Kurt Warner, "False Idols: How Diversion is Destroying Democracy" (Vernon Press, 2024)

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Welcome to The New Books Network.

**Dessy Vassileva** (1:35)
Welcome to today's episode on The New Books Network, a platform dedicated to thoughtful conversations about important new books across academic fields and public debates. I'm Dessy Vassileva with Vernon Press, and today we're joined by Kurt Warner, author of False Idols, How Diversion is Destroying Democracy, published by Vernon Press in the series Critical Perspectives on Social Science. Before we begin, a brief introduction to Vernon Press, an independent publisher of scholarly books in the humanities and social sciences. This interview is part of our ongoing collaboration with New Books Network, where we bring authors and readers together through engaging conversations about new academic work.
False Idols explores how contemporary forms of diversion, from celebrity culture and economic pressure, to politics, social media, sports, video games and entertainment, can distract citizens from civic duty, critical thinking and democratic responsibility. Kurt Warner, welcome to the New Books Network.

**Kurt Warner** (2:41)
Thank you, Dessy. It's really an honor to be here. Thank you for having me.

**Dessy Vassileva** (2:45)
Kurt, to start us off, could you say a few words about yourself? Where were you born? Where did you study? And how did you become interested in the relationship between destruction, democracy and civic life?

**Kurt Warner** (2:58)
Sure.
So I was born in a town called Mountaintop in Pennsylvania. And there's an adjacent town to that called Wokesboro, where I studied at King's College for my undergraduate degree, where I studied English literature. Ninety miles north of that in New York is a town called Binghamton, and that's where I went to study social work at Binghamton University. And as far as I think I became interested in the relationship between distraction, democracy and civic life as probably as early as I was introduced to politics. It appeared to be more theater to me than actual substance. And the actual issues, at least in America, I found to be seldom discussed in a meaningful way. And in its stead, there's a sort of eternal play being performed that really doesn't have a lot to do with the things that will really help people.

**Dessy Vassileva** (3:58)
Your background brings together literature, social work, psychotherapy and social criticism. How did those different paths lead you to this book?

**Kurt Warner** (4:08)
I'll answer that in the order that you name them. So first I became very zealous about English literature.
I remember I began reading pretty much everything I could get my hands on in late high school, and literature was formative for me. I found that literature had the capacity to develop profound empathy and compassion in me. It really spoke to my better angels, so to speak. And that empathy and compassion I found cultivated deeper thought, and especially within the realm of literary criticism. I was very drawn to literary criticism and the analyzation of literature and writing, because writing did a tremendous amount in cultivating thought for me.
This developed into the critical thinking skills that were necessary to bring that empathy into a forum where I could utilize it with actual human beings instead of characters in a book. That's the intersection where literature comes into social work. Social work entered the picture in that way.