i teach a course called fiction vampire. kipling, all the books that came out of the british empire. a lot of different things. also shakespeare. mostly about shakespeare. >> host: can you make connections between all of those? >> guest: that is my perfection -- profession. >> host: what is one of the connections that you make? >> guest: i am generally interested in politics and how people perceive politics. these things go all the way from homer to the american western. so i have an essay that compares the great trilogy. and they're both stories about revenge the stories the restore the boundaries between civilization, barbarism. i'm really interested in how things change over time. you can do wonderful comparisons. you take the same subject and look at a greek strategy and an american western movie. >> host: your newest book is called the invisible hand in popular culture. what are you attempting to do? >> guest: i am examining the issue of freedom and american popular culture, and i am particularly interested in the debat