Podcasts about cambridge companion

It’s actually a good thing that some books push you to the edge of your ability to understand. But there’s no doubting the fact that dense, abstract and jargon-filled works can push you so far into the fog of frustration that you cannot blame yourself for giving up. But here’s the truth: You don’t have to walk away frustrated and confused. I’m going to share with you a number of practical strategies that will help you fill in the gaps of your reading process. Because that’s usually the real problem: It’s not your intelligence. Nor is it that the world is filled with books “above your level.” I ultimately don’t believe in “levels” as such. But as someone who taught reading courses at Rutgers and Saarland University, I know from experience that many learners need to pick up a few simple steps that will strengthen how they approach reading difficult books. And in this guide, you’ll learn how to read challenging books and remember what they say. I’m going to go beyond generic advice too. That way, you can readily diagnose: Why certain books feel so hard Use pre-reading tactics that prime your brain to deal with difficulties effectively Apply active reading techniques to lock in understanding faster Leverage accelerated learning tools that are quick to learn Use Artificial Intelligence to help convert tough convent into lasting knowledge without worrying about getting duped by AI hallucinations Whether you’re tacking philosophy, science, dense fiction or anything based primarily in words, the reading system you’ll learn today will help you turn confusion into clarity. By the end, even the most intimidating texts will surrender their treasures to your mind. Ready? Let’s break it all down together. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9HLbY4jsFg Why Some Books Feel “Too Hard” (And What That Really Means) You know exactly how it feels and so do I. You sit down with a book that people claim is a classic or super-important. But within a few pages, your brain fogs over and you’re completely lost. More often than not, through glazed eyes, you start to wonder… did this author go out of his or her way to make this difficult? Are they trying to show off with all these literary pyrotechnics? Or is there a deliberate conspiracy to confuse readers like me? Rest assured. These questions are normal and well worth asking. The difficulty you might feel is never arbitrary in my experience. But there’s also no “single origin” explanation for why some books feel easier than others. It’s almost always a combination of factors, from cognitive readiness, lived experience, emotions and your physical condition throughout the day. This means that understanding why individual texts resist your understanding needs to be conducted on a case-by-case basis so you can move towards mastering anything you want to read. Cognitive Load: The Brain’s Processing “Stop Sign” “Cognitive load” probably needs no definition. The words are quite intuitive. You start reading something and it feels like someone is piling heavy bricks directly on top of your brain, squishing everything inside. More specifically, these researchers explain that what’s getting squished is specifically your working memory, which is sometimes called short-term memory. In practical terms, this means that when a book suddenly throws a bunch of unfamiliar terms at you, your working memory has to suddenly deal with abstract concepts, completely new words or non-linear forms of logic. All of this increases your cognitive load, but it’s important to note that there’s no conspiracy. In Just Being Difficult: Academic Writing in the Public Arena, a variety of contributors admit that they often write for other specialists. Although it would be nice to always compose books and articles for general readers, it’s not laziness. They’re following the codes of their discipline, which involves shorthand to save everyone time. Yes, it can also signal group membership and feel like an intellectual wall if you’re new to this style, but it’s simply a “stop sign” for your brain. And wherever there are stop signs, there are also alternative routes. Planning Your Detour “Roadmap” Into Difficult Books Let me share a personal example by way of sharing a powerful technique for making hard books easier to read. A few years ago I decided I was finally going to read Kant. I had the gist of certain aspects of his philosophy, but a few pages in, I encountered so many unfamiliar terms, I knew I had to obey the Cognitive Load Stop Sign and take a step back. To build a roadmap into Kant, I searched Google in a particular way. Rather than a search term like, “Intro to Kant,” I entered this tightened command instead: Filetype:PDF syllabus Kant These days, you can ask an LLM in more open language to simply give you links to the syllabi of the most authoritative professors who teach Kant. I’d still suggest that you cross-reference what you get on Google, however. If you’re hesitant about using either Google or AI, it’s also a great idea to visit a librarian in person to help you. Or, you can read my post about using AI for learning with harming your memory to see if it’s time to update your approach. Narrowing Down Your Options One way or another, the reason to consult the world’s leading professors is that their syllabi will provide you with: Foundational texts Core secondary literature Commentaries from qualified sources Essential historical references Once you’ve looked over a few syllabi, look through the table of contents of a few books on Amazon or Google Books. Then choose: 1-2 foundational texts to read before the challenging target book you want to master 1-2 articles or companion texts to read alongside In this way, you’ve turned difficulty into a path, not an obstacle. Pre-Reading Strategies That Warm Up Your Reading Muscles A lot of the time, the difficulty people feel when reading has nothing to do with the book. It’s just that you’re diving into unfamiliar territory without testing the waters first. Here are some simple ways to make unfamiliar books much easier to get into. Prime Like a Pro To make books easier to read, you can perform what is often called “priming” in the accelerated learning community. It is also sometimes called “pre-reading” and as this research article discusses, its success has been well-demonstrated. The way I typically perform priming is simple. Although some books require a slight change to the pattern, I typically approach each new book by reading: The back cover The index The colophon page The conclusion or afterword The most interesting or relevant chapter The introduction The rest of the book Activate Prior Knowledge Sometimes I will use a skimming and scanning strategy after reading the index to quickly familiarize myself with how an author approaches a topic with which I’m already familiar. This can help raise interest, excitement and tap into the power of context-dependent memory. For example, I recently started reading Doubt: A History by Jennifer Michael Hecht. Since the Renaissance memory master Giordano Bruno comes up multiple times, I was able to draw up a kind of context map of the books themes by quickly going through those passages. Take a Picture Walk Barbara Oakley and Terence Sejnjowski share a fantastic strategy in Learning How to Learn. Before reading, simply go through a book and look at all the illustrations, tables, charts and diagrams. It seems like a small thing. But it gives your brain a “heads up” about upcoming visual information that you may need to process than prose. I used to find visual information like this difficult, but after I started taking picture walks, I’m now excited to read “towards” these elements. If still find them challenging to understand, I apply a tip I learned from Tony Buzan that you might like to try: Rather than struggle to interpret a chart or illustration, reproduce it in your own hand. Here’s an example of how I did this when studying spaced repetition: As a result, I learned the graph and its concepts quickly and have never forgotten it. Build a Pre-Reading Ritual That Fits You There’s no one-sized-fits-all strategy, so you need to experiment with various options. The key is to reduce cognitive load by giving your mind all kinds of ways of understanding what a book contains. If it helps, you can create yourself a checklist that you slip into the challenging books on your list. That way, you’ll have both a bookmark and a protocol as you develop your own pre-reading style. Active Reading Techniques That Boost Comprehension Active reading involves deliberately applying mental activities while reading. These can include writing in the margins of your books, questioning, preparing summaries and even taking well-time breaks between books. Here’s a list of my favorite active reading strategies with ideas on how you can implement them. Using Mnemonics While Reading On the whole, I take notes while reading and then apply a variety of memory techniques after. But to stretch my skills, especially when reading harder books, I start the encoding process earlier. Instead of just taking notes, I’ll start applying mnemonic images. I start early because difficult terms often require a bit more spaced repetition. To do this yourself, the key is to equip yourself with a variety of mnemonic methods, especially: The Memory Palace technique The Pegword Method The Major System The PAO System And in some cases, you may want to develop a symbol system, such as if you’re studying physics or programming. Once you have these mnemonic systems developed, you can apply them in real time. For example, if you come across names and dates, committing them to memory as you read can help you keep track of a book’s historical arc. This approach can be especially helpful when reading difficult books because authors often dump a lot of names and dates. By memorizing them as you go, you reduce the mental load of having to track it all. For even more strategies you can apply while reading, check out my complete Mnemonics Dictionary. Strategic Questioning Whether you take notes or memorize in real-time, asking questions as you go makes a huge difference. Even if you don’t come up with answers, continually interrogating the book will open up your brain. The main kinds of questions are: Evaluative questions (checking that the author uses valid reasoning and address counterarguments) Analytical questions (assessing exactly how the arguments unfold and questioning basic assumptions) Synthetic questions (accessing your previous knowledge and looking for connections with other books and concepts) Intention questions (interrogating the author’s agenda and revealing any manipulative rhetoric) One medieval tool for questioning you can adopt is the memory wheel. Although it’s definitely old-fashioned, you’ll find that it helps you rotate between multiple questions. Even if they are as simple as who, what, where, when, how and why questions, you’ll have a mental mnemonic device that helps ensure you don’t miss any of them. Re-reading Strategies Although these researchers seem to think that re-reading is not an effective strategy, I could not live without it. There are three key kinds of re-reading I recommend. Verbalize Complexity to Tame It The first is to simply go back and read something difficult to understand out loud. You’d be surprised how often it’s not your fault. The author has just worded something in a clunky manner and speaking the phrasing clarifies everything. Verbatim Memorization for Comprehension The second strategy is to memorize the sentence or even an entire passage verbatim. That might seem like a lot of work, but this tutorial on memorizing entire passages will make it easy for you. Even if verbatim memorization takes more work, it allows you to analyze the meaning within your mind. You’re no longer puzzling over it on paper, continuing to stretch your working memory. No, you’ve effectively expanded at least a part of your working memory by bypassing it altogether. You’ve ushered the information into long-term memory. I’m not too shy to admit that I have to do this sometimes to understand everything from the philosophy in Sanskrit phrases to relatively simple passages from Shakespeare. As I shared in my recent discussion of actor Anthony Hopkins’ memory, I couldn’t work out what “them” referred to in a particular Shakespeare play. But after analyzing the passage in memory, it was suddenly quite obvious. Rhythmical Re-reading The third re-reading strategy is something I shared years ago in my post detailing 11 reasons you should re-read at least one book per month. I find this approach incredibly helpful because no matter how good you get at reading and memory methods, even simple books can be vast ecosystems. By revisiting difficult books at regular intervals, you not only get more out of them. You experience them from different perspectives and with the benefit of new contexts you’ve built in your life over time. In other words, treat your reading as an infinite game and never assume that you’ve comprehended everything. There’s always more to be gleaned. Other Benefits of Re-reading You’ll also improve your pattern recognition by re-treading old territory, leading to more rapid recognition of those patterns in new books. Seeing the structures, tropes and other tactics in difficult books opens them up. But without regularly re-reading books, it can be difficult to perceive what these forms are and how authors use them. To give you a simple example of a structure that appears in both fiction and non-fiction, consider in media res, or starting in the middle. When you spot an author using this strategy, it can immediately help you read more patiently. And it places the text in the larger tradition of other authors who use that particular technique. For even more ideas that will keep your mind engaged while tackling tough books, feel free to go through my fuller article on 7 Active Reading Strategies. Category Coloring & Developing Your Own Naming System For Complex Material I don’t know about you, but I do not like opening a book only to find it covered in highlighter marks. I also don’t like highlighting books myself. However, after practicing mind mapping for a few years, I realized that there is a way to combine some of its coloring principles with the general study principles of using Zettelkasten and flashcards. Rather than passively highlighting passages that seem interesting at random, here’s an alternative approach you can take to your next tour through a complicated book. Category Coloring It’s often helpful to read with a goal. For myself, I decided to tackle a hard book called Gödel Escher Bach through the lens of seven categories. I gave each a color: Red = Concept Green = Process Orange = Fact Blue = Historical Context Yellow = Person Purple = School of Thought or Ideology Brown = Specialized Terminology Example Master Card to the Categorial Color Coding Method To emulate this method, create a “key card” or “master card” with your categories on it alongside the chosen color. Use this as a bookmark as you read. Then, before writing down any information from the book, think about the category to which it belongs. Make your card and then apply the relevant color. Obviously, you should come up with your own categories and preferred colors. The point is that you bring the definitions and then apply them consistently as you read and extract notes. This will help bring structure to your mind because you’re creating your own nomenclature or taxonomy of information. You are also using chunking, a specific mnemonic strategy I’ve written about at length in this post on chunking as a memory tool. Once you’re finished a book, you can extract all the concepts and memorize them independently if you like. And if you emulate the strategy seen on the pictured example above, I’ve included the page number on each card. That way, I can place the cards back in the order of the book. Using this approach across multiple books, you will soon spot cross-textual patterns with greater ease. The catch is that you cannot allow this technique to become activity for activity’s sake. You also don’t want to wind up creating a bunch of informational “noise.” Before capturing any individual idea on a card and assigning it to a category, ask yourself: Why is this information helpful, useful or critical to my goal? Will I really use it again? Where does it belong within the categories? If you cannot answers these questions, either move on to the next point. Or reframe the point with some reflective thinking so that you can contextualize it. This warning aside, it’s important not to let perfectionism creep into your life. Knowing what information matters does take some practice. To speed up your skills with identifying critical information, please read my full guide on how to find the main points in books and articles. Although AI can certainly help these days, you’ll still need to do some work on your own. Do Not Let New Vocabulary & Terminology Go Without Memorization One of the biggest mistakes I used to make, even as a fan of memory techniques, slowed me down much more than necessary. I would come across a new term, look it up, and assume I’d remember it. Of course, the next time I came across it, the meaning was still a mystery. But when I got more deliberate, I not only remembered more words, but the knowledge surrounding the unfamiliar terms also stuck with greater specificity. For example, in reading The Wandering Mind by Jamie Kreiner, memorizing the ancient Greek word for will or volition (Prohairesis) pulled many more details about why she was mentioning it. Lo and behold, I started seeing the word in more places and connecting it to other ancient Greek terms. Memorizing those as well started to create a “moat of meaning,” further protecting a wide range of information I’d been battling. Understanding Why Vocabulary Blocks Comprehension The reason why memorizing words as you read is so helpful is that it helps clear out the cognitive load created by pausing frequently to look up words. Even if you don’t stop to learn a new definition, part of your working memory gets consumed by the lack of familiarity. I don’t always stop to learn new definitions while reading, but using the color category index card method you just discovered, it’s easy to organize unfamiliar words while reading. That way they can be tidily memorized later. I have a full tutorial for you on how to memorize vocabulary, but here’s a quick primer. Step One: Use a System for Capturing New Words & Terms Whether you use category coloring, read words into a recording app or email yourself a reminder, the key is to capture as you go. Once your reading session is done, you can now go back to the vocabulary list and start learning it. Step Two: Memorize the Terms I personally prefer the Memory Palace technique. It’s great for memorizing words and definitions. You can use the Pillar Technique with the word at the top and the definition beneath it. Or you can use the corners for the words and the walls for the definitions. Another idea is to photograph the cards you create and important them into a spaced repetition software like Anki. As you’ll discover in my complete guide to Anki, there are several ways you can combine Anki with a variety of memory techniques. Step Three: Use the Terms If you happened to catch an episode of the Magnetic Memory Method Podcast back when I first learned Prohairesis I mentioned it often. This simple habit helps establish long-term recall, reflection and establishes the ground for future recognition and use. Expand Understanding Using Video & Audio Media When I was in university, I often had to ride my bike across Toronto to borrow recorded lectures on cassette. Given the overwhelming tsunamis of complex ideas, jargon and theoretical frameworks I was facing, it was worth it. Especially since I was also dealing with the personal problems I shared with you in The Victorious Mind. Make no mistake: I do not believe there is any replacement for reading the core books, no matter how difficult they might be. But there’s no reason not to leverage the same ideas in multiple formats to help boost your comprehension and long-term retention. Multimedia approaches are not just about knowledge acquisition either. There have been many debates in the magical arts community that card magicians should read and not rely on video. But evidence-based studies like this one show that video instruction combined with reading written instructions is very helpful. The Science Behind Multi-Modal Learning I didn’t know when I was in university, or when I was first starting out with memdeck card magic that dual coding theory existed. This model was proposed by Allan Paivio, who noticed that information is processed both verbally and non-verbally. Since then, many teachers have focused heavily on how to encourage students to find the right combination of reading, visual and auditory instructional material. Here are some ideas that will help you untangle the complexity in your reading. How to Integrate Multimedia Without Overload Forgive me if this is a bit repetitive, but to develop flow with multiple media, you need to prime the brain. As someone who has created multiple YouTube videos, I have been stubborn about almost always including introductions. Why? Go Through the Intros Like a Hawk Because without including a broad overview of the topic, many learners will miss too many details. And I see this in the comments because people ask questions that are answered throughout the content and flagged in the introductions. So the first step is to be patient and go through the introductory material. And cultivate an understanding that it’s not really the material that is boring. It’s the contemporary issues with dopamine spiking that make you feel impatient. The good news is that you can possibly reset your dopamine levels so you’re better able to sit through these “priming” materials. One hack I use is to sit far away from my mouse and keep my notebook in hand. If I catch myself getting antsy, I perform a breathing exercise to restore focus. Turn on Subtitles When you’re watching videos, you can help increase your engagement by turning on the subtitles. This is especially useful in jargon-heavy video lessons. You can pause and still see the information on the screen for easier capture when taking notes. When taking notes, I recommend jotting down the timestamp. This is useful for review, but also for attributing citations later if you have to hand in an assignment. Mentally Reconstruct After watching a video or listening to a podcast on the topic you’re mastering, take a moment to review the key points. Try to go through them in the order they were presented. This helps your brain practice mental organization by building a temporal scaffold. If you’ve taken notes and written down the timestamps, you can easily check your accuracy. Track Your Progress For Growth & Performance One reason some people never feel like they’re getting anywhere is that they have failed to establish any points of reference. Personally, this is easy for me to do. I can look back to my history of writing books and articles or producing videos and be reminded of how far I’ve come at a glance. Not only as a writer, but also as a reader. For those who do not regularly produce content, you don’t have to start a blog or YouTube channel. Just keep a journal and create a few categories of what skills you want to track. These might include: Comprehension Retention Amount of books read Vocabulary growth Critical thinking outcomes Confidence in taking on harder books Increased tolerance with frustration when reading challenges arise You can use the same journal to track how much time you’ve spent reading and capturing quick summaries. Personally, I wish I’d started writing summaries sooner. I really only got started during grad school when during a directed reading course, a professor required that I had in a summary for every book and article I read. I never stopped doing this and just a few simple paragraph summaries has done wonders over the years for my understanding and retention. Tips for Overcoming Frustration While Reading Difficult Books Ever since the idea of “desirable difficulty” emerged, people have sought ways to help learners overcome emotional responses like frustration, anxiety and even shame while tackling tough topics. As this study shows, researchers and teachers have found the challenge difficult despite the abundance of evidence showing that being challenged is a good thing. Here are some strategies you can try if you continue to struggle. Embrace Cognitive Discomfort As we’ve discussed, that crushing feeling in your brain exists for a reason. Personally, I don’t think it ever goes away. I still regularly pick up books that spike it. The difference is that I don’t start up a useless mantra like, “I’m not smart enough for this.” Instead, I recommend you reframe the experience and use the growth mindset studied by Carol Dweck, amongst others. You can state something more positive like, “This book is a bit above my level, but I can use tactics and techniques to master it.” I did that very recently with my reading of The Xenotext, parts of which I still don’t fully understand. It was very rewarding. Use Interleaving to Build Confidence I rotate through draining books all the time using a proven technique called interleaving. Lots of people are surprised when I tell them that I rarely read complex and challenging books for longer than fifteen minutes at a time. But I do it because interleaving works. Which kinds of books can you interleave? You have choices. You can either switch in something completely different, or switch to a commentary. For example, while recently reading some heavy mathematical theories about whether or not “nothing” can exist, I switched to a novel. But back in university, I would often stick within the category while at the library. I’d read a core text by a difficult philosopher, then pick up a Cambridge Companion and read an essay related to the topic. You can also interleave using multimedia sources like videos and podcasts. Interleaving also provides time for doing some journaling, either about the topic at hand or some other aspect of your progress goals. Keep the Big Picture in Mind Because frustration is cognitively training, it’s easy to let it drown out your goals. That’s why I often keep a mind map or some other reminder on my desk, like a couple of memento mori. It’s also possible to just remember previous mind maps you’ve made. This is something I’m doing often at the moment as I read all kinds of boring information about managing a bookshop for my Memory Palace bookshop project first introduced in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utcJfeQZC2c It’s so easy to get discouraged by so many rules and processes involved in ordering and selling books, that I regularly think back to creating this mind map with Tony Buzan years ago. In case my simple drawings on this mind map for business development doesn’t immediately leap out at you with its meanings, the images at the one o’clock-three o’clock areas refer to developing a physical Memory Palace packed with books on memory and learning. Developing and keeping a north star in mind will help you transform the process of reading difficult books into a purposeful adventure of personal development. Even if you have to go through countless books that aren’t thrilling, you’ll still be moving forward. Just think of how much Elon Musk has read that probably wasn’t all that entertaining. Yet, it was still essential to becoming a polymath. Practice Seeing Through The Intellectual Games As you read harder and harder books, you’ll eventually come to realize that the “fluency” some people have is often illusory. For example, some writers and speakers display a truly impressive ability to string together complex terminology, abstract references and fashionable ideas of the day in ways that sound profound. Daniel Dennett frequently used a great term for a lot of this verbal jujitsu that sounds profound but is actually trivial. He called such flourishes “deepities.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey-UeaSi1rI This kind of empty linguistic dexterity will be easier for you to spot when you read carefully, paraphrase complex ideas in your own words and practice memorizing vocabulary frequently. When you retain multiple concepts and practice active questioning in a large context of grounded examples and case studies, vague claims will not survive for long in your world. This is why memory training is about so much more than learning. Memorization can equip you to think independently and bring clarity to fields that are often filled with gems, despite the fog created by intellectual pretenders more interested in word-jazz than actual truth. Using AI to Help You Take On Difficult Books As a matter of course, I recommend you use AI tools like ChatGPT after doing as much reading on your own as possible. But there’s no mistaking that intentional use of such tools can help you develop greater understanding. The key is to avoid using AI as an answer machine or what Nick Bostrom calls an “oracle” in his seminal book, Superintelligence. Rather, take a cue from Andrew Mayne, a science communicator and central figure at OpenAI and host of their podcast. His approach centers on testing in ways that lead to clarity of understanding and retention as he uses various mnemonic strategies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlzD_6Olaqw Beyond his suggestions, here are some of my favorite strategies. Ask AI to Help Identify All Possible Categories Connected to a Topic A key reason many people struggle to connect ideas is simply that they haven’t developed a mental ecosystem of categories. I used to work in libraries, so started thinking categorically when I was still a teenager. But these days, I would combine how traditional libraries are structured with a simple prompt like: List all the possible categories my topic fits into or bridges across disciplines, historical frameworks and methodologies. Provide the list without interpretation or explanation so I can reflect. A prompt like this engineers a response that focuses on relationships and lets your brain perform the synthetic thinking. Essentially, you’ll be performing what some scientists call schema activation, leading to better personal development outcomes. Generate Lists of Questions To Model Exceptional Thinkers Because understanding relies on inquiry, it’s important to practice asking the best possible questions. AI chat bots can be uniquely useful in this process provided that you explicitly insist that it helps supply you excellent questions without any answers. You can try a prompt like: Generate a list of questions that the world’s most careful thinkers in this field would ask about this topic. Do not provide any answers. Just the list of questions. Do this after you’ve read the text and go through your notes with fresh eyes. Evaluate the material with questions in hand, ideally by writing out your answers by hand. If you need your answers imported into your computer, apps can now scan your handwriting and give you text file. Another tip: Don’t be satisfied with the first list of questions you get. Ask the AI to dig deeper. You can also ask the AI to map the questions into the categories you previously got help identifying. For a list of questions you can put into your preferred chat bot, feel free to go through my pre-AI era list of philosophical questions. They are already separated by category. Use AI to Provide a Progress Journal Template If you’re new to journaling, it can be difficult to use the technique to help you articulate what you’re reading and why the ideas are valuable. And that’s not to mention working out various metrics to measure your growth over time. Try a prompt like this: Help me design a progress journal for my quest to better understand and remember difficult books. Include sections for me to list my specific goals, vocabulary targets, summaries and various milestones I identify. Make it visual so I can either copy it into my own print notebook or print out multiple copies for use over time. Once you have a template you’re happy to experiment with, keep it visible in your environment so you don’t forget to use it. Find Blind Spots In Your Summaries Many AIs have solid reasoning skills. As a result, you can enter your written summaries and have the AI identify gaps in your knowledge, blind spots and opportunities for further reading. Try a prompt like: Analyze this summary and identify any blind spots, ambiguities in my thinking or incompleteness in my understanding. Suggest supplementary reading to help me fill in any gaps. At the risk of repetition, the point is that you’re not asking for the summaries. You’re asking for assessments that help you diagnose the limits of your understanding. As scientists have shown, metacognition, or thinking about your thinking can help you see errors much faster. By adding an AI into the mix, you’re getting feedback quickly without having to wait for a teacher to read your essay. Of course, AI outputs can be throttled, so I find it useful to also include a phrase like, “do not throttle your answer,” before asking it to dig deeper and find more issues. Used wisely, you will soon see various schools of thought with much greater clarity, anticipate how authors make their moves and monitor your own blind spots as you read and reflect. Another way to think about the power of AI tools is this: They effectively mirror human reasoning at a species wide level. You can use them to help you mirror more reasoning power by regularly accessing and practicing error detection and filling in the gaps in your thinking style. Why You Must Stop Abandoning Difficult Books (At Least Most of the Time) Like many people, I’m a fan of Scott Young’s books like Ultralearning and Get Better at Anything. He’s a disciplined thinker and his writing helps people push past shallow learning in favor of true and lasting depth. However, he often repeats the advice that you should stop reading boring books. In full transparency, I sometimes do this myself. And Young adds a lot of context to make his suggestion. But I limit abandoning books as much as possible because I don’t personally find Young’s argument that enjoyment and productivity go together. On the contrary, most goals that I’ve pursued have required fairly intense periods of delaying gratification. And because things worth accomplishing generally do require sacrifice and a commitment to difficulty, I recommend you avoid the habit of giving up on books just because they’re “boring” or not immediately enjoyable. I’ll bet you’ll enjoy the accomplishment of understanding hard books and conquering their complexity far more in the end. And you’ll benefit more too. Here’s why I think so. The Hidden Cost of Abandoning Books You’ve Started Yes, I agree that life is short and time is fleeting. But if you get into the habit of abandoning books at the first sign of boredom, it can quickly become your default habit due to how procedural memory works. In other words, you’re given your neurons the message that it’s okay to escape from discomfort. That is a very dangerous loop to throw yourself into, especially if you’re working towards becoming autodidactic. What you really need is to develop the ability to stick with complexity, hold ambiguous and contradictory issues in your mind and fight through topic exhaustion. Giving up on books on a routine basis? That’s the opposite of developing expertise and resilience. The AI Risk & Where Meaning is Actually Found We just went through the benefits of AI, so you shouldn’t have issues. But I regularly hear from people and have even been on interviews where people use AI to summarize books I’ve recomended. This is dangerous because the current models flatten nuance due to how they summarize books based on a kind of “averaging” of what its words predictability mean. Although they might give you a reasonable scaffold of a book’s structure, you won’t get the friction created by how authors take you through their thought processes. In other words, you’ll be using AI models that are not themselves modeling the thinking that reading provides when you grind your way through complex books. The Treasure of Meaning is Outside Your Comfort Zone Another reason to train for endurance is that understanding doesn’t necessarily arrive while reading a book or even a few weeks after finishing it. Sometimes the unifying insights land years later. But if you don’t read through books that seem to be filled with scattered ideas, you cannot gain any benefit from them. Their diverse points won’t consolidate in your memory and certainly won’t connect with other ideas later. So I suggest you train your brain to persist as much as possible. By drawing up the support of the techniques we discussed today and a variety of mnemonic support systems, you will develop persistence and mine more gold from everything you read. And being someone who successfully mines for gold and can produce it at will is the mark of the successful reading. Not just someone who consumes information efficiently, but who can repeatedly connect and transform knowledge year after year due to regularly accumulating gems buried in the densest and most difficult books others cannot or will not read. Use Struggle to Stimulate Growth & You Cannot Fail As you’ve seen, challenging books never mean that you’re not smart enough. It’s just a matter of working on your process so that you can tackle new forms of knowledge. And any discomfort you feel is a signal that a great opportunity and personal growth adventure awaits. By learning how to manage cognitive load, fill in the gaps in your background knowledge and persist through frustration, you can quickly become the kind of reader who seeks out complexity instead of flinching every time you see it. Confusion has now become a stage along the path to comprehension. And if you’re serious about mastering increasingly difficult material, understanding and retaining it, then it’s time to upgrade your mental toolbox. Start now by grabbing my Free Memory Improvement Course: Inside, you’ll discover: The Magnetic Memory Method for creating powerful Memory Palaces How to develop your own mnemonic systems for encoding while reading Proven techniques that deepen comprehension, no matter how abstract or complex your reading list is And please, always remember: The harder the book, the greater rewards. And the good news is, you’re now more than ready to claim them all.

The Sex & Power Podcast: Truth-telling that liberates with Mike Steve Collins: The Anti-Civil Rights MovementMike Collins is the author of The Anti-Civil Rights Movement: Affirmative Action as Wedge and Weapon (University Press of Kansas, 2024), Understanding Etheridge Knight, updated edition (University of South Carolina Press, 2023), and The Traveling Queen (poems, Sheep Meadow Press, 2013). His essays have appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Oxford American, The Cambridge Companion to American Prison Writing and Mass Incarceration, Fight & Fiddle, Callaloo, PMLA, and elsewhere. His poems have appeared in New Letters, About Place, 32 Poems, The Rupture, JAMA, The American Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. He teaches at Texas A & M University.https://kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700637140/  Our conversation today focuses on his recent book The Anti-Civil Rights Movement: Affirmative Action as Wedge and Weapon, where Mike examines how policies created to promote opportunity and fairness were slowly reshaped into tools that divided the very groups they were meant to empower.FIND MIKE on TikTok @mike.steve.collinsFIND JANICE SELBIE:Janice Selbie's best-selling book, Divorcing Religion: A Memoir and Survival Handbook, is available here. https://amzn.to/4mnDxuoRecordings from the Shameless Sexuality: Life After Purity Culture conference 2025 available here. https://www.shamelesssexuality.org/Religious Trauma Survivor Support Groups happen online Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern. Sign up here. https://www.divorcing-religion.com/servicesFor help with recovery from religious trauma, book a free 20-minute consultation with Janice here. https://www.divorcing-religion.com/servicesFollow Janice and Divorcing Religion on Social Media:linktr.ee/janiceselbieThe Divorcing Religion Podcast is for entertainment purposes only. If you need help with your mental health, please consult a qualified, secular, mental health clinician. The views expressed by guests are not necessarily held by the host.Support the show

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . I am talking with José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson about AI in postsecondary education, because they are authors of the new book Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning. José is leader of the Bowen Innovation Group, consulting on innovation in higher education and was the 11th president of Goucher College. He has held leadership roles at Stanford, the University of Southampton, Georgetown, Miami University, and Southern Methodist University, and his book Teaching Naked reshaped conversations about technology and pedagogy. He is an international jazz pianist and edited the Cambridge Companion to Conducting. Eddie Watson is Vice President for Digital Innovation at the American Association of Colleges and Universities and is the Founding Director of their Institute on AI, Pedagogy, and the Curriculum.  He directed the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Georgia, and is a Fellow of the Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education. In our conclusion, we talk about the future of textbooks, José and Eddie's meta-analysis of AI literacy frameworks and standardizing AI literacy training, the evolution of teaching models and practices like lectures, and the future of degrees themselves. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines! Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.        

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . After last week's exploration of AI in secondary education it's time to look at how it's landing in the universities, and so I am talking with José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson, authors of the brand new book Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning. José leads the Bowen Innovation Group, consulting on innovation in higher education and was the 11th president of Goucher College. He has held leadership roles at Stanford, the University of Southampton, Georgetown, Miami University, and Southern Methodist University, and his influential book Teaching Naked reshaped conversations about technology and pedagogy. He edited the Cambridge Companion to Conducting, and is an international jazz pianist. C. Edward Watson - Eddie on our show - is Vice President for Digital Innovation at the American Association of Colleges and Universities and is the Founding Director of their Institute on AI, Pedagogy, and the Curriculum. He directed the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Georgia, and is a Fellow of the Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education. We talk about how students and teachers are reacting to AI, threats to jobs – particularly teaching jobs – and changes to how we work, what really matters in the practice of teaching in an AI world, cheating, changes to relationships between teachers and students and the importance of caring. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines! Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.        

Do we ever have a duty to commit treason? In episode 155 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about “the crime of crimes.” They look at the emergence of this legal concept and its evolution over time, and discuss some of the most important historical cases involving treason: Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, and John Brown. Can we say that treason is always bad when America's founding itself depended on an act of treason? Who is capable of committing a treasonous act? And is treason ever morally permissible? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts discuss how treason is seen in Hobbes' political philosophy and whether we need to recover insurrection as a political possibility.Works Discussed:Neil Cartlidge, “Treason,” The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Law and LiteratureCécile Fabre, “The Morality of Treason”George P. Fletcher, “The Case for Treason”Michel Foucault, Discipline and PunishPhyllis Greenacre, “Treason and the Traitor”Leonard Harris, “Honor and Insurrection or A Short Story about why John Brown (with David Walker's Spirit) was Right and Frederick Douglass (with Benjamin Banneker's Spirit) was Wrong”Lee McBride, “Insurrectionary Ethics and Racism”Enjoy our work? Support Overthink via tax-deductible donation: https://www.givecampus.com/fj0w3vJoin our Substack for ad-free versions of both audio and video episodes, extended episodes, exclusive live chats, and more: https://overthinkpod.substack.com/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this bonus episode of Cunningcast, Tony Robinson is joined by biblical scholars John Barton and Francesca Stavrakopoulou to explore the Dead Sea Scrolls and what they reveal about the origins of the Bible and early Christianity. From their dramatic discovery in the late 1940s and recent AI-led re-dating, to the startling variety of ancient Jewish and Christian texts—including lost gospels and strange infancy stories of Jesus—they uncover a world of belief far more diverse and surprising than the Bible alone suggests. As Francesca says, “these texts show the sheer variety of early Christian belief and stories about Jesus that were in circulation.”Hosted by Sir Tony Robinson | Instagram @sirtonyrobinsonProducer: Melissa FitzGerald | X @melissafitzgWithProfessor John Barton | theology.ox.ac.uk/people/john-bartonJohn is a British Anglican priest and biblical scholar. From 1991 to 2014, he was the Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Oriel College. In addition to his academic career, he has been an ordained and serving priest in the Church of England since 1973. His research interests and extensive publications have been in the areas of the Old Testament prophets, the biblical canon, biblical interpretation, and Old Testament theology. He is the author of numerous books on the Bible, co-editor of The Oxford Bible Commentary and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation.A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths was shortlisted for the 2020 Wolfson History Prize and won the 2019 Duff Cooper Prize. It was adapted for radio and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2020.Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou | experts.exeter.ac.uk/1365-francesca-stavrakopoulouFrancesca is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at the University of Exeter. She is an internationally renowned scholar and award-winning author, specialising in material religion, death studies, and the ancient religious cultures in which the Bible emerged. Actively engaged in public scholarship, her media work includes writing and presenting the BBC TV documentary series Bible's Buried Secrets, and narrating the serialisation of her most recent book on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week. Follow us on our socials:Instagram @cunningcastpod | X @cunningcastpod | YouTube @cunningcast and TikTok @cunningcastLAST IN SERIES. STAY TUNDED FOR SERIES 4 COMING IN '26 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today Tony is joined by an Anglican priest, John Barton, and an atheist scholar, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, to strip away myth and reverence and reveal the Bible as a messy, brilliant, centuries-long experiment in storytelling, belief, politics, and power. Full of sex, violence, poetry, argument, and big ideas, the Bible emerges not as a single holy book but as one of the most influential and fascinating collections of texts ever written. As Francesca says, ‘whether we believe it or not, the Bible is one of the most important cultural icons of our time.'Hosted by Sir Tony Robinson | Instagram @sirtonyrobinsonProducer: Melissa FitzGerald | X @melissafitzgWithProfessor John Barton | theology.ox.ac.uk/people/john-bartonJohn is an Anglican priest and biblical scholar. From 1991 to 2014, he was the Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Oriel College. In addition to his academic career, he has been an ordained and serving priest in the Church of England since 1973. His research interests and extensive publications have been in the areas of the Old Testament prophets, the biblical canon, biblical interpretation, and Old Testament theology. He is the author of numerous books on the Bible, co-editor of The Oxford Bible Commentary and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation.A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths was shortlisted for the 2020 Wolfson History Prize and won the 2019 Duff Cooper Prize. It was adapted for radio and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2020.Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou | experts.exeter.ac.uk/1365-francesca-stavrakopoulouFrancesca is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at the University of Exeter. She is an internationally renowned scholar and award-winning author, specialising in material religion, death studies, and the ancient religious cultures in which the Bible emerged. Actively engaged in public scholarship, her media work includes writing and presenting the BBC TV documentary series Bible's Buried Secrets, and narrating the serialisation of her most recent book on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week. Follow us on our socials:Instagram @cunningcastpod | X @cunningcastpod | YouTube @cunningcast and TikTok @cunningcast------- If you enjoy this podcast, please follow us and leave us a rating or review.Thank you, Love Tony x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After many requests, Dr. Carlos Eire shares a reading list with our listeners.Great classic introductions:Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A foundational, comprehensive survey of the mystical path. The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, edited by Amy Hollywood & Patricia Beckman): An excellent collection of essays Understanding Mysticism, ed. Richard Woods: Excellent essays of all the foundational scholarly interpreters of mysticism. Including the following: David Knowles, “What Is Mysticism?”Louis Bouyer, “Mysticism: An Essay on the History of the Word”Margaret Smith, “The Nature and Meaning of Mysticism"Evelyn Underhill, “The Essentials of Mysticism”Edward Howells: "Mysticism and the Mystical: The Current Debate" R. C. Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane: an Inquiry Into Some Varieties of Praeternatural Experience: A classicMore recent introductionsStephen Clarke, From Athens to Jerusalem: The Love of Wisdom and the Love of GodOlivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism John Macquarrie, Two Worlds Are Ours: An Introduction to Christian MysticismCarl McColman, The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism: An Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality Great historical - analytical surveys:Louis Bouyer, et. al., A History of Christian Spirituality, 3 volumes: an older classic surveyVol. 1 The Spirituality of the New Testament and the FathersVol. 2 The Spirituality of the Middle AgesVol. 3 Orthodox Spirituality and Protestant and Anglican Spirituality Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism:A monumental multi-volume series that explores the development of mysticism across different historical periods and theological contexts. Vol. 1 The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth CenturyVol. 2 The Growth of Mysticism: Gregory the Great Through the 12 CenturyVol. 3 The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism: 1200-1350Vol. 4 The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany: 1300-1500Vol. 5 The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism: 1350–1550Vol. 6.1 Mysticism in the Reformation: 1500-1650Vol. 6.2 Mysticism in the Golden Age of Spain: 1500-1650Vol. 6.3 The Persistence of Mysticism in Catholic Europe 1500-1675Vol. 7 The Crisis of Mysticism: Quietism in Seventeenth-Century Spain, Italy, and France Bernard McGinn, Modern Mystics: An Introduction (not part of the Presence of God series, but a an essential complement to all of its volumes)Short surveys Harvey Egan, Introduction to Christian MysticismSteven Fanning, Mystics of the Christian TraditionWilliam Harmless, MysticsRichard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics SeeFocus on the corporeal dimension of mysticism:Montague Summers, The Physical Phenomena of MysticismHerbert Thurston, The Physical Phenomena of MysticismFocus on Practice:The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence of the ResurrectionThomas Keating, Open Mind, Open HeartMartin Laird, Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Practice of Contemplation An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and ContemplationThomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation Contemplative Prayer Anthologies of Christian mystical texts:The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, edited by Bernard McGinnChristian Spirituality: The Classics, edited by Arthur HolderLight from Light: An Anthology of Christian Mysticism, edited by Louis DupréSuggestions for approaching the subject graduallyFirst step: Read a brief modern guide like that of Harmless or Fanning to get context before diving into the mystical texts. Second step: Dive into short excerpts from mystical texts in an anthology such as those listed above Third step: Pair theoretical texts (like Underhill) with devotional texts (like Brother Lawrence or Merton) and entire mystical texts (like the Cloud of Unknowing or The Interior Castle). Fourth step: Dive into the great surveys (like McGinn), and explore mystical texts from different eras and traditions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Author Events Series presents Nicholas Boggs | Baldwin: A Love Story In Conversation with Rachel L. Swarns Baldwin: A Love Story, the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades, reveals how profoundly the writer's personal relationships shaped his life and work. Drawing on newly uncovered archival material and original research and interviews, this spellbinding book tells the overlapping stories of Baldwin's most sustaining intimate and artistic relationships: with his mentor, the Black American painter Beauford Delaney; with his lover and muse, the Swiss painter Lucien Happersberger; and with his collaborators, the famed Turkish actor Engin Cezzar and the iconoclastic French artist Yoran Cazac, whose long-overlooked significance as Baldwin's last great love is explored in these pages for the first time. Nicholas Boggs shows how Baldwin drew on all the complex forces within these relationships-geographical, cultural, political, artistic, and erotic- and alchemized them into novels, essays, and plays that speak truth to power and had an indelible impact on the civil rights movement and on Black and queer literary history. Richly immersive, Baldwin: A Love Story follows the writer's creative journey between Harlem, Paris, Switzerland, the southern United States, Istanbul, Africa, the South of France, and beyond. In so doing, it magnifies our understanding of the public and private lives of one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century, whose contributions only continue to grow in influence. Nicholas Boggs was an undergraduate when he discovered James Baldwin's out-of-print children's book, Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood, in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. After he tracked down its illustrator, the French artist Yoran Cazac, he went on to coedit an acclaimed new edition of the book in 2018. His writing has also been anthologized in The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin, James Baldwin Now, and Speculative Light: The Arts of Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin. He is the recipient of a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Leon Levy Center for Biography, the Beinecke Library and Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale, the Schomburg Center Scholars-in-Residence Program, and the National Humanities Center, as well as residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell. He received his BA in English from Yale, his MFA in creative writing from American University, and his PhD in English from Columbia. Born and raised in Washington, DC, he lives in Brooklyn, New York. Rachel L. Swarns is a journalist, author and associate professor of journalism at New York University, who writes about race and history as a contributing writer for The New York Times. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of American Historians and her work has been recognized and supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, the Leon Levy Center for Biography, the Biographers International Organization and others. Her latest book, The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church, was published by Random House. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation when you register for this event to ensure that this series continues to inspire Philadelphians. Books will be available for purchase at the library on event night! All tickets are non-refundable. (recorded 9/30/2025)

Today, science has uncovered many wonders about the cosmos and about life within it, but science has also "reduced" most everything in the universe to virtually nothing. In our attempt to understand the universe and ourselves down to a quantified, subatomic constituency we have not only emptied the universe, but also virtually emptied ourselves. C.S. Lewis well understood that scientific quantification of the physical universe and scientific empiricism in general, cannot be the foundational paradigm for how we understand the cosmos and our place within it. Lewis was not criticizing science per se, however. Rather, he was highly critical of the belief that the scientific quantification of reality was the only way to understand reality. In such a universe, the essential facets of what make us human, morality, virtue, truth, beauty, and goodness all become mere emotive sentiments. This week on the Profile we continue our conversation with C.S. Lewis scholar Dr. Michael Ward about Lewis's prescient work The Abolition of Man and how it remains relevant for us today. From michaelward.netMichael Ward is an English literary critic and theologian. He works at the University of Oxford where he is an associate member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion. He is the author of the award-winning and best-selling Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford University Press) and of After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man (Word on Fire Academic); he is the co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis (Cambridge University Press). Though based at Oxford in his native England, Dr Ward is also employed as Professor of Apologetics at Houston Christian University, Texas, teaching one course per semester as part of the online MA program in Christian Apologetics.Free Four-Page Articles From Watchman FellowshipCharles Darwin Carl Sagan's CosmosNaturalism Deconstruction FREE: We are also offering a subscription to our 4-page bimonthly Profiles here: www.watchman.org/Free.PROFILE NOTEBOOK: Order the complete collection of Watchman Fellowship Profiles (over 600 pages -- from Astrology to Zen Buddhism) in either printed or PDF formats here: www.watchman.org/notebook. SUPPORT: Help us create more content like this. Make a tax-deductible donation here: www.watchman.org/give.Apologetics Profile is a ministry of Watchman Fellowship For more information, visit www.watchman.org © 2025 Watchman Fellowship, Inc.

The Hogwarts Professor comment threads have been jumping so Nick Jeffery and John Granger decided to dedicate a conversation to a review of the Greatest Hits in the last week (to do a complete review yourself, click on ‘Activity' in the left margin of the Hogwarts Professor Substack home page).After their reviewing the remarkably global and growing audience of Rowling Readers — 36 countries, 46 states! — and tracking The Presence's location — her yacht seems to be in Fiji but she is touring Levesden Studios? — Nick and John read out fifteen comment subjects and discuss the merits, deficiencies, and promise of each.The lede story is the theory shared by Jaclyn Hayes that Cormoran Strike and the late Charlotte Campbell were half-siblings with Jonny Rokeby in common as their absentee father. From her notes: I think Charlotte was blackmailed (via threat of exposing the relatedness btw her and Cormoran) into marrying Jago to provide him a male heir. Perhaps their relatedness is even an open secret in Charlotte's family, similar to the “secret” relatedness of Decima and Rupert in THM (another parallel). Charlotte was forbidden from telling Cormoran about the blackmail, but since she's conniving and obsessed with him, she uses their unexpected encounter at the Paralympics gala to drop hints about her predicament, hoping he'll solve the mystery and save her or take her back once she's fulfilled the terms of her marriage/birth agreement with Jago. She then orchestrates another encounter with Cormoran to drop more hints-- this time at Franco's, which she knows will trigger the memory of her father's outrage at seeing her and Cormoran dating again. She hopes Cormoran will realize her father was angry because he knew they were related, not simply because he thinks Cormoran wasn't good enough for her. She then tells Coromoran things would be different if he'd taken the job her father offered him (calling to mind the job Tara gives Rupert to keep him quiet in THM), and says she found out she was pregnant at Tara's house and later “lost” (not aborted) the baby. Read the whole thing. Ed Shardlow's response, in which he points out that the hallmark given to silver and DNA testing of human beings have a lot in common, and Tamspells and Jaclyn Hayes discussion of Strike's dreams in previous books give the Strike:Charlotte::Rupert:Decima theory some heft. Cheryl Rose Orrocks asked for help with research she is doing on a possible divine marker, mythologically divine at least, being placed in each book at the appearance of that novel's killer. The only holes in her theory at the time Nick and John recorded their conversation were Troubled Blood and Running Grave — and Catherine has since posted a neat solution for Strike 5. Check that out and please share the missing god or goddess from Running Grave!Nick and John also review and discuss:* Ed Shardlow's idea that the characters creating narratives inside Rowling-Galbraith stories are perhaps best understood as creating their stories as Rowling writes hers, i.e., inspired by Lake material and crafted with the tools in their Sheds;* Vicky's thank you to Dr Fimi for the Ursula Le Guin quotation;* Ed Shardlow's ‘RL Mystery' with back-up from Tamspells and J. S. Maleksen;* Cheryl Rose Orrocks' YouTube notes about the Dirty Bomb Theory conversation (and just how wrong John is about Carmen the opera and Carmen Ellacott); and* Answers to listener requests for more information — all of which can be found in the Links section below!In the week to come, John pledges to post his Hallmarked Man Names exegesis, Nick is working on his review of Aurora Leigh, the supposed template of Ink Black Heart (and the only book ever confirmed by Rowling as such), they will record their Part Two ring charting this weekend, and John is reorganizing his 2017 seven week online course — Wizard Reading Formula — for which class Paid Subscribers will get a greater than 50% discount.John and Nick thank everyone listening and especially those active on the comment threads and taking part in the Hallmarked Man Ring Reading Workshop!Links to Subjects Discussed in the Conversation Above:Cheryl Rose Orrocks: Can you let me know the title and author of the book about Gothic elements?The one John used for Harry Potter's Bookshelf was Patterns of fear in the Gothic novel, 1790-1830 by Ann Tracy, now only ‘in print' via a Kindle version.John read from his much longer Harry Meets Hamlet and Scrooge: Harry Potter's Hogwarts Adventures as the Gateway to English Literature in the conversation above, in which the list of subjects is spelled out (e.g., the castle, supernatural atmosphere, horror, isolation, subterranean passages, fragmentation and reunion, prophecy, ancestral curse, tainted blood, bond of blood, graveyard, corpses, Decay of Aristocratic Privilege, Rise of Bourgeoisie, forest, memories, dreams, found book, doppelgangers, scar or tell-tale mark, mysterious stranger, confused origin, night, mist and fog, distant past, death,, etc.).John also recommends The Handbook of Gothic Literature, ed. Marie Mulvy-Roberts, and The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, ed. Jerrold Hogle.Who is the mystery writer John was talking about who killed a women when she was an adolescent?Anne Perry, author of the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt and William Monk series of historical detective fiction. John recommends Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century, the book written by the journalist who out'd Perry as a convicted murderer writing murder mysteries. Perry died in 2023. J. S. Maleksen I too enjoyed this post, immensely. Can someone recommend a version of Cupid and Psyche and other relevant works of mythology for a Striker who assiduously avoided mythology through seven years of post-secondary education. I'm willing to gut it out in order to understand Rowling's work. TIA.John shared his favorites in the conversation above — Hamilton's Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, Graves' The Greek Myths, Powell's Classical Myth, and Schwab's Gods and Heroes: Myths and Epics of Ancient Greece but Dr Dimitra Fimi responded in the thread today:It's a really difficult question this, and yet it shouldn't be. But the truth is that there is no contemporary authoritative collection of Greek/Classical mythological retellings that's up-to-date with recent scholarship, etc. Catherine recommends Hamilton's book below, which is still good in many respects, but these earlier compilations (like Bulfinch's too) often synthesize different versions of mythological narratives, and omit some interesting variations. My recommendations are a bit heavier on the scholarly side of things, but still readable (the issue will be getting hold of them, but I provide links where possible):1) Classical Myth by Barry B. Powell - as implied by the astronomical price on Amazon.uk (https://amzn.to/3JYkLfF) this is mostly available second-hand now, but there is a scanned version via Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/classicalmyth0000powe (you'll need to create a free account, but once you do you can log in and borrow the book digitally to read)2) Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (2 Volumes) by Timothy Gantz is great, and at least easier to get hold of. It gives the tales and their versions as well as an overview of their sources. The Amazon price of Vol. 1, for example, is a bit more accessible: https://amzn.to/4oTFKQ1For those interested in the de profundis interpretation of classical myth, see The Door in the Sky: Coomaraswamy on Myth and Meaning and Symbolism in Greek Mythology by Paul Diel.You can find the post about Beedle the Bard that Dr Fimi discussed in her conversation with Nick and John at her Substack, ‘A Kind of Elvish Craft:' “You must've heard of Babbitty Rabbitty!”: Secondary World Fairy Tales in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Series This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hogwartsprofessor.substack.com/subscribe

On the last four episodes of the Profile, we have discussed the importance of understanding and living in accordance with the fact that we as human beings are intentionally created by God, in His image. When we lose sight of this central truth about our humanity, much moral and societal confusion and many evils will soon follow. If naturalism is true, then morality and virtue are mere sentiments, not anything objectively true or real. Literary scholar and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis recognized what individual and cultural consequences would follow in the wake of moral relativism. On this episode of Apologetics Profile, we discuss C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man with Lewis scholar and author Dr. Michael Ward and how Lewis's thoughts are still very much relevant for our time. From michaelward.netMichael Ward is an English literary critic and theologian. He works at the University of Oxford where he is an associate member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion. He is the author of the award-winning and best-selling Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford University Press) and of After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man (Word on Fire Academic); he is the co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis (Cambridge University Press). Though based at Oxford in his native England, Dr Ward is also employed as Professor of Apologetics at Houston Christian University, Texas, teaching one course per semester as part of the online MA program in Christian Apologetics.Free Four-Page Articles From Watchman FellowshipCharles Darwin Carl Sagan's CosmosNaturalism Deconstruction FREE: We are also offering a subscription to our 4-page bimonthly Profiles here: www.watchman.org/Free.PROFILE NOTEBOOK: Order the complete collection of Watchman Fellowship Profiles (over 600 pages -- from Astrology to Zen Buddhism) in either printed or PDF formats here: www.watchman.org/notebook. SUPPORT: Help us create more content like this. Make a tax-deductible donation here: www.watchman.org/give.Apologetics Profile is a ministry of Watchman Fellowship For more information, visit www.watchman.org © 2025 Watchman Fellowship, Inc.

Wer war Homer – ein genialer Dichter, ein blinder Sänger oder ein Mythos?In dieser Folge nähern wir uns dem Menschen (oder Kollektiv) hinter der Ilias und Odyssee – den ältesten überlieferten Epen Europas.Dabei werden wir versuchen herauszufinden:Ob Homer wirklich existiert hat?Ob beide Epen von denselben Autor stammen?Und wann die homerischen Epen in der Form, wie wir sie heute kennen, entstanden sind?QuellenAristotelesClemens von AlexandriaDiodorDiogenes LaertiosEusebius von CaesareaFlavius JosephusFlavius PhilostratosHerodotLykurgusPausaniasPlatonPlutarchPseudo-PlutarchSudaXenophanesLektüreAhl/Roisman, The Odyssey Re-formed, 1996Allen/Monro, Homer, 1911Bannert, Homer. Mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, 2005Bethe, Arktinos, RE, 1895Blößner, The state of the Homeric question, (…), 2020Brodersen/Zimmermann, Personen der Antike, 2004Burgess, The Tradition of the Trojan War and the Epic Cycle, 2001Cohn, Aristarchos 22, RE, 1895Davies, The Greek Epic Cycle, 1989Fowler, The Cambridge Companion to Homer, 2004Fränkel, Dichtung und Philosophie des frühen Griechentums, 1975Friedrich, Verwundung und Tod in der Ilias (…), 1956Graziosi, Inventing Homer (…), 2002Harris, Homer the Hostage (online)Heubeck, Die homerische Frage, 1974Hose/Schenker, A Companion to Greek Literature, 2015Jachmann, Vom frühalexandrinischen Homertext, (…), 1949Lane Fox, Reisende Helden (…), 2011Latacz, Homer. Der erste Dichter des Abendslands, 2003Lefkowitz, The Lives of the Greek Poets, 2013Michalopoulos, The Homeric Question Revisited (…), 2022Miller, Ancient Greek Dialects and Early Authors (…), 2013Möller, Homer (…), 2022Morris/Powell, A New Companion to Homer, 2011Nagy, Homer's Text and Language, 2004Ebd., An Evolutionary Model for the Making of Homeric Poetry, 1995Parry, The Making of Homeric Verse (…), 1971Patzek, Homer & die frühen Griechen, 2017Schadewaldt, Von Homers Welt und Werk. Aufsätze und Auslegungen zur Homerischen Frage, 1965Schironi, The Best of the Grammarians (…), 2018Schrott, Homers Heimat (…), 2008Seeck, Homer. Eine Einführung, 2004Shipp, Studies in the Language of Homer, 1953Too, The Idea of the Library in the Ancient World, 2010Welcker, Der epische Zyklus oder die Homerischen Dichter, 2010 (Neuausgabe)West, The Date of the Iliad, 1995Ebd., Geschichte der Überlieferung, 2008Ebd., Geschichte des Textes, 2000Wolf, Prolegomena zu Homer, 1908Homer in Britannica“Was Homer a tennage girl?” via meer.com“Homer and the Epic” via wehd.comHomer via europe.factsanddetails.comFrancois Hedelin via BritannicaMusikAkhet, the Inundation of the Nile - Egyptian Double Reed Flute Music & Old Tolchaco - Southwest Native American Indian Flute Music von ArizonaGuide (Pixabay)

Is it time to overhaul the way we study and teach ancient history? Are we limiting our ability to understand fully how the past informs the present in ways like inequality if we keep these disciplines siloed?Walter Scheidel is a professor of humanities, classics, and history at Stanford University. He's the author of more than a dozen books, including What Is Ancient History? and The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century.Walter and Greg discuss methodological divides between departments studying ancient history, the relevance of the Classics today, and the case for a new discipline on “foundational history.” They also explore the origins of inequality and how war, plagues, and technological advancements are the primary drivers for equality shifts. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:How ancient innovations still shape the modern world13:37: People face similar challenges, and they should be studied accordingly. And we should try to understand how people, at the time of many thousands of years ago, put all kinds of innovations in place and bundled them together in very specific ways that really create our world—in terms of material culture, in terms of social arrangements, institutions, cognitive frameworks, if you will. Writing and literature and world religions and other belief systems, and so on, are still very much with us. They really shape everything that we do today. So the world we inhabit today is like a supercharged version of what people set up in this formative period. But they did it all over the place.Why ancient studies need a paradigm shift10:08: Unless there is some major paradigm shift or some major other shock to the system, there's really no sufficient force to reconfigure the way we approach the study of the ancient world.Redefining ancient history beyond Greece and Rome03:03: If you're a historian, you may want to ask, well, why isn't ancient history, like Roman history, part of our history patterns more generally? And to go beyond that, what do we mean mostly by Greece and Rome when we say ancient history? I think we mean two things when we evoke ancient history. One is Greeks and Romans, maybe Egyptians and Nas if you're lucky, but not, you know, Maya or early China and that sort of thing. Or, more commonly, you refer to something you think is irrelevant and obsolete. You say that's ancient history whenever you want to dismiss something—it's like, that's ancient history. So my book is about both of these meanings and why neither one of them really does any justice to the subject matter and to what our understanding should be of this particular part of history. I want to redefine it as a truly transformative, foundational phase—not so much a period, but a phase of human development that unfolded on a planetary scale and needs to be studied accordingly.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Gini coefficientBranko MilanovićKuznets curveGuest Profile:Faculty Profile at Stanford UniversityProfessional WebsiteProfessional Profile on XGuest Work:What Is Ancient History?The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)Part of: The Princeton Economic History of the Western World (55 books)The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy (Cambridge Companions to the Ancient World)Part of: Cambridge Companions to the Ancient Athens (17 books) The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World by Walter Scheidel, Ian Morris, et al.The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium (Oxford Studies in Early Empires) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Exorcisms on the big screen are terrifying – but what did exorcisms mean in first-century Palestine? Join Helen and Lloyd in the Biblical Time Machine as they uncover the strange world of Greek magical papyri, the Dead Sea Scrolls and charismatic figures viewed as magicians. Joining them in the Time Machine is Professor Graham Twelftree, a leading Jesus historian, who argues that Jesus was perceived in his own lifetime as an exorcist. Graham H. Twelftree is Professor Emeritus of New testament Theology and Early Christianity at the School of Divinity, Regent University in Virginia, and Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the London School of Theology. His many works include Jesus the Exorcist: A Contribution to the Study of the Historical Jesus (1991), Jesus the Miracle Worker and Paul and the Miraculous, and edited volumes such as The Nature Miracles of Jesus: Problems, Perspectives and Prospects and The Cambridge Companion to Miracles. SUPPORT BIBLICAL TIME MACHINE If you enjoy the podcast, please (pretty please!) consider supporting the show through the Time Travellers Club, our Patreon. We are an independent, listener-supported show (no ads!), so please help us continue to showcase high-quality biblical scholarship with a monthly subscription.DOWNLOAD OUR STUDY GUIDE: MARK AS ANCIENT BIOGRAPHYCheck out our 4-part audio study guide called "The Gospel of Mark as an Ancient Biography." While you're there, get yourself a Biblical Time Machine mug or a cool sticker for your water bottle.Support the showTheme music written and performed by Dave Roos, creator of Biblical Time Machine

Dr Lucas Schulte, Director of Education and Outreach at Tri-Faith, was raised on a Nebraska farm, tutored in college and divinity schools, seasoned on archaeological digs, and blends grit and thoughtful reflection. As well as deep religious scholarship, he has spent decades asking how people of different faiths live well together. We talk about all that in the show, as well as Indiana-Jones moments, religious identity, and why interfaith engagement matters in a polarized era.Dr. Schulte leads efforts to promote Religious Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion through community education and engagement. A Nebraska native, he earned degrees from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Yale Divinity School, and Claremont Graduate University, specializing in the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, and the ancient Near East. His career includes teaching at universities and seminaries nationwide, archaeological work in Israel, and published scholarship, including a book on the Book of Nehemiah and a chapter in The Cambridge Companion to the Book of Isaiah. Today, he brings both academic expertise and practical creativity to advancing interfaith understanding, while also enjoying life with his wife, two children, and passions ranging from biking and cooking to Star Trek and K-dramas.____Today's show and others are supported by the generous membership of Amy and Tom Trenolone.

Dr Lucas Schulte, Director of Education and Outreach at Tri-Faith, was raised on a Nebraska farm, tutored in college and divinity schools, seasoned on archaeological digs, and blends grit and thoughtful reflection. As well as deep religious scholarship, he has spent decades asking how people of different faiths live well together. We talk about all that in the show, as well as Indiana-Jones moments, religious identity, and why interfaith engagement matters in a polarized era.Dr. Schulte leads efforts to promote Religious Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion through community education and engagement. A Nebraska native, he earned degrees from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Yale Divinity School, and Claremont Graduate University, specializing in the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, and the ancient Near East. His career includes teaching at universities and seminaries nationwide, archaeological work in Israel, and published scholarship, including a book on the Book of Nehemiah and a chapter in The Cambridge Companion to the Book of Isaiah. Today, he brings both academic expertise and practical creativity to advancing interfaith understanding, while also enjoying life with his wife, two children, and passions ranging from biking and cooking to Star Trek and K-dramas.____Today's show and others are supported by the generous membership of Amy and Tom Trenolone.

Welcome to the Via Stoica Podcast, The Podcast on Stoicism.In this episode of The Via Stoica Podcast, Benny speaks with Dr. John Sellars, one of today's leading scholars of Stoicism and the history of philosophy. Dr. Sellars is Reader in the History of Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London, Associate Editor for the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series at King's College London, and a founding member of both Modern Stoicism and the Aurelius Foundation. He has authored and edited numerous works, including Stoicism (recently revised), Stoicism and Emotion, and The Cambridge Companion to Marcus Aurelius.Our conversation traces Dr. Sellars' journey from his early fascination with science and politics to his lifelong study of ancient philosophy. We explore how the Stoics carried forward the legacy of Socrates in a way that feels both practical and deeply human, and why their materialist, empiricist outlook resonated more with him than Plato's metaphysical idealism. Dr. Sellars reflects on how philosophy has shaped his own life, from changing his views on free will to cultivating a “big picture” perspective that keeps ego and ambition in check.The discussion ranges widely: from common misconceptions about Stoicism, such as that it is unemotional, politically disengaged, or only for men, to the role of community in mental health, and the tension between Stoic determinism and ideas of God, providence, and nature. We also dive into Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, examining why the book endures, how Marcus grappled with death and difficult people, and why we should see him not as a perfect sage but as a flawed human being struggling to live well.Dr. Sellars also shares insights into his ongoing projects, including new research on Stoicism and leadership (with Justin Stead of the Aurelius Foundation), and his work with psychologists at Royal Holloway testing Stoic practices in peer-reviewed studies on resilience, anxiety, and anger.Whether you are new to Stoicism or looking to go deeper into its history and modern applications, this episode offers both scholarly depth and practical wisdom for living a good life.You can find Dr. Sellars' books, including the revised edition of Stoicism and The Cambridge Companion to Marcus Aurelius, through major booksellers. To learn more, visit the Aurelius Foundation or the Center for the Study and Application of Stoicism at Royal Holloway.Support the show⁠https://viastoica.com⁠https://viastoica.com/stoic-life-coaching⁠https://viastoica.com/benny-voncken⁠https://viastoica.com/brendan-hogle⁠https://x.com/ViaStoica⁠info@viastoica.com⁠Produced by: ⁠http://badmic.com

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emile Zola's greatest literary success, his thirteenth novel in a series exploring the extended Rougon-Macquart family. The relative here is Etienne Lantier, already known to Zola's readers as one of the blighted branch of the family tree and his story is set in Northern France. It opens with Etienne trudging towards a coalmine at night seeking work, and soon he is caught up in a bleak world in which starving families struggle and then strike, as they try to hold on to the last scraps of their humanity and the hope of change. With Susan Harrow Ashley Watkins Chair of French at the University of Bristol Kate Griffiths Professor in French and Translation at Cardiff University And Edmund Birch Lecturer in French Literature and Director of Studies at Churchill College & Selwyn College, University of Cambridge Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: David Baguley, Naturalist Fiction: The Entropic Vision (Cambridge University Press, 1990) William Burgwinkle, Nicholas Hammond and Emma Wilson (eds.), The Cambridge History of French Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2011), particularly ‘Naturalism' by Nicholas White Kate Griffiths, Emile Zola and the Artistry of Adaptation (Legenda, 2009) Kate Griffiths and Andrew Watts, Adapting Nineteenth-Century France: Literature in Film, Theatre, Television, Radio, and Print (University of Wales Press, 2013) Anna Gural-Migdal and Robert Singer (eds.), Zola and Film: Essays in the Art of Adaptation (McFarland & Co., 2005) Susan Harrow, Zola, The Body Modern: Pressures and Prospects of Representation (Legenda, 2010) F. W. J. Hemmings, The Life and Times of Emile Zola (first published 1977; Bloomsbury, 2013) William Dean Howells, Emile Zola (The Floating Press, 2018) Lida Maxwell, Public Trials: Burke, Zola, Arendt, and the Politics of Lost Causes (Oxford University Press, 2014) Brian Nelson, Emile Zola: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2020) Brian Nelson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Emile Zola (Cambridge University Press, 2007) Sandy Petrey, Realism and Revolution: Balzac, Stendhal, Zola, and the Performances of History (Cornell University Press, 1988) Arthur Rose, ‘Coal politics: receiving Emile Zola's Germinal' (Modern & contemporary France, 2021, Vol.29, 2) Philip D. Walker, Emile Zola (Routledge, 1969) Emile Zola (trans. Peter Collier), Germinal (Oxford University Press, 1993) Emile Zola (trans. Roger Pearson), Germinal (Penguin Classics, 2004) Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

Discover the life, works, and enduring influence of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the Dominican friar whose synthesis of faith and reason transformed philosophy and theology.Find me and my music here:https://linktr.ee/filipholmSupport Let's Talk Religion on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/letstalkreligion Or through a one-time donation: https://paypal.me/talkreligiondonateSources/Recomended Reading:Aquinas, Thomas (1998). "Selected Writings". Penguin Classics.Davies, Brian & Elenore Stump (ed.) (2012). "The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas". OUP USA.Kretzmann, Norman & Eleonore Stump (ed.) (2010). "The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas". Cambridge University Press.The Summa Theologica Translation by Ave Maria Press (1981). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since its publication in 1957, Jack Kerouac's iconic novel On the Road has inspired millions to head for the highways and live life to its fullest. In this episode, Jacke talks to filmmaker Ebs Burnough about his new documentary Kerouac's Road: The Beat of a Nation, which interweaves stories of modern-day travelers with those influenced by or connected to the legendary author. PLUS Steven Belletto, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Jack Kerouac and The Cambridge Companion to the Beats, stops by to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read. Additional listening: 644 Jack Kerouac (with Steven Belletto) 619 Fred Waitzkin on Kerouac, Hemingway, and His New Novel 339 Jack Kerouac Special Announcement: The History of Literature Podcast Tour is happening in May 2026! Act now to join Jacke and fellow literature fans on an eight-day journey through literary England in partnership with ⁠John Shors Travel⁠. Find out more by emailing jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com or masahiko@johnshorstravel.com, or by contacting us through our website ⁠historyofliterature.com⁠. Or visit the ⁠History of Literature Podcast Tour itinerary⁠ at ⁠John Shors Travel⁠. The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at ⁠gabrielruizbernal.com. Help support the show at ⁠patreon.com/literature ⁠or ⁠historyofliterature.com/donate ⁠. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at ⁠thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Do I dare / Disturb the universe?" I've been waiting to record this episode for a long time: Megan Quigley, my dear friend and colleague, joins the podcast to talk about T. S. Eliot and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."Megan Quigley is an associate professor of English at Villanova University, where she is also on the Irish Studies and Gender and Women's Studies faculties. She is the author of Modernist Fiction and Vagueness: Philosophy, Form, and Language (Cambridge UP, 2015) and the co-editor of Eliot Now (Bloomsbury, 2024). She is also the editor of two clusters of essays on #MeToo, Eliot, and modernism in Modernism/modernity Print+ (2019, 2020). Her essays have appeared in the James Joyce Quarterly, Modernism/modernity, Philosophy and Literature, Poetics Today, LARB, the T. S. Eliot Studies Annual, nonsite, and the Cambridge Companion to European Modernism. She is a four-time lecturer and seminar leader at the T. S. Eliot International Summer School. Her current book project is called "The Love Song of Modernism" and is on modernism and fan fiction. She has two essays in progress on AI and literature and an essay forthcoming on "T. S. Eliot's Women" in A Companion to Eliot's Complete Prose.As always, make sure you're following the podcast on your platform of choice, and, if you've been enjoying it, leave a rating and review. Please also share the podcast with your friends. More soon!

Today Dominic hosts Rik Peels on the podcast to discuss religious extremism. They dive into the background of radicalisation; the differences between extremism, fundamentalism, and conspiracy theories; what the global patterns are; what role belief systems play in radicalisation; why radicalisation has such an impact on crises; and more!Dr. Rik Peels is a Professor in Philosophy and Theology of Radicalisation at the Faculty of Humanities at the Free University of Amsterdam. Rik specialises in the ethics and epistemology of belief, in particular extreme belief, and replication in the humanities. He has developed a theory of responsible belief, studied ignorance, criticised scientism and developed a common sense alternative, explored the ethics of religious belief, and delved into the epistemic responsibilities of universities. He is currently leading an ERC Starting Grant named "Extreme Beliefs: The Epistemology and Ethics of Fundamentalism" (2020-2025)Among his most recent books are Ignorance (OUP 2023) and Monotheism and Fundamentalism (CUP 2024). He is the main editor of the OUP Extreme Belief and Behaviour Series (2024-2026). Among his most recent books in Dutch are: De extremist en de wetenschapper: Hoe we radicalisering beter kunnen begrijpen (Amsterdam 2024) and Leven zonder God: Wat je kunt leren van atheïsten (Utrecht 2024). His most recent monograph is Responsible Belief: A Theory in Ethics and Epistemology (Oxford University Press, 2017). He edited Moral and Social Perspectives on Ignorance (Routledge, 2017), and co-edited The Epistemic Dimensions of Ignorance (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Scientism: A Philosophical Exposition and Evaluation (Oxford University Press, 2018), and The Cambridge Companion to Common Sense Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2020). He published over 50 articles in such journals as Nature, Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and The Journal of Philosophy. He also regularly publishes opinion pieces in newspapers, does radio and television interviews, and engages in public debates on several issues in ethics and the philosophy of religion.Finally, Rik is one of the few academics fusing philosophy, theology, and psychology to explain the architecture of radicalisation.The International Risk Podcast is a must-listen for senior executives, board members, and risk advisors. This weekly podcast dives deep into international relations, emerging risks, and strategic opportunities. Hosted by Dominic Bowen, Head of Strategic Advisory at one of Europe's top risk consulting firms, the podcast brings together global experts to share insights and actionable strategies.Dominic's 20+ years of experience managing complex operations in high-risk environments, combined with his role as a public speaker and university lecturer, make him uniquely positioned to guide these conversations. From conflict zones to corporate boardrooms, he explores the risks shaping our world and how organisations can navigate them.The International Risk Podcast – Reducing risk by increasing knowledge.Follow us on LinkedIn  and Instagram for all our great updates.Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly briefs.Tell us what you liked!

In this episode, we explore the powerful philosophy of Pantheism—the belief that God is identical with the universe and everything in it. From ancient roots to modern interpretations, we dive deep into how Pantheism connects spirituality, science, and nature in a unified vision of reality.Find me and my music here:https://linktr.ee/filipholmSupport Let's Talk Religion on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/letstalkreligion Or through a one-time donation: https://paypal.me/talkreligiondonateAlso check out the Let's Talk Religion Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0ih4sqtWv0wRIhS6HFgerb?si=95b07d83d0254bSources/Recomended Reading:Chittick, William (1989). "The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn 'Arabi's Metaphysics of Imagination".Chittick, William (1998). "The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-'Arabi's Cosmology". State University of New York Press.Chittick, William (2005). "Ibn Arabi: Heir to the Prophets". OneWorld Publications.Garrett, Don (1996). "The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza". Cambridge University Press.Gatti, Hilary (ed.) (2002). "Giordano Bruno: Philosopher of the Renaissance". Routledge.Idel, Moshe (1990). "Kabbalah: New Perspectives". Yale University Press.Inwood, Brad (ed.) (2003). "The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics". Cambridge University Press.Levine, Michael P.P. (2014). "Pantheism: A Non-Theistic Concept of Deity". Routledge.McGinn, Bernard. "The Presence of God" Series, in several volumes. Perhaps the best and most comprehensive introduction to Christian mysticism. Published by Crossroad Publishing Co.Scholem, Gershom (1995). "Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism". Schocken Books; Revised edition.Rubenstein, Mary-Jane (2018). "Pantheologies: Gods, Worlds, Monsters". Columbia University Press.Wolfson, Harry Austryn (2014). "The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning". Harvard University Press."The Ethics" by Spinoza"Cause, Principle & Unity" by Giordano Bruno Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, I am joined by the eminent historian of science and religion, Peter Harrison. We examine how we've inherited a distorted narrative about the relationship between science and religion. Rather than the conflict narrative we're accustomed to, Harrison reveals that science and religion are not historical foes, and that modern Western sciences are actually built on theological assumptions. The real game-changer comes from tracing how Protestant reforms—notably the attack on allegorical readings of scripture and the demand for each individual to justify their belief— fundamentally transformed how we read both Scripture and nature, eventually leading to our impoverished, utilitarian view of the natural world. Harrison shows how concepts we think are timeless - like "belief," "supernatural," and even "religion" itself - are modern inventions with specific histories, and how understanding these genealogies can help us see that many of our contemporary problems in science-religion dialogue are artifacts of the categories themselves rather than real conflicts in the world. The conversation ultimately suggests that by understanding how we arrived at our current conceptual frameworks, we might find new ways forward that don't trap us in the either/or thinking that dominates so much of contemporary debate. Dr. Peter Harrison is a former Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion in the University of Oxford, and Emeritus Professor of the History of Science at the University of Queensland, where he was also an Australian Laureate fellow and Founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH). His many celebrated books include The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science, The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion, The Territories of Science and Religion, & his newest book Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age. ONLINE SUMMIT:⁠⁠⁠ Democracy in Tension - NAVIGATING THE INTERLOCKING CRISES OF DEMOCRACY AND RELIGION ⁠⁠⁠ Democracy today faces profound challenges – polarization, inequality, populist authoritarianism, and widespread cynicism are eroding the foundations of democratic life. Yet, what if democracy's greatest strength lies not in eliminating these tensions, but in productively embracing them?The summit will navigate the complex terrain between political equality and social justice, liberal freedom and democratic sovereignty, and ethical demands and political action. As always, the class is donation-based, including 0. INFO & Sign-Up at ⁠⁠⁠www.HomebrewedClasses.com⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Theology Beer Camp ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠is a unique three-day conference that brings together of theology nerds and craft beer for a blend of intellectual engagement, community building, and fun. This event features a lineup of well-known podcasters, scholars, and theology enthusiasts who come together to "nerd out" on theological topics while enjoying loads of fun activities. Guests this year include John Dominic Crossan, Kelly Brown Douglas, Philip Clayton, Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Jeffery Pugh, Juan Floyd-Thomas, Andy Root, Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Noreen Herzfeld, Reggie Williams, Casper ter Kuile, and more! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Get info and tickets here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. _____________________ This podcast is a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Homebrewed Christianity⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ production. Follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the Homebrewed Christianity⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Theology Nerd Throwdown⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, & ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Rise of Bonhoeffer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 80,000 other people by joining our⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Substack - Process This!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Get instant access to over 45 classes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.TheologyClass.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow the podcast, drop a review⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, send ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠feedback/questions⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or become a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠member of the HBC Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was a visionary, teacher, Abbess, composer, theologian, painter, and the first woman in history to be given papal approval to preach in public. Four centuries before the emergence of the “Renaissance Man,” there was Hildegard of Bingen. Usually known mostly for her music (and rightfully so) there is so much more to this medieval mystic. Links To get a sense of what the Cathars were all about, here's the Way of the Fathers episode on gnosticism: https://youtu.be/JYeyevLBF4I?si=rr0eWytzOAuHyPfH Playlist of Hildegard's Music on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nJez_L5_xEzOeIgUp4rEsPrdri_ZJIG-E Margot Fassler's Cosmos, Liturgy, and the Arts in the Twelfth Century: Hildegard's Illuminated "Scivias"  https://www.pennpress.org/9781512823073/cosmos-liturgy-and-the-arts-in-the-twelfth-century/ Carmen Acevedo Butcher's Hildegard of Bingen: A Spiritual Reader: https://paracletepress.com/products/hildegard-of-bingen-doctor-of-the-church?_pos=1&_sid=82546e597&_ss=r The Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen: https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/literature/european-literature/cambridge-companion-hildegard-bingen?format=PB&isbn=9781108457811 SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's Newsletter:  https://www.catholicculture.org/newsletters/ DONATE at:  http://www.catholicculture.org/donate/audio Dr. Papandrea's Homepage:  http://www.jimpapandrea.com Dr. Papandrea's YouTube channel, The Original Church: https://www.youtube.com/@TheOriginalChurch To ask questions, make comments, or interact with Dr. Papandrea, join the conversation in the Original Church Community: https://theoriginalchurch.locals.com/ Theme Music: Gaudeamus (Introit for the Feast of All Saints), sung by Jeff Ostrowski. Courtesy of Corpus Christi Watershed:  https://www.ccwatershed.org/

Link to more info: https://eggshelltherapy.com/podcast-blog/2025/05/29/drrondel/A CONVERSATION ON EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY I am pleased to share with you my recent conversation on a topic that haunts many of us: anxiety. Today, we dive into the connection between philosophy and anxiety with Dr. David Rondel, a philosophy professor and author of "A Danger, Which We Do Not Know: A Philosophical Journey into Anxiety." In his work, Dr. Rondel explores his journey through anxiety. From the wisdom of thinkers like Kierkegaard and William James to the challenges of modern anxieties like eco-anxiety and social media stress, Dr. Rondel shows us how embracing anxiety can lead to personal growth and a greater understanding of ourselves.I would be thrilled for you to join this poignant and perennially relevant discussion! About Dr. RondelDavid Rondel is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nevada. He is the author of Pragmatist Egalitarianism (Oxford University Press, 2018), and editor or co-editor of four additional books: Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will: The Political Philosophy of Kai Nielsen (University of Calgary Press, 2012), Pragmatism and Justice (Oxford University Press, 2017), The Cambridge Companion to Rorty (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and The Moral Psychology of Anxiety (Lexington, 2024).His website: https://www.davidrondel.com/aboutThe book: https://www.amazon.com/Danger-Which-Not-Know-Philosophical/dp/0197767249Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: eggshelltherapy.com About Imi Lo: www.imiloimilo.comInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/eggshelltherapy_imilo/ Newsletters: https://eepurl.com/bykHRzDisclaimers: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers Trigger Warning: This episode may cover sensitive topics including but not limited to suicide, abuse, violence, severe mental illnesses, relationship challenges, sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, psychedelics, and the use of plant medicines. You are advised to refrain from watching or listening to the YouTube Channel or Podcast if you are likely to be offended or adversely impacted by any of these topics. Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only. Please do not consider any of the content clinical or professional advice. None of the content can substitute mental health intervention. Opinions and views expressed by the host and the guests are personal views and they reserve the right to change their opinions. We also cannot guarantee that everything mentioned is factual and completely accurate. Any action you take based on the information in this episode is taken at your own risk.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great figures in world literature. The French playwright Molière (1622-1673) began as an actor, aiming to be a tragedian, but he was stronger in comedy, touring with a troupe for 13 years until Louis XIV summoned him to audition at the Louvre and gave him his break. It was in Paris and at Versailles that Molière wrote and performed his best known plays, among them Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope and Le Malade Imaginaire, and in time he was so celebrated that French became known as The Language of Molière.With Noel Peacock Emeritus Marshall Professor in French Language and Literature at the University of GlasgowJan Clarke Professor of French at Durham UniversityAnd Joe Harris Professor of Early Modern French and Comparative Literature at Royal Holloway, University of LondonProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:David Bradby and Andrew Calder (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Molière (Cambridge University Press, 2006)Jan Clarke (ed.), Molière in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2022)Georges Forestier, Molière (Gallimard, 2018)Michael Hawcroft, Molière: Reasoning with Fools (Oxford University Press, 2007)John D. Lyons, Women and Irony in Molière's Comedies of Mariage (Oxford University Press, 2023)Robert McBride and Noel Peacock (eds.), Le Nouveau Moliériste (11 vols., University of Glasgow Presw, 1994- )Larry F. Norman, The Public Mirror: Molière and the Social Commerce of Depiction (University of Chicago Press, 1999)Noel Peacock, Molière sous les feux de la rampe (Hermann, 2012)Julia Prest, Controversy in French Drama: Molière's Tartuffe and the Struggle for Influence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)Virginia Scott, Molière: A Theatrical Life (Cambridge University Press, 2020)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/editorialtpv El día de hoy hablaremos sobre el fin del movimiento puritano, de acuerdo capítulo 5, “Later Stuart Puritanism” por John Spurr del libro The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism. Ver aquí: https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/subjects/religion/church-history/cambridge-companion-puritanism?format=HB&isbn=9780521860888 . Páginas 89-106. El programa de hoy examina la evolución del puritanismo en la Inglaterra posterior a la Restauración de la monarquía de 1660. Traza la transición del puritanismo a la disidencia, destacando los diversos grupos englobados en la disidencia y sus experiencias de persecución y evolución de las alianzas políticas. El programa explora la dinámica interna de la disidencia, incluidos los debates teológicos y las estructuras organizativas, y examina la relación entre la disidencia y diversos grupos sociales y económicos. En última instancia, sostiene que, aunque el puritanismo se adaptó y cambió significativamente después de 1662, sus valores y prácticas fundamentales persistieron en diversas formas dentro del movimiento disidente. Siguenos: - Web: https://teologiaparavivir.com/ - Blog: https://semperreformandaperu.org/ - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teologiaparavivir/ - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teologiaparavivir/ - Youtube: https://www.instagram.com/teologiaparavivir/

Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/editorialtpv El día de hoy hablaremos sobre la revolución puritana, de acuerdo capítulo 4, “The Puritan Revolution” por John Morrill del libro The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism. Ver aquí: https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/subjects/religion/church-history/cambridge-companion-puritanism?format=HB&isbn=9780521860888 . Páginas 67-88. El programa de hoy examina la polifacética agitación religiosa y política de la Gran Bretaña de mediados del siglo 17. Morrill cuestiona la simplista etiqueta de «revolución puritana», explorando la compleja interacción de grupos presbiterianos, independientes y de otras sectas que competían por el poder religioso y político. Detalla los intentos de reforma de la Iglesia de Inglaterra, los conflictos subsiguientes y el triunfo final, aunque incompleto, de los ideales puritanos bajo el Protectorado de Oliver Cromwell. El programa destaca los diversos puntos de vista teológicos y la lucha por la libertad religiosa, mostrando en última instancia el complejo legado de triunfo y fragmentación del puritanismo. Se analiza también el papel de las figuras y acontecimientos clave, proporcionando una comprensión matizada de este período transformador. Siguenos: - Web: https://teologiaparavivir.com/ - Blog: https://semperreformandaperu.org/ - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teologiaparavivir/ - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teologiaparavivir/ - Youtube: https://www.instagram.com/teologiaparavivir/

Over sixty years after its opening night, West Side Story is perhaps the most famous and beloved of twentieth-century musicals and stands as a colossus of musical and dramatic achievement. It not only helped define a generation of musical theatre lovers but is among the handful of shows that have contributed to our understanding of American musical identity at mid-century.  Bringing together contemporary scholars in music, theatre, dance, literature, and performance, The Cambridge Companion to West Side Story (Cambridge UP, 2024) explores this explosive 1950s remake of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and its portrayal of the raw passion, rivalries, jealousy and rage that doom the young lovers to their tragic fate. Organized thematically, chapters range from Broadway's history and precursors to West Side Story; the early careers of its creators; the show's score with emphasis on writing, production, and orchestrations; issues of class, colorism, and racism; New York's gang culture, and how the show's legacy can be found in popular culture throughout the world. Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Over sixty years after its opening night, West Side Story is perhaps the most famous and beloved of twentieth-century musicals and stands as a colossus of musical and dramatic achievement. It not only helped define a generation of musical theatre lovers but is among the handful of shows that have contributed to our understanding of American musical identity at mid-century.  Bringing together contemporary scholars in music, theatre, dance, literature, and performance, The Cambridge Companion to West Side Story (Cambridge UP, 2024) explores this explosive 1950s remake of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and its portrayal of the raw passion, rivalries, jealousy and rage that doom the young lovers to their tragic fate. Organized thematically, chapters range from Broadway's history and precursors to West Side Story; the early careers of its creators; the show's score with emphasis on writing, production, and orchestrations; issues of class, colorism, and racism; New York's gang culture, and how the show's legacy can be found in popular culture throughout the world. Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

Over sixty years after its opening night, West Side Story is perhaps the most famous and beloved of twentieth-century musicals and stands as a colossus of musical and dramatic achievement. It not only helped define a generation of musical theatre lovers but is among the handful of shows that have contributed to our understanding of American musical identity at mid-century.  Bringing together contemporary scholars in music, theatre, dance, literature, and performance, The Cambridge Companion to West Side Story (Cambridge UP, 2024) explores this explosive 1950s remake of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and its portrayal of the raw passion, rivalries, jealousy and rage that doom the young lovers to their tragic fate. Organized thematically, chapters range from Broadway's history and precursors to West Side Story; the early careers of its creators; the show's score with emphasis on writing, production, and orchestrations; issues of class, colorism, and racism; New York's gang culture, and how the show's legacy can be found in popular culture throughout the world. Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Over sixty years after its opening night, West Side Story is perhaps the most famous and beloved of twentieth-century musicals and stands as a colossus of musical and dramatic achievement. It not only helped define a generation of musical theatre lovers but is among the handful of shows that have contributed to our understanding of American musical identity at mid-century.  Bringing together contemporary scholars in music, theatre, dance, literature, and performance, The Cambridge Companion to West Side Story (Cambridge UP, 2024) explores this explosive 1950s remake of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and its portrayal of the raw passion, rivalries, jealousy and rage that doom the young lovers to their tragic fate. Organized thematically, chapters range from Broadway's history and precursors to West Side Story; the early careers of its creators; the show's score with emphasis on writing, production, and orchestrations; issues of class, colorism, and racism; New York's gang culture, and how the show's legacy can be found in popular culture throughout the world. Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In early 1820 a young farm boy by the name of Joseph Smith believed he had a vision of God the Father and Jesus Christ appearing to him, exhorting him not to join any of the existing churches of his day, for they were all corrupt. Just over 200 years later in 2023 in Wilmore, Kentuck in the main chapel on the campus of Asbury Theological Seminary, something of a revival began. For two weeks, thousands of people from all over the world came to Ashbury to see for themselves what was happening. During these two weeks, people prayed and sang worship songs. Many Christians, however, debated as to whether or not this was a genuine revival or just an emotive outpouring of mostly Gen-Z'ers. And most Evangelical Christians criticize Joseph's Smith's first vision as either legendary, completely fabricated, or theologically aberrant. How can we rightly discern whether or not people's personal experiences are truly from God? This week on the Profile we wrap up our conversation with theologian and literary scholar Dr. Jeffery Barbeau about his new book The Last Romantic - C.S. Lewis, English Literature, and Modern Theology and consider more of Lewis's insights and how they can equip us to think biblically about personal religious experiences.Jeffery Barbeau (Ph.D., Marquette University) is professor of theology at Wheaton College, Editor of The Coleridge Bulletin, and a writer on British Romanticism, religion and literature, and the history of Christian thought. His other works include The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism and Religion (2021), The Spirit of Methodism: From the Wesleys to a Global Communion (2019), and Religion in Romantic England (2018).Related Links: Go deeper with these related apologetics tools: Watchman Fellowship's Spiritual Abuse Recovery Workbook by David Henke: www.watchman.org/SA Watchman Fellowship Profile on the International Christian Church: by Steve Matthews and Dr. Brady Blevins: www.watchman.org/ICC Watchman Fellowship Profile on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Tim Martin: www.watchman.org/Mormonism Watchman Fellowship Profile on Atheism by Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Jr: www.watchman.org/Mormonism Watchman Fellowship Profile on the Islam by James Walker: www.watchman.org/Muslim Additional ResourcesFREE: We are also offering a subscription to our 4-page bimonthly Profiles here: www.watchman.org/FreePROFILE NOTEBOOK: Order the complete collection of Watchman Fellowship Profiles (around 700 pages -- from Astrology to Zen Buddhism) in either printed or PDF formats here: www.watchman.org/NotebookSUPPORT: Help us create more content like this. Make a tax-deductible donation here: www.watchman.org/GiveApologetics Profile is a ministry of Watchman Fellowship For more information, visit www.watchman.org © Watchman Fellowship, Inc.

Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/editorialtpv El día de hoy hablaremos sobre las complejidades del puritanismo a inicios del siglo 17 de acuerdo capítulo 3, “Early Stuart Puritanism” por Tom Webster del libro The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism. Ver aquí: https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/subjects/religion/church-history/cambridge-companion-puritanism?format=HB&isbn=9780521860888 . Páginas 48-66. El programa de hoy explora las complejidades del puritanismo de los primeros tiempos de Estuardo (1603-1640), cuestionando la noción de un movimiento unificado. Analiza la cambiante relación de los puritanos con la corona, destacando los periodos de optimismo y decepción, y la tensión entre conformidad y subversión. Webster examina las diversas estrategias de los puritanos para la reforma religiosa y social, incluyendo el mecenazgo, la piedad y la cultura impresa, demostrando su adaptabilidad y resistencia ante los cambiantes panoramas político y eclesiástico. Además, investiga el impacto del laudianismo, ilustrando cómo el aumento de la presión condujo tanto a una mayor conformidad como a una respuesta más radicalizada por parte de algunos. Por último, el programa concluye abogando por una comprensión más matizada del puritanismo de principios del siglo 17, haciendo hincapié en su heterogeneidad interna y su fluidez contextual. Siguenos: - Web: https://teologiaparavivir.com/ - Blog: https://semperreformandaperu.org/ - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teologiaparavivir/ - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teologiaparavivir/ - Youtube: https://www.instagram.com/teologiaparavivir/ 

If you have ever had a deeply moving personal experience with God, you know it can be something that words cannot adequately convey. Perhaps it is deeply emotional, powerful, and moving. The experience solidifies your conviction that what you believe about God is true. You might also believe God "spoke" to you in that moment. But given that there are a multitude of other religions today with devotees who claim to have similar experiences, how can we know that what we have experienced is an authentic movement of the God who is there? This week and next on the Profile, we talk with theologian and literary scholar Dr. Jeffrey Barbeau about his new book The Last Romantic - C.S. Lewis, English Literature, and Modern Theology and how Lewis's thoughts about Romantic poetry might give us some insight about the nature of personal religious experiences and how properly to think about them.Jeffery Barbeau (Ph.D., Marquette University) is professor of theology at Wheaton College, Editor of The Coleridge Bulletin, and a writer on British Romanticism, religion and literature, and the history of Christian thought. His books include monographs, anthologies, and edited books, including The Last Romantic: C. S. Lewis, English Literature, and Modern Theology (2025), The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism and Religion (2021), The Spirit of Methodism: From the Wesleys to a Global Communion (2019), Religion in Romantic England (2018), and Sara Coleridge: Her Life and Thought (2014).Related Links: Go deeper with these related apologetics tools: Watchman Fellowship's Spiritual Abuse Recovery Workbook by David Henke: www.watchman.org/SA Watchman Fellowship Profile on the International Christian Church: by Steve Matthews and Dr. Brady Blevins: www.watchman.org/ICC Watchman Fellowship Profile on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Tim Martin: www.watchman.org/Mormonism Watchman Fellowship Profile on Atheism by Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Jr: www.watchman.org/Mormonism Watchman Fellowship Profile on the Islam by James Walker: www.watchman.org/Muslim Former Latter-day Saint, Isaac Hess, describes Mormonism's "Burning in the Bosom" https://youtu.be/ChULWVM6AF8 Additional ResourcesFREE: We are also offering a subscription to our 4-page bimonthly Profiles here: www.watchman.org/FreePROFILE NOTEBOOK: Order the complete collection of Watchman Fellowship Profiles (around 700 pages -- from Astrology to Zen Buddhism) in either printed or PDF formats here: www.watchman.org/NotebookSUPPORT: Help us create more content like this. Make a tax-deductible donation here: www.watchman.org/GiveApologetics Profile is a ministry of Watchman Fellowship For more information, visit www.watchman.org © Watchman Fellowship, Inc.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Plato's Crito and Phaedo, his accounts of the last days of Socrates in prison in 399 BC as he waited to be executed by drinking hemlock. Both works show Socrates preparing to die in the way he had lived: doing philosophy. In the Crito, Plato shows Socrates arguing that he is duty bound not to escape from prison even though a bribe would open the door, while in the Phaedo his argument is for the immortality of the soul which, at the point of death, might leave uncorrupted from the 'prison' of his body, the one escape that truly mattered to Socrates. His example in his last days has proved an inspiration to thinkers over the centuries and in no small way has helped ensure the strength of his reputation.WithAngie Hobbs Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of SheffieldFiona Leigh Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at University College LondonAnd James Warren Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Corpus Christi College, CambridgeProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:David Ebrey, Plato's Phaedo: Forms, Death and the Philosophical Life (Cambridge University Press, 2023)Dorothea Frede, ‘The Final Proof of the Immortality of the Soul in Plato's Phaedo 102a-107a' (Phronesis 23, 1978)W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 4, Plato: The Man and his Dialogues, Earlier Period (Cambridge University Press, 2008) Verity Harte, ‘Conflicting Values in Plato's Crito' (Archiv. für Geschichte der Philosophie 81, 1999)Angie Hobbs, Why Plato Matters Now (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2025), especially chapter 5 Rachana Kamtekar (ed.), Plato's Euthyphro, Apology and Crito: Critical Essays (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004)Richard Kraut, Socrates and the State (Princeton University Press, 1984)Melissa Lane, ‘Argument and Agreement in Plato's Crito' (History of Political Thought 19, 1998) Plato (trans. Chris Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy), Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo and Phaedrus (Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 2017)Plato (trans. G. M. A. Grube and John Cooper), The Trial and Death of Socrates: Euthyphro Apology, Crito, Phaedo (Hackett, 2001) Plato (trans. Christopher Rowe), The Last Days of Socrates: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo (Penguin, 2010)Donald R. Robinson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Socrates (Cambridge University Press, 2011)David Sedley and Alex Long (eds.), Plato: Meno and Phaedo (Cambridge University Press, 2010)James Warren, ‘Forms of Agreement in Plato's Crito' (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 123, Issue 1, April 2023)Robin Waterfield, Why Socrates Died: Dispelling the Myths (Faber and Faber, 2010)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

In recent years, manga and anime have attracted increasing scholarly interest beyond the realm of Japanese studies. This Companion takes a unique approach, committed to exploring both the similarities and differences between these two distinct but interrelated media forms. Firmly based in Japanese sources, The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime (Cambridge UP, 2024) offers a lively and accessible introduction, exploring the local contexts of manga and anime production, distribution, and reception in Japan, as well as the global influence and impact of these versatile media. Chapters explore common characteristics such as visuals, voice, serial narrative and characters, whilst also highlighting distinct challenges and histories. The volume provides both a basis for further research in this burgeoning field and a source of inspiration for those new to the topic. Listeners are also invited to observe an author roundtable on Feb.19, 2025. Please RSVP here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In recent years, manga and anime have attracted increasing scholarly interest beyond the realm of Japanese studies. This Companion takes a unique approach, committed to exploring both the similarities and differences between these two distinct but interrelated media forms. Firmly based in Japanese sources, The Cambridge Companion to Manga and Anime (Cambridge UP, 2024) offers a lively and accessible introduction, exploring the local contexts of manga and anime production, distribution, and reception in Japan, as well as the global influence and impact of these versatile media. Chapters explore common characteristics such as visuals, voice, serial narrative and characters, whilst also highlighting distinct challenges and histories. The volume provides both a basis for further research in this burgeoning field and a source of inspiration for those new to the topic. Listeners are also invited to observe an author roundtable on Feb.19, 2025. Please RSVP here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

George Orwell is sometimes read as disinterested in (if not outright hostile) to philosophy. Yet a fair reading of Orwell's work reveals an author whose work was deeply informed by philosophy and who often revealed his philosophical sympathies. Orwell's written works are of ethical significance, but he also affirmed and defended substantive ethical claims about humanism, well-being, normative ethics, free will and moral responsibility, moral psychology, decency, equality, liberty, justice, and political morality.  In George Orwell: The Ethics of Equality (Oxford UP, 2023), philosopher Peter Brian Barry avoids a narrow reading of Orwell that considers only a few of his best-known works and instead considers the entirety of Orwell's corpus, including his fiction, journalism, essays, book reviews, diaries, and correspondence, contending that there are ethical commitments discernible throughout his work that ground some of his best-known pronouncements and positions. While Orwell is often read as a humanist, egalitarian, and socialist, too little attention has been paid to the nuanced versions of those doctrines that he endorsed and the philosophical sympathies that led him to embrace them. Barry illuminates Orwell's philosophical sympathies and contributions that have either gone unnoticed or been underappreciated. Philosophers interested in Orwell now have a text that explores many of the philosophical themes in his work and Orwell's readers now have a text that makes the case for regarding him as a worthy philosopher as well as one of the greatest Anglophone writers of the 20th century. Peter Brian Barry is Professor of Philosophy and the Finkbeiner Endowed Professor in Ethics at Saginaw Valley State University. He is the author of Evil and Moral Psychology and The Fiction of Evil as well as several papers in ethics, applied ethics, and social and political philosophy. He has contributed to The Cambridge Companion to Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Oxford Handbook of George Orwell, and George Orwell Studies. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek biographer Plutarch (c46 AD-c120 AD) and especially his work 'Parallel Lives' which has shaped the way successive generations see the Classical world. Plutarch was clear that he was writing lives, not histories, and he wrote these very focussed accounts in pairs to contrast and compare the characters of famous Greeks and Romans, side by side, along with their virtues and vices. This focus on the inner lives of great men was to fascinate Shakespeare, who drew on Plutarch considerably when writing his Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens and Antony and Cleopatra. While few followed his approach of setting lives in pairs, Plutarch's work was to influence countless biographers especially from the Enlightenment onwards.WithJudith Mossman Professor Emerita of Classics at Coventry UniversityAndrew Erskine Professor of Ancient History at the University of EdinburghAnd Paul Cartledge AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of CambridgeProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Mark Beck (ed.), A Companion to Plutarch (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014)Colin Burrow, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2013), especially chapter 6Raphaëla Dubreuil, Theater and Politics in Plutarch's Parallel Lives (Brill, 2023)Tim Duff, Plutarch's Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (Oxford University Press, 1999)Noreen Humble (ed.), Plutarch's Lives: Parallelism and Purpose (Classical Press of Wales, 2010)Robert Lamberton, Plutarch (Yale University Press, 2002)Hugh Liebert, Plutarch's Politics: Between City and Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2016)Christopher Pelling, Plutarch and History (Classical Press of Wales, 2002)Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Greek Lives (Oxford University Press, 2008) Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Roman Lives (Oxford University Press, 2008) Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Hellenistic Lives (Oxford University Press, 2016)Plutarch (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert), The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives (Penguin, 2023) Plutarch (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert), The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives (Penguin, 2011) Plutarch (trans. Richard Talbert), On Sparta (Penguin, 2005)Plutarch (trans. Christopher Pelling), The Rise of Rome (Penguin, 2013) Plutarch (trans. Christopher Pelling), Rome in Crisis: Nine Lives (Penguin, 2010)Plutarch (trans. Rex Warner), The Fall of the Roman Republic: Six Lives (Penguin, 2006)Plutarch (trans. Thomas North, ed. Judith Mossman), The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (Wordsworth, 1998)Geert Roskam, Plutarch (Cambridge University Press, 2021)D. A. Russell, Plutarch (2nd ed., Bristol Classical Press, 2001)Philip A. Stadter, Plutarch and his Roman Readers (Oxford University Press, 2014)Frances B. Titchener and Alexei V. Zadorojnyi (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Plutarch (Cambridge University Press, 2023)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek biographer Plutarch (c46 AD-c120 AD) and especially his work 'Parallel Lives' which has shaped the way successive generations see the Classical world. Plutarch was clear that he was writing lives, not histories, and he wrote these very focussed accounts in pairs to contrast and compare the characters of famous Greeks and Romans, side by side, along with their virtues and vices. This focus on the inner lives of great men was to fascinate Shakespeare, who drew on Plutarch considerably when writing his Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens and Antony and Cleopatra. While few followed his approach of setting lives in pairs, Plutarch's work was to influence countless biographers especially from the Enlightenment onwards.WithJudith Mossman Professor Emerita of Classics at Coventry UniversityAndrew Erskine Professor of Ancient History at the University of EdinburghAnd Paul Cartledge AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of CambridgeProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Mark Beck (ed.), A Companion to Plutarch (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014)Colin Burrow, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2013), especially chapter 6Raphaëla Dubreuil, Theater and Politics in Plutarch's Parallel Lives (Brill, 2023)Tim Duff, Plutarch's Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (Oxford University Press, 1999)Noreen Humble (ed.), Plutarch's Lives: Parallelism and Purpose (Classical Press of Wales, 2010)Robert Lamberton, Plutarch (Yale University Press, 2002)Hugh Liebert, Plutarch's Politics: Between City and Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2016)Christopher Pelling, Plutarch and History (Classical Press of Wales, 2002)Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Greek Lives (Oxford University Press, 2008) Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Roman Lives (Oxford University Press, 2008) Plutarch (trans. Robin Waterfield), Hellenistic Lives (Oxford University Press, 2016)Plutarch (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert), The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives (Penguin, 2023) Plutarch (trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert), The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives (Penguin, 2011) Plutarch (trans. Richard Talbert), On Sparta (Penguin, 2005)Plutarch (trans. Christopher Pelling), The Rise of Rome (Penguin, 2013) Plutarch (trans. Christopher Pelling), Rome in Crisis: Nine Lives (Penguin, 2010)Plutarch (trans. Rex Warner), The Fall of the Roman Republic: Six Lives (Penguin, 2006)Plutarch (trans. Thomas North, ed. Judith Mossman), The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (Wordsworth, 1998)Geert Roskam, Plutarch (Cambridge University Press, 2021)D. A. Russell, Plutarch (2nd ed., Bristol Classical Press, 2001)Philip A. Stadter, Plutarch and his Roman Readers (Oxford University Press, 2014)Frances B. Titchener and Alexei V. Zadorojnyi (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Plutarch (Cambridge University Press, 2023)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Timestamps to Know · 00:32 – Intro · 03:35 – Encouragements as We Look Forward to 2025 · 07:23 – Why is the Question of Humanity Historically Important? · 12:20 – Why Should Congregants or Laypersons Study the Doctrine of Humanity? · 17:31 – How Did the Change to an Enlightenment Epistemology Effect the Doctrine of Humanity? · 23:10 – A Mirrored Reality That is Lost · 30:00 – How Is This Piece Helpful in How Dr. Van Relates This to Economics? · 34:44 – Man Creating God · 43:03 –Do Other Systematic Theologies Address Our Modern Anthropological Problems? · 45:25 – Denying Politics Denies the Doctrine of Man · 54:15 – How Does the Doctrine of Humanity Help Us Preach the Gospel? ·  1:00:18 - Outro   Resources to Click ·“The Need for Theological Anthropology” – Stephen J. Wellum · “The Extinction of Experience: Christine Rosen on the Impact of Technology on Society” – Uncommon Knowledge · “The Embodied Person: Why I Am My Body, Not Just My Soul” – Gregg Allison · “Going Deeper” – Daniel Strange · “Can You Understand a Kangaroo Without a Bible? Why I Hold to a Revelational Epistemology” – Pierce Taylor Hibbs · “Abortion Statistics 1973-2019” · “Majority of Americans Remain Supportive of Euthanasia” – Jade Wood and Justin McCarthy ·  “Why They Kill Their Newborns” – Steven Pinker · “WEF Mastermind: ‘Human Rights are Fiction, Just Like God' – Frank Bergman · Theme of the Month: The Image of God in Scripture and Society · Give to Support the Work   Books to Read · The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World – Christine Rosen · The Abolition of Man – C.S. Lewis · “Human Being, Individual and Social” by Kevin J. Vanhoozer in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine –  ed. Colin E. Gunton · An Essay on Man: The 18th Century Enlightenment Classic – Alexander Pope · The Message in the Bottle -  Walker Percy · The Human Body Shop – Andrew Kimbrell ·  The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism – Phillip E. Johnson · False Flag: Why Queer Politics Mean the End of America – Joy Pullman · Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision – David F. Wells ·“Losing Our Religion: The Impact of Secularisation on the Understanding of Sin” in Ruined Sinners to Reclaim – ed. David Gibson · The Intolerance of Tolerance – D.A. Carson · A Critique of Pure Tolerance – Robert Paul Wolff · “Sin's Contemporary Significance,” by D.A. Carson in Fallen: A Theology of Sin – ed. Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson · Idols for Destruction: The Conflict of Christian Faith in American Culture – Herbert Schlossberg · How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture – Franciss A. Schaeffer ·Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow – Yuval Noah Harari · The Institutes of the Christian Religion – John Calvin · Our Civilizational Moment: The Waning of the West and the War of the Worlds – Os Guinness

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Italian author of Invisible Cities, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, Cosmicomics and other celebrated novels, fables and short stories of the 20th Century. Calvino (1923 -1985) had a passionate belief that writing and art could make life better for everyone. Despite his parents being scientists, who dearly wanted him to be a scientist too, and his time fighting with the Partisans in Liguria in WWII during which his parents were held hostage by the Nazis, Calvino turned away from realism in his writing. Ideally, he said, he would have liked to be alive in the Enlightenment. He moved towards the fantastical, drawing on his childhood reading while collecting a huge number of the fables of Italy and translating them from dialect into Italian to enrich the shared culture of his fellow citizens. His fresh perspective on the novel continues to inspire writers and delight readers in Italian and in translations around the world.With Guido Bonsaver Professor of Italian Cultural History at the University of OxfordJennifer Burns Professor of Italian Studies at the University of WarwickAndBeatrice Sica Associate Professor in Italian Studies at UCLProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list: Elio Baldi, The Author in Criticism: Italo Calvino's Authorial Image in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2020)Elio Baldi and Cecilia Schwartz, Circulation, Translation and Reception Across Borders: Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities Around the World (Routledge, 2024)Peter Bondanella and Andrea Ciccarelli (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2003), especially the chapter ‘Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco: Postmodern Masters'James Butler, ‘Infinite Artichoke' (London Review of Books, vol. 45, no. 12, 15 June 2023)Italo Calvino (trans. Martin McLaughlin), The Path to the Spiders' Nests (first published 1947; Penguin Classics, 2009)Italo Calvino (trans. Mikki Taylor), The Baron in the Trees (first published 1957; Vintage Classics, 2021)Italo Calvino, Marcovaldo (first published 1963; Vintage Classics, 2023) Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver and Ann Goldstein), Difficult Loves and Other Stories (first published 1970; Vintage Classics, 2018)Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver), Invisible Cities (first published 1972; Vintage Classics, 1997)Italo Calvino (trans. Patrick Creagh), The Uses of Literature (first published 1980; Houghton Mifflin, 1987)Italo Calvino (trans. Geoffrey Brock), Six Memos for the Next Millennium (first published 1988; Penguin Classics, 2016) Italo Calvino (trans. Tim Parks), The Road to San Giovanni (first published 1990; HMH Books, 2014) Italo Calvino (trans. Ann Goldstein), The Written World and the Unwritten World: Essays (Mariner Books Classics, 2023)Kathryn Hume, Calvino's Fictions: Cogito and Cosmos (Clarendon Press, 1992)Martin McLaughlin, Italo Calvino (Edinburgh University Press, 1998)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet George Herbert (1593-1633) who, according to the French philosopher Simone Weil, wrote ‘the most beautiful poem in the world'. Herbert gave his poems on his relationship with God to a friend, to be published after his death if they offered comfort to any 'dejected pour soul' but otherwise be burned. They became so popular across the range of Christians in the 17th Century that they were printed several times, somehow uniting those who disliked each other but found a common admiration for Herbert; Charles I read them before his execution, as did his enemies. Herbert also wrote poems prolifically and brilliantly in Latin and these he shared during his lifetime both when he worked as orator at Cambridge University and as a parish priest in Bemerton near Salisbury. He went on to influence poets from Coleridge to Heaney and, in parish churches today, congregations regularly sing his poems set to music as hymns. WithHelen Wilcox Professor Emerita of English Literature at Bangor UniversityVictoria Moul Formerly Professor of Early Modern Latin and English at UCLAndSimon Jackson Director of Music and Director of Studies in English at Peterhouse, University of CambridgeProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list: Amy Charles, A Life of George Herbert (Cornell University Press, 1977)Thomas M. Corns, The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry: Donne to Marvell (Cambridge University Press, 1993) John Drury, Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert (Penguin, 2014)George Herbert (eds. John Drury and Victoria Moul), The Complete Poetry (Penguin, 2015)George Herbert (ed. Helen Wilcox), The English Poems of George Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 2007)Simon Jackson, George Herbert and Early Modern Musical Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2022)Gary Kuchar, George Herbert and the Mystery of the Word (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)Cristina Malcolmson, George Herbert: A Literary Life (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)Victoria Moul, A Literary History of Latin and English Poetry: Bilingual Literary Culture in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2022)Joseph H. Summers, George Herbert: His Religion and Art (first published by Chatto and Windus, 1954; Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, New York, 1981)Helen Vendler, The Poetry of George Herbert (Harvard University Press, 1975)James Boyd White, This Book of Starres: Learning to Read George Herbert (University of Michigan Press, 1995)Helen Wilcox (ed.), George Herbert. 100 Poems (Cambridge University Press, 2021) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian-British economist Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944) in which Hayek (1899-1992) warned that the way Britain was running its wartime economy would not work in peacetime and could lead to tyranny. His target was centralised planning, arguing this disempowered individuals and wasted their knowledge, while empowering those ill-suited to run an economy. He was concerned about the support for the perceived success of Soviet centralisation, when he saw this and Fascist systems as two sides of the same coin. When Reader's Digest selectively condensed Hayek's book in 1945, and presented it not so much as a warning against tyranny as a proof against socialism, it became phenomenally influential around the world. With Bruce Caldwell Research Professor of Economics at Duke University and Director of the Center for the History of Political EconomyMelissa Lane The Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University and the 50th Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College in LondonAndBen Jackson Professor of Modern History and fellow of University College at the University of OxfordProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets Since the Depression (Harvard University Press, 2012)Bruce Caldwell, Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F.A. Hayek (University of Chicago Press, 2004)Bruce Caldwell, ‘The Road to Serfdom After 75 Years' (Journal of Economic Literature 58, 2020)Bruce Caldwell and Hansjoerg Klausinger, Hayek: A Life 1899-1950 (University of Chicago Press, 2022)M. Desai, Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism (Verso, 2002)Edward Feser (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hayek (Cambridge University Press, 2006)Andrew Gamble, Hayek: The Iron Cage of Liberty (Polity, 1996)Friedrich Hayek, Collectivist Economic Planning (first published 1935; Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2015), especially ‘The Nature and History of the Problem' and ‘The Present State of the Debate' by Friedrich HayekFriedrich Hayek (ed. Bruce Caldwell), The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents: The Definitive Edition (first published 1944; Routledge, 2008. Also vol. 2 of The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, University of Chicago Press, 2007)Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom: Condensed Version (Institute of Economic Affairs, 2005; The Reader's Digest condensation of the book)Friedrich Hayek, ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society' (American Economic Review, vol. 35, 1945; vol. 15 of The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, University of Chicago Press) Friedrich Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order (first published 1948; University of Chicago Press, 1996), especially the essays ‘Economics and Knowledge' (1937), ‘Individualism: True and False' (1945), and ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society' (1945)Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (first published 1960; Routledge, 2006) Friedrich Hayek, Law. Legislation and Liberty: A new statement of the liberal principles of justice and political economy (first published 1973 in 3 volumes; single vol. edn, Routledge, 2012)Ben Jackson, ‘Freedom, the Common Good and the Rule of Law: Hayek and Lippmann on Economic Planning' (Journal of the History of Ideas 73, 2012)Robert Leeson (ed.), Hayek: A Collaborative Biography Part I (Palgrave, 2013), especially ‘The Genesis and Reception of The Road to Serfdom' by Melissa LaneIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Critics didn't know quite what to make of twentieth-century American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), but readers had less difficulty. In spite of mixed reviews, On the Road (1957) quickly became a kind of bible for anyone hoping to squeeze more out of life. In this episode, Jacke talks to Steven Belletto, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Jack Kerouac, about the continuing fascination with the Beat Generation and its most famous avatar. Additional listening: 339 Jack Kerouac 619 Novelist Fred Waitzkin Discusses Kerouac 283 Planes, Trains & Automobiles - Top 10 Literary Modes of Transportation (with Mike Palindrome) The music in this episode is by Gabriel Ruiz-Bernal. Learn more at gabrielruizbernal.com.   Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss "The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling" (1749) by Henry Fielding (1707-1754), one of the most influential of the early English novels and a favourite of Dickens. Coleridge wrote that it had one of the 'three most perfect plots ever planned'. Fielding had made his name in the theatre with satirical plays that were so painful for their targets in government that, from then until the 1960s, plays required approval before being staged; seeking other ways to make a living, Fielding turned to law and to fiction. 'Tom Jones' is one of the great comic novels, with the tightness of a farce and the ambition of a Greek epic as told by the finest raconteur. While other authors might present Tom as a rake and a libertine, Fielding makes him the hero for his fundamental good nature, so offering a caution not to judge anyone too soon, if ever.With Judith Hawley Professor of 18th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of LondonHenry Power Professor of English Literature at the University of ExeterAndCharlotte Roberts Associate Professor of English Literature at University College LondonProducer: Simon TillotsonIn Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio ProductionReading list:Martin C. Battestin with Ruthe R. Battestin, Henry Fielding: A Life (Routledge, 1989)J. M. Beattie, The First English Detectives: The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750–1840 (Oxford University Press, 2012) S. Dickie, Cruelty and Laughter: Forgotten Comic Literature and the Unsentimental Eighteenth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2011)J.A. Downie (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel (Oxford University Press, 2020)Henry Fielding (ed. John Bender and Simon Stern), The History of Tom Jones (Oxford University Press, 2008)Henry Fielding (ed. Tom Keymer), The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (Penguin Classics, 1996)Ronald Paulson, The Life of Henry Fielding: A Critical Biography (Wiley Blackwell, 2000)Henry Power, Epic into Novel: Henry Fielding, Scriblerian Satire, and the Consumption of Classical Literature (Oxford University Press, 2015)Claude Rawson, Henry Fielding and the Augustan Ideal under Stress (first published 1972; Routledge, 2021)Claude Rawson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Henry Fielding (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most significant philosophers of the twentieth century, Philippa Foot (1920 - 2010). Her central question was, “Why be moral?” Drawing on Aristotle and Aquinas, Foot spent her life working through her instinct that there was something lacking in the prevailing philosophy of the 1950s and 1960s which held that values could only be subjective. Could there really be no objective response to the horrors of the concentration camps that she had seen on newsreels, no way of saying that such acts were morally wrong? Foot developed an ethics based on virtues, in which humans needed virtues to flourish as surely as plants needed light and water. While working through her ideas she explored applied ethics and the difference between doing something and letting it happen, an idea she illustrated with what became The Trolley Problem.With Anil Gomes Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Trinity College, University of OxfordSophie Grace Chappell Professor of Philosophy at the Open UniversityAnd Rachael Wiseman Reader in Philosophy at the University of LiverpoolProducer: Simon Tillotson In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio ProductionReading list:Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices (Oxford University Press, 1978)Philippa Foot, Moral Dilemmas (Oxford University Press, 2002)Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford University Press, 2001)John Hacker-Wright, Philippa Foot's Moral Thought (Bloomsbury, 2013)Benjamin Lipscomb, The Women Are Up To Something (Oxford University Press, 2021)Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman, Metaphysical Animals: How Four Women Brought Philosophy Back to Life (Chatto, 2022)Dan Russell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virtue Ethics (Cambridge University Press), especially ‘Virtue Ethics in the Twentieth Century' by Timothy (now Sophie Grace) Chappell