Unsung Podcast.

John, Son of Dick writes at Bright Sunny South.

Jason is also an audiobook narrator. Check out Medicine Woman, and The Boys’ Book of Western Stories authored by Frank Kidd. More audiobooks in the works.

In this show, we’ll be digging into the essays in the book I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition. This book was published in 1930 and contains 12 essays by Southerners critiquing the growing industrialization of America at that time. In this episode, we introduce the project, discuss biographical information on the 12 authors, and go over the “Introduction: Statement of Principles” section paragraph by paragraph.

Going forward, we will be publishing an episode for each essay in the book for a total of 12 after this one. Once we’re done with that, we’ll move on to something else.

Currently planned guests include:1

If you have suggestions for guests who would be a good fit for this project, or would like to be a guest yourself, DM one of us on Substack or email Jason at unsung.substack@gmail.com.

Tune in on Substack at Charley Horse Radio on the first and third Saturday of each month at noon eastern/11am central time.2

Support us on Substack at Charley Horse Radio for $5/month or $50/year.

has a long-form history podcast at The Unsung Podcast.

writes at John's Substack.

Jason is also an audiobook narrator. Check out Medicine Woman, authored by . More audiobooks in the works.

Subscribe now

Hello there.

We are Jason and John, two Orthodox Christians with a love for the South.1

This publication is based mostly around a conversation-style podcast where we will discuss literature related to the American South and its traditions, starting with the twelve essays contained in I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition. We already have some great guests planned, who you might recognize if you spend any time around Chudstackistan. They include:

• Probably more

If you have suggestions for future topics or guests, feel free to comment on any of our posts, or DM either of us.

The planned schedule is to go live on Substack on the first and third Saturday of each month at noon eastern/11am central time.2 Interaction with the live chat is cool. Then we will publish a possibly edited version of each conversation for posterity. First live session is May 16, where we’ll go over some introduction and background for the book.

In the meantime, you can check out our other publications. Find Jason at , where he has published an 11-part podcast series on Bleeding Kansas and the Kansas-Missouri border war,3 and is currently working on a series about Xenophon’s Ten Thousand. Find John at John’s Substack, where he writes “Southern and Orthodox Traditionalist writing about no one thing in particular.”

Lastly, the first person to guess where the name of the show derives from will get a cookie.4

Subscribe now, and tune in to the first livestream:

https://open.substack.com/live-stream/190400