James Orr, Alex Petkas, Nathan Pinkoski, Bill Rivers, and Dan McCarthy gather for Episode 02 of Project Cosmos to discuss one of the most enduring questions in history: Can you be a great man and a good father?
Email not displaying correctly?
View it in your browser
[link removed]
.
[link removed]
Hello John,
I am excited to announce that the second episode
[link removed]
of ISI’s flagship series, Project Cosmos, is now available on YouTube. “Greatness & Goodness: A Guide for Young Men in Dark Times”
[link removed]
addresses two of the most enduring questions in history: Can you be a great man and a good father? What does true greatness mean in the modern world?
Chapters in this episode
[link removed]
include: Historical Examples of Leadership and Fatherhood, the Role of Family Heritage and Legacy, The Left’s Relationship with Heroism and Greatness, and more!
ISI’s Project Cosmos
[link removed]
series aims to address the dominant political, philosophical, and cultural questions of our time, providing a platform for thoughtful dialogue at a moment when serious conversation is more crucial than ever.
Watch Now
[link removed]
I facilitated the discussion for Episode 02
[link removed]
, bringing together these five leading thinkers with diverse beliefs and perspectives.
James Orr is a British philosopher and Cambridge associate professor of Philosophy of Religion. He is the UK Chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation and co-founder of the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation. Orr also is a mentor to JD Vance.
Bill Rivers is an author and speechwriter who served as principal speechwriter to US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. He is a Truman Scholar and holds degrees from the University of Delaware and the University of Pennsylvania. Rivers wrote the acclaimed novel Last Summer Boys (2022).
Alex Petkas is a former university lecturer and host of The Cost of Glory podcast. He earned his PhD in Classics from Princeton University. On his podcast, he brings ancient heroes and ideas to life through dramatic retellings and practical insights drawn from Plutarch and classical literature.
Nathan Pinkoski is a political theorist specializing in classical, early modern, and 20th-century thought. He has taught at Princeton, the University of Toronto, and the University of Florida, and he writes for leading journals. He is authoring Actually Existing Postliberalism and translating Éric Zemmour’s The Suicide of the French.
Dan McCarthy is Vice President of ISI’s Publications and Editor-in-Chief of Modern Age. He’s also a contributing editor at The American Conservative and has worked for both ISI Books and the Ron Paul 2008 campaign.
You can watch the whole conversation on YouTube
[link removed]
, or listen on Spotify
[link removed]
or Apple Podcasts
[link removed]
. If you prefer to read the discussion, a lightly edited transcript
[link removed]
is available on our Substack
[link removed]
.
Best regards,
Johnny Burtka
President and CEO
Copyright © 2025, All rights reserved.
Our mailing address is:
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
3901 Centerville Road
Wilmington, DE 19807
unsubscribe from all emails
[link removed]
update subscription preferences
[link removed]
