Podcast: Glamour Profession

 

Virtual Memories – season 3 episode 26 – Glamour Profession

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“Everyone is susceptible to some kind of glamour; it’s just a matter of understanding what kind of glamour you’re susceptible to. Is it technological glamour, or glamour of the intellectual life, or something else?”

Virginia Postrel joins us this week to talk about her new book, The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion. It’s a great conversation about the uses and abuses of glamour, the nerd fixation on space travel, the first known symbol of glamour, how people get seduced by IT glamour, how Barack Obama’s first election campaign was heaven-sent for Ms. Postrel’s book, and more!

“All my work is a continuation of the classical liberal tradition that goes back to the 18th century. Writers like Hume and Adam Smith were interested in the economy, in the role of the state, but they were interested in much more than that. Fundamentally, they were interested in the human imagination, in how human beings create a meaningful world around them, and relate to each other, and live in a civilized world order.”

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Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! Related conversations:

• Peter Bagge
• Charles Blackstone
• Eva Brann
• Miss Scorpio
• Wallis Wilde Menozzi

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About our Guest

Virginia Postrel is an author, columnist, and speaker whose work spans a broad range of topics, from social science to fashion, concentrating on the intersection of culture and commerce. In addition to The Power of Glamour, she also wrote The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness and The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity. She’s a regular columnist for Bloomberg View and was the editor of Reason magazine for more than a decade. You can follow her on twitter at vpostrel.

Credits: This episode’s music is Glamour Profession by Steely Dan. The conversation was recorded in a rather echo-y room at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H4n recorder. The intro and outro were recorded in a room at the Omni La Mansion Del Rio in San Antonio on aSamson Meteor USB Microphone. Processing was done in Audacity and Garage Band. Photo of Virginia Postrel by me.