Podcasts about his friends

Samuel Rutherford's letters are often remembered for their soaring descriptions of the beauty and loveliness of Christ. But Rutherford was not content merely to comfort sleepy Christians. He also knew how to awaken them. In this final episode on Samuel Rutherford, Dr. John Snyder examines a series of Rutherford's letters written to stir believers out of spiritual lethargy and call them to earnestness, holiness, and wholehearted pursuit of Christ. Whether addressing young converts, careless professors, or discouraged saints, Rutherford repeatedly presses the same point: Christ is too precious to be followed lazily. These letters confront the danger of spiritual drift, warn against assuming salvation without evidence of perseverance, and urge believers to cultivate prayer, holiness, watchfulness, and delight in Christ. Yet Rutherford's exhortations are never cold or merely moralistic. Again and again, he reminds us that true obedience flows from hearts captivated by the sweetness of Christ himself. This episode also includes one of Rutherford's most beloved warnings to dry and wandering believers: “We are rather dry than thirsty.” His counsel is simple and searching — stop dwelling far from the well and return to Christ. As this series on Rutherford concludes, Dr. Snyder reflects on the enduring value of these prison letters and the way they continue to call believers to sincerity, diligence, and deeper communion with Christ. “Keep Christ and entertain him well.” — Samuel Rutherford Show Notes Kingdom Life: Studies in the Sermon on the Mount: https://shop.mediagratiae.org/collections/kingdom-life The Life of Samuel Rutherford by Andrew Thomson: https://www.amazon.com/Samuel-Rutherford-Andrew-Thomson/dp/1164013874 Samuel Rutherford and His Friends by Faith Cook: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/ebooks/samuel-rutherford-and-his-friends/ Letters of Samuel Rutherford: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/letters/letters-of-samuel-rutherford/ Want to listen to The Whole Counsel on the go? Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts You can get The Whole Counsel a day early on the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

Samuel Rutherford knew suffering, imprisonment, isolation, and loss. Yet from his prison cell came some of the richest descriptions of communion with Christ ever written. In this episode of Dr. John Snyder continues exploring Rutherford's letters by focusing on one central theme: the nearness of God. Drawing from Rutherford's prison correspondence, Dr. Snyder examines the different ways Scripture speaks about God's presence and how Rutherford experienced the sweetness of Christ in ways he once thought impossible on this side of heaven. Rutherford writes of the believer's regret over loving Christ so little, the overwhelming abundance of Christ's love toward his people, the dangers of idolizing spiritual experiences, and the diligence required to pursue deeper fellowship with God. Again and again, his letters press us beyond merely knowing truths about Christ into delighting in Christ himself. What happens when a believer discovers that his soul is too small to contain the love of God? Rutherford's answer is simple: stop standing on the shore and throw yourself into the ocean. “If this whole world were the beam of a balance, it would not be able to bear the weight of Christ's love.” — Samuel Rutherford Show Notes Kingdom Life: Studies in the Sermon on the Mount: https://shop.mediagratiae.org/collections/kingdom-life The Life of Samuel Rutherford by Andrew Thomson: https://www.amazon.com/Samuel-Rutherford-Andrew-Thomson/dp/1164013874 Samuel Rutherford and His Friends by Faith Cook: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/ebooks/samuel-rutherford-and-his-friends/ Letters of Samuel Rutherford: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/letters/letters-of-samuel-rutherford/ Want to listen to The Whole Counsel on the go? Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts You can get The Whole Counsel a day early on the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

This week we continue our study through the letters of Samuel Rutherford by looking at the cost Rutherford paid for following Christ faithfully. Dr. John Snyder gives an overview of Rutherford's turbulent life, including his imprisonment, exile from his congregation, work at St. Andrews, influence at the Westminster Assembly, and his final years under house arrest awaiting trial for treason. From those seasons of suffering came some of Rutherford's richest letters. In this episode, we read selections where Rutherford calls Christians to make their choice clearly: Christ or the world. Again and again, Rutherford compares the passing pleasures of sin and worldly comfort with the surpassing worth of Jesus Christ. Rutherford's words are not theoretical. They come from a man who lost family, freedom, reputation, and security, yet still testified that Christ was worth every sorrow. His counsel remains deeply relevant for believers today as we count the cost of following Christ in a world that continually calls us elsewhere. Show Notes Kingdom Life: Studies in the Sermon on the Mount: https://shop.mediagratiae.org/collections/kingdom-life The Life of Samuel Rutherford by Andrew Thomson: https://www.amazon.com/Samuel-Rutherford-Andrew-Thomson/dp/1164013874 Samuel Rutherford and His Friends by Faith Cook: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/ebooks/samuel-rutherford-and-his-friends/ Letters of Samuel Rutherford: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/letters/letters-of-samuel-rutherford/ Want to listen to The Whole Counsel on the go? Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts You can get The Whole Counsel a day early on the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

Samuel Rutherford's letters are filled with counsel for Christians walking through suffering, affliction, persecution, and grief. Having endured imprisonment, bereavement, sickness, and deep ecclesiastical conflict, Rutherford wrote not as a detached theologian, but as a pastor acquainted with sorrow. In this episode of The Whole Counsel Podcast, we examine Rutherford's teaching on Christian suffering and the believer's union with Christ in trials. Looking at passages such as Matthew 5, Romans 5, and James 1, we consider how Scripture speaks of joy in tribulation, sanctification through affliction, and the temporary nature of earthly crosses. Rutherford reminds believers that Christ often comes with a cross, but never without purpose. Trials loosen our grip on the world, expose remaining sin, and conform us to the image of Christ. Yet suffering is not permanent. As Rutherford wrote, “Christ and his cross part ways at heaven's door.” Show Notes Kingdom Life: Studies in the Sermon on the Mount: https://shop.mediagratiae.org/collections/kingdom-life The Life of Samuel Rutherford by Andrew Thomson: https://www.amazon.com/Samuel-Rutherford-Andrew-Thomson/dp/1164013874 You can read the letter here: https://www.mediagratiae.org/blog/samuel-rutherfords-9-marks-of-a-true-christian Life of Samuel Rutherford by Andrew Thompson Sign up for the giveaway: https://www.mediagratiae.org/the-whole-counsel-giveaway Samuel Rutherford and His Friends by Faith Cook: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/ebooks/samuel-rutherford-and-his-friends/ Letters of Samuel Rutherford: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/letters/letters-of-samuel-rutherford/ Want to listen to The Whole Counsel on the go? Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts You can get The Whole Counsel a day early on the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

In this episode of The Whole Counsel Podcast, Dr. John Snyder returns to the letters of Samuel Rutherford to consider a central theme of his writings, the love and loveliness of Christ. Drawing from The Life of Samuel Rutherford by Andrew Thompson, this episode highlights Rutherford's emphasis on experiential Christianity, where truth is not only understood but lived. Rutherford presents Christ as beyond comparison, infinitely full and endlessly satisfying. His letters illustrate both the greatness of Christ's love and our incapability of expressing it. Yet Christ remains an inexhaustible well, never diminished by the needs of his people. He also reminds us that Christ himself is the glory of heaven, the one who makes eternity desirable. As reflected in the hymn by Anne Cousin (The Sands of Time Are Sinking), the focus is not the crown, but the King. Next week, we will consider Rutherford's teaching on suffering and the cross in light of Christ's surpassing worth. Show Notes Kingdom Life: Studies in the Sermon on the Mount: https://shop.mediagratiae.org/collections/kingdom-life The Life of Samuel Rutherford by Andrew Thomson: https://www.amazon.com/Samuel-Rutherford-Andrew-Thomson/dp/1164013874 You can read the letter here: https://www.mediagratiae.org/blog/samuel-rutherfords-9-marks-of-a-true-christian Life of Samuel Rutherford by Andrew Thompson Sign up for the giveaway: https://www.mediagratiae.org/the-whole-counsel-giveaway Samuel Rutherford and His Friends by Faith Cook: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/ebooks/samuel-rutherford-and-his-friends/ Letters of Samuel Rutherford: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/letters/letters-of-samuel-rutherford/ Want to listen to The Whole Counsel on the go? Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts You can get The Whole Counsel a day early on the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

We appreciate you giving us time to prepare new studies and to let you know about the study with Dr. Stephen Yuille that we just released. You can find more information about that study in the show notes. But this week Dr. John Snyder returns to the letters of Samuel Rutherford. As Dr. Snyder says, those we read can become lifelong friends and counselors who speak truth to us in times of need. This is particularly true of Samuel Rutherford. While he did write polemical works, he is especially remembered for his warm and compelling descriptions of Christ and for his helpful words regarding the sanctification of the Christian. In this week's letter, Rutherford presents nine evidences of saving faith. He is helping us answer the question, “Am I truly the Christian I say I am?” Every Christian experiences uncertainty in particular seasons, and many experience it without realizing how common it is. This letter is written for them. Rutherford calls us to consider whether these evidences are present in our lives: A willingness to prize Christ above all things Obedience that is driven by love and not fear Humility and self-denial A profession of faith that is accompanied by good works A desire to live for God's honor in all things A genuine hatred of sin A careful commitment to biblical truth and worship Conscientiousness in everyday calling and relationships A life marked by habitual prayer As we listen to or read this letter (linked in the show notes), we pray God uses these evidences to both encourage and convict us, strengthening true assurance and directing us again to Christ. Show Notes Kingdom Life: Sutdies in the Sermon on the Mount: https://shop.mediagratiae.org/collections/kingdom-life You can read the letter here: https://www.mediagratiae.org/blog/samuel-rutherfords-9-marks-of-a-true-christian Life of Samuel Rutherford by Andrew Thompson Sign up for the giveaway: https://www.mediagratiae.org/the-whole-counsel-giveaway Samuel Rutherford and His Friends by Faith Cook: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/ebooks/samuel-rutherford-and-his-friends/ Letters of Samuel Rutherford: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/letters/letters-of-samuel-rutherford/ Want to listen to The Whole Counsel on the go? Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts You can get The Whole Counsel a day early on the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

For the latests Whisper in the Wings from Stage Whisper, we welcomed on the playwright Cassandra Rose, to talk about her show Billy to His Friends. The show, which is part of the Fresh Fruit Festival, was incredible to learn about talk about. So make sure that you hit play and get your tickets today!Billy to His FriendsPart of the Fresh Fruit FestivalApril 28th and 29th and May 2nd@ The Wild ProjectTickets and more information are available at freshfruitfestival.com And be sure to follow our Cassandra to stay up to date on all her upcoming projects and productions: freshfruitefestival.com@scriptsbyrosescriptsbyrose.card.co

The Game Warden and His Friend, Otto by Gary Ralston https://www.amazon.com/Game-Warden-His-Friend-Otto/dp/1662480946 The book is a collection of stories and situations a game warden will encounter in his work. The work can be difficult and very disheartening and at times very gratifying. Wardens do much more than enforcing fish and game law, and many of these activities are noted. I have offered a few tips about hunting and fishing, which I have learned during my seventy-five years of participation in these activities and observations gathered while spending countless hours in the great outdoors. The goal of this book is to inform the public about a warden’s life and the many things he is involved with in his work. I’m sure there will be some who will be critical of what I’ve put on paper, but I can assure you, what I’ve written ain’t fiction. I hope you purchase a copy of my book, read it with an open mind, enjoy a few laughs, learn some things you weren’t aware of, come away with a little more support, and hopefully respect for the work a game warden does for wildlife and benefits created for those who care about our great natural resources today and for generations to come.

This week we continue reading from the prison letters of Samuel Rutherford. Though he was suffering under house arrest, Rutherford never lost his pastoral concern for his people. Many in his day had been baptized into the national church and assumed themselves to be Christians. Yet Rutherford recognized that outward identification did not necessarily mean true conversion. As a result, many were left either with false assurance or deep uncertainty, and they turned to him for help. In this letter, Rutherford offers careful and tender counsel on the nature of assurance. Drawing from 1 John, he points to evidences of grace within the believer, including a growing awareness of sin and a genuine grief over it. Importantly, he shows that such grief is not a sign of spiritual death, but may in fact be evidence of spiritual life. At the same time, Rutherford is careful to direct the believer away from resting in these inward evidences. Our assurance is not grounded in the strength of our faith, the depth of our repentance, or the intensity of our feelings. It rests ultimately in Christ himself—his life, his death, and his resurrection on behalf of sinners. This episode is both searching and comforting, reminding us to take sin seriously while fixing our eyes firmly on Christ. Don't forget to use the link below to sign up for our giveaway featuring books on Samuel Rutherford. Show Notes Sign up for the giveaway: https://www.mediagratiae.org/the-whole-counsel-giveaway Samuel Rutherford and His Friends by Faith Cook: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/ebooks/samuel-rutherford-and-his-friends/ Letters of Samuel Rutherford: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/letters/letters-of-samuel-rutherford/ Want to listen to The Whole Counsel on the go? Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts You can get The Whole Counsel a day early on the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

We're creating our Mount Rushmores this week and it's getting controversial. Well... for us. We ranked our top four fast food items, Counselor Zachariah's favorite places to just walk around, and then Counselor Jonathan built an Anti Mount Rushmore of his most hated fictional characters of all time. Some of you will agree, and some of you will be on the wrong side of Shady Birch history. Either way, leave a comment I guess. Then we've got an 80-year-old cafe owner who spent a month baking a 6,000-pound carrot cake for his birthday. The Philadelphia airport set a Guinness World Record by lining up 1,291 cheesesteaks between terminals (kind of a nightmare imo). We're also ranting about a dog that would not stop barking in a hotel room, having an anxiety attack at TJ Maxx, why fireflies are the greatest bug alive, and Lisa Kudrow's The Comeback deserves more love. Its a fabulous episode, duh.This episode was mixed and edited by Kevin Betts.Want BONUS CONTENT? Join our PATREON!Works Cited:➜ Hooper, Ben. "Cafe Owner Celebrates Birthday with 6,044-Pound Carrot Cake." UPI, 27 Mar. 2026.➜ Kulkarni, Akshay. "For His 80th Birthday, Ted Martindale and His Friends in Quesnel, B.C., Baked a 2,500-Kilogram Carrot Cake." CBC News, 26 Mar. 2026.➜ Vejpongsa, Tassanee, and Leah Willingham. "Longest Line at Philly Airport? Cheesesteaks, Not Security." Associated Press, 24 Mar. 2026.Camp Songs:Spotify Playlist | YouTube Playlist | Sammich's Secret MixtapeSocial Media:Camp Counselors TikTokCamp Counselors InstagramCamp Counselors FacebookCamp Counselors TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Job 37:9“Del sur viene el torbellino, y el frío, de los vientos del norte”.Una de las cosas más asombrosas de nuestra era contemporánea es, el científico que piensa que puede utilizar la ciencia para juzgar la Biblia. Después de todo, muchas cosas que se aceptan hoy como hechos científicos primero fueron enseñadas en la Biblia.Job 36:27-28 explica el ciclo del agua en la que, a través de la evaporación, las lluvias de mañana son atraídas a las nubes. Eclesiastés 1:7 explica por qué los ríos no llenan los mares. Nos dice que hay un ciclo de agua de los ríos hacia los mares de regreso a llenar los ríos otra vez. No fue sino hasta el año 350 AC, mucho después de lo que fue escrito Job y más de 600 años después de lo que fue escrito Eclesiastés, que Aristóteles empezó a entender el ciclo del agua. Y finalmente en 1841 un científico, utilizando un termómetro que Galileo inventó en 1593 y un barómetro que había sido inventado por Torricelli en 1643, mostraba que las nubes en realidad eran el resultado del vapor del agua que sube.Job 37:9 y Eclesiastés 1:6 ambos hablan del viento y los patrones del clima que finalmente fueron confirmados en 1940. Lea estos pasajes antes de ver las últimas fotos satelitales del clima – el satélite claramente muestra de lo que las Escrituras están hablando en estos versículos.Muchos de los hechos aceptados hoy por la ciencia fueron originalmente mencionados por Dios en la Biblia. La ciencia no debería pasar juicio a la Biblia. Después de todo, ha tomado a la ciencia miles de años empezar a ponerse al día con el nivel de conocimiento de la Biblia de incluso una cosa tan simple como el clima.Oración: Amado Padre, el hombre es una criatura orgullosa que típicamente piensa que conoce más de lo que realmente conoce. Ayúdame a ver el orgullo en mi vida ya que el orgullo humano siempre se interpone en nuestro camino de tener una relación más cercana contigo. En Nombre de Cristo Jesús. Amén.Imagen: Job Reproved by His Friends, James Barry, CC0, Wikimedia Commons, changes made. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1235/29?v=20251111

1. A Display of Deepest Friendship 2. Abandoned by His Friends 3. What He Accomplished The sermon centers on Christ's unwavering friendship, exemplified in His agonizing prayer in Gethsemane and His willingness to endure betrayal and abandonment for the sake of His disciples, even as they fled in fear. It contrasts Christ's faithful love, displayed in His self-sacrificial choice to fulfill Scripture and bear the cross with His disciples' salvation in mind, with the disciples' failure to remain faithful, revealing the fragility of human loyalty when tested by fear and self-preservation. The passage underscores that true friendship is not defined by consistency in action but by steadfast commitment in love, as Christ, though forsaken, never abandoned His people, securing their salvation through His death and resurrection. The sermon calls believers to reflect on their own spiritual weakness, to embrace the grace of a faithful Savior who preserves His own, and to live courageously in the world, knowing that His love and power sustain them through trials and temptation. Ultimately, the gospel is presented as the supreme revelation of God's faithful love, where Christ, the true Friend, bears the cost of our unworthiness and ensures that no one whom the Father has given Him will be lost.

In this week's episode, John Snyder continues exploring the letters of Samuel Rutherford. Rutherford is known for his poetic descriptions of Christ. Even when his life was difficult, he continued to speak of Christ's worth and beauty. In this letter to a young Christian, Rutherford gives counsel in two main areas. He urges him to seek Christ early. He also shows why Christ is worthy to be followed at any cost. First, he tells the young man to give Christ his “virgin love.” This means giving Christ the first and best of his affections. His heart should not be claimed by lesser loves. Then Rutherford explains why Christ deserves this kind of devotion. He points to the beauty of creation. He speaks of the sun, the moon, and the stars. Then he stops and corrects himself. Compared to Christ, even these are not truly beautiful. What once seemed bright is dark next to Him. Rutherford's goal is simple. He wants us to see Christ as He truly is. When we do, everything else changes. We pray this episode lifts your view of Christ and helps you seek Him, no matter what you face today. Show Notes Samuel Rutherford and His Friends by Faith Cook: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/ebooks/samuel-rutherford-and-his-friends/ Letters of Samuel Rutherford: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/letters/letters-of-samuel-rutherford/ Want to listen to The Whole Counsel on the go? Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts You can get The Whole Counsel a day early on the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

This week on The Whole Counsel, Dr. John Snyder continues our series on the great letterwriters in Christendom: Letters of Samuel Rutherford. After introducing the Scottish Puritan pastor last episode, we now focus on his deep friendship with Marion McNaught, a godly woman who encouraged her family, supported Rutherford during trials, and even mentored others amid persecution. Marion traveled far to hear Rutherford preach because, as she beautifully put it: “Though other ministers show me the majesty of God and the plague of my own heart, Mr. Samuel does both these things, but he also shows me as no other minister ever does the loveliness of Christ.” In one poignant letter from a time of intense trial (as Rutherford faces exile and separation from his flock), he urges her: “Swim through your temptations and troubles to be at that lovely, amiable person, Jesus.” These aren't mere words, Rutherford lived upon this truth, finding Christ sufficient even in suffering and heaviness of heart. If this stirs your soul for more of Rutherford's Christ-centered comfort and the lives of those around him, pick up Faith Cook's Samuel Rutherford and His Friends (Banner of Truth). It brings fresh insight into the people who received these treasures. Show Notes Samuel Rutherford and His Friends by Faith Cook: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/ebooks/samuel-rutherford-and-his-friends/ Letters of Samuel Rutherford: https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/letters/letters-of-samuel-rutherford/ Want to listen to The Whole Counsel on the go? Subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast app: https://www.mediagratiae.org/podcasts You can get The Whole Counsel a day early on the Media Gratiae App: https://subsplash.com/mediagratiae/app

Welcome to the Internet 3-25-2026 … His Friend's Hot Mom isn't Feeling It …Welcome to Bad Guitar Players Anonymous …You Need a Gin and Tonic (Don't you think?)

What a pleasure it was to talk to Ruth Scurr, author of John Aubrey: My Own Life, about the great man himself, who was born four hundred years ago this month. Aubrey is best know for his splendid Brief Lives but he preserved a huge amount of knowledge which historians still rely on. There are many things we only know because of Aubrey—things about people Hobbes and Hooke, Stonehenge, architectural history. We also talked about Janet Malcom, the genre of biography, and modern fiction.HENRY OLIVER: Today I'm talking to Ruth Scurr. Ruth is a fellow of Gonville and Caius College in the University of Cambridge, where she specializes in the history of political thought. But more importantly, she is the biographer of John Aubrey, one of my favorite writers, who is celebrating 400 years of his birth this year. Ruth, hello.RUTH SCURR: Hi, Henry.OLIVER: Can you begin by giving us a brief life of John Aubrey?SCURR: So born in 1626, 17th-century antiquarian, collector, early fellow at the Royal Society. Well connected to scientific and the literary circles of his day. Someone who sees himself more as a whetstone: a person who could help sharpen other people's ideas. As a recorder, someone who treasured the details, the minutiae of the lives he encountered, and pass those details on to posterity.He's nonjudgmental, witty, kind, inventive. Very, very sociable. Very good friend. But he's hopeless at self-advancement. Begins his life as a gentleman, but he inherits debts from his father and he can never really achieve financial stability.Never marries, ends up homeless and worried about being arrested for his debts. And he has to sell his precious collection of books periodically through his life to raise some much-needed cash, but he keeps his manuscripts safe. And he does this at the end of his life by putting them into the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, afterwards known as the Bodleian, and where they still are today.OLIVER: So how many manuscripts did he save for us?SCURR: Of his own manuscripts or other people's manuscripts?OLIVER: Other people's. Because he was collecting all sorts of precious things.SCURR: Oh, absolutely. He was the person who, when someone died, would go round if he could to their house and ask what was happening about the manuscripts. He's particularly concerned, obviously, with his friends. So he had a close relationship with Robert Hooke and he wanted to make sure that Hooke's many inventions and scientific contributions were recorded.And he has this wonderful line in the life of Hooke where he says, “It's so hard to get people to do right by themselves.” And in his childhood, he had seen the fallout from the dissolution of the monasteries. He'd become very troubled by the habit of using manuscript pages which had been displaced in the dissolution. He saw them being used in schools to cover textbooks. He saw them being used to—or he heard about them at least being used—to wrap up gloves or to create stoppers in bottles. And this really troubled him from, from a very early age.And I think he has another beautiful line where he says after the dissolution of the monasteries, whereas these manuscripts had been kept safe, they flew around like butterflies. And he wanted to catch them and preserve them and to stop people letting the papers and the precious manuscripts of their relatives do the same. So he was very instrumental in rescuing manuscripts, other people's manuscripts. And then fortunately with his own, he knew Ashmole and they had the shared astrology interest.Ashmole was a very different sort of person who basically said to Oxford, look, I'll give you my collections, but there has to be a museum for them. And luckily Aubrey was able to use that museum as a safe place for his own manuscripts.OLIVER: So we know things about Robert Hooke and Thomas Hobbes and all these other luminaries of the 17th century, thanks to Aubrey. What else do we know, thanks to him?SCURR: We know what Stonehenge looked like in his day because he was a very good draftsman. He drew pictures of Stonehenge. He'd grown up in Wiltshire, he'd known those stones from childhood. He understood that Avebury nearby was a comparable monument, and he took Charles II to see it, and persuaded the king to get the locals to stop breaking up the stones, to reuse the stones, which was the practice.He also made drawings of windows because he was possibly the first person as a historian of architecture to realize that you could date buildings by the style of their windows. So we have those drawings. He was also interested in the history of costume. He did a survey of Surrey, of Wiltshire.So these are all sort of focuses in his manuscripts and people who've used them come to really appreciate how pioneering Aubrey was. But of course he doesn't finish them. He doesn't publish those manuscripts. So it's very easy really to overlook the innovation and the contribution and the wonderful imagination that he had.OLIVER: You mean if he'd published a book, he would have a much bigger reputation?SCURR: Well, I think there's two things. Yes, but in a sense, you know, the Brief Lives have been published after his death in various forms. But I think one of the most engaging things about Aubrey is that he's a modest and self-effacing person. And I already mentioned the idea he had of himself as a whetstone to other people's talents.There aren't that many people—certainly not in my life, maybe there are in yours—but who would effortlessly describe themselves as a whetstone to other people's talents. Most people want to be at the center. They're happy to have clever and literary friends, but they want a place there at the table as well.And Aubrey really was very, very invested in helping other people to do right by themselves, as he said about Hooke. And he very movingly—this is one of the inspirations really for my book that I wrote about him—he spent all that time collating the information about other people's lives. And for his own life, he puts down a few lines, a couple of facts and everything.He says, well, this could be used as the binding of a book. You know, it's sort of waste paper really. So he doesn't write his own life. Other people's lives he's going to convey to posterity. He doesn't see his own life as really being at that level of needing the attention that he gave, for example, to Milton or to Harvey or Hobbes, as you mentioned.OLIVER: He's born the year after Charles I comes to the throne. So he obviously lives through a fairly terrible period of history and very tumultuous, changeable in lots of different ways. The new world, the new learning, new religion, new politics, everything is changing. And he's obsessed with the old ways. How did these historical events—is he reacting against his time? Is he just born in a lucky time in a way?SCURR: So he was a student in Oxford during the Civil War. And you are right. The upheaval is very disturbing for his generation. It means he gets called back from Oxford by his father because it's dangerous to be there. And he's really, really upset by that because, it's like us, when we were students or our students today. You finally get away from your family and there you are in this place with all these exciting peers and access to books that you've never had before or at least to that extent, libraries, et cetera.And suddenly there's a war on and you've got to go home. So there's that disturbance. Then there is the fact that actually he was close to Hobbes. Hobbes actually was a Malmesbury man, so Wiltshire, very near Aubrey. And had come back to visit the school where Hobbes had been, which was where Aubrey was at school. And so they had met in Aubrey's childhood, and then he would've been aware of Hobbes having to go into exile. And then Hobbes coming back, of course. And that's a very important time in his life.And it's not an accident that Hobbes asks Aubrey to write his life because Hobbes knows how careful Aubrey is. And he knows that Aubrey has information that he can convey in the life. So that is really the first life that he writes. And it's different from the others. There's a different sort of origin. And it's after he's done that, that he starts to think, well, actually, you know, I can think of at least 50, 55 other people's lives. And now I've got my hand in, I might start on those as well.So in that period of upheaval there are wonderful stories. Maybe we'll look at some of the Brief Lives, but there's this amazing story that he captures in the life of William Harvey, which is a description of Harvey having been at the battlefield in Edgehill and recording one of the people who had been fighting and wounded, surviving by having the good sense to pull a dead body on top of himself, to keep himself warm on the battlefield. Things like that, which make the war very much alive. This is brutal, this civil war. It's a long time ago and we think we passed over it, but the really brutal reality of war is captured in the Brief Lives through the anecdotes and the stories of that generation that Aubrey preserves.OLIVER: How English is he?SCURR: Well, as opposed to what?OLIVER: Welsh.SCURR: Okay. Well he goes to Wales often and is very interested in Wales. I think he sees himself as English. I think he's very invested in English customs and stories and people. He's not nationalistic in any sense like that. What he's interested in is the inherited ways of living.And he's very interested in language and different dialects. That's one of the other things; he starts to collect different words. He was very aware of the Cornish dialect, for example. So I'd say it's a very decentered England that's rooted in customs, traditions, inherited stories.And there's a big place there for both the future and the past. Huge excitement about The Royal Society, English science, what can be achieved through the sharing of knowledge. But again, Aubrey's not an insular person in that respect. So, he wished he could go on the Grand Tour when he was a student. He would really have loved to have done that. It's one of the things that he actually talked to Harvey about, going and traveling as his contemporaries, for example, John Evelyn did.But Aubrey actually says—this is very typical of Aubrey—that his mother persuaded him out of it. His mother didn't want him going off on the Grand Tour. She was afraid for him. And he regretted it later in life. But it's so typical of Aubrey that he would pay attention to his mother and her anxieties.OLIVER: This interest in the present and the past—so he loves all the history, but he's in the Royal Society. One thing I like in your book is the way he talks about, oh, my grandfather still dresses in the old ways, like he's an Elizabethan, but at the same time he's doing a very sort of Baconian project. He's influenced by Bacon. Is Aubrey a sort of paradox? Does this make sense in a way?SCURR: Only in so far as lots of other people are as well. I was just looking at the Harvey life, and there's a story there about how when Harvey was a student he was meant to be setting sail with some friends. And he's stopped and told, “No, you can't get on this boat. You have to wait.” And he says, “Well, what have I done wrong? Why can't I get on this boat?” He said, “No, honestly, we need to have a word with you. You are not going on the boat.” And then the boat sinks, everyone dies. And this is apparently because the guy who stopped him had a dream that he needed to stop Harvey going. Harvey told Aubrey that story.Harvey also is—as Aubrey sort of slightly inaccurately puts it, is the inventor of the circulation of the blood. And you think, well, that's going a little bit far, perhaps not actually the inventor, but certainly the first person to discover, to understand about circulating blood.So there's another example of someone's life includes, I wouldn't be alive unless somebody had had this premonition and dream that I was about to die. Which is from a completely different world, from the rational, scientific understanding of the body or the other scientific advances that are going on at the time.OLIVER: And Aubrey's happy to just sort of coexist with both of those because of his interest in astrology?SCURR: And not just astrology. He's very interested in astrology and nativities, as he called it. In some of the Brief Lives, you see the sort of recording of the information that would be needed to cast an astrological shape for the life.But he is also interested in the fact that people believe in fairies and ghosts. He doesn't look down on those beliefs. Nor does he say that he necessarily believes in the presence of fairies or the interventions of the supernatural. But he's got a very open mind in relation to that. And certainly being simultaneously interested in early astronomy and astrology together is, to us, very striking. But then I think it was much more normal.OLIVER: Why do you think he resisted ordination?SCURR: Because he said the cassock stinks. He considered ordination several times because he knew it would be a living, it would be a way of being able to have some income, probably not very onerous duties. Some of his friends say to him, “Come on, Aubrey, it really won't be that much work. You'll just get a curate who'll do it all, and you'll get the living, and then you won't have to be worrying all the time about your paycheck. You haven't got a paycheck. It would be a living coming to you.”And on one occasion, one of the reasons he gives for not doing that is he thinks well, what if there's another religious upheaval and I have to change sides again? What if Roman Catholicism comes back and I ended up on the wrong side of it?And, again, would it really have been that difficult to go with the flow? But I think, in his own way, he had found his way of living, which was intensely sociable. And perhaps he didn't want that constraint of being a member of the clergy around him.OLIVER: Do you think he was a nonbeliever?SCURR: Well. I don't know the answer to that. I don't think so at all. I think he probably was a straightforward Christian believer. I think perhaps he'd seen enough of the religious conflicts and wars to be afraid of fanaticism on both sides. And that would fit certainly with his relationship with Hobbes.I don't have any reason to think he's an atheist. He's got a beautiful way of writing about death and there's this wonderful line he has when he says, “God bless you and me in our in and out world.” So the fact that we refer to his works as the Brief Lives because they're short, but everybody's life is brief.And even those who live, as he did, into his 70s, it feels brief. And there's these very moving descriptions of him at funerals. I was thinking about this the other day because he often records where someone's buried. And I recently wrote my first entry for the Dictionary of National Biography. I did the one for Hilary Mantel, which was a great honor and extremely interesting.And when I came back to the Brief Lives, I thought, gosh, I wish I'd put at the end of that DNB entry where she's actually buried, that would've made sense to do that. And I didn't do it because the DNB is quite formalized; they've got their formula and you need to stick to it.But maybe I'll add it in. Because it seems to me very moving to record where people are actually buried. That would fit I think with her religious sensibility, with a regard for the afterlife, and with the rites of passage at the end of life.OLIVER: What is it that makes Aubrey such a good biographer?SCURR: So I think the modesty that is in his spirit, the noticing, the minutiae that he both notices and values and his wit. He has a sensitivity to these funny and revealing quirky stories about the people that he knows. Or he finds them in the stories he's told by people who did know them.There's an eyewitness account aspect to it as well. Or at least it's an oral history. “I was told this by . . .” He's extremely precise. He'll try to assemble the facts so far as he can, and then he'll tell you what people's close friends said about them, and he will do so very, very carefully so that you know this is a story that he's been told that he's passing on.And then he doesn't pass moral judgment. He doesn't adjudicate. And finally, he thinks of himself as doing all of this for posterity and that posterity, i.e. us or the people who come after us, will find things there and he's not going to tell them what to find. He's not going to shape the life and say, this is what you should think about it.He will give you the raw materials, he'll give you the stories, he'll give you a flavor of the details of the life, and then posterity can look there and can see, for example, the disagreements between Hobbes and Isaac Newton. There are people who've written lives of Hooke and Newton. And there are people who've written lives and you can be team Newton or team Hooke. Interestingly, Aubrey is team Hooke. He doesn't write a life of Newton. And he wants, as I said, to do well by Hooke. But his way of doing that isn't to say Mr.Hooke was fantastic and Newton robbed him of lots of his ideas. He says, let me show you, let me assemble and make a catalog, if I can, of all these hundreds of contributions that Hooke made.OLIVER: When did you discover Aubrey?SCURR: So I discovered Aubrey because I was reviewing for the LRB, The Biographer's Tale, and I had come across a really interesting—and it's still in the introduction to my book—a really interesting reflection on the difference between Aubrey and Lytton Strachey, a reflection made by Anthony Powell, and I had quoted it or alluded to it in my review. And I had gone and started to read Aubrey as a result of that. So I was led to it through reviewing, via Anthony Powell, and then into the Brief Lives.But then another very strange thing happened, which is I met for the very first time, Janet Malcolm, who is someone who became very important in my life. And because she knew or had been told that I'd written this review, she read the review before we met. And she said to me, she said, “Ruth, I read your review”—and I doubt Janet Malcolm was a massive fan of A.S. Byatt, to be absolutely honest. We never really discussed that further, but she said, “I read your review and I was really interested in this Aubrey. I was so interested in what you quoted about Aubrey and the difference between his biographical approach and Lytton Strachey.”And then it sort of stuck in my mind and suddenly as I was coming toward the end of my first book, which was a totally different book on Robespierre and the French Revolution, I just knew I wanted to write about Aubrey. And I think at the time my then-husband really thought I'd gone mad actually, because you're not supposed to do that, are you?I mean, you're supposed to stick in your period and certainly build on it. So, you know, a book on Marra or even Napoleon would've been okay, that would've made sense. But to circle back to the 17th century and write about Aubrey seemed extremely eccentric.OLIVER: Well, what was Janet Malcolm like?SCURR: Oh, Janet was absolutely wonderful. She has this reputation of being sort of terrifying. And, of course, I was extremely interested in her forensic examination of biography which we had very interesting conversations about. She was a deeply kind person, extremely nurturing of younger writers, and extremely funny as well.That's the other thing that you don't associate with her sometimes from this sort of public image of a very austere interviewer, The Journalist and the Murderer, In the Freud Archives, et cetera. Actually, she was a really warm and extremely witty person.OLIVER: A lot of historians don't think biography is real history. Why do you take biography seriously?SCURR: Well, Michael Holroyd writes Works on Paper—and I love Michael Holroyd so much. And he has this wonderful line—I won't remember it exactly—but it's about biography being the b*****d offspring of history and the novel, and both are ashamed of it.And I think some of those distinctions actually have broken down. I know lots of historians who are very interested in biographical writing. I think it depends. There are certain historical schools that maybe are not so interested in lives.And to be fair, the history of ideas is—which I belong to, and in a sense I'm a rebel from—is one of those. I remember there coming a point where I had spent so much time thinking about the constitutional ideas for the representative republic in the middle of the French Revolution, that actually the French Revolution could have been happening on Mars for all it mattered about the actual sequence of events. What mattered was the structure of the ideas.And it's difficult because the school I belong to in Cambridge wants to put the ideas into context all the time. But again, by context you don't really mean people's lives; more the discourses and the conversations and the ideas of the time that are the landscape, the intellectual landscape, if you like.So I rebelled at a certain point and I was like, well, you know, I'm actually going to go through the revolution day by day because that period is short. And I think it really matters, the lived experience there. I think many, many history books quote Aubrey with enormous respect and say, “as Aubrey says,” or, “according to Aubrey,” and pull those details forwards.I suppose some history is quite instrumental in its use of biography, so it wants to draw the reader in with a few anecdotes and a little bit of what does somebody wear on their head? And who was their first love, that kind of thing. But it's perhaps not very engaged with the real work of trying to capture the shape or the feel of a life.OLIVER: And of a temperament, right? I think one thing biography gives us is that sense that a lot of these big decisions or events in history are quite temperamental. As well as being based in ideas and events.SCURR: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.OLIVER: Your life of Aubrey, at one point you tried to write as a novel.SCURR: Yeah. I had to stop that quite fast.OLIVER: Why?SCURR: Because Aubrey is too important. I didn't want to make up things for him. As someone who's come right up to that line of the history and the novel, I do think it's very clear to be on one side or the other. And again, going back to Hilary Mantel, she wrote those wonderful Reith Lectures on historical fiction.And, like her, I think that it's not about ignoring the facts or embellishing the facts. It is about the gaps. It's about imagining what isn't in the record and should have been, and trying to reconstruct that inside the novel. But at the time, I felt that the gaps with Aubrey didn't actually matter that much.There was so much there that I could pull together to give a sense of him and his sensibility. Now actually, scholars in this field will all be very, very keen to advance our knowledge of those gaps. And that's wonderful. You know, what exactly was Aubrey doing when he visited France? You know, at the time I wrote my book that seemed very unclear.I think my colleague in Oxford, Kate Bennett, knows that now and will write her own biography. And she will fill in many of these gaps that I sort of happily included in the form that I'd found for his life because giving him that first person voice, I was able to focus on the evidence that I thought had been very underused at that point.OLIVER: Now Kate Bennett did a wonderful edition of the Brief Lives with lots of excellent footnotes and investigations. And you wrote that it gave us a new understanding of Aubrey.SCURR: Absolutely. And of the lives themselves. And Kate and I got to know each other and became friends while we were both writing our books. And people we knew before we met were very keen to sort of set us against each other. So they would wind us up. I would meet someone and they'd say, “Ruth, there you are. You've written a book about the French Revolution and now you are going to write a book about Aubrey. But don't you know there is a scholar in Oxford who spent her entire academic life working on Aubrey?” And it built up a picture of fear that you shouldn't trespass on somebody else's ground.And then people would do a sort of reverse thing to her that they would say, “Oh, Kate, gosh, you've been working a long time on Aubrey and where is your Clarendon edition after all? And did you know there's somebody in Cambridge who's going to write this popular book about Aubrey?”Anyway, finally we met at a conference and we really actually just liked each other and we decided it's fine. I was doing my thing. She's doing something very different. And we became friends, and I see that as a triumph over a sort of more traditional, maybe even dare I say, male and territorial approach to academic life and to knowledge in general actually.OLIVER: Yeah. Because the two books are great complements to each other. They're not rivalrous in that sense.SCURR: Absolutely not. Kate's book, it's not just an addition. It's as much as you can ever do. It's a reconstruction of the manuscript as Aubrey left it and intended it with all the gaps and the notes to himself to fill this in. And his changes of mind and his deletions and all of that. And so it's an astonishing thing. Because it's not just a copy of it. It takes you in, it helps you understand what he was intending with those collections, as you called them, my pretty collections.And so that edition that she had been working on for a very long time came out in 2015, the same year as my book came out. And it felt like an amazing year for Aubrey. And now, we'll be celebrating the 400th anniversary of his birth. But that year, 2015, was a very special, obviously for us, but I think for Aubrey more broadly.OLIVER: How much of an influence has Aubrey had on English biography?SCURR: As we know, there's the huge influence in terms of “Aubrey says.” Open any book on the 17th century, and it will be “Aubrey says,” “according to Aubrey,” et cetera. So a huge influence in that respect. With regard to the actual form, I think it's very, very pervasive and important, and we have to look at it very carefully.I mentioned earlier the very important difference between what Aubrey does and what Lytton Strachey did. There are some similarities in so far as Strachey will go for the vivid detail. He give you these powerful anecdotes. But actually he spins them as well.And that's what Anthony Powell so brilliantly showed. And the example was of Francis Bacon, the life of Francis Bacon who Aubrey has a description of Bacon right at the end of his life, the circumstances leading up to Bacon's death where he is on Highgate Hill and he decides to conduct an experiment to see if snow will preserve a chicken or a hen as well as salt. So he is stuffing this carcass of the hen with snow. Catches a cold, ends up having to stay with a friend, sleeps in a bed that hasn't been aired for a long time, and dies. And that's the end of Lord Bacon.So Aubrey gives us all this, and then along comes Lytton Strachey. And he takes it, and he says an old man disgraced, shattered, alone on Highgate Hill, stuffing a dead foul with snow, which makes it sound like he's lost his mind at the end of his life. And then Anthony Powell examined that and he said, look, the story of stuffing the hen with snow is Aubrey's.Bacon was certainly an old man at the time of the incident. He was disgraced. He may have been shattered. No doubt at times he was alone. But Aubrey's story of stuffing the foul on Highgate Hill shows Bacon accompanied by the king's physician, conducting a serious experiment to test the preservative properties of snow and, on becoming indisposed, finding accommodation in the house of the Earl of Arundel.And so you take that same story and, as Anthony Powell says, you combine the story, the fragment preserved by Aubrey with some epithets, and you convey an oblique point. It's a biographical method for actually building up a picture of the person. And it really matters what you do with those fragments.So I think the fact that Aubrey is pretty pure about this, he gives you the fragments and another biographer might come along and think, okay, what's going on here with Venetia Stanley and dying in her bed after drinking Viper wine? Let's build up a story about that. And there was a rumor at the time that her husband had murdered her, et cetera. Aubrey doesn't comment. He just gives you the fragment. And I think afterwards, people have not only used the fragments in their own work, but they've also developed a technique of working up those fragments into whatever picture you decide as a biographer you are going to draw.OLIVER: Now as well as a historian, you are a literary critic. You review novels. You are a Hilary Mantel admirer. Who else among the modern fiction writers do you admire?SCURR: Amongst the modern fiction writers? I'm getting quite old, Henry. Lots of my people are dead now. Alice Monroe is someone I'm extremely interested in. Hilary Manel, obviously, Beryl Bainbridge, Penelope Fitzgerald. And I love the fact Penelope Fitzgerald was a biographer simultaneously with becoming a novelist.And I was thinking back to this actually, that Charlotte Mew and Her Friends—that's the title. And then the Anthony Powell is John Aubrey and His Friends. And I was thinking, is there something about these people who have a lot of friends and the biographical genre? It's interesting.In terms of younger people writing, I just read a wonderful short story by Gwendoline Riley in the latest Paris Review. “A–Z” it's called—very disturbing. Very, very good story. And Gwendoline has a novel coming out later this year, which I shall read with enormous interest. It's going to be called Palm House. I absolutely revered George Saunders, although I haven't yet read Vigil. I'm only on Substack for George Saunders and you Henry. That's it, basically.OLIVER: That shows very good taste.SCURR: Very good taste. Yeah. And a couple of others. My friend Danielle Allen's The Renovator, I also subscribe to, but very few. But George Saunders wrote a wonderful post on his Substack about maybe a year and a half, maybe more even ago, about how he found the solution to the beginning of Lincoln in the Bardo. And he wanted to find a way to tell the story of the death of Lincoln's son. It's so typical of him—and I love this—he said he didn't want the ghosts. He knew it was going to be narrated by the ghosts in the morgue. And he couldn't have them coming home one evening saying, “Oh, you know, I just popped over the wall and had a look in through the White House window. And guess what I saw?” So how was he going to get the voices in?And then he said he'd got these extracts from the letters and from the literature that he needed. And he ended up putting them all on the floor and thinking, what order shall I put them in? And that reminded me of when I was struggling to find a way to write about Aubrey. I suddenly had the idea that I could just put them as diary entries without comment.I would sort of curate these entries and things like that. So, that was a very interesting moment for me about sort of the construction and the choices that go in both to writing a novel and to writing, in my case, a sort of experimental biography.OLIVER: So Hilary Mantel, Lincoln in the Bardo, Penelope Fitzgerald, Beryl Bainbridge—there's a lot of historical fiction here. This is the genre you most enjoy. It's been a sort of golden age for historical fiction.SCURR: But those people aren't just historical fiction writers. It's very important. They have all written historical fiction, but actually they write other novels as well. It doesn't matter the order in their careers, they go in and out of it. So I would say that actually it's those people as writers and sensibilities that attract me.Anita Brookner is another example. I love Anita Brookner's novels. I also love her book on David, the revolutionary painter, that she wrote—Jacques-Louis David—that's a fantastic book. So there's a sense in which I see them as writers and the genre of historical fiction, you are right, it does cut across, but I don't think that's what I'm following. I think I'm following what I find on the page from a particular sensibility and of course a command of language, which is in all of those cases, absolutely extraordinary.OLIVER: Because they're all quite innovative as historical novelists as well. And it's not the main part of what is recognized as their achievement in a way.SCURR: No, no.OLIVER: It's been quietly a second great period of the historical novel. It seems crazy to say Hilary Mantel is our Walter Scott, but that is quite high praise.SCURR: So I think you deal much more definitely than I do with these sort of epoch-defining ideas. I think I'm just more intermittently focused on particular things that I like. I used to do an enormous amount of reviewing. I've had to stop it because—talk about being the whetstone.I was constantly reviewing when I was in my 30s and much of my 40s actually. And I don't regret it in the least. And one of the reasons I don't regret it, especially with novels, was because I would never have read all those novels if I hadn't been reviewing them.And even some of the nonfiction, I wouldn't. But here's an example: Because I'd been reviewing so much, I ended up quite early 2007, becoming a Booker judge. And part of that process is that anyone who's been on the list before they automatically get entered by the publisher—McEwen and Barnes, et cetera. Fine.And then the publisher can put forward two books they choose and they can be anything. And then they assemble a list of so-called call-ins. And those are the books where the publisher says, “Oh, please, please call this in. I mean, we didn't make it one of our two, but we think it's absolutely amazing and you must read it.” And you think, well, if it's so amazing, what were you doing not making it one of your two. But anyway, whatever, we call it in. And on that call-in list there was actually, Anne Enright's novel, The Gathering, and that ended up winning the year I was a judge.And I knew Anne Enright's writing because I had reviewed several of her earlier books, especially one called What Are You Like?, which is quite obscure. It's not the book people think of when they think about Anne Enright. But I knew because I'd done all that time in the reviewing trenches, as it were, how extraordinary Anne Enright is as a writer. And we were able to say, well, absolutely go ahead and call this in. And then sure enough it won.OLIVER: What about biography? Modern biography? You like Michael Holroyd?SCURR: Well, we've already talked about Janet Malcolm. She's a sort of anti-biographer in some respect, sort of subversive of the entire genre. I very much like and respect Antonia Fraser's historical biographies and especially her one of Marie Antoinette which, again, came out very close to when my Robespierre book came out. And it's like seeing the other side of the story and that was absolutely extraordinary.And one of the biographies I go back to over and over again I'm extremely interested in Virginia Woolf. You are obviously a fan with The Common Reader. I was looking at it, preparing for this, that she's got this absolutely hilarious short biography of John Evelyn, and it is called Rambling Round Evelyn. Do you know it?OLIVER: Yes.SCURR: It's so beautifully constructed. It's got the butterflies landing on the dahlias pretty much throughout the actual text of the short biography. But then it's got this brilliant bit where she sort of makes fun of John Evelyn. And she says, the difference between then and now is, if we saw a red admiral, we would admire it, but we wouldn't—and this is very mean of her—we wouldn't rush into the kitchen and get a kitchen knife in order to dissect the red admiral's head. Right? It's so ridiculous and it so makes fun of Evelyn.I was listening to the podcast you made with Hermione Lee. And Hermione was saying that she thought what made Woolf such a good critic was that she was very empathetic. But I also think she's capable of that kind of sharp, wicked distance as well, where she goes, I see you, John Evelyn, you are so proud of your garden, and you're actually—looked at from my point of view—a bit of an idiot in some respects as well.OLIVER: I like her because she's so judgmental, which is not a very popular thing to say, but she is. She is really capable of saying that, you know, as long as prose will be read, Addison will be read. But on the other hand, he's boring and rambling and not very good in many ways. Absolutely cutting.SCURR: No, totally, totally. Yeah.OLIVER: What about some of the sort of big names: Richard Holmes, Claire Tomalin?SCURR: Yeah. Oh, Claire, absolutely. I mean, goodness, they've been such influences on me, both of them. Absolutely Richard and his Footsteps and then of course, and those other books, The Ratters of Lightning Ridge and then The Age of Wonder. That's so important, so wonderful.Claire, I revere, I loved and still recommend to my students her book on Mary Wollstonecraft. I also, by the way, love Virginia Woolf's essay on Mary Wollstonecraft. I think that's a different sort of thing where Woolf describes Mary Wollstonecraft pursuing her lover like a dolphin. She won't let him go. He thought he'd hooked a minnow. He wasn't expecting a dolphin to come after him. It was Mary Wollstonecraft. So, Claire Tomalin, her Peyps, Hardy, absolutely hugely important books and deeply, deeply humane actually.And that's the other thing, I think biography, by definition, you do get the sharpness of Woolf or Strachey, but I think to put someone else's life at the center of your book, that's a humane act. It's to say, no, I'm going to spend this number years of my life preserving and communicating this other person's life. And that's a very wonderful thing to do.OLIVER: What do you think of the sort of standard criticism of biography, that it's just not accurate enough? So, for example, Austen Scholars will point to various things in the Tomalin biography where she's deleted the facts or said things to make the narrative flow, but it's just not really accurate enough. The novelistic tendency overwhelms the historical one or whatever. You've obviously avoided that with various decisions you made in the Aubrey book, but as a genre.SCURR: I'd never say that. That would be a real hostage to fortune, wouldn't it?OLIVER: Well, you know what I mean?SCURR: And saying, look at, look at this—OLIVER: Page 28.SCURR: —at this piece of nonsense you introduced. Well, accuracy is extremely important. What I think about that is it all contributes to knowledge. If someone comes along and finds a mistake or wants to bring in some other evidence—And actually Kate Bennett, she does this with Aubrey as well. She says that, oh, Aubrey's really got this wrong, or he's gotten in a muddle about that. She's not saying, and therefore let's just chuck it out because it's inaccurate. You need to see this as well as that. So I think of it more as a collaborative relationship about adding to knowledge and if somebody corrects a previous book or previous claim or something, or point something, then that's fine actually.Again, going back to Holroyd, he thought that that biography was an art form constrained by the facts. So he's got a place for art in it. And I know what he means by that. And I think ultimately that's probably why I couldn't write a novel about a biographical subject because of being constrained by the facts. And yet Hilary Mantel has written many historical novels that are absolutely constrained by the facts. It's just what they're doing besides the facts, alongside the facts. So perhaps some people are going to come along and contribute other information and other people will come along and contribute some imaginative answer to the whole. And both are fine. I think we should be liberal broad church here.OLIVER: Is the genre dying?SCURR: Not so far as I'm aware. We are always doing this about genres dying, aren't we? Those things are always dying.OLIVER: People talk about biography dying a lot.SCURR: Well, perhaps they do. I haven't been listening to that. Why do they say it's dying?OLIVER: Because you can't sell these 700-page lives of people.SCURR: We can't sell most books. I mean, if we're going to go buy sales . . .OLIVER: This, yeah. Well, this story in The Times recently as well, that all the nonfiction that sells now is trash and that the serious books aren't there. And the whole civilization's dying routine.SCURR: Well if it is, we just have to carry on doing what we are doing.OLIVER: Yeah. What do you think is going to be the future of biography? Because I think more than a lot of other nonfiction genres, it's so changeable, it's so flexible. If you look at any decade, you see so much variety in structure and form. What do you think is coming next?SCURR: I'm like Aubrey; I think that's going to be for posterity to decide. As long as there are human beings, we will tell stories and we will want to tell stories about ourselves, and we will want to tell stories about the people we have loved and or hated, or the people who we think matter, for whatever reason, in science, in art, in literature. There will always be a need for the story of the human life.I think it will inevitably change enormously in ways that we couldn't possibly imagine. Just as Aubrey knew that he couldn't possibly imagine what posterity was going to make of the information that he had collected, and he didn't think that was something that he should be constrained by. He thought it was about passing it on.OLIVER: And what will Ruth Scurr do next?SCURR: I'll ask her. I think she's supposed to be writing about Rousseau and is very excited about that, but has been massively distracted by the Royal Society of Literature and becoming chair of that. So, I'm trying to pull myself back into my project. And I was very excited actually, because again, when I was looking at The Common Reader I saw Woolf refer to the Montaigne, Pepys, and Rousseau as people who had provided these spectacular portraits of themselves. And I was very excited by that. So I'm going to write a book about Rousseau and his time in England.OLIVER: Very exciting. I look forward to it. Ruth Scurr, author of John Aubrey: My Own Life, thank you very much.SCURR: Thank you, Henry. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

In the 6 AM Hour: Larry O’Connor and Bethany Mandel discussed: Potomac River Sewage Spill: DC Water targets mid‑March repair; Trump, Moore clash over response WMAL GUEST: 6:35 AM - INTERVIEW - CAL THOMAS - Syndicated columnist TOPICS FROM CAL: Three personal stories about Jesse Jackson. CBS News president continues to clean house of liberals. Bye Bye Anderson Cooper. Iran "talks" will not go anywhere. Trump warms Tehran and "Cuber" as JFK used to pronounce it, or suffer "grave consequences." Havana has no oil, he says. Whoopi Goldberg Denies Ties to Jeffrey Epstein After Her Name Surfaces in Files: ‘I Wasn’t His Girlfriend, I Wasn’t His Friend’ Where to find more about WMAL's morning show: Follow the Show Podcasts on Apple podcasts, Audible and Spotify.Follow WMAL's "O'Connor and Company" on X: @WMALDC, @LarryOConnor, @Jgunlock, @patricepinkfile, @bethanyshondark and @heatherhunterdc. Facebook: WMALDC and Larry O'ConnorInstagram: WMALDCShow Website: https://www.wmal.com/oconnor-company/How to listen live weekdays from 5 to 9 AM: https://www.wmal.com/listenlive/ Episode: Wednesday, February 18, 2026 / 6 AM Hour See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode, My Friend Who… Wants to Buy Her College Son a House and Rent the Rooms to His Friends in Virginia, explores the pros and cons of parents investing in a rental property for their college-aged children. I review not only the financial considerations like mortgages, rental income, and maintenance costs to help listeners evaluate potential cash flow, I discuss the realistic issues that could affect shared housing setups, especially with first-time renters and remote owners.  I offer practical advice on family boundaries, lease agreements, and managing relationships between student tenant roommates. The episode closes with expert tips and clear action steps for families considering turning college housing into a smart real estate move.

This episode, My Friend Who… Wants to Buy Her College Son a House and Rent the Rooms to His Friends in Virginia, explores the pros and cons of parents investing in a rental property for their college-aged children. I review not only the financial considerations like mortgages, rental income, and maintenance costs to help listeners evaluate potential cash flow, I discuss the realistic issues that could affect shared housing setups, especially with first-time renters and remote owners.  I offer practical advice on family boundaries, lease agreements, and managing relationships between student tenant roommates. The episode closes with expert tips and clear action steps for families considering turning college housing into a smart real estate move.

Send us a textDaniel and his friends had been loaded up and carted off to captivity in Babylon, hundreds of miles away from Jerusalem. But when they faced tests to turn their backs on God, they remained faithful and found God stands with those who stand for Him. Pick up your Bible or device, and turn to Daniel 1 to hear the story.This episode is based on the God's Word for Life, Winter 2025–2026, Adult Lesson Guide entitled, "Daniel and His Friends" (January 25, 2026).Find an Apostolic church that preaches this glorious gospel and our response at UPCI.orgThis episode is produced by the Pentecostal Resources Group and is hosted by LJ Harry. To order resources of the God's Word for Life curriculum, visitPentecostalPublishing.com and PentecostalResourcesGroup.com. Share your God's Word for Life stories with me at pphcurriculum@upci.org.

Sir John, Naked Beauty's favorite cousin, is back for another insightful episode. Sir John has been part of the Naked Beauty family since his first visit as a guest and later as a recurring co-host. Each time he visits the pod, we leave the conversation with master tips for makeup application and building an aligned creative career. Since his last visit, Sir John has continued to expand his career globally and now works as Medicube's Global Creative Director. We learn exactly what it means to be a creative director and how his time in Seoul has helped him better understand what it means to consider your heritage in your everyday life. We also cover what's inspiring us right now, and how to determine good art from great art, in beauty, film, music, and more. As always, Sir John drops gems about how he has become an icon in the beauty industry without compromising his personal or professional boundaries. Our chat begins with Sir John, explaining why he doesn't create New Year's resolutions and instead prioritizes radical self-care and discipline each day. We talk at length about caring for ourselves mentally and physically, especially overcoming emotional setbacks, and what it's like having to be “on” professionally. Having such a public-facing career means that he has learned why being authentically yourself at work isn't necessary, and how to be honest about working through grief on the clock. The greater part of the episode considers the parallels between corporate and creative careers and includes great advice for burgeoning creatives. For example, we provide actionable tips for how to stand out at work and how breathwork can soothe pre-Zoom anxiety. And, Sir John's most important lesson? Never lose the thug in yourself.Tune in as we discuss:(1:26) Why Sir John Doesn't Make New Year's Resolutions(1:48) Radical Self-Care Includes Discipline(4:15) How Brooke Has Put Other Creatives On(5:00) You Shouldn't Be Your Full Self In Corporate Spaces(6:40) The Difference Between Code Switching And Translating(7:05) What It's Like Working With Global Companies(7:30) How South Korea Celebrates Its Heritage In Everyday Practices(8:07) Being Medicube's Global Creative Director (9:15) Drawing Inspiration: The Chanel Subway Fashion Show And Sinners(15:01) Overcoming Mental Setbacks(18:10) The True Cost Of “Pulling A Look” For Events(23:10) Why Zoom Meetings Are Anxiety-Inducing(25:15) Career Advice: Be More Enthusiastic(27:00) Understanding The Gen-Z Stare (31:48) Reducing Stress Is A Key To Good Health(34:48) Sir John & Brooke Play Boundaries Bingo(36:35) Unlearning Saying Yes When You Really Mean No(41:26) Why Sir John Doesn't Work Weekends(46:28) Grieving AJ Crismson, His Friend & Beauty Pioneer, Before A Major Shoot(49:54) Why You Should Call Out Disrespect Immediately(50:50) Why He Won't Work With Nicki Minaj(54:01) Don't Lose The Thug In You(59:45) Sir John's Holistic Beauty Cabinet Rate, Subscribe & Review the Podcast on Apple Join the Naked Beauty Community on IG: @nakedbeautyplanet Thanks for all the love and support. Tag me while you're listening @nakedbeautyplanet & as always love to hear your thoughts :) Check out nakedbeautypodcast.com for all previous episodes & search episodes by topicShop My Favorite Products & Pod Discounts on my ShopMyShelfStay in touch with me: @brookedevardFollow Sir John @sirjohn Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's story is titled Shyaka and His Friends. The story is all about friendship, caring, and teamwork! We are going to meet Shyaka, a cheerful boy who loves playing around with his friends Mwiza and Sano. But something unexpected happens… and oh ho ho! Want to find out? Listen keenly, and don't forget to answer fun questions that pop up along the way. Have fun!This story is published by NABU Organization. You can find an openly licensed version of the book here.Author: Pascaline MunezeroIllustration: Muhire RobertTranslation: James NyagaNarrator: Mo NyarindaHost and Editor: Magdalene ChorongoYou can reach us via ⁠stories@edutab.africa⁠ or through our social media channels to find out how you can get involved in this project

What is carrying you toward Jesus?

Ryan's story is a powerful journey through early substance use, deep loss, incarceration, and ultimately finding real recovery. From growing up seeking acceptance, to losing his closest friend at 16, to years of cycling between numbness and despair, Ryan opens up about the turning points that shifted his life. He reflects on the moment he almost gave up, how connection inside prison planted the first seeds of recovery, and how service, honesty, and community helped him rebuild his life. Today, with six months in recovery, a thriving small business, and strong family relationships, Ryan talks about healing, purpose, and the simple daily actions that keep him grounded. His message to anyone struggling: you're not alone, and recovery is absolutely possible.00:00 – Intro & Recovery Dates00:52 – How They First Met01:19 – Reuniting Inside AA Meetings02:07 – Ryan's Childhood03:26 – Meeting the Friend Who Shaped Everything04:00 – First Time Trying to “Feel Something”05:00 – Becoming the “Go-To” Guy05:36 – The Night Everything Changed07:27 – Grief He Never Faced08:30 – Homeless at 1809:30 – Crossing Lines & Getting Arrested10:19 – “Recovery Curious”12:43 – Hearing the 15-Year Offer14:17 – The Serenity Prayer Moment16:05 – Tier 4 Program & Real Change17:15 – Coming Home With Purpose18:44 – Finding Community Again19:58 – Being Around Recovery vs. In Recovery21:42 – Substitution & Spiraling22:28 – Losing Himself Again23:08 – New Year's at His Friend's Grave24:21 – Choosing Recovery For Real25:00 – Returning to CCAR25:46 – Life in Recovery Today26:43 – Rebuilding Family Bonds27:27 – Growing His Landscaping Business28:20 – Daily Program & Service28:59 – “If I Can Do It, Anyone Can”29:25 – Advice for the First 24 Hours ----Across the Web----

Pastor Rob Byker joins us with a message from John 15:9-15 titled “Know His Sacrifice for His Friends.” Jesus says the greatest love is to lay down your life for your friends. That's what He did for us. We owed a debt we could not pay, and He gave His life to pay it. It would be enough to be His loved servants, but Jesus calls us something greater—we are His dearly loved friends. Want to learn more about Connections Church? Visit our website: https://myconnections.church/

Come celebrate 100 episodes with The Girls! This week Barbara is presenting “Shared with His Friends” by Kitty King! This book may only be 100 pages but it manages to pack A LOT in it…much like our FMC Amber! When Amber's boyfriend Jet Harrington (who happens to be a billionaire) wants to see if she is worthy of being his wife, he does what any billionaire book boyfriend would do - he shares her with his friends! Much like the four horseman of the apocalypse, Jet's friends each have a unique kink - Praise, Humiliation, Degradation, and BDSM. At the end of the day, the ultimate prize is who manages to get Amber pregnant! If you have made it with us you to episode 100 you know it's just a book!New Episodes out every Tuesday! Join our Patreon to receive early, ad- free (and bonus!) episodes and more! Patreon.com/ClutchMyPearlsPod We have *NEW* MERCH go to ClutchMyPearlsPod.com to check it out!Watch the video version of this podcast on our YouTube channel! Follow @ClutchMyPearlsPod on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and GoodReads! We have *NEW* MERCH go to ClutchMyPearlsPod.com to check it out!Do you have a smut recommendation for the girls? Send an email to: ClutchMyPearlsPod@gmail.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bookwaves/Artwaves is produced and hosted by Richard Wolinsky. Links to assorted local theater & book venues   Edmund White (1940-2025) Edmund White. Photo: David Shankbone Edmund White (1940-2025) in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded in the KPFA Studio. Part One: Recorded February 20, 2012 while on tour for the novel “Jack Holmes and His Friend.” Part Two: Recorded February 17, 2014 while on tour for the memoir “Inside a Peal, My Years in Paris.” Edmund White, who died on June 3, 2025 at the age of 85, was often called the Grandfather of gay literature. Equally at home writing novels, biographies, plays, memoirs, essays and various hybrids, he was a pioneer in the LBGT world, one of the first gay novelists to achieve literary fame, the co[author in 1977 of The Joy of Gay Sex, along with a ground breaking trilogy of novels based on his own life, several memoirs, three well received biographies, and various collections of essays. Winner of the Lambda Literary Award and nominated several times, nominated for the Pulitzer and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for his biography of Jean Genet, winner of the National Book Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award and the PEN/Saul Bellow Award, Edmund White has also been called the Patron Saint of Gay Literature.   Review of “The Neil Diamond Musical A Beautiful Noise” at BroadwaySF Golden Gate Theater through June 22, 2025.   Book Interview/Events and Theatre Links Note: Shows may unexpectedly close early or be postponed due to actors' positive COVID tests. Check the venue for closures, ticket refunds, and vaccination and mask requirements before arrival. Dates are in-theater performances unless otherwise noted. Some venues operate Tuesday – Sunday; others Wednesday or Thursday through Sunday. All times Pacific Time. Closing dates are sometimes extended. Book Stores Bay Area Book Festival  See website for highlights from the 110th Annual Bay Area Book Festival, May 31 – June 1, 2025. Book Passage.  Monthly Calendar. Mix of on-line and in-store events. Books Inc.  Mix of on-line and in-store events. The Booksmith.  Monthly Event Calendar. BookShop West Portal. Monthly Event Calendar. Center for Literary Arts, San Jose. See website for Book Club guests in upcoming months. Green Apple Books. Events calendar. Kepler's Books  On-line Refresh the Page program listings. Live Theater Companies Actors Ensemble of Berkeley.  Summers at John Hinkel Park: Cymbeline opens July 4; The Taming of the Shrew opens August 16. See website for readings and events. Actor's Reading Collective (ARC).   See website for upcoming productions. African American Art & Culture Complex. See website for calendar. Afro-Solo Theatre Company.See website for calendar. American Conservatory Theatre Co-Founders. a world premiere hip-hop musical May 29 – July 6, Strand. Kim's Convenience by Ins Choi, Sept 18 – Oct 19, Toni Rembe Theatre. Aurora Theatre  The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe by Jane Wagner, with Marga Gomez, July 12 – August 10.  Awesome Theatre Company. See website for information. Berkeley Rep. The Big Reveal Live Show written and performed by Sasha Velour, June 4 – 15, Roda Theatre. Who's With Me. written and performed by W. Kamau Bell, June 17-22, Roda Theatre. Berkeley Shakespeare Company Julius Caesar, June 13-21, Live Oak Theater, Berkeley. y. See website for upcoming events and productions. Boxcar Theatre. The Illusionist with Kevin Blake, live at the Palace Theatre. Brava Theatre Center: Pacific Overtures, through June 15, 2025. BroadwaySF: A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical, June 3-22, Golden Gate. See website for complete listings for the Orpheum, Golden Gate and Curran Theaters. Broadway San Jose:  Moulin Rouge!, The Musical. July 8-13. See website for other events. Center Rep: Happy Pleasant Valley, June 1- 29. Lesher Center. Central Stage. See website for upcoming productions, 5221 Central Avenue, Richmond Central Works  The Last Goat by Gary Graves, June 28 – July 27. Cinnabar Theatre. Bright Star, June 13-29, Sonoma State. Club Fugazi. Dear San Francisco ongoing. Check website for Music Mondays listings. Contra Costa Civic Theatre Fiddler on the Roof June 7 – 22. See website for other events. Golden Thread   See website for upcoming events. Hillbarn Theatre: Murder for Two, a musical comedy, October 9 – November 2, 2025. Lorraine Hansberry Theatre. See website for specific workshops and events. Los Altos Stage Company. Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, May 29 – June 22. Lower Bottom Playaz  See website for upcoming productions. Magic Theatre. Aztlan by Luis Alfaro, World Premiere, June 25 – July 13. See website for additional events. Marin Shakespeare Company: A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare, June 13 – July 13, Forest Meadows Amphitheatre. See website for other events. Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts Upcoming Events Page. New Conservatory Theatre Center (NCTC) To My Girls by JC Lee, through June 8. Pride Cabaret, June 6-21.  Ride the Cyclone, the musical, July 11 – August 15. New Performance Traditions.  See website for upcoming schedule Oakland Theater Project. Les Blancs (The Whites) by Lorraine Hansberry, July 11 – 27. Odd Salon: Upcoming events in San Francisco & New York, and streaming. Palace of Fine Arts Theater.  See website for event listings. Pear Theater. Constellations by Nick Payne, June 27 – July 20.See website for staged readings and other events. Playful People Productions. See web page for information on summer camps. Presidio Theatre. See website for complete schedule of events and performances. Ray of Light: Next to Normal. May 30 – June 21. Ross Valley Players: See website for New Works Sunday night readings and other events. San Francisco Playhouse. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time based on the novel by Mark Haddon, adapted by Simon Stephens. May 1-June 21. SFBATCO.  See website for upcoming streaming and in- theater shows.  The Day The Sky Turned Orange by Julius Ernesto, Sept 5 – Oct. 5, Z Space. San Jose Stage Company: Sweet Charity,  June 4 – 29.. Shotgun Players.  Yellowface by David Henry Hwang, May 10 – June 14. South Bay Musical Theatre:  The Sound of Music, September 27 – October 18. Stagebridge: See website for events and productions. Storytime every 4th Saturday. The Breath Project. Streaming archive. The Marsh: Calendar listings for Berkeley, San Francisco and Marshstream. Theatre Lunatico See website for upcoming events and producctions. Theatre Rhino  Doodler by John Fisher, May 31 – July 6, The Marsh, San Francisco. The Laramie Project, June 19-29.. Streaming: Essential Services Project, conceived and performed by John Fisher, all weekly performances now available on demand. TheatreWorks Silicon Valley. Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean  Jimmy Dean, A New Musical, June  18 – July 13. Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. Word for Word.  See website for upcoming productions. Misc. Listings: BAMPFA: On View calendar for Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Berkeley Symphony: See website for listings. Chamber Music San Francisco: Calendar, 2025 Season. Dance Mission Theatre. On stage events calendar. Fort Mason Center. Events calendar. Oregon Shakespeare Festival: Calendar listings and upcoming shows. San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus. See schedule for upcoming SFGMC performances. San Francisco Opera. Calendar listings. San Francisco Symphony. Calendar listings. Filmed Live Musicals: Searchable database of all filmed live musicals, podcast, blog. If you'd like to add your bookstore or theater venue to this list, please write Richard@kpfa.org                                   .   . The post June 12, 2025. Pride Month: Edmund White (1940-2026), The Patron Saint of Gay Literature appeared first on KPFA.

Send us a textThey took each other's hands. Each gave way to the impulse of his manly love, rarer, alas! but as tender and true as the love of woman, and they drew nearer and kissed each other.These words are from what is generally agreed to be America's first gay novel.  Stick with this podcast as we delve into the 1870 novel Joseph and His Friend, and this is Episode 385 - America's First Gay Novel.Thank you for experiencing Celebrate Poe.

Edmund White. Photo: David Shankbone Edmund White (1940-2025) in conversation with Richard Wolinsky, recorded in the KPFA Studios, September 20, 2012 while on tour for the novel “Jack Holmes and His Friend.” Edmund White, who died on June 3, 2025 at the age of 85, was often called the Grandfather of gay literature. Equally at home writing novels, biographies, plays, memoirs, essays and various hybrids, he was a pioneer in the LBGT world, one of the first gay novelists to achieve literary fame, the co[author in 1977 of The Joy of Gay Sex, along with a ground breaking trilogy of novels based on his own life, several memoirs, three well received biographies, and various collections of essays. Winner of the Lambda Literary Award and nominated several times, nominated for the Pulitzer and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for his biography of Jean Genet, winner of the National Book Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award and the PEN/Saul Bellow Award, Edmund White has also been called the Patron Saint of Gay Literature. There were four Bookwaves interviews with Edmund White. In this third interview, recorded on February 20, 2012, he discusses his novel Jack Holmes and His Friend, along with a collection of essays, Sacred Monsters, and various other topics. The post Edmund White (1949-2025). The Patron Saint of Gay Literature appeared first on KPFA.

Join Pastor Balla for today's Daily Devotion, “Job Prays for His Friends,” as we explore Job 42:9 (ESV). Discover the power of forgiveness, intercessory prayer, and restoration through Job's faithful obedience. Learn how Job's prayer, offered for those who wronged him, reflects God's grace, true repentance, and Christ-like mercy. In this Christian devotion, we uncover how biblical forgiveness heals relationships and strengthens faith. If you are seeking encouragement, daily Bible study, or a deeper understanding of God's plan for reconciliation, this devotion is for you. Pastor Balla's teaching is rooted in Scripture, grounded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and offers practical wisdom for everyday Christian living. Subscribe for more Christ-centered devotions, daily Bible reflections, and life-changing truths from God's Word. Walk with us each day as we grow in grace, faith, and love through the study of the Bible.#DailyDevotion #BibleStudy #ChristianForgiveness #PastorBalla #Job42

Novelist, memoirist and biographer Edmund White joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about his recent book, The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir. White talks about the changes he has witnessed the LGBTQ+ community go through over the years and the hostility the transgender population faces under the Trump-Vance regime. He discusses a general concern older members of the community have about losing Social Security and health coverage should gay marriage become Trump's next target, as well as this administration's attempt to erase queer language from governmental archives. White previews his forthcoming novel about Louis XIV's gay brother titled Monsieur and reads from The Loves of My Life.To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/.This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, Ian Johnson, Hunter Murray, and Vanessa Watkins. Selected Readings:Edmund White  The Loves of My Life (2025) The Humble Lover (2025) Nocturnes for the King of Naples (2024) A Previous Life (2023) A Saint from Texas (2022) The Unpunished Vice (2018) The Flaneur (2015) Inside a Pearl (2015) Jack Holmes & His Friend (2012) City Boy (2010) A Boy Story (2009) Marcel Proust - A Life (2009) Anthologies, Foreword & Others: The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame (2022) A Luminous Republic (2020) The Stonewall Reader (2019) Such Small Hands (2017) The Violet Quill Club, 40 Years On - The Gay & Lesbian Review by David Bergman, January-February 2021 Felice Picano, Champion of Gay Literature, Is Dead at 81 - The New York Times Edmund White and Emily Temple on Literary Feuds, Social Media, and Our Appetite for Drama Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 2, Episode 4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Novelist, memoirist and biographer Edmund White joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about his recent book, The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir. White talks about the changes he has witnessed the LGBTQ+ community go through over the years and the hostility the transgender population faces under the Trump-Vance regime. He discusses a general concern older members of the community have about losing Social Security and health coverage should gay marriage become Trump's next target, as well as this administration's attempt to erase queer language from governmental archives. White previews his forthcoming novel about Louis XIV's gay brother titled Monsieur and reads from The Loves of My Life. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/. This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, Ian Johnson, Hunter Murray, and Vanessa Watkins.  Selected Readings: Edmund White  The Loves of My Life (2025) The Humble Lover (2025) Nocturnes for the King of Naples (2024) A Previous Life (2023) A Saint from Texas (2022) The Unpunished Vice (2018) The Flaneur (2015) Inside a Pearl (2015) Jack Holmes & His Friend (2012) City Boy (2010) A Boy Story (2009) Marcel Proust - A Life (2009) Anthologies, Foreword & Others: The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame (2022) A Luminous Republic (2020) The Stonewall Reader (2019) Such Small Hands (2017) The Violet Quill Club, 40 Years On - The Gay & Lesbian Review by David Bergman, January-February 2021 Felice Picano, Champion of Gay Literature, Is Dead at 81 - The New York Times Edmund White and Emily Temple on Literary Feuds, Social Media, and Our Appetite for Drama Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 2, Episode 4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Don't you just hate it when there are double standards when it comes to relationships? Become a Patron or YouTube Member for ad-free episodes and bonus stories every Monday and Friday as well as exclusive content: Cultiv8 Patreon or YouTube Membership   Head to https://factormeals.com/factorpodcast and use code FACTORPODCAST to get 50% off! Head to empowherbyheidi.com to get 10% off with code REDDIT. (Timestamps are approximate due to dynamic ad insertion. Consider being a Patron or YouTube member for ad-free episodes) On today's Reddit Readings episode we have: (00:00) - Intro (03:02) - I started washing and putting away my roommates favorite mug whenever she uses it. When she caught me I lied about why. (19:16) - My Childhood Bully Kept Joking About My Seggs Life, So I Humiliated Him in Front of His Friends and Family (26:36) - I anonymously told my SIL her bf cheated... have I done the right thing? (34:53) - The double standards in my (28/F) and my husband's (36/M) marriage are killing me. (48:17) - Have you ever been so flabbergasted on a date that you go into shock and your body stops working? (57:47) - My date has a girlfriend Be sure to hit like, subscribe, and follow us on all social media platforms for all things Reddit on Wiki! Click here for our Social and Donation Links: https://linktr.ee/redditonwiki Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Straight outta Ohio! Steph brings us Heather and Matt Sullivan while visiting the gateway to the Midwest. Boat Of The Week is a giant swarthy on the outside glam on the inside renovated tugboat, we continue drooling over Novas and get steamed up over another magnificent vintage ad.  Email us your boaty thoughts at theboatyshow@gmail.com. Check out Matt's music live around Columbus Ohio as Matt Sullivan and His Friends, streaming as Black River Gypsies or Tin Hearts. Thanks for listening!

This week Pastor Justin talks about the greatness of God and our relationship with Him!   You can now see on our Youtube Channel by following this link: Greater Love   Important Points: I can Sustain as I Remain! I will Lay it All Down to choose His Greater Love! I am His Friend, He is my God!   Important Scriptures (NLT version unless stated otherwise):   John 15:13 John 15:9-10 John 15:11-13 Matthew 16:24-25 John 15:14-15 John 15:16-17

Guest Suggestion Form:⁠⁠https://forms.gle/bnaeY3FpoFU9ZjA47⁠⁠Disclaimer: This video is intended solely for educational purposes and opinions shared by the guest are his personal views. We do not intent to defame or harm any person/ brand/ product/ country/ profession mentioned in the video. Our goal is to provide information to help audience make informed choices.Order 'Build, Don't Talk' (in English) here:⁠⁠https://amzn.eu/d/eCfijRu⁠⁠Order 'Build Don't Talk' (in Hindi) here:⁠⁠https://amzn.eu/d/4wZISO0⁠⁠Follow Our Whatsapp Channel:⁠⁠https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaokF5x0bIdi3Qn9ef2J⁠⁠Subscribe To Our Other YouTube Channels:-⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@rajshamaniclips⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@RajShamani.Shorts⁠⁠

Collin Carter grew up in Utah. Without a father in the picture and a mother who struggled with her own demons, it wasn't long before bad influences led him down a path that ended in a 27 year prison stay. It was there, fifteen years into his incarceration that Collin caught the vision of his true potential. Whether you're struggling with a child that is making poor decisions, struggling to discover your own potential, or are just wanting to witness the true power of education and hope, you're going to want to listen as Collin shares his story on today's episode of All My Friends Are Felons. Sponsors & Partners Freedom Scholars Academy My Story Matters / Captain Your Story - mystorymatters.org The Other Side Academy (TOSA) - theothersideacademy.com 00:00 - Collin Carter 01:09 - Sponsors 02:35 - His Story 08:00 - The Complexities of His Environment, Community & Race 15:10 - His Grandmother's Influence 16:15 - Moving Out at 14 20:05 - Grappling with the Influence of His Friends 25:15 - Hitting a Turning Point 28:45 - Moving to Another Facility and Finding Opportunity 35:59 - The Power of Someone Believing in You 48:00 - Associating with Good Influences

Episode 91, The Fifth CourtA slightly longer than usual edition of Ireland's favourite podcast as our hosts delve into the light and shade of Arthur Mathews new book, 'Walled In By Hate: Kevin O'Higgins, His Friends and Enemies'. Arthur is well known as co-creator of Father Ted so naturally the talk starts with a chat about the modern sitcom masterpiece, and everybody's favourite Fr. Ted moments.However, more sombrely, the talk then turns to the subject matter of Arthur's latest book, former Minister for Justice, Kevin O'Higgins, who on July 1927, at just thirty-five years old, was assassinated on his way to Mass in Booterstown, Co. Dublin. A reviled figure for anti-Treaty republicans, O'Higgins became the target of particular venom for his vocal support of the Free State government's execution policy during the Civil War, which saw seventy-seven IRA men executed, including the best man at his wedding, Rory O'Connor.If you like this episode please make sure to pass it on to others, and of course, leave a five star review. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nannerl Mozart, Wolfgang Amadaeus's intriguing older sister, is the HILF of Dawn's guest, LAZOU. She is an award-winning podcast host and composer with work featured in film, television and a gazillion other places!  Hear about her childhood growing up on the tiny island of Mauritius (the only place the Dodo bird ever lived) and how moving to Canada and then the US shaped both her perspective and her music. ---SILF's (Sources I'd Like to F*ck)Book - Mozart's Women - His Family, His Friends, His Music by Jane GloverPodcast - You're Dead to Me (March, 2024)Podcast - Storical (S2, E52)Interview with author,  Rita Charbonnier.  (She wrote novel, MOZART'S SISTER which is fiction but like... very historically appropriate if not accurate.)--- LILF's (Link's I'd Like to F*ck) See Dawn on THE HISTORY CHANNEL!Crazy Rich AncientsHistories Greatest Mysteries (multiple seasons)HILF is now on Patreon!Buy Me a Coffee---NEXT NEW EPISODE: Benjamin Franklin with Benjamin Franklin (kinda).---WANNA TALK? Find us on Instagram or email us hilfpodcast@gmail.comTheme song: Composed and performed by Kat Perkins.

Rabash. Record 454. He Who Prays for His Friend

Ralston College Humanities MA   Dr. David Novak is a distinguished professor at the University of Toronto, renowned theologian, and esteemed rabbi. He has authored numerous books, delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectures, and bridges ancient philosophical traditions with modern ethical issues. Recorded live at Ralston College in Savannah, GA in November of 2022. Dr David Novak—Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto—offers a lecture on the Book of Job followed by an extended question and answer session with students enrolled in Ralston College's Master's in the Humanities Program. In his lecture, Dr Novak explores the complex position of Job in the canon of Jewish scriptures, surveys diverse scholarly accounts of the concluding passages of the book, and offers his own interpretation of Job's “face-to-face” interaction with God, one that emphasizes direct knowledge over abstract understanding and finds in the book's conclusion a vision of the resurrection of the body.    —   00:00 Introduction 08:20 Dr. David Novak's Lecture on the Book of Job  53:25:00 Question and Answer Session with Ralston College Students and Dr. Novak  54:45 Question: Does Job's Vision Occur Before or After Death? 59:40 Question: Why are Job's Friends Punished for Their Conceptual Understanding? 01:03:00 Question: How Does This Align With the Belief That No One Can See God and Live? 01:09:05 Question: What is the Purpose of the Dialogues Between Job and His Friends? 01:13:05 Question: Did Job's Friends Hear God's Voice During the Appearance? 01:14:55 Question: What is the Significance of God Doubling Job's Possessions? 01:15:30 Question: Is There a Visual Aspect to God's Response to Job, or Is It Only Auditory? 01:15:30 Question: What Does it Mean for God to Make a Bet with the Adversary? 01:19:10 Question: Is Job's Refusal to Curse God a Prerequisite for His Later Vision? 01:25:15 Question: What Do You Make of the Relationship Between Satan and God? 01:29:05 Did God Use Job to Prove a Point to Satan, Knowing the Outcome? 01:31:20 Question: Can Man Question God and Express Grievances? 01:35:40 Question: Does Elihu Suggest People Perceive God Through Suffering and Visions? 1:41:30 Question: How Has Your Belief in Providence Impacted Your Life? 01:44:45 Closing Remarks —   Authors, Ideas, and Works Mentioned in this Episode:    The Book of Job The Book of Ezekiel The Book of Leviticus  The Book of Esther The Book of Ecclesiastes Robert Gordis, The Book of God and Man: A Study of Job  mashal (משל)—Hebrew, “parable” Katagoros (Hebrew—קָטִיגור; Greek—κατήγορος)—”accuser”  Fredrich Nietzsche Johann von Rist, “O Traurigkeit, o Herzeleid”  G.W.F. Hegel Richard Rorty Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man  Leo Strauss  Plato, Republic  Yehuda Haleri  Aristotle Thomas Aquinas The Book of Isaiah  via negativa  John Rawls Eric Gregory  Chaim ibn Attar Tzimtzum (צמצום)    —   Additional Resources    David Novak    Dr Stephen Blackwood    Ralston College (including newsletter)   Support a New Beginning    —   Thank you for listening!  

Children's television historian Jim Engel talks to WGN Radio's Dave Plier about WGN-TV's Ray Rayner, celebrating the 1964 launch of his own self-titled show 'Ray Rayner & His Friends' which premiered 60 years ago along with Cuddly Dudley, ‘Ark in the Park' with Dr. Lester Fisher and Chelveston the Duck, his years on ‘Bozo's Circus' […]

In July 1927, Kevin O'Higgins, the Minister for Justice, was assassinated on his way to mass in Booterstown. Now, a new book explores this complex story. Joining Seán to discuss is Arthur Matthews, Author of ‘Walled in By Hate: Kevin O'Higgins, His Friends and Enemies'.

This season on Vulgar History, we're investigating the question How Do You Solve A Problem Like Marie Antoinette? To do so, we're looking at the lives of women who lived during the revolutionary era of the 18th century. This week, Kristin Franseen joins us to discuss Constanze Mozart, best known as the wife and then widow of Amadeus Mozart. -- Learn about the Grove Music Online website of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Project -- Kristin's references: Mozart's Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music by Jane Glover 1791: Mozart's Last Year by H.C. Robbins Landon "Salieri's Cosi fan tutte" by Bruce Alan Brown and John Rice, Cambridge Opera Journal 8, no. 1 Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life edited by Robert Spaethling A Mozart Pilgrimage by Vincent and Mary Novellos — Operation Olive Branch Operation Olive Branch Instagram Operation Olive Branch TikTok — Get 15% off all the gorgeous jewellery and accessories at common.era.com/vulgar or go to commonera.com and use code VULGAR at checkout -- Get Vulgar History merch at vulgarhistory.com/store (best for US shipping) and vulgarhistory.redbubble.com (better for international shipping) -- Support Vulgar History on Patreon  -- Vulgar History is an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which means that a small percentage of any books you click through and purchase will come back to Vulgar History as a commission. Use this link to shop there and support Vulgar History. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shepherding Our Hearts with Tina and Addy  A Bible podcast for ladies Ep117 - Job and His Friends

Zechariah 13:1-6 Wounded in the House of His Friends by Matt Freeman

Wellness + Wisdom Episode 603 Wellness + Wisdom Podcast Host and Wellness Force Media CEO, Josh Trent, shares what death teaches us and how we can find gratitude and love in our grief. In this solocast, you will learn: The healthy process of grieving. Christian Oliver 405 Tim Corcoran | Vision Quest: How To Find Your Place In The Ecology of Life, Purpose Mountain & Spiritual Courage What you can learn from Christian's death. Prayers have power and make a difference. Why science or the human mind can't describe death. There is a deep sense of sadness and gratitude in death. Why Josh tried to run away from his grief. Let love rule. The angel number 111. How death reminds you to live. 521 The Truth About Living A Spiritual Life + Vision Quests | Mark Tollefson The four enemies of a man of knowledge. Being honest about the way you live. Not letting your past dictate your present and future. How Christian finally understood unconditional love before passing. You touch the hearts of others through generosity. BREATHE: Breath & Wellness Program Get 33% off of the BREATHE: Breath & Wellness Program with the code PODCAST33   Boost your immunity and calm your mind with freedom from chronic stress in the modern world. A 21-day guided breath and wellness program using ancient wisdom to boost your immunity, calm your mind, and give you freedom from chronic stress in the modern world. Combining special breathwork infused with safe vape cannabidiol, BREATHE gives you everything you need to let go of old weight, de-stress, and build immunity so you can live your best life. In this special (limited time) offer, you will receive: - Lifetime access to BREATHE - Free upgrades to all future training modules - Free additional training modules - Special VIP coupons for safe vape, essential oils, CBD, nootropics and more - Private WF group access Listen To Episode 603 As Josh Trent Honors The Death of His Friend, Christian Oliver, and His Two Daughters This is Wellness + Wisdom, the podcast where we learn to nourish all 5 sides of our Wellness Pentagon: The physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and financial wellness that we all signed up to master here on planet Earth. If you're like us, then you have a deep desire to live your life well, and in order to live our life well we must be intentional, committed, and pure of heart in our skillset development for the Arc of Wellness. This is where we gather, apply, and most importantly embody the knowledge and information from those wise elders and teachers who came before us such that then we can choose to combine it with our own life experience that becomes our own earned and unique wisdom that we can share for long after we're gone. Death As A Teacher: Honoring Christian Oliver This is a really potent podcast because I know it's going to feed a part of you if you have ever gone through a grieving process, or lost a loved one, or lost someone unexpectedly, there is a healthy grieving process. That healthy grieving process includes a sacred reminder of how we all get to choose to live and that is my intention of what I'm going to explore with you gently and also heartfelt today in this solocast...I'm sure you've seen the news that my brother Christian Oliver and his two daughters were tragically killed in a plane crash just days ago and I've been in grieving, in processing ever since I heard about the news. Christian and I bonded so deeply about our work, lives, children, and women in our shared Vision Quest with Mark Tollefson and Tim Corcoran in 2022 in Santa Barbara, Quail Springs California. We both shared a desire to have understanding and softness and integration of the feminine inside of us, and most importantly, to understand the women that we love. It was a deep learning curve for both of us in this lifetime, and I could feel Christian's pain around his ex-wife, and even learning lessons with his current girlfriend where I also had my lessons with my lady as well... The Reality of Choice Because this is the reality of choice that we are all (every day) choosing to either feed our vitality and wellness or we are choosing to starve it. Part of feeding our vitality is being present and in acceptance to recognize that we all must die. I'm going through this grieving process when someone we love dies. My friend Tim Corcoran of Purpose Mountain, with whom I've done (2) Vision Quests and, who has led me through so much of his own shared wisdom in quest said in an email recently: "What can you learn from Christian's death? It immediately reminds me of how short and precious life is, and reminds me to live fully and unapologetically!  To live my vision!  To live this day as if it were my last, "Hoka Hey, today is a good day to die!" the old Lakota warriors would say. Christian's last post on social media was a short one that said, "Let love rule. Wishing all of you the best for 2024!"  How can we honor these last words?  What does it mean to "let love rule" in your life? For me, it invites me further into forgiveness (for both myself and others), self-care, discipline to do what is right, and courage to live my vision.  What does it mean to live the best life possible in this new year of 2024 here on Earth? I believe that doing so truly honors our brother. Pray for Christian, that his spirit can indeed travel back to the good, bright ancestors, right beside his two precious daughters. Pray for Christian's family, especially his wife who I can only imagine must be going through an enormous process of grief right now. Remember that prayer has real power and that your prayers truly make a difference to the living and the dead. Pray for him the way you would want to be prayed for if you had passed." So yes, death is not something that we need to ruminate on, but it is something that is a powerful ally to reflect on daily or weekly because it is this reminder that we all die that allows us to choose to fully live. So this may or may not be the perfect place for you to start and to subscribe with Wellness + Wisdom. I know that you saw the title and you're here with us for a reason, and that you already know today's podcast is about honoring a dear friend who has died and what lessons we all can learn from the way that he chose to live. What Is Death, Really? It may seem on one side of the coin that death is the removal of life or the absence of life. I could sit here and try to wax poetic and use my intellect to describe what I think death is but we all know that science (and really our egoic mind) can't really describe it. Because in the same way that science can't describe exactly why there's a burst of light when the egg in the womb of a mother is fertilized by the seed of a father, or why the SA node beats in the heart of us all... ...there is a divine mystery that has its own timeline, its own essence, and its own direction that we all must surrender to if we are to choose to live our lives well. If we choose to fight against this divine mystery, we age faster, we suffer deeper, and we don't live our lives as well as we can... if we don't choose to surrender to God's will. It's this (painful and difficult at times) surrender to the mystery of God and to the will of our creator, the being that created us and all things, that we can actually go through a personal process of grieving so that we can come out with our light on the other side of it all. There is a deep sadness in death, and there is also paradoxically a deep well of gratitude that is created in all of our hearts when someone we love leaves the earth. The message coming from my heart to share with you today is how death teaches us about generosity; how can we learn from the people who have died so that we can have generosity in our hearts, in the same way, they showed us was possible? Spiritual Bypassing True story I wanted to share right away, because I realize it's a service to all of us, where we may tend to spiritually bypass or "rush to the lesson" without feeling the pain of learning. I realized that I was recently (just a few days ago) trying to sit and record this podcast so that I could honestly stop feeling the pain in my heart and get right to the lesson of "why God has taken Christian and his two daughters from this earth?" I realized it was my ego trying to run from my own grief and my own anger and sadness about the loss of my friend Christian. So today I finally feel as ready as I can be to share; and not that I'm prepared to let go, but that I'm in the process of letting go. Again, as Tim said in the very last post of his life on Christians's Instagram, the last resounding message he shared with us he said: Christian, my brother it feels so surreal, and I can't imagine the pain that the mother of your children is going through… I'm sending you and the family, my deepest, heartfelt love, and I know there's nothing that I could say that would assuage the bereavement of those who love you, including me. This is also very special because this podcast is being released on January 11, 2024, which is in numerology a designation of an angel number, so anytime you see three ones in a row... The Angel Number 111 111 is often seen as a powerful and positive number that signifies alignment, new beginnings, and spiritual awakening, it is a message encouraging you to pay attention to your thoughts and focus on maintaining a positive mindset, even in the face of tragedy, what can we learn and how can we move forward using this special day? The repetition of the number 1 three times suggests that our thoughts and intentions are heightened at this time. According to numerology, the 111 angel number is a way for a guardian angel to get your attention, not for you to forget, but for you and I to forgive yourself or others. The 111 means that these guardian angels are giving you the power to leave your past behind. Christian and his daughters I believe are now guardian angels for those whom they would like to connect with. And I would like to say, but the reality is, I do not know... none of us know what's beyond... that Christian is watching us now, looking over how we handle this loss and this grief. And realize that Christian is there, and he is watching us and he's reminding us to live! He's reminding us to live in the way that he did with the ultimate generosity of his energy, time, and spirit. Christian taught us to LIVE. I was talking with my friend and Vision Quest guide Mark Tollefson, who has been a guest on the podcast, and in our conversation with tears, he shared with me wisdom of Carlos Castaneda: Don't Let The 4th Enemy In Castaneda talks about the four enemies of the man of knowledge, for a person who lives an examined life and learns through various stages of personal awareness, connection, and ego dissolution. He explains that a man of knowledge must overcome sequential challenges. The first is fear, the second is clarity the third is power, and the fourth is old age, or death. The ultimate adversary, according to Castaneda, is old age. Christian's death has put a spotlight on my mortality and all of our mortality and the fact that we all die as a reminder to be honest about the way we are truly living. The conclusive and harshest foe that inevitably confronts us all is old age and death. Our potential for glory, the opportunity to embody completeness in the odyssey of what Castaneda calls this "knowledgeable individual" hinges on persisting through the challenges of aging and (this is the key) resisting the allure of repose, apathy, and complacency. After grappling with fear, attaining clarity, and mastering the wielding of power, in the fourth enemy of old age and death there may be a temptation to believe that everything has been achieved, leading to a choice to simply rest and withdraw. Yet, it is during this ultimate pinnacle of self-actualization (this 4th stage) that it becomes crucial to stay fervently connected to life. This echoes the wisdom of Buddhists who proclaim: "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water." So today, how are we chopping wood and carrying water in the way that we are living a generous life? How can we honor the life of Christian and his daughters, and all of those who have left the earth by choosing generosity? By opening our hearts, even when we are in pain, by not letting our past pain dictate our present potential? By choosing to love ourselves, and to do our deepest work, so that we can show up for the people in our lives, and pour the love we have for ourselves onto them? That is our work and that is our that is our quest here on earth and as a human being. A human being that cares deeply about Wellness and well-being. That is my deepest work: to not let complacency ever set in and to be generous with my heart above all else. Honoring Christian Oliver Christian lived with generosity, his smile, his heart, his time, his energy, his acting, and his expression. All of these things poured out of him from a place of love... And he wasn't perfect because no human being ever is, but what brings me solace is one of the last things he shared with his beloved of three years whose name is Taylor. He told her that he understood what it was to "truly have unconditional love for someone" and that was her. What a gift he received from her. It is what all of us deserve and it makes my heart so happy that he got to experience that before he left. And although tragic, and so deeply painful to which there is no timeline of exactly how long it will hurt, possibly, and most likely forever. One thing I have is that I will always remember Christian's smile, and his generosity as a way for me to live generously in my life. Because this is the ultimate lesson from Christian life: how can we be generous with our our time and our energy? How can we live our lives with an open heart no matter what challenges we go through? How can we live our life so that we do not let the enemy win, that we do not let old age win, no matter how old we are? That we lived, and we danced, and we made love, and we shared from our hearts because one day we all will die. Becoming More Conscious: What Death Teaches Us About Living A Generous Life And how can we become conscious of the fact that none of these things that we stressed so deeply about were anything other than God teaching us and directing us towards how we can live with more love? I want to pray for Christian and his daughters in this moment, and let you know that we miss you. We love you, and we thank you for being our teacher, for teaching us how to love and be generous with our love, because it is through that generosity, that we touch the hearts of others, so that they may touch the hearts of those that they love. It is this loving generosity that creates a ripple in this cosmic soup... This is what cuts through the demonic energy and the negativity in the world. This cosmic lake that we are all in together. May we learn from Christian, may we embody this lesson. God may you allow us to live with this generosity in our hearts, from this day forward. We are loved, we are supported, and we are on the right path. May the generosity of the heart guide you and I now, and forever. Christian, I pray that you hear me on the other side and that you know from my heart: We love you, we see you and we cherish you. I am wishing you and your daughters and all of us love and wellness. Leave Wellness + Wisdom a Review on Apple Podcasts Links From Today's Show  Christian Oliver 405 Tim Corcoran | Vision Quest: How To Find Your Place In The Ecology of Life, Purpose Mountain & Spiritual Courage 521 The Truth About Living A Spiritual Life + Vision Quests | Mark Tollefson Live Life Well from Sunrise to Sunset Save 20% with code "WELLNESSFORCE" on everyone's favorite Superfoods brand, ORGANIFI, including their Sunrise to Sunset Bundle and their Women's Power Stack that includes HARMONY + GLOW for true hormonal balance and great health radiating through your beautiful skin. Click HERE to order your Organifi today. Are You Stressed Out Lately? Take a deep breath with the M21™ wellness guide: a simple yet powerful 21 minute morning system that melts stress and gives you more energy through 6 science-backed practices and breathwork. Click HERE to download for free. Biohack Your Mind & Body with Plunge Ice Baths!Save $150 on your PLUNGE order with code "WELLNESSFORCE" As seen on Shark Tank, Plunge's revolutionary Cold Plunge uses powerful cooling, filtration, and sanitation to give you cold, clean water whenever you want it, making it far superior to an ice bath or chest freezer. *Review The Wellness + Wisdom Podcast & WIN $150 in wellness prizes! *Join The Facebook Group   Josh's Trusted Products | Up To 40% Off Shop All Products Biohacking BREATHE - 33% off with the code “PODCAST33” SaunaSpace - 10% off with the code "JOSH10" PLUNGE - $150 off with the code “WELLNESSFORCE" SiPhox - 10% off with code "JOSH" BON CHARGE - 15% off with the code "JOSH15" SpectraSculpt - 15% off with the code "JOSH15" SENSATE - $25 off with the code "JOSH25" Healthy Home + Office QI-Shield EMF Device - 20% off with the code "JOSH" ALIVE WATERS - 33% off your first order with the code "JOSH33" Holy Hydrogen - $100 off with code "JOSH" Nutrition + Gut Health Organifi - 20% off with the code ‘WELLNESSFORCE' SEED Synbiotic - 30% off with the code "JOSHTRENT" Paleovalley - 15% off with the link only ION - 15% off with the code ‘JOSH15' ⁠EnergyBITS - 20% off with the code "WELLNESSFORCE⁠" ⁠EQUIP Foods - 15% off with the code JOSH15 DRY FARM WINES - Get an extra bottle of Pure Natural Wine with your order for just 1¢ Supplements MANNA Vitality - 20% off with the code "JOSH20" Adapt Naturals - 15% off with code "WELLNESSFORCE" MitoZen - 10% off with the code “WELLNESSFORCE” Activation Products - 20% off with the code “WELLNESSFORCE” BiOptimizers - 10% off with the code "JOSH10" ⁠Myoxcience - Save 20% with code "JOSH20" Create Wellness Creatine Gummies - 20% off with the code "JOSH20" Fitness + Physical Health SimplyO3 - 10% off with code "JOSH10" SinuSonic - 15% off with "JOSH15" Kineon - 10% off with code "JOSH10" Earth Runners Shoes - 10% off with the code "JOSH10" Drink LMNT - Zero Sugar Hydration: Get your free LMNT Sample Pack, with any purchase Mental Health + Stress Relase Mendi.io - 20% off with the code "JOSH20" Cured Nutrition CBD - 20% off with the code "WELLNESS FORCE" LiftMode - 10% off with the code "JOSH10" NOOTOPIA - 10% off with the code "JOSH10"  Feel Free from Botanic Tonics - $40 off with the code "WELLNESS40" ⁠Essential Oil Wizardry - 10% off with the code "WELLNESSFORCE"   Free Resources M21 Wellness Guide - Free 3-Week Breathwork Program with Josh Trent Join Wellness + Wisdom Community MANNA Vitality The only supplement you will ever need.   Save 20% with "JOSH20"   Manna harnesses the power of nature through their Mineral Matrix blend, a unique composition of natural ingredients such as Shilajit, Ormus, and marine minerals. • Energy & Longevity • Brain Performance • Sex Drive • Immunity Defence • Beauty & Glow   This blend is designed to support overall mental and physical performance, including cognitive function and energy levels, for an overall boost in vitality. 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This episode is a recording of Ben Ruhl's STS article "⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠An Open Letter from a Pastor to His Friend.⁠" We pray this article from the archives is a blessing and an encouragement to you. You can find more STS Articles at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.smalltownsummits.com/articles⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. For more information on Small Town Summits, please visit our website here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.smalltownsummits.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ To partner with us financially, give here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.smalltownsummits.com/give⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ To see more details regarding next steps and financial needs, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠view this PDF⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. To volunteer your time and talents, email us here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠SmallTownSummits@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ To stay up to date on how to pray, subscribe to our newsletter here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.smalltownsummits.com/contact

Raising Kanan season 3 - Ronnie got be a lost character from a early 80's horror, film ! Wack100 Claims Birdman Got Heated After He Called B.G. A “Rat” The NFL issued CeeDee Lamb a drug test immediately after his record-breaking game Yung Miami & Southside Pose With Daughter Summer In Adorable New Christmas Photos Megan Thee Stallion Becomes “Mother Fitness” For New Planet Fitness Ad Eazy The Block Captain Thinks Remy Ma Affair Got Him A Bag In New Alleged Audio Leaks. Lil Baby Brings Out J. Cole And Quavo At Birthday Concert / Lil Baby Trends For Appearing To Fly Spirit, Rick Ross Comes To His Defense Chris Rock & Amber Rose Dating Rumors Swirl After Post-Christmas Outing Donald Trump Disputes Claim He “Bullied” His Way Into “Home Alone 2” Cameo SZA's “Snooze” Becomes The Only Song To Chart On The Hot 100 For All Of 2023 Lil Mabu Defends Fivio Foreign Collab, Disproves “N-Word” Controversy Chief Keef & Sexyy Red's “F My Baby Dad” Remix Kevin Gates Says He'd Put Finesse2Tymes' “Legs In The Air,” Fans Debate What He Means Fabolous Seemingly Addresses Taina Williams' Absent Father Accusations In New Freestyle Charleston white storms out of interview after they set him up with a dude NBA Youngboy has been the most streamed rapper on YouTube for 5 consecutive years, becoming the first rapper to achieve this. A 38-year-old man went viral after he threw an NBA YoungBoy themed party Lady on twitter- If my D appointment ask me to bring him some food and while I'm on the way - I'll buss a u turn and call another dude . Latto Collab Criticism Leads "777" Artist To Speak Out Zion Williamson's New Tattoo Gets Clowned By Fans. Travis Kelce “Hickey” Leads To Swiftie Debate. Kevin Hart Sues Tasha K For Extortion Over Interview With Ex-Assistant Aaron Gordon Out Indefinitely After Christmas Day Dog Attack Gunna's 'Fukumean' was the MOST streamed rap song of 2023 in the US with over 400m streams Lamar Jackson is looking pretty "quarterbacky" Under Rule 17 of the NFL rulebook, commissioner Roger Goodall has the authority to OVERTURN a game result… also the referee crew from last night is expected to be downgraded and OUT for the 2024 NFL Playoffs Be careful on how fast you pour into other people DJ Akademiks Slams Metro Boomin In Stream & Twitter Rant Akademiks reveals that his girlfriend stole $500,000 from him. DJ Akademiks Faces Accusations Of Sexually Assaulting Woman He Slammed For Having Threesome w/ His Friends & Allegedly Grooming Underage Girls: ‘Lock His A** Up' Is letting yourself go aka getting to comfortable when you been a long term relationship, just natural thing ? Ja Morant Seemingly Hits Gun Celebration During Grizzlies Win Cardi B Fires Back At Fans On Twitter, Says She's Leaving Bad Vibes In 2023 Rasheed Wallace isn't in NBA 2K because they only pay vets $10K to be in the game… he wanted $125K but they refused to pay it. 2K makes 100's of millions a year. Cam Newton Disputes Deebo Samuel Claims: “I Ain't Got Your Number To Call You” Trina says Beyoncè is the #1 female rapper when she taps into that side Detroit Pistons Finally Snap Historic Losing Streak The Detroit Pistons blew a 19 point lead & fall to the Celtics. They've now lost 28 straight games Dr Umar addressed the backlash and comments he's been receiving for saying Eminem can't be hip hop's G.O.A.T. because he is White. John Gabbana is curious to know why so many rappers are turning Muslim. “It's a trend.. it's cool to be Muslim now”. Russell Wilson is going to walk away from Denver with $142,000,000. People believe he was mistreated after the Broncos threatened to bench him if he didn't restructure his contract. Prideful police officer wouldn't give up chasing a hellcat that sped away from him… he later paid the price Rory went on Twitter Spaces and alleged that Joe Budden settled a sexual harassment lawsuit with former female employee:

In 1996, 17-year-old Aaron Stark of Denver, CO had made up his mind. He was going to become a school shooter. Before the days of Columbine, there weren’t metal detectors at every entrance or armed community services officers standing guard in American schools. In fact, it was relatively easy for a kid to bring a gun to school. Aaron had it all planned out. He knew exactly how he was going to get the weapon and in his mind, there was no turning back. But ultimately that is exactly what he did. We had a chance to speak with Aaron…and not from his prison cell, but instead on a Zoom call from the comfort of his own home. Written by Michael Dunphy Jr., Executive Produced by Michael Ojibway. Special thanks to Aaron Stark for participating in an exclusive interview and for sharing his perspective.    Episode Sponsors:  Fabric by Gerber Life: Protect your family today with Fabric by Gerber Life by applying at https://www.meetfabric.com/invisible  Babbel: Learn a new language today and save up to 55% off your subscription at https://www.babbel.com/invisible    Visit Invisible Choir on the web:  Patreon - Invisible Choir Premium:  https://www.patreon.com/InvisibleChoir  Website:  https://www.invisiblechoir.com/  Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/InvisibleChoirPodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/invisiblechoir/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/InvisibleChoir   Written/Audio Sources:  Nightcrawler (character) - Wikipedia Warren Worthington III - Wikipedia Casa Bonita (South Park) - Wikipedia Abuse Pushed Him To Make Violent Plans. Without Knowing, His Friends' Simple Acts Of Love Pulled Him Back | Kind World Aaron Stark - Wikipedia 'I Was Almost a School Shooter.' Man Pens Heartfelt Letter About Mental Health and Guns Colorado father writes open letter after Parkland massacre: 'I was almost a school shooter' Man says he was almost a school shooter, reflects on Uvalde tragedy Almost A School Shooter, Now An Advocate For Hope | KPBS Public Media School Shooting Reported In Florida | NBC News Music & Sound Effect Sources Opening Track: “Ambient Cave” by Lance Conrad  Closing Track: “Aureole of Hope” by Rand Aldo    Music & Sound Effect Sources All music & sound effects used with express permission under unlimited blanket license authority from Epidemic Sound ® & SoundStripe ®.  Individual sources are available via request at info@invisiblechoir.com