Episode 13 of my podcast with Kevin Steel is now posted here. In Part 1, we discuss the reactions to the Paris atrocities. They kill, and we cry—or, like Sky News presenter Kay Burley, tweet a picture of a sad dog. Can anyone doubt that Osama bin Laden was right? They are the strong horse, and we are the weak horse. Or perhaps we are just marking time until the advent of a man on a white horse. In addition, my co-host Kevin Steel recounts the joys and sorrows of travelling thousands of miles across North America by thumb in 1982.

In Part 2, we examine the rout precipitated by Black Lives Matters and its stale, pale allies on America’s college campuses. The similarities between 2015 and 1968 are obvious. The difference is that the reign of terror snapping fomented by the students of ’15 is a direct assault on the values institutionalized by the radicals of ’68. How long before a Thermidorian Reaction? While there’s breath, there’s hope.

In Week 12 of our feature A Year of Cinema: My 52 Favourite Films, I sing the praises of John Frankenheimer’s 1966 horror fable Seconds, a cinematic expression of the eternal wisdom of Saint Thomas à Kempis: “Wherever you go, there you are.” My essay examines the philosophical struggle between being and becoming and references Henri Bergson, Wyndham Lewis, Hugh Kenner and Caitlyn (sic) Jenner.