Podcasts about kierkegaardian

In this interview, Lamorna Ash, author of Don't Forget We're Here Forever: A New Generation's Search for Religion, and one of my favourite modern writers, talked about working at the Times Literary Supplement, netball, M. John Harrison, AI and the future of religion, why we should be suspicious of therapy, the Anatomy of Melancholy, the future of writing, what surprised her in the Bible, the Simpsons, the joy of Reddit, the new Pope, Harold Bloom, New Atheism's mistakes, reading J.S. Mill. I have already recommended her new book Don't Forget We're Here Forever, which Lamorna reads aloud from at the end. Full transcript below.Uploading videos onto Substack is too complicated for me (it affects podcast downloads somehow, and the instructions to avoid this problem are complicated, so I have stopped doing it), and to upload to YouTube I have to verify my account but they told me that after I tried to upload it and my phone is dead, so… here is the video embedded on this page. I could quote the whole thing. Here's one good section.Lamorna: Which one would you say I should do first after The Sea, The Sea?Henry: Maybe The Black Prince.Lamorna: The Black Prince. Great.Henry: Which is the one she wrote before The Sea, The Sea and is just a massive masterpiece.Lamorna: I'll read it. Where do you stand on therapy? Do you have a position?Henry: I think on net, it might be a bad thing, even if it is individually useful for people.Lamorna: Why is that?Henry: [laughs] I didn't expect to have to answer the question. Basically two reasons. I think it doesn't take enough account of the moral aspect of the decisions being made very often. This is all very anecdotal and you can find yourself feeling better in the short term, but not necessarily in the long-- If you make a decision that's not outrageously immoral, but which has not had enough weight placed on the moral considerations.There was an article about how lots of people cut out relatives now and the role that therapy plays in that. What I was struck by in the article that was-- Obviously, a lot of those people are justified and their relatives have been abusive or nasty, of course, but there are a lot of cases where you were like, "Well, this is a long-term decision that's been made on a short-term basis." I think in 10 years people may feel very differently. There wasn't enough consideration in the article, at least I felt, given to how any children involved would be affected later on. I think it's a good thing and a bad thing.Lamorna: I'm so with you. I think that's why, because also the fact of it being so private and it being about the individual, and I think, again, there are certain things if you're really struggling with that, it's helpful for, but I think I'm always more into the idea of communal things, like AAA and NA, which obviously a very particular. Something about doing that together, that it's collaborative and therefore there is someone else in the room if you say, "I want to cut out my parent."There's someone else who said that happened to me and it was really hard. It means that you are making those decisions together a little bit more. Therapy, I can feel that in friends and stuff that it does make us, even more, think that we are these bounded individuals when we're not.Henry: I should say, I have known people who've gone to therapy and it's worked really well.Lamorna: I'm doing therapy right now and it is good. TranscriptHenry: Today I am talking to Lamorna Ash. Lamorna is one of the rising stars of her generation. She has written a book about a fishing village in Cornwall. She's written columns for the New Statesman, of which I'm a great admirer. She works for a publisher and now she's written a book called, Don't Forget, We're Here Forever: A New Generation's Search for Religion. I found this book really compelling and I hope you will go and read it right now. Lamorna, welcome.Lamorna Ash: Thank you for having me.Henry: What was it like when you worked at the Times Literary Supplement?Lamorna: It was an amazing introduction to mostly contemporary fiction, but also so many other forms of writing I didn't know about. I went there, I actually wrote a letter, handwritten letter after my finals, saying that I'd really enjoyed this particular piece that somehow linked the anatomy of melancholy to infinite jest, and being deeply, deeply, deeply pretentious, those were my two favorite books. I thought, well, I'll apply for this magazine. I turned up there as an intern. They happened to have a space going.My job was Christmas in that I just spent my entire time unwrapping books and putting them out for editors to swoop by and take away. I'd take on people's corrections. I'd start to see how the editorial process worked. I started reading. I somehow had missed contemporary fiction. I hadn't read people like Rachel Kask or Nausgaard. I was reading them through going to the fiction pages. It made me very excited. Also, my other job whilst I was there, was I had the queries email. You'd get loads of incredibly random emails, including things like, you are cordially invited to go on the Joseph Conrad cycle tour of London. I'd ask the office, "Does anyone want to do this?" Obviously, no one ever said yes.I had this amazing year of doing really weird stuff, like going on Joseph Conrad cycling tour or going to a big talk at the comic book museum or the new advertising museum of London. I loved it. I really loved it.Henry: What was the Joseph Conrad cycling tour of London like? That sounds-Lamorna: Oh, it was so good. I remember at one point we stopped on maybe it was Blackfriars Bridge or perhaps it was Tower Bridge and just read a passage from the secret agent about the boats passing underneath. Then we'd go to parts of the docks where they believe that Conrad stayed for a while, but instead it would be some fancy youth hostel instead.It was run by the Polish Society of London, I believe-- the Polish Society of England, I believe. Again, each time it was like an excuse then to get into that writer and then write a little piece about it for the TLS. I guess, it was also, I was slightly cutting my teeth on how to do that kind of journalism as well.Henry: What do you like about The Anatomy of Melancholy?Lamorna: Almost everything. I think the prologue, Democritus Junior to the Reader is just so much fun and naughty. He says, "I'm writing about melancholy in order to try and avoid melancholy myself." There's six editions of it. He spent basically his entire life writing this book. When he made new additions to the book, rather than adding another chapter, he would often be making insertions within sentences themselves, so it becomes more and more bloated. There's something about the, what's the word for it, the ambition that I find so remarkable of every single possible version of melancholy they could talk about.Then, maybe my favorite bit, and I think about this as a writer a lot, is there's a bit called the digression of air, or perhaps it's digression on the air, where he just suddenly takes the reader soaring upwards to think about air and you sort of travel up like a hawk. It's this sort of breathing moment for a reader where you go in a slightly different direction. I think in my own writing, I always think about digression as this really valuable bit of nonfiction, this sense of, I'm not just taking you straight the way along. I think it'd be useful to go sideways a bit too.Henry: That was Samuel Johnson's favorite book as well. It's a good choice.Lamorna: Was it?Henry: Yes. He said that it was the only book that would get him out of bed in the morning.Lamorna: Really?Henry: Because he was obviously quite depressive. I think he found it useful as well as entertaining, as it were. Should netball be an Olympic sport?Lamorna: [laughs] Oh, it's already going to be my favorite interview. I think the reason it isn't an Olympic-- yes, I have a vested interest in netball and I play netball once a week. I'm not very good, but I am very enthusiastic because it's only played mostly in the Commonwealth. It was invented a year after basketball as a woman-friendly version because women should not run with the ball in case they get overexerted and we shouldn't get too close to contacting each other in case we touch, and that's awful.It really is only played in the Commonwealth. I think the reason it won't become an Olympic sport is because it's not worldwide enough, which I think is a reasonable reason. I'm not, of all the my big things that I want to protest about and care about right now, making that an Olympic sport is a-- it's reasonably low on my list.Henry: Okay, fair enough. You are an admirer of M. John Harrison's fiction, is that right?Lamorna: Yes.Henry: Tell us what should we read and why should we read him?Lamorna: You Should Come With Me Now, is that what it's called? I know I reviewed one of his books years ago and thought it was-- because he's part of that weird sci-fi group that I find really interesting and they've all got a bit of Samuel Delany to them as well. I just remember there was this one particular story in that collection, I think in general, he's a master at sci-fi that doesn't feel in that Dune way of just like, lists of names of places. It somehow has this, it's very literary, it's very odd, it's deeply imaginative. It is like what I wanted adult fiction to be when I was 12 or something, that there's the way the fantasy and imagination works.I remember there was one about all these men, married men who were disappearing into their attics and their wives thought they were just tinkering. What they were doing was building these sort of translucent tubes that were taking them off out of the world. I remember just thinking it was great. His conceits are brilliant and make so much sense, whilst also always being at an interesting slant from reality. Then, I haven't read his memoir, but I hear again and again this anti-memoir he's written. Have you read that?Henry: No.Lamorna: Apparently that's really brilliant too. Then he also, writes those about climbing. He's actually got this one foot in the slightly travel nature writing sports camp. I just always thought he was magic. I remember on Twitter, he was really magic as well. I spent a lot of time following him.Henry: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of writing and literature and books and this whole debate that's going on?Lamorna: It's hard to. I don't want to say anything fast and snappy because it's such a complicated thing. I could just start by saying personally, I'm worried about me and writing because I'm worried about my concentration span. I am so aware that in the same way that a piano player has to be practising the pieces they're going to play all the time. I think partly that's writing and writing, I seem to be able to do even with this broken, distracted form of attention I've got. My reading, I don't feel like I'm getting enough in. I think that means that what I produce will necessarily be less good if I can't solve that.I've just bought a dumb phone on the internet and I hope that's going to help me by no longer having Instagram and things like that. I think, yes, I suppose we do read a bit less. The generation below us is reading less. That's a shame. There's so much more possibility to go out and meet people from different places. On an anthropological level, I think anthropology has had this brilliant turn of becoming more subjective. The places you go, you have to think about your own relationship to them. I think that can make really interesting writing. It's so different from early colonial anthropology.The fact that, I guess, through, although even as I'm saying this, I don't know enough to say it, but I was going to say something about the fact that people, because we can do things like substacks and people can do short form content, maybe that means that more people's voices are getting heard and then they can, if they want to, transfer over and write books as well.I still get excited by books all the time. There's still so much good contemporary stuff that's thrilling me from all over the place. I don't feel that concerned yet. If we all do stop writing books entirely for a year and just read all the extraordinary books that have been happening for the last couple of thousand, we'd be okay.Henry: I simultaneously see the same people complaining that everything's dying and literature is over and that we have an oversupply of books and that capitalism is giving us too many books and that's the problem. I'm like, "Guys, I think you should pick one."Lamorna: [laughs] You're not allowed both those arguments. My one is that I do think it's gross, the bit of publishing that the way that some of these books get so oddly inflated in terms of the sales around them. Then, someone is getting a million pounds for a debut, which is enormous pressure on them. Then, someone else is getting 2K. I feel like there should be, obviously, there should be a massive cap on how large an advance anyone should get, and then more people will actually be able to stay in the world of writing because they won't have to survive on pitiful advances. I think that would actually have a huge impact and we should not be giving, love David Beckham as much as I do, we shouldn't be giving him five million pounds for someone else to go to write his books. It's just crazy.Henry: Don't the sales of books like that subsidize those of us who are not getting such a big advance?Lamorna: I don't think they always do. I think that's the problem is that they do have this wealth of funds to give to celebrities and often those books don't sell either. I still think even if those books sell a huge amount of money, those people still shouldn't be getting ridiculous advances like that. They still should be thinking about young people who are important to the literary, who are going to produce books that are different and surprising and whose voices we need to hear. That feels much more important.Henry: What do you think about the idea that maybe Anglo fiction isn't at a peak? I don't necessarily agree with that, but maybe we can agree that these are not the days of George Eliot and Charles Dickens, but the essay nonfiction periodicals and writing online, this is huge now. Right? Actually, our pessimism is sort of because we're looking in the wrong area and there are other forms of writing that flourish, actually doing great on the internet.Lamorna: Yes, I think so too. Again, I don't think I'm internet worldly enough to know this, but I still find these extraordinary, super weird substats that feel exciting. I also get an enormous amount of pleasure in reading Reddit now, which I only just got into many, many years late, but so many fun, odd things. Like little essays that people write and the way that people respond to each other, which is quick and sharp, and I suppose it fills the gap of what Twitter was.I think nonfiction, I was talking about this morning, because I'm staying with some writers, because we're sort of Cornish, book talk thing together and how much exciting nonfiction has come out this year that we want to read from the UK that is hybrid-y nature travel. Then internationally, I still think there's-- I just read, Perfection by Vincenzo, but there's enough translated fiction that's on the international book list this year that gets me delighted as well. To me, I just don't feel worried about that kind of thing at all when there's so much exciting stuff happening.I love Reddit. I think they really understand things that other people don't on there. I think it's the relief now that when you type in something to Google, you get the AI response. It's something like, it's so nice to feel on Reddit that someone sat down and answered you. Maybe that's such a shame that that's what makes me happy now, that we're in that space. It does feel like someone will tell you not just the answer, but then give you a bit about their life. Then, the particular tool that was passed down by their grandparents. That's so nice.Henry: What do you think of the new Pope?Lamorna: I thought it was because I'd heard all the thing around fat Pope, thin Pope, and obviously, our new Pope is maybe a sort of middle Pope, or at least is closer to Francis, but maybe a bit more palatable to some people. I guess, I'm excited that he's going to do, or it seems like he's also taking time to think, but he's good on migration on supporting the rights of immigrants. I think there's value in the fact of him being American as this being this counterpoint to what's happening in America right now. If feels always feels pointless to say because they're almost the idea of a Pope.I guess, Francis said that, who am I to judge about people being gay, but I think this Pope has so far has been more outly against gay people, but he stood up against JD Vance and his stupid thoughts on theology. I'm quietly optimistic. I guess I'm also waiting for Robert Harris's prophecy to come true and we get an intersex Pope next. Because I think that was prophecy, right? What he wrote.Henry: That would be interesting.Lamorna: Yes.Henry: The religious revival that people say is happening, particularly among young people, how is AI going to make it different than previous religious revivals?Lamorna: Oh, that's so interesting. Maybe first of all, question, sorry, I choked on my coffee. I was slightly questioned the idea if there is a religious revival, it's not actually an argument that I made in the book. When I started writing the book, there wasn't this quiet revival or this Bible studies and survey that suggests that more young people are going to church hadn't come out yet. I was just more, I guess, aware that there were a few people around me who were converting and I thought it'd be interesting if there's a few, there'll be more, which I think probably happens in every single generation, right? Is that that's one way to deal with the longing for meaning we all experience and the struggles in our lives.I was speaking to a New York Times journalist who was questioning the stats that have been coming out because first it's incredibly small pool. It's quite self-selecting that possibly there are people who might have gone to church already. It's still such a small uptick because it makes it hard to say anything definitive. I guess in general, what will the relationship be between AI and religion?I guess, there are so many ways you could go with that. One is that those spaces, religious spaces, are nicely insulated from technology. Not everywhere. Obviously, in some places they aren't, but often it's a space in which you put your phone away. In my head, the desire to go to church is as against having to deal with AI or having to deal with technology being integrated to every other aspect of my life.I guess maybe people will start worshiping the idea of the singularity. Maybe we'll get the singularity and Terminator, or the Matrix is going to happen, and we'll call them our gods because they will feel like gods. That's maybe one option. I don't know how AI-- I guess I don't know enough about AI that maybe you'll have AI, or does this happen? Maybe this has happened already that you could have an AI confession and you'd have an AI priest and they tell you--Henry: Sure. It's huge for therapy, right?Lamorna: Yes.Henry: Which is that adjacent thing.Lamorna: That's a good point. It does feel something about-- I'm sure, theologically, it's not supposed to work if you haven't been ordained, but can an AI be ordained, become a priest?Henry: IndeedLamorna: Could they do communion? I don't know. It's fascinating.Henry: I can see a situation where a young person lives in a secular environment or culture and is interested in things and the AI is the, in some ways, easiest place for them to turn to say, "I need to talk about-- I have these weird semi-religious feelings, or I'm interested." The AI's not going to be like, "Oh, really? That's weird." There's the question of will we worship AI or whatever, but also will we get people's conversions being shaped by their therapy/confessors/whatever chat with their LLM?Lamorna: Oh, it's so interesting. I read a piece recently in the LRB by James Vincent. It was about AI relationships, our relationship with AI, and he looked at AI girlfriends. There was this incredible case, maybe you read about it, about a guy who tried to kill the Queen some years back. His defense was that his AI girlfriend had really encouraged him to do that. Then, you can see the transcripts of the text, and he says, "I'm thinking about killing the Queen." His AI girlfriend is like, "Go for it, baby."It's that thing there of like, at the moment, AI is still reflecting back our own desires or refracting almost like shifting how they're expressed. I'm trying to imagine that in the same case of me saying, "I feel really lonely, and I'm thinking about Christianity." My friend would speak with all of their context and background, and whatever they've got going on for them. Whereas an AI would feel my desire there and go, "That's a good idea. It says online this." It's very straight. It would definitely lead us in directions that feel less than human or other than human.Henry: I also have this thought, you used to, I think you still do, but you see it less. You used to get a Samaritan's Bible in every hotel. The Samaritans, will they start trying to install a religious chatbot in places where people--? There are lots of ways in which you could use it as a distribution mechanism.Lamorna: Which does feel so far from the point. Not to think about the gospels, but that feeling of something I talk about in the book is that, so much of it is human contact. Is that this factor of being changed in the moment, person to person. If I have any philosophy for life at the moment is this sense of desperately needing contact that we are saved by each other all the time, not by our telephones and things that aren't real. It's the surprise.I quote it in the book, but Iris Murdoch describes love is the very difficult realization that someone other than yourself is real. I think that's the thing that makes us all survive, is that reminder that if you're feeling deeply depressed, being like, there is someone else that is real, and they have a struggle that matters as much as mine. I think that's something that you are never going to get through a conversation with a chatbot, because it's like a therapeutic thing. You are not having to ask it the same questions, or you are not having to extend yourself to think about someone else in those conversations.Henry: Which Iris Murdoch novels do you like?Lamorna: I've only read The Sea, The Sea, but I really enjoyed it. Which ones do you like?Henry: I love The Sea, The Sea, and The Black Prince. I like the late books, like The Good Apprentice and The Philosopher's Pupil, as well. Some people tell you, "Don't read those. They're late works and they're no good," but I was obsessed. I was absolutely compelled, and they're still all in my head. They're insane.Lamorna: Oh, I must, because I've got a big collection of her essays. I'm thinking is so beautiful, her philosophical thought. It's that feeling, I know I'm going the wrong-- starting in the wrong place, but I do feel that she's someone I'd really love to explore next, kind of books.Henry: I think you'd like her because she's very interested in the question of, can therapy help, can philosophy help, can religion help? She's very dubious about therapy and philosophy, and she is mystic. There are queer characters and neurodivergent characters. For a novelist in the '70s, you read her now and you're like, "Well, this is all just happening now."Lamorna: Cool.Henry: Maybe we should be passing these books out. People need this right now.Lamorna: Which one would you say I should do first after The Sea, The Sea?Henry: Maybe The Black Prince.Lamorna: The Black Prince. Great.Henry: Which is the one she wrote before The Sea, The Sea and is just a massive masterpiece.Lamorna: I'll read it. Where do you stand on therapy? Do you have a position?Henry: I think on net, it might be a bad thing, even if it is individually useful for people.Lamorna: Why is that?Henry: [laughs] I didn't expect to have to answer the question. Basically two reasons. I think it doesn't take enough account of the moral aspect of the decisions being made very often. This is all very anecdotal and you can find yourself feeling better in the short term, but not necessarily in the long-- If you make a decision that's not outrageously immoral, but which has not had enough weight placed on the moral considerations.There was an article about how lots of people cut out relatives now and the role that therapy plays in that. What I was struck by in the article that was-- Obviously, a lot of those people are justified and their relatives have been abusive or nasty, of course, but there are a lot of cases where you were like, "Well, this is a long-term decision that's been made on a short-term basis." I think in 10 years people may feel very differently. There wasn't enough consideration in the article, at least I felt, given to how any children involved would be affected later on. I think it's a good thing and a bad thing.Lamorna: I'm so with you. I think that's why, because also the fact of it being so private and it being about the individual, and I think, again, there are certain things if you're really struggling with that, it's helpful for, but I think I'm always more into the idea of communal things, like AAA and NA, which obviously a very particular. Something about doing that together, that it's collaborative and therefore there is someone else in the room if you say, "I want to cut out my parent."There's someone else who said that happened to me and it was really hard. It means that you are making those decisions together a little bit more. Therapy, I can feel that in friends and stuff that it does make us, even more, think that we are these bounded individuals when we're not.Henry: I should say, I have known people who've gone to therapy and it's worked really well.Lamorna: I'm doing therapy right now and it is good. I think, in my head, it's like it should be one among many and I still question it whilst doing it.Henry: To the extent that there is a religious revival among "Gen Z," how much is it because they have phones? Because you wrote something like, in fact, I have the quote, "There's a sense of terrible tragedy. How can you hold this constant grief that we feel, whether it's the genocide in Gaza or climate collapse? Where do I put all the misery that I receive every single second through my phone? Church can then be a space where I can quietly go and light a candle." Is it that these young people are going to religion because the phone has really pushed a version of the world into their faces that was not present when I was young or people are older than me?Lamorna: I think it's one of, or that the phone is the symptom because the phone, whatever you call it, technology, the internet, is the thing that draws the world closer to us in so many different ways. One being that this sense of being aware of what's happening around in other places in the world, which maybe means that you become more tolerant of other religions because you're hearing about it more. That, on TikTok, there's loads of kids all across the world talking about their particular faiths and their background and which aspera they're in, and all that kind of thing.Then, this sense of horror being very unavoidable that you wake up and it is there and you wake up and you think, "What am I doing? What am I doing here? I feel completely useless." Perhaps then you end up in a church, but I'm not sure.I think a bigger player in my head is the fact that we are more pluralistic as societies. That you are more likely to encounter other religions in schools. I think then the question is, well then maybe that'll be valuable for me as well. I think also, not having parents pushing religion on you makes kids, the fact of the generation above the British people, your parents' generations, not saying religion is important, you go to church, then it becomes something people can become more curious about in their own right as adults. I think that plays into it.I think isolation plays into it and that's just not about technology and the phone, but that's the sense of-- and again, I'm thinking about early 20s, mid 20s, so adults who are moving from place to place, who maybe feel very isolated and alone, who are doing jobs that make them feel isolated and alone, and there are this dearth of community spaces and then thinking, well, didn't people used to go to churches, it would be so nice to know someone older than me.I don't know how this fits in, but I was thinking about, I saw this documentary, The Encampments, like two days ago, which is about the Columbia University encampments and within that, Mahmood Khalil, who's the one who's imprisoned at the moment, who was this amazing leader within the movement and is from Palestine. The phone in that, the sense about how it was used to gather and collect people and keep people aware of what's happening and mean that everyone is more conscious and there's a point when they need more people in the encampments because the police are going to come. It's like, "Everyone, use your phone, call people now." I think I can often be like, "Oh no, phones are terrible," but this sense within protest, within communal activity, how valuable they can be as well.I haven't quite gotten into that thought. I don't know, basically. I think it's so hard. I've grown up with a phone. I have no sense of how much it plays a part in everything about me, but obviously, it is a huge amount. I do think it's something that we all think about and are horrified by whilst also seeing it as like this weird extension of ourselves. That definitely plays into then culturally, the decisions we make to either try and avoid them, find spaces where you can be without them.Henry: How old do you think a child should be when they're first given a phone? A smartphone, like an iPhone type thing?Lamorna: I think, 21.Henry: Yes?Lamorna: No, I don't know. I obviously wouldn't know that about a child.Henry: I might.Lamorna: I'd love to. I would really love to because, I don't know, I have a few friends who weren't allowed to watch TV until they were 18 and they are eminently smarter than me and lots of my other friends. There's something about, I don't know, I hate the idea that as I'm getting older, I'm becoming more scaremongering like, "Oh no, when I was young--" because I think my generation was backed in loads of ways. This thing of kids spending so much less time outside and so much less time being able to imagine things, I think I am quite happy to say that feels like a terrible loss.I read a piece recently about kids in New York and I think they were quite sort of middle-class Brooklyn-y kids, but they choose to go days without their phones and they all go off into the forest together. There is this sense of saying giving kids autonomy, but at the same time, their relationship with a phone is not one of agency. It's them versus tech bros who have designed things that are so deeply addictive, that no adult can let go of it. Let alone a child who's still forming how to work out self-control, discipline and stuff. I think a good parenting thing would be to limit massively these completely non-neutral objects that they're given, that are made like crack and impossible to let go of.Henry: Do you think religious education in schools should be different or should there be more of it?Lamorna: Yes, I think it should be much better. I don't know about you, but I just remember doing loads of diagrams of different religious spaces like, "This is what a mosque looks like," and then I'd draw the diagram. I knew nothing. I barely knew the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. In fact, I probably didn't as a teenager.I remember actually in sixth form, having this great philosophy teacher who was talking about the idea of proto antisemitism within the gospels. I was like, "Wait, what?" Because I just didn't really understand. I didn't know that it was in Greek, that the Old Testament was in Hebrew. I just didn't know. I think all these holy texts that we've been carrying with us for thousands of years across the world have so much in them that's worth reading and knowing.If I was in charge of our R.E., I would get kids to write on all holy texts, but really think about them and try and answer moral problems. You'd put philosophy back with religion and really connect them and think, what is Nietzsche reacting against? What does Freud about how is this form of Christianity different like this? I think that my sense is that since Gove, but also I'm sure way before that as well, the sense of just not taking young people seriously, when actually they're thoughtful, intelligent and able to wrestle with these things, it's good for them to have know what they're choosing against, if they're not interested in religion.Also, at base, those texts are beautiful, all of them are, and are foundational and if you want to be able to study English or history to know things about religious texts and the practices of religion and how those rituals came about and how it's changed over thousands of years, feels important.Henry: Which religious poets do you like other than Hopkins? Because you write very nicely about Hopkins in the book.Lamorna: He's my favorite. I like John Donne a lot. I remember reading lots of his sermons and Lancelot Andrews' sermons at university and thinking they were just astonishingly beautiful. There are certain John Donne sermons and it's this feeling of when he takes just maybe a line from one of Paul's letters and then is able to extend it and extend it, and it's like he's making it grow in material or it's like it's a root where suddenly all these branches are coming off it.Who else do I like? I like George Herbert. Gosh, my brain is going in terms of who else was useful when I was thinking about. Oh it's gone.Henry: Do you like W.H. Auden?Lamorna: Oh yes. I love Auden, yes. I was rereading his poems about, oh what's it called? The one about Spain?Henry: Oh yes.Lamorna: About the idea of tomorrow.Henry: I don't have a memory either, but I know the poem you mean, yes.Lamorna: Okay. Then I'm trying to think of earlier religious poets. I suppose things like The Dream of the Rood and fun ways of getting into it and if you're looking at medieval poetry.Henry: I also think Betjeman is underrated for this.Lamorna: I've barely read any Betjeman.Henry: There's a poem called Christmas. You might like it.Lamorna: Okay.Henry: It's this famous line and is it true and is it true? He really gets into this thing of, "We're all unwrapping tinsely presents and I'm sitting here trying to work out if God became man." It's really good. It's really good. The other one is called Norfolk and again, another famous line, "When did the devil first attack?" It talks about puberty as the arrival of the awareness of sin and so forth.Lamorna: Oh, yes.Henry: It's great. Really, really good stuff. Do you personally believe in the resurrection?Lamorna: [chuckles] I keep being asked this.Henry: I know. I'm sorry.Lamorna: My best answer is sometimes. Because I do sometimes in that way that-- someone I interviewed who's absolutely brilliant in the book, Robert, and he's a Cambridge professor. He's a pragmatist and he talks about the idea of saying I'm a disciplined person means nothing unless you're enacting that discipline daily or it falls away. For him, that belief in a Kierkegaardian leap way is something that needs to be reenacted in every moment to say, I believe and mean it.I think there are moments when my church attendance is better and I'm listening to a reading that's from Acts or whatever and understanding the sense of those moments, Paul traveling around Europe and Asia Minor, only because he fully believed that this is what's happened. Those letters and as you're reading those letters, the way I read literature or biblical writing is to believe in that moment because for that person, they believe too. I think there are points at which the resurrection can feel true to me, but it does feel like I'm accessing that idea of truth in a different way than I am accessing truth about-- it's close to how I think about love as something that's very, very real, but very different from experiential feelings.I had something else I wanted to say about that and it's just gone. Oh yes. I was at Hay Festival a couple of weeks ago. Do you know the Philosopher Agnes Callard?Henry: Oh, sure.Lamorna: She gave a really great talk about Socrates and her love of Socrates, but she also came to my talk and she and her husband, who I think met through arguing about Aristotle, told me they argued for about half a day about a line I'd said, which was that during writing the book, I'd learned to believe in the belief of other people, her husband was like, "You can't believe in the belief of other people if you don't believe it too. That doesn't work. That doesn't make sense." I was like, "That's so interesting." I can so feel that if we're taking that analytically, that if I say I don't believe in the resurrection, not just that I believe you believe it, but I believe in your belief in the resurrection. At what point is that any different from saying, I believe in the resurrection. I feel like I need to spend more time with it. What the slight gap is there that I don't have that someone else does, or as I say it, do I then believe in the resurrection that moment? I'm not sure.I think also what I'm doing right now is trying to sound all clever with it, whereas for other people it's this deep ingrained truth that governs every moment of their life and that they can feel everywhere, or perhaps they can't. Perhaps there's more doubt than they suggest, which I think is the case with lots of us. Say on the deathbed, someone saying that they fully believe in the resurrection because that means there's eternal salvation, and their family believe in that too. I don't think I have that kind of certainty, but I admire it.Henry: Tell me how you got the title for this book from an episode of The Simpsons.Lamorna: It's really good app. It's from When Maggie Makes Three, which is my favorite episode. I think titles are horribly hard. I really struck my first book. I would have these sleepless nights just thinking about words related to the sea, and be like, blue something. I don't know. There was a point where my editor wanted to call it Trawler Girl. I said, "We mustn't. That's awful. That's so bad. It makes me sound like a terrible superhero. I'm not a girl, I'm a woman."With this one, I think it was my fun title for ages. Yes, it's this plaque that Homer has put-- Mr. Burns puts up this plaque to remind him that he will never get to leave the power plant, "Don't forget you're here forever."I just think it's a strong and bonkers line. I think it had this element of play or silliness that I wanted, that I didn't think about too hard. I guess that's an evangelical Christian underneath what they're actually saying is saying-- not all evangelicals, but often is this sense of no, no, no, we are here forever. You are going to live forever. That is what heaven means.That sense of then saying it in this jokey way. I think church is often very funny spaces, and funny things happen. They make good comedy series when you talk about faith.Someone's saying she don't forget we're here forever. The don't forget makes it so colloquial and silly. I just thought it was a funny line for that reason.Then also that question people always ask, "Is religion going to die out?" I thought that played into it. This feeling that, yes, I write about it. There was a point when I was going to an Extinction Rebellion protest, and everyone was marching along with that symbol of the hourglass inside a circle next to a man who had a huge sign saying, "Stop, look, hell is real, the end of the world is coming." This sense of different forms of apocalyptic thinking that are everywhere at the moment. I felt like the title worked for that as well.Henry: I like that episode of The Simpsons because it's an expression of an old idea where he's doing something boring and his life is going to slip away bit by bit. The don't forget you're here forever is supposed to make that worse, but he turns it round into the live like you're going to die tomorrow philosophy and makes his own kind of meaning out of it.Lamorna: By papering it over here with pictures of Maggie. They love wordplay, the writers of The Simpsons, and so that it reads, "Do it for her," instead. That feeling of-- I think that with faith as well of, don't forget we're here forever, think about heaven when actually so much of our life is about papering it over with humanity and being like, "Does it matter? I'm with you right now, and that's what matters." That immediacy of human contact that church is also really about, that joy in the moment. Where it doesn't really matter in that second if you're going to heaven or hell, or if that exists. You're there together, and it's euphoric, or at least it's a relief or comforting.Henry: You did a lot of Bible study and bible reading to write this book. What were the big surprises for you?Lamorna: [chuckles] This is really the ending, but revelation, I don't really think it's very well written at all. It shouldn't be in there, possibly. It's just not [unintelligible 00:39:20] It got added right in the last minute. I guess it should be in there. I just don't know. What can I say?So much of it was a surprise. I think slowly reading the Psalms was a lovely surprise for me because they contain so much uncertainty and anguish, and doubt. Imagining those being read aloud to me always felt like a very exciting thing.Henry: Did you read them aloud?Lamorna: When I go to more Anglo Catholic services, they tend to do them-- I never know how to pronounce this. Antiphonally.Henry: Oh yes.Lamorna: Back and forth between you. It's very reverential, lovely experience to do that. I really think I was surprised by almost everything I was reading. At the start of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, he does this amazing thing where he does four different versions of what could be happening in the Isaac and Abraham story underneath.There's this sense of in the Bible, and I'm going to get this wrong, but in Mimesis, Auerbach talks about the way that you're not given the psychological understanding within the Bible. There's so much space for readers to think with, because you're just being told things that happened, and the story moves on quickly, moment by moment. With Isaac and Abraham, what it would mean if Isaac actually had seen the fact that his father was planning to kill him. Would he then lose his faith? All these different scenarios.I suddenly realised that the Bible was not just a fixed text, but there was space to play with it as well. In the book, I use the story of Jacob and the angel and play around with the meaning of that and what would happen after this encounter between Jacob and an angel for both of them.Bits in the Gospels, I love the story of the Gerasene Demoniac. He was a knight. He was very unwell, and no one knew what to do with him. He was ostracised from his community. He would sit in this cave and scream and lacerate himself against the cave walls. Then Jesus comes to him and speaks to him and speaks to the demons inside him. There's this thing in Mark's Gospel that Harold Bloom talks about, where only demons are actually able to perceive. Most people have to ask Christ who he really is, but demons can perceive him immediately and know he's the son of God.The demons say that they are legion. Then Jesus puts them into 1,000 pigs. Is it more? I can't remember. Then they're sent off over the cliff edge. Then the man is made whole and is able to go back to his community. I just think there's just so much in that. It's so rich and strange. I think, yes, there's something about knowing you could sit down and just read a tiny bit of the Bible and find something strange and unusual that also might speak to something you've read that's from thousands of years later.I also didn't know that in Mark's Gospel, the last part of it is addended, added on to it. Before that, it ended with the women being afraid, seeing the empty tomb, but there's no resolution. There's no sense of Christ coming back as spirit. It ended in this deep uncertainty and fear. I thought that was so fascinating because then again, it reminds you that those texts have been played around with and thought with, and meddled with, and changed over time. It takes away from the idea that it's fixed and certain, the Bible.Henry: What did you think of Harold Bloom's book The Shadow of a Great Rock?Lamorna: I really loved it. He says that he treats Shakespeare more religiously and the Bible more like literature, which I found a funny, irreverent thing to say. There's lovely stuff in there where, I think it was Ruth, he was like, maybe it was written by a woman. He takes you through the different Hebrew writers for Genesis. Which again, becoming at this as such a novice in so many ways, realising that, okay, so when it's Yahweh, it's one particular writer, there's the priestly source for particular kinds of writing. The Yahwist is more ironic, or the God you get is more playful.That was this key into thinking about how each person trying to write about God, it's still them and their sense of the world, which is particular and idiosyncratic is forming the messages that they believe they're receiving from God. I found that exciting.Yes, he's got this line. He's talking about the blessings that God gives to men in Genesis. He's trying to understand, Bloom, what the meaning of a blessing is. He describes it as more life into a time without boundaries. That's a line that I just found so beautiful, and always think about what the meaning of that is. I write it in the book.My best friend, Sammy, who's just the most game person in the world, that you tell them anything, they're like, "Cool." I told them that line. They were like, "I'm getting it tattooed on my arm next week." Then got me to write in my handwriting. I can only write in my handwriting, but write down, "More time into life without boundaries." Now they've just got it on their arm.Henry: Nice.Lamorna: I really like. They're Jewish, non-practicing. They're not that really interested in it. They were like, "That's a good line to keep somewhere."Henry: I think it's actually one of Bloom's best books. There's a lot of discussion about, is he good? Is he not good? I love that book because it really just introduces people to the Bible and to different versions of the Bible. He does all that Harold Bloom stuff where he's like, "These are the only good lines in this particular translation of this section. The rest is so much dross.He's really attentive to the differences between the translations, both theologically but also aesthetically. I think a lot of people don't know the Bible. It's a really good way to get started on a-- sitting down and reading the Bible in order. It's going to fail for a lot of people. Harold Bloom is a good introduction that actually gives you a lot of the Bible itself.Lamorna: For sure, because it's got that midrash feeling of being like someone else working around it, which then helps you get inside it. I was reading that book whilst going to these Bible studies at a conservative evangelical church called All Souls. I wasn't understanding what on earth was going on in Mark through the way that we're being told to read it, which is kids' comprehension.Maybe it was useful to think about why would the people have been afraid when Christ quelled the storms? It was doing something, but there was no sense of getting inside the text. Then, to read alongside that, Bloom saying that the Christ in Mark is the most unknowable of all the versions of Christ. Then again, just thinking, "Oh, hang on." There's an author. The author of Mark's gospel is perceiving Christ in a particular way. This is the first of the gospels writing about Christ. What does it mean? He's unknowable. Suddenly thinking of him as a character, and therefore thinking about how people are relating to him. It totally cracks the text open for you.Henry: Do you think denominational differences are still important? Do most people have actual differences in dogma, or are they just more cultural distinctions?Lamorna: They're ritual distinctions. There really is little that you could compare between a Quaker meeting and a Catholic service. That silence is the fundamental aspect of all of it. There's a sense of enlighten.My Quaker mate, Lawrence, he's an atheist, but he wouldn't go to another church service because he's so against the idea of hierarchy and someone speaking from a pulpit. He's like, honestly, the reincarnated spirit of George Fox in many ways, in lots of ways he's not.I guess it becomes more blurry because, yes, there's this big thing in the early 20th century in Britain anyway, where the line that becomes more significant is conservative liberal. It's very strange that that's how our world gets divided. There's real simplification that perhaps then, a liberal Anglican church and a liberal Catholic church have more in relationship than a conservative Catholic church and a conservative evangelical church. The line that is often thinking about sexuality and marriage.I was interested, people have suddenly was called up in my book that I talk about sex a lot. I think it's because sex comes up so much, it feels hard not to. That does seem to be more important than denominational differences in some ways. I do think there's something really interesting in this idea of-- Oh, [unintelligible 00:48:17] got stung. God, this is a bit dramatic. Sorry, I choked on coffee earlier. Now I'm going to get stung by a bee.Henry: This is good. This is what makes a podcast fun. What next?Lamorna: You don't get this in the BBC studios. Maybe you do. Oh, what was I about to say? Oh, yes. I like the idea of church shopping. People saying that often it speaks to the person they are, what they're looking for in a church. I think it's delightful to me that there's such a broad church, and there's so many different spaces that you can go into to discover the church that's right for you. Sorry. I'm really distracted by this wasp or bee. Anyway.Henry: How easy was it to get people to be honest with you?Lamorna: I don't know. I think that there's certain questions that do tunnel right through to the heart of things. Faith seems to be one of them. When you talk about faith with people, you're getting rid of quite a lot of the chaff around with the politeness or whatever niceties that you'd usually speak about.I was talking about this with another friend who's been doing this. He's doing a play about Grindr. He was talking about how strange it is that when you ask to interview someone and you have a dictaphone there, you do get a deeper instant conversation. Again, it's a bit like a therapeutic conversation where someone has said to you, "I'm just going to sit and listen." You've already agreed, and you know it's going to be in a book. "Do you mind talking about this thing?"That just allows this opportunity for people to be more honest because they're aware that the person there is actually wanting to listen. It's so hard to create spaces. I create a cordon and say, "We're going to have a serious conversation now." Often, that feels very artificial. I think yes, the beauty of getting to sit there with a dictaphone on your notebook is you are like, "I really am interested in this. It really matters to me." I guess it feels easy in that way to get honesty.Obviously, we're all constructing a version of ourselves for each other all the time. It's hard for me to know to what extent they're responding to what they're getting from me, and what they think I want to hear. If someone else interviewed them, they would probably get something quite different. I don't know. I think if you come to be with openness, and you talk a bit about your journey, then often people want to speak about it as well.I'm trying to think. I've rarely interviewed someone where I haven't felt this slightly glowy, shimmery sense of it, or what I'm learning feels new and feels very true. I felt the same with Cornish Fisherman, that there was this real honesty in these conversations. Many years ago, I remember I got really obsessed with interviewing my mom. I think I was just always wanting to practice interviewing. The same thing that if there's this object between you, it shifts the dimensions of the conversation and tends towards seriousness.Henry: How sudden are most people's conversions?Lamorna: Really depends. I was in this conversation with someone the other day. When she was 14, 15, she got caught shoplifting. She literally went, "Oh, if there's a God up there, can you help get me out of the situation?" The guy let her go, and she's been a Christian ever since. She had an instantaneous conversion. Someone I interviewed in the book, and he was a really thoughtful card-carrying atheist. He had his [unintelligible 00:51:58] in his back pocket.He hated the Christians and would always have a go at them at school because he thought it was silly, their belief. Then he had this instant conversion that feels very charismatic in form, where he was just walking down an avenue of trees at school, and he felt the entire universe smiling at him and went, "Oh s**t, I better become a Christian."Again, I wonder if it depends. I could say it depends on the person you are, whether you are capable of having an instant conversion. Perhaps if I were in a religious frame of mind, I'd say it depends on what God would want from you. Do you need an instant conversion, or do you need to very slowly have the well filling up?I really liked when a priest said to me that people often go to church and expect to be changed in a moment. He's like, "No, you have to go for 20 years before anything happens." Something about that slow incremental conversion to me is more satisfying. It's funny, I was having a conversation with someone about if they believe in ghosts, and they were like, "Well, if I saw one, then I believe in ghosts." For some people, transcendental things happen instantaneously, and it does change them ultimately instantly.I don't know, I would love to see some stats about which kinds of conversions are more popular, probably more instant ones. I love, and I use it in the book, but William James' Varieties of Religious Experience. He talks about there's some people who are sick-souled or who are also more porous bordered people for whom strange things can more easily cross the borders of their person. They're more likely to convert and more likely to see things.I really like him describing it that way because often someone who's like that, it might just be described as well, you have a mental illness. That some people are-- I don't know, they've got sharper antennae than the rest of us. I think that is an interesting thought for why some people can convert instantly.Henry: I think all conversions take a long time. At the moment, there's often a pivotal moment, but there's something a long time before or after that, that may or may not look a conversion, but which is an inevitable part of the process. I'm slightly obsessed with the idea of quests, but I think all conversions are a quest or a pilgrimage. Your book is basically a quest narrative. As you go around in your Toyota, visiting these places. I'm suspicious, I think the immediate moment is bundled up with a longer-term thing very often, but it's not easy to see it.Lamorna: I love that. I've thought about the long tail afterwards, but I hadn't thought about the lead-up, the idea of that. Of what little things are changing. That's such a lovely thought. Their conversions began from birth, maybe.Henry: The shoplifter, it doesn't look like that's where they're heading. In retrospect, you can see that there weren't that many ways out of this path that they're on. Malcolm X is like this. One way of reading his autobiography is as a coming-of-age story. Another way of reading it is, when is this guy going to convert? This is going to happen.Lamorna: I really like that. Then there's also that sense of how fixed the conversion is, as well, from moment to moment. That Adam Phillips' book on wanting to change, he talks about our desire for change often outstrips our capacity for change. That sense of how changed am I afterwards? How much does my conversion last in every moment? It goes back to the do you believe in the resurrection thing.I find that that really weird thing about writing a book is, it is partly a construction. You've got the eye in there. You're creating something that is different from your reality and fixed, and you're in charge of it. It's stable, it remains, and you come to an ending. Then your life continues to divert and deviate in loads of different ways. It's such a strange thing in that way. Every conversion narrative we have fixed in writing, be it Augustine or Paul, whatever, is so far from the reality of that person's experience.Henry: What did the new atheists get wrong?Lamorna: Arrogance. They were arrogant. Although I wonder, I guess it was such a cultural moment, and perhaps in the same way that everyone is in the media, very excitedly talking about revival now. There was something that was created around them as well, which was delight in this sense of the end of something. I wonder how much of that was them and how much of it was, they were being carried along by this cultural media movement.I suppose the thing that always gets said, and I haven't read enough Dawkins to say this with any authority, but is that the form of religion that he was attempting to denigrate was a very basic form of Christianity, a real, simplified sense. That he did that with all forms of religion. Scientific progress shows us we've progressed beyond this point, and we don't need this, and it's silly and foolish.I guess he underestimated the depth and richness of religion, and also the fact of this idea of historical progress, when the people in the past were foolish, when they were as bright and stupid as we are now.Henry: I think they believed in the secularization idea. People like Rodney Stark and others were pointing out that it's not really true that we secularized a lot more consistency. John Gray, the whole world is actually very religious. This led them away from John Stuart Mill-type thinking about theism. I think everyone should read more John Stuart Mill, but they particularly should have read the theism essays. That would have been--Lamorna: I've only just got into him because I love the LRB Close Reading podcast. It's Jonathan Rée and James Wood. They did one on John Stuart Mill's autobiography, which I've since been reading. It's an-Henry: It's a great book.Lamorna: -amazing book. His crisis is one of-- He says, "The question of religion is not something that has been a part of my life, but the sense of being so deeply learned." His dad was like, "No poetry." In his crisis moment, suddenly realizing that that's what he needed. He was missing feeling, or he was missing a way of looking at the world that had questioning and doubt within it through poetry.There was a bit in the autobiography, and he talks about when he was in this deep depression, whenever he was at 19 or something. That he was so depressed that he thought if there's a certain number of musical notes, one day there will be no more new music because every single combination will have been done. The sense of, it's so sweetly awful thinking, but without the sense-- I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here.I found his crisis so fascinating to read about and how he comes out of that through this care and attention of beautiful literature and thinking, and through his love of-- What was his wife called again?Henry: Harriet.Lamorna: Harriet. He credits her for almost all his thinking. He wouldn't have moved towards socialism without her. Suddenly, humans are deeply important to him. He feels sorry for the fact that his dad could not express love or take love from him, and that that was such a terrible deficiency in his life.Henry: Mill's interesting on religion because he looks very secular. In fact, if you read his letters, he's often going into churches.Lamorna: Oh, really?Henry: Yes, when he's in Italy, because he had tuberculosis. He had to be abroad a lot. He's always going to services at Easter and going into the churches. For a secular person, he really appreciates all these aspects of religion. His stepdaughter was-- there's a diary of hers in their archives. She was very religious, very intense. As a young woman, when she's 16, 17, intensely Catholic or Anglo-Catholic. Really, it's quite startling.I was reading this thing, and I was like, "Wait, who in the Mill household is writing this? This is insane." There are actually references in his letters where he says, "Oh, we'll have to arrive in time for Good Friday so that she can go to church." He's very attentive to it. Then he writes these theism essays, right at the end of his life. He's very open-minded and very interrogatory of the idea. He really wants to understand. He's not a new atheist at all.Lamorna: Oh, okay. I need to read the deism essays.Henry: You're going to love it. It's very aligned. What hymns do you like?Lamorna: Oh, no.Henry: You can be not a hymn person.Lamorna: No. I'm not a massive hymn person. When I'm in church, the Anglican church that I go to in London now, I always think, "Remember that. That was a really nice one." I like to be a pilgrim. I really don't have the brain that can do this off the cuff. I'm not very musically. I'm deeply unmusical.There was one that I was thinking of. I think it's an Irish one. I feel like I wrote this down at one point, because I thought I might be asked in another interview. I had to write down what I thought in case a hymn that I liked. Which sounds a bit like a politician, when they're asked a question, they're like, "I love football." I actually can't think of any. I'm sorry.Henry: No, that's fine.Lamorna: What are your best? Maybe that will spark something in me.Henry: I like Tell Out My Soul. Do you know that one?Lamorna: Oh, [sings] Tell Out My Soul. That's a good one.Henry: If you have a full church and people are really going for it, that can be amazing. I like all the classics. I don't have any unusual choices. Tell Out My Soul, it's a great one. Lamorna Ash, this has been great. Thank you very much.Lamorna: Thank you.Henry: To close, I think you're going to read us a passage from your book.Lamorna: I am.Henry: This is near the end. It's about the Bible.Lamorna: Yes. Thank you so much. This has definitely been my favourite interview.Henry: Oh, good.Lamorna: I really enjoyed it. It's really fun.Henry: Thank you.Lamorna: Yes, this is right near the end. This is when I ended up at a church, St Luke's, West Holloway. It was a very small 9:00 AM service. Whilst the priest who'd stepped in to read because the actual priest had left, was reading, I just kept thinking about all the stories that I'd heard and wondering about the Bible and how the choices behind where it ends, where it ends.I don't think I understand why the Bible ends where it does. The final lines of the book of Revelation are, "He who testifies to these things says, Yes, I am coming soon. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people. Amen." Which does sound like a to-be-continued. I don't mean the Bible feels incomplete because it ends with Revelation. What I mean is, if we have continued to hear God and wrestle with him and his emissaries ever since the first overtures of the Christian faith sounded.Why do we not treat these encounters with the same reverence as the works assembled in the New Testament? Why have we let our holy text grow so antique and untouchable instead of allowing them to expand like a divine Wikipedia updated in perpetuity? That way, each angelic struggle and Damascene conversion that has ever occurred or one day will, would become part of its fabric.In this Borgesian Bible, we would have the Gospel of Mary, not a fictitious biography constructed by a man a century after her death, but her true words. We would have the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch on the road between Jerusalem and Gaza from Acts, but this time given in the first person. We would have descriptions from the Picts on Iona of the Irish Saint Columba appearing in a rowboat over the horizon.We would have the Gospels of those from the early Eastern Orthodox churches, Assyrian Gospels, Syriac Orthodox Gospels. We would have records of the crusades from the Christian soldiers sent out through Europe to Jerusalem in order to massacre those of other faiths, both Muslim and Jewish. In reading these accounts, we would be forced to confront the ways in which scripture can be interpreted

Say “Holy Spirit” and most picture a dove or gentle fire. But Anthony SooHoo, S.J., turns to a wilder Celtic image: a honking goose in flight—untamed and impossible to ignore. It's how he preaches Pentecost: the Spirit who startles us into new life and calls the church to fly together—rather than just waddle along. For the Solemnity of Pentecost, Year C, Anthony draws on the physics of flight and a Kierkegaardian parable about ducks. In conversation with host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., he explores imagination in preaching and the art of going off-script—especially when the Spirit honks. Guest: Anthony SooHoo, S.J., professor of ancient Near Eastern studies at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome and pastoral staff member at Caravita, an international English-language Catholic community. Get daily Scripture reflections and support “Preach” by becoming a digital subscriber to America Magazine⁠⁠⁠⁠ “Preach” is made possible through the generous support of the Compelling Preaching Initiative, a project of Lilly Endowment Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 Our 2024 Christmas episode is devoted to all 312 minutes of Ingmar Bergman's late masterpiece Fanny and Alexander (1982); a phantasmagorical smorgasbord of genres and summary of the writer-director's obsessions. We explore the film's Keatsian and Kierkegaardian implications, its relationship to the Modernist moment, and its oneiric inquiry into the nature of reality... among the many other topics raised by this dramatically and conceptually rich movie. We hope the holiday season gives you many opportunities to eat, think, and be merry!  Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:    FANNY & ALEXANDER (1982) [dir. Ingmar Bergman] +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again” * Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

Thomas and Steven conclude their analysis of Malick's Weightless trilogy, looking at his 2017 film Song to Song. With this movie, Malick solidifies the Weightless trilogy's status as authentically Christian (specifically, Kierkegaardian) cinema. Using the setting of the Austin music scene, it delivers a positive message concerning the emptiness of hedonistic contemporary culture and how that lifestyle might be escaped. Thomas and Steven pay special attention to Michael Fassbender's role as a sinister record producer named Cook, Malick's version of a Miltonian Satan, a character that hints at the dark occult underbelly of the music industry.https://twitter.com/StevenDeLay4https://stevendelay.com/https://sunypress.edu/Books/L/Life-Above-the-Cloudshttps://twitter.com/CinemaPsyophttps://www.patreon.com/PsyopCinemahttp://psyop-cinema.com/https://linktr.ee/psyopcinema thomas-psyopcinema@protonmail.combrett-psyopcinema@protonmail.com

Thomas and Steven continue the Terrence Malick series, introducing a discussion of the Weightless Trilogy, which begins with To the Wonder (2012) and constitutes some of the most fully realized Christian cinema ever produced. We talk about Malick's Kierkegaardian inspiration and analyze the film's depiction of romance, family, and the search for God.https://twitter.com/StevenDeLay4https://stevendelay.com/https://sunypress.edu/Books/L/Life-Above-the-Cloudshttps://twitter.com/CinemaPsyophttps://www.patreon.com/PsyopCinemahttp://psyop-cinema.com/https://linktr.ee/psyopcinemathomas-psyopcinema@protonmail.combrett-psyopcinema@protonmail.com

On the front page of her website, the family therapist and psychologist B. Janet Hibbs quotes Kierkegaard's observation that “we live our lives forward, but understand them backwards.” But her coauthored You're Not Done Yet: Parenting Young Adults in an Age of Uncertainty seems to reverse that Kierkegaardian narrative. Many contemporary young Americans, Hibbs explains, are living their lives backwards by retreating home to live with their parents and surround themselves with all the certainties of their former childhood. It's an odd paradox that, in supposedly the most “advanced” country in the world, American kids are unlearning how to grow up. Parents, Hibbs tells us in her new book, should understand and welcome these adult-children back to their nests with open arms. But Hibbs, who sports an M.F.T. (Marriage Family Therapy) and the obligatory Ph.D, is part of that growing therapy-anxiety complex which, some might argue, are both the cause and beneficiary of our “age of uncertainty” (which is, of course, no more uncertain than any other age). Dr. B. Janet Hibbs is a recognized authority on family issues, with a focus on parent-child and partner relationships. Her speaking engagements draw on expert clinical experience, based on 30 years of practice treating individuals, couples, and families. She provides effective strategies for coping with the many issues–including stress–that parents and students face. Dually licensed as a psychologist and a family therapist, Dr. Hibbs holds the highest credential in the marriage and family therapy field, as an Approved Supervisor for the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. She is a popular radio talk show guest, with appearances on NPR's Voices in the Family, Radio Times, and The Diane Riehm show. She has also made appearances and on national and regional TV. Dr. Hibbs has been quoted in national newspapers including The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Dr. Hibbs is also the recipient of the 2021 Psychologist in the Media Award from the Pennsylvania Psychological Association. She is co-founder of Contextual Therapy Associates, where she has a private practice in Philadelphia, PA. She and her husband have been married for over 30 years and have two sons.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Join us as we explore Heidegger's conception of the single thought and delve into his nuanced criticism of Kierkegaard. This video brings to light the continental philosophy discussion, contrasting Heidegger and Kierkegaard's approaches to existentialism, Being, and the existential anxiety embedded within Dasein. We'll unpack Heidegger's Being and Time alongside Kierkegaard's leap of faith, offering insights into the complex interplay between ontology, phenomenology, and existential philosophy. This critique navigates the depths of Heideggerian philosophy and Kierkegaardian existentialism, aiming to illuminate the profound debates that shape our understanding of existenceSupport the show--------------------------If you would want to support the channel and what I am doing, please follow me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/christianityforall Where else to find Josh Yen: Philosophy YT: https://bit.ly/philforallEducation: https://bit.ly/joshyenBuisness: https://bit.ly/logoseduMy Website: https://joshuajwyen.com/

Embark on a literary journey with my in-depth book review of Aaron J. Simmons' 'Camping with Kierkegaard.' Explore Simmons' insightful analysis of existential philosophy, making this book a brilliant introduction to the profound concepts of Kierkegaardian thought. Gain valuable insights into the book's existential exploration, Simmons' literary critique, and the overall overview of 'Camping with Kierkegaard.' This review delves into Simmons' conceptual exploration, providing a comprehensive understanding of existential philosophy through literature.Support the show--------------------------If you would want to support the channel and what I am doing, please follow me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/christianityforall Where else to find Josh Yen: Philosophy YT: https://bit.ly/philforallEducation: https://bit.ly/joshyenBuisness: https://bit.ly/logoseduMy Website: https://joshuajwyen.com/

Join me in a thought-provoking exploration of Kierkegaard's philosophy as we delve into the question of whether his faith is rational. In this analysis, we examine Kierkegaard's concept of faith, exploring its rationality and the role it plays in his works. Gain insights into Kierkegaardian faith through a rational assessment of his religious existentialism. Is Kierkegaard's faith reasonable? Let's unravel the debate between faith and reason in the context of Kierkegaard's profound views on the nature of faith.Support the show--------------------------If you would want to support the channel and what I am doing, please follow me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/christianityforall Where else to find Josh Yen: Philosophy YT: https://bit.ly/philforallEducation: https://bit.ly/joshyenBuisness: https://bit.ly/logoseduMy Website: https://joshuajwyen.com/

In episode 20 of After Socrates, join Dr. John Vervaeke and his eloquent interlocutor, Christopher Mastropietro, as they delve into an intriguing exploration of love, beauty, faith, and the mysteries of existence. From the interplay of virtues to the hermeneutics of beauty, the dialectic of part and whole, and the unveiling of the concealed 'sculpture' within us, this episode is sure to incite curiosity, inspire insights, and deepen your understanding of life's profound questions. I recently had a discussion with DC Schindler and Ken Lowry that further explores this topic, if you would like to view that conversation, please do so here: Discovering the Four Leaps: Reason, Love, Faith, and Body | DC Schindler and Ken Lowry - https://youtu.be/V8UFpsVOl7A Time-Codes: 00:00 - John Vervaeke introduces the Vervaeke Foundation Patreon - www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke 01:00 - John and Christopher delve into the intriguing relationship between love, beauty, and the leap into the unknown.  03:00 - The concept of the three leaps: faith, reason, and love, is introduced and explored. 06:00 - John poses the question of how to articulate the intricate relationship between the three leaps. 08:10 - A deep discussion on the interdependence of virtues in the dialectic takes place. 09:49 - John distinguishes between the hermeneutics of suspicion and the hermeneutics of beauty. 12:08 - Christopher enlightens us with the Kierkegaardian idea of being a part in order to participate in the whole.  21:20 - Dr. Vervaeke explains the relationship between the absolute and the relative. 22:13 - The concept of Ratio is introduced as a means of moving towards the absolute. 24:00 - The interpenetration of insight and inference in philosophy is discussed. 27:24 - John illuminates the lack of distinction between inferences and insights. 28:00 - The Platonian metaphor of uncovering the sculpture within the stone is explored. 29:50 - John explains how two perspectives can induce an aporia in inferential reasoning. 32:21 - The role of a beautiful tree in orienting us towards reality is discussed. 35:07 - A deep dive into how beauty, love, and faith are interrelated occurs. 36:50 - Christopher proposes a terminological change in Kierkegaard's concept of faith. 39:00 - John elucidates how the fullness of being orients us towards a fuller life. 41:10 - The connection between goodness and faith is brought to light. 43:35 - An enlightening discussion on forgiveness, guilt, and sin takes place. 01:03:40 - John concludes the discussion by emphasizing the importance of transcendence.

The philosophy of deconstruction, most famously pushed forward by Jacques Derrida, has left an undeniable dent on contemporary thought, and even religion has found itself in deconstruction's sights, with Church, faith and even God put under philosophical scrutiny. But is this a one-way street, or is there something faith might teach deconstruction? This way of framing the relation is itself questionable, since deconstruction itself is an indifferent, impersonal force, something that simply happens as part of reality, but this gives it a certain seduction for theorists who don't simply want to bear witness to it's work but to master it as a tool, wielding it as they please, unwittingly falling into the very sort of traps deconstruction often unravels. This is one of the main ideas Chris Boesel wants to remind us of with his new book, In Kierkegaard's Garden With the Poppy Blooms: Why Derrida Doesn't Read Kierkegaard When He Reads Kierkegaard (Fortress Academic, 2021). Written as part academic monograph, part dialogue between a philosophy professor and theology student, the book stages a confrontation between Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and Derrida's The Gift of Death, where he claims to draw deconstructive lessons from Abraham's famous ‘leap of faith', although Boesel finds the lessons he draws questionable. In fact, Boesel contends, Derrida doesn't seem to have read the text at all! Derrida, renowned for his capacity to find the smallest cracks on the margins and in between the lines of philosophical and literary texts, blatantly misses many of the actual points Kierkegaard was trying to make, and in doing so illustrates the uniqueness of Kierkegaard's inquiries into the nature of faith and subjectivity. In critically analyzing Derrida's work, Boesel finds opportunity to remind us of what deconstruction can (and can't!) do in animating commitments for justice, while also suggesting that a Kierkegaardian faith may offer a more productive possibility for thinking through those same commitments. Chris Boesel is an associate professor of theology at Drew University. His other publications include Reading Karl Barth: Theology That Cuts Both Ways and Risking Proclamation, Respecting Difference: Christian Faith, Imperialistic Discourse, and Abraham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The philosophy of deconstruction, most famously pushed forward by Jacques Derrida, has left an undeniable dent on contemporary thought, and even religion has found itself in deconstruction's sights, with Church, faith and even God put under philosophical scrutiny. But is this a one-way street, or is there something faith might teach deconstruction? This way of framing the relation is itself questionable, since deconstruction itself is an indifferent, impersonal force, something that simply happens as part of reality, but this gives it a certain seduction for theorists who don't simply want to bear witness to it's work but to master it as a tool, wielding it as they please, unwittingly falling into the very sort of traps deconstruction often unravels. This is one of the main ideas Chris Boesel wants to remind us of with his new book, In Kierkegaard's Garden With the Poppy Blooms: Why Derrida Doesn't Read Kierkegaard When He Reads Kierkegaard (Fortress Academic, 2021). Written as part academic monograph, part dialogue between a philosophy professor and theology student, the book stages a confrontation between Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and Derrida's The Gift of Death, where he claims to draw deconstructive lessons from Abraham's famous ‘leap of faith', although Boesel finds the lessons he draws questionable. In fact, Boesel contends, Derrida doesn't seem to have read the text at all! Derrida, renowned for his capacity to find the smallest cracks on the margins and in between the lines of philosophical and literary texts, blatantly misses many of the actual points Kierkegaard was trying to make, and in doing so illustrates the uniqueness of Kierkegaard's inquiries into the nature of faith and subjectivity. In critically analyzing Derrida's work, Boesel finds opportunity to remind us of what deconstruction can (and can't!) do in animating commitments for justice, while also suggesting that a Kierkegaardian faith may offer a more productive possibility for thinking through those same commitments. Chris Boesel is an associate professor of theology at Drew University. His other publications include Reading Karl Barth: Theology That Cuts Both Ways and Risking Proclamation, Respecting Difference: Christian Faith, Imperialistic Discourse, and Abraham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

The philosophy of deconstruction, most famously pushed forward by Jacques Derrida, has left an undeniable dent on contemporary thought, and even religion has found itself in deconstruction's sights, with Church, faith and even God put under philosophical scrutiny. But is this a one-way street, or is there something faith might teach deconstruction? This way of framing the relation is itself questionable, since deconstruction itself is an indifferent, impersonal force, something that simply happens as part of reality, but this gives it a certain seduction for theorists who don't simply want to bear witness to it's work but to master it as a tool, wielding it as they please, unwittingly falling into the very sort of traps deconstruction often unravels. This is one of the main ideas Chris Boesel wants to remind us of with his new book, In Kierkegaard's Garden With the Poppy Blooms: Why Derrida Doesn't Read Kierkegaard When He Reads Kierkegaard (Fortress Academic, 2021). Written as part academic monograph, part dialogue between a philosophy professor and theology student, the book stages a confrontation between Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and Derrida's The Gift of Death, where he claims to draw deconstructive lessons from Abraham's famous ‘leap of faith', although Boesel finds the lessons he draws questionable. In fact, Boesel contends, Derrida doesn't seem to have read the text at all! Derrida, renowned for his capacity to find the smallest cracks on the margins and in between the lines of philosophical and literary texts, blatantly misses many of the actual points Kierkegaard was trying to make, and in doing so illustrates the uniqueness of Kierkegaard's inquiries into the nature of faith and subjectivity. In critically analyzing Derrida's work, Boesel finds opportunity to remind us of what deconstruction can (and can't!) do in animating commitments for justice, while also suggesting that a Kierkegaardian faith may offer a more productive possibility for thinking through those same commitments. Chris Boesel is an associate professor of theology at Drew University. His other publications include Reading Karl Barth: Theology That Cuts Both Ways and Risking Proclamation, Respecting Difference: Christian Faith, Imperialistic Discourse, and Abraham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

The philosophy of deconstruction, most famously pushed forward by Jacques Derrida, has left an undeniable dent on contemporary thought, and even religion has found itself in deconstruction's sights, with Church, faith and even God put under philosophical scrutiny. But is this a one-way street, or is there something faith might teach deconstruction? This way of framing the relation is itself questionable, since deconstruction itself is an indifferent, impersonal force, something that simply happens as part of reality, but this gives it a certain seduction for theorists who don't simply want to bear witness to it's work but to master it as a tool, wielding it as they please, unwittingly falling into the very sort of traps deconstruction often unravels. This is one of the main ideas Chris Boesel wants to remind us of with his new book, In Kierkegaard's Garden With the Poppy Blooms: Why Derrida Doesn't Read Kierkegaard When He Reads Kierkegaard (Fortress Academic, 2021). Written as part academic monograph, part dialogue between a philosophy professor and theology student, the book stages a confrontation between Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and Derrida's The Gift of Death, where he claims to draw deconstructive lessons from Abraham's famous ‘leap of faith', although Boesel finds the lessons he draws questionable. In fact, Boesel contends, Derrida doesn't seem to have read the text at all! Derrida, renowned for his capacity to find the smallest cracks on the margins and in between the lines of philosophical and literary texts, blatantly misses many of the actual points Kierkegaard was trying to make, and in doing so illustrates the uniqueness of Kierkegaard's inquiries into the nature of faith and subjectivity. In critically analyzing Derrida's work, Boesel finds opportunity to remind us of what deconstruction can (and can't!) do in animating commitments for justice, while also suggesting that a Kierkegaardian faith may offer a more productive possibility for thinking through those same commitments. Chris Boesel is an associate professor of theology at Drew University. His other publications include Reading Karl Barth: Theology That Cuts Both Ways and Risking Proclamation, Respecting Difference: Christian Faith, Imperialistic Discourse, and Abraham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

The philosophy of deconstruction, most famously pushed forward by Jacques Derrida, has left an undeniable dent on contemporary thought, and even religion has found itself in deconstruction's sights, with Church, faith and even God put under philosophical scrutiny. But is this a one-way street, or is there something faith might teach deconstruction? This way of framing the relation is itself questionable, since deconstruction itself is an indifferent, impersonal force, something that simply happens as part of reality, but this gives it a certain seduction for theorists who don't simply want to bear witness to it's work but to master it as a tool, wielding it as they please, unwittingly falling into the very sort of traps deconstruction often unravels. This is one of the main ideas Chris Boesel wants to remind us of with his new book, In Kierkegaard's Garden With the Poppy Blooms: Why Derrida Doesn't Read Kierkegaard When He Reads Kierkegaard (Fortress Academic, 2021). Written as part academic monograph, part dialogue between a philosophy professor and theology student, the book stages a confrontation between Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and Derrida's The Gift of Death, where he claims to draw deconstructive lessons from Abraham's famous ‘leap of faith', although Boesel finds the lessons he draws questionable. In fact, Boesel contends, Derrida doesn't seem to have read the text at all! Derrida, renowned for his capacity to find the smallest cracks on the margins and in between the lines of philosophical and literary texts, blatantly misses many of the actual points Kierkegaard was trying to make, and in doing so illustrates the uniqueness of Kierkegaard's inquiries into the nature of faith and subjectivity. In critically analyzing Derrida's work, Boesel finds opportunity to remind us of what deconstruction can (and can't!) do in animating commitments for justice, while also suggesting that a Kierkegaardian faith may offer a more productive possibility for thinking through those same commitments. Chris Boesel is an associate professor of theology at Drew University. His other publications include Reading Karl Barth: Theology That Cuts Both Ways and Risking Proclamation, Respecting Difference: Christian Faith, Imperialistic Discourse, and Abraham. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

Dr Nadav Prawer joins Josh for the first part on 1996's Hogfather, examining Susan's character development, her contrasts to Teatime, the nature of justice, the power of belief, falling angels, rising apes, Kierkegaardian existentialism, lies to children and the possible psychological (and legal!) ramifications of believing in the tooth fairy.* *All jingling bell sounds in the background are indicative of cats, not the encroachment of any Verruca Gnomes. I hope...  Contact: unseenacademicalspod@gmail.com Support: patreon.com/unseenacademicals

For the twenty-fourth episode of the Integral Stage's Author Series, Layman sits down with the very animated, Adyahanzi, to talk about his latest book, Emergentism, which he co-authored with that rather sneaky post-Kierkegaardian writer, Brendan Graham Dempsey. As a cave-dwelling hermit, Adyahanzi doesn't get out much -- you might be able to tell that from his unkempt beard and his enthusiastic oracular bursts -- but he's found a good listener in Layman, and soon spills all the book's secrets. "The new sciences of complexity have completely revolutionized our understanding of the universe as well as our place in it. At a time when nihilism and meaninglessness are affecting more people than ever, the new cosmic story of complexification comes as a genuine revelation. Evolution, we now know, is not some senseless meandering, but part of an ever-deepening learning process by which the universe is waking up to itself. And, as highly complex, conscious beings, we have a unique role to play in this cosmic drama." Emergentism book: https://www.amazon.com/Emergentism-Religion-Complexity-Metamodern-Spirituality/dp/B0BF28PC2L/ Brendan Graham Dempsey is a writer whose work focuses on the meaning crisis and the nature of spirituality in metamodernity. He earned his BA in Religious Studies from the University of Vermont and his MA in Religion and the Arts from Yale University. He lives in Wolcott, Vermont. Professional website: www.BrendanGrahamDempsey.com

"The opposite of sin is faith in which one responds, you might say, appropriately to the call that comes to one. So faith is a kind of response. Faith is a passion. It requires grace. It requires divine assistance."Episode description:If there would be a Christian type of depth psychology, a part of its foundation would most likely be founded on the insights about the human self articulated by Danish Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). Our guest in this episode, Professor C. Stephen Evans, has not only imagined but also articulated important parts of the foundations of such a Christian psychology of depth in his book Søren Kierkegaard's Christian psychology - Insights for counseling and pastoral care. In this episode, Dr. Evans helps us outline Kierkegaard's view of the human self and his understanding of anxiety, despair, and self-deception's role in psychological development. He helps us understand how conscience and sin relate to individual psychology in Kierkegaard's psychology. Perhaps most importantly, he shows us how love and forgiveness are the foundations of a Kierkegaardian practice of depth psychology.  Dr. Evans is a world-leading expert on Søren Kierkegaard. He is a Professor of University Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Baylor University, Waco, Texas. A professorial research fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Society at the University of Notre Dame in Sydney, Australia. He has also published extensively on subjects including philosophy of religion and the relationship of psychology and Christianity. His latest book is Kierkegaard and spirituality: Accountability as the Meaning of Human Existence (Kierkegaard as a Christian thinker).Music played in this episode is licensed under creativecommons.org: Ketsa - No light without darkness, Essence and Reborn.

Søren Kierkegaard is one of the most talked about philosophical figures in history, and for good reason. His views, although subversive, are not held anywhere near that of other subversives such as Marx or Machiavelli, (even though he touches on many of the same subjects). Kierkegaard's philosophy on humanities place in the world is especially interesting, and in todays episode I give a roundabout explanation of how we fit in the Kierkegaardian landscape. RoRo & co.™ Join me: The Website: https://www.podpage.com/a-social-experiment/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkw9k2H2CDhDxCxSrJjAfUw Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asocialexperiment._/ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/13wYI8AEohRihpR9WrBLWx?si=595e5e625c26479e Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-social-experiment/id1612177000 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/6560a7b2-98f3-49db-b603-73d969d2864c/a-social-experiment Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/A-Social-Experiment-Podcast/B09W7PFBG8 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asocialexperiment/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asocialexperiment/support

On December 11th, 2006, in a beautiful little town in Italy, two men were out for a walk when they noticed a fire in a nearby second story apartment window. They quickly ran up the outside stairs to get to that apartment, but when they reached it and looked through the open front door, they froze, because what they saw was nothing short of a nightmare. Today's story is about the "Erba Massacre" and it is extremely graphic, upsetting, and it involves harm to a child, so listener discretion is advised. For 100s more stories like this one, check out my YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallen If you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @MrBallen SPOILERS BELOW THIS POINT: . . . . Main Sources: 1. The Guardian -- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jan/13/italy.mainsection 2. Reuters -- https://jp.reuters.com/article/us-italy-murders-idUSTRE4AP6VE20081126 3. Shock confession -- https://www.corriere.it/english/articoli/2007/01_Gennaio/12/erba.shtml 4. Schematic of the crime scene -- http://www1.lastampa.it/redazione/cmsSezioni/infografica/200802articoli/30227girata.asp 5. Italy ponders the crime -- https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/italy-ponders-lessons-of-killers-next-door-case.29812 6. BBC world news -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6255433.stm 7. Italian news site -- https://cultura.biografieonline.it/quer-pasticciaccio/ 8. Kierkegaardian choice of evil -- https://another-fucking-madman.tumblr.com/post/154640238973/la-strage-di-erba-erba-massacre-erba-italy-11 9. Repubblica -- https://www.repubblica.it/2007/01/sezioni/cronaca/erba-ris/erba-legale-azouz/erba-legale-azouz.html 10. Ciao como newspaper -- https://www.ciaocomo.it/2013/12/11/11-dicembre-2006-erba-cerca-di-dimenticare/32077/ 11. Ciao como newspaper: various -- https://www.ciaocomo.it/tag/strage-erba/ 12. Scotsman newspaper -- https://www.scotsman.com/news/world/couple-trial-murders-over-noise-next-door-2508751 13. Wikipedia in translation -- https://it-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Strage_di_Erba?_x_tr_sl=it&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp 14. Reflections on the massacre -- https://traccesent.com/2007/01/11/la-strage-di-erba/ 15. Weather -- https://www.wunderground.com/history/daily/it/erba/LSZA/date/2007-12-11

If ever in the past two years you were sent screenshots of dubious studies about vaccine safety and were unsure how to describe its dubiousness, this episode is for you. What is correlation, and is it the same as causation?? What is a randomized double-blind control trial and why is it important? What is causality? What is not an experiment? Lest we forget, this episode is centred around the Mads Mikkelsen tour-de-force, Another Round, which features its own dubious study on alcohol consumption and a dance scene for the ages. Freda and Abi descend into difficult territory around Kierkegaardian philosophy, male wellness and alcohol abuse, and, after months of MCU squabbling, finally land on a mutual understanding of each other's relationship with film. .Alcohol, bad!. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Matt has teased with the philosophy before but this episode is all-in with a somehow not too literal reading of the title of Elliott Smith's heartbreaking 1997 album, Either/Or. After giving a quick foundation for Kierkegaardian analysis - out of care for your intro to philosophy course as well - Matt traces the legacy of Smith and the presence of Kierkegaard's existentialism through two (massive) personal favorites: The National's High Violet and Frightened Rabbit's The Midnight Organ Fight. Kierkegaard often guides us to consider anxiety and Matt definitely felt some while Tim was choosing the winner…

On this week's Fabulous Film & Friends our roundtable will be completing the second part of a matched set we started with last episode's discussion of Joel and Ethan Coen's Hudsucker Proxy, as we review their other lavish, 1950's-set extravaganza, 2016's Hail Caesar!.  Returning for this thrilling follow up is a name over 200 podcast listeners trust, my younger sister Roseanne Caputi.  Then there's the most doggedly truth-seeking pediatric dentist ever to set up shop in Salt Lake City, David Johnson, DMD.  And back again in the official Paul Lynde Center Square is Actor, Voice Artist, photobug and funnyman, GORDON ALEX ROBERTSON! Hail Caesar! follows a day in the life of Hollywood Studio fixer Eddie Mannix as he shepherds a menagerie of actors, directors, and publicity hounds, keeping them out of trouble, motivated and happy during several productions in the studio's line up. Meanwhile on the set of Mannix's most expensive endeavor, a Tale of the Christ also entitled Hail Caesar, lead actor Baird Whitlock has been kidnapped by a group of Communists. And on a personal level, the scrupulous Mannix struggles with lying to his wife about his cigarette habit and must decide whether he will leave the chaos of Capitol Studios for the greener pastures of a cushy, serious-minded job at Lockheed Martin.  As with Hudsucker Proxy, I first saw the film in less-than-ideal circumstances: on a plane bound for India in the summer of 2016, after missing the film in theaters once again-- something I rarely do with Coen Brothers movies. It should be noted that I missed two of their most visually spectacular films on the big screen and seeing Hail Caesar! amidst the din and flight attendants' interruptions of a plane voyage, I lost a lot of lines and nuance of the film, and yet I still loved it. Upon first seeing it, I declared on social media that you couldn't find a more Catholic message of self-sacrifice and mortification in a mainstream Hollywood film  than if the film was bankrolled by the Vatican itself.   Another  voice in the roundtable couldn't  help but notice a strong Kierkegaardian/existentialist worldview to this largely ignored and/or dismissed film and we all delve into the significance of the story as presented.What's the lowdown on the street? Find out!#hailcaesar!#joshbrolin#hollywood#fabulousfilmandfriendsNote: Actor Max Baker played the lead Communist in Hail Caesar! I mistakenly guessed his name was Mark Baker in the podcast. Either way, a fantastic performance. 

On this week's annotated deep dive, The Cultists present Terrence Malick's ‘Knight of Cups' (2015). Often regarded as a particularly “tough watch” (even by those who enjoy the film), Cups is a slow and mangled feast of images that will delight some and utterly baffle others. Adding to the challenge is that grasping the more concrete structure of the film demands a familiarity with a rather eclectic back catalogue of source materials that range from a working knowledge of the tarot's major arcana, to John Bunyan's 17th century allegorical novel, a spattering of gnostic hymns, and the regret-fueled works of Kierkegaard. And all this to tell what is essentially the lead-up to the beginning of a story that we don't even get to see. In other words, this film is incredibly cruel. But it's also beautiful. Deep Dive's Include: The film's production and the truly unique filming strategies of Terrence Malick; The adapted source material of The Pilgrim's Progress and The Hymn of the Pearl; Gnosticism (or why everyone is stuck in the water when they really just want to get closer to the sky); The Knight of Cups and the film's other Tarot chapter cards; existential angst and other Kierkegaardian philosophy; the statistical likelihood of an earthquake wiping out Los Angeles, and why, according to one of the film's selected source materials, Christian Bale's "Rick" is the lesser, memory-addled and drugged-up twin brother of Jesus…. Maybe. Episode safe word: “clarity”

Jon and Paul continue their discussion of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by linking his thought to a development of the thought of Søren Kierkegaard, meaning that religionless Christianity is linked to a critique of Christendom, and cheap and costly grace, worldliness, and obedience are all also Kierkegaardian concepts developed by Bonhoeffer. Become a Patron! If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider donating to support our work.

Bruce Alderman, Layman Pascal, & Gregg Henriques continue their trialogue on the meaning and promise of a sacred or sophianic naturalism for our time. In this second episode, they reflect on the relevance of insights from "The Elusive I" & "An 'I' for an Elusive I" discussions for this project, and the relation of John Vervaeke's and Gregg's models to evolutionary spirituality; the meaning and significance of 'sacred' in sacred naturalism; the notion of sacred materialism or 'matarealism'; Gregg's justification systems theory and Kierkegaardian or Zen trans-justificatory stages of development; the importance and nature of centauric development, and the contrast of the centaur (or satyr) and the minotaur; guidelines for a sacred naturalist education; and much more.

There's so much to get into with the couture wars and all the damage caused by dishonest extremists on every side of this toxic debate. There are types of racial discrimination that we can discuss but these trolls refuse to discuss honestly. I gave them the floor for about two hours to do so and they didn't get anywhere. I left some links below to more info. I would love to get more into this important issue carefully if anyone would like to do so honestly. Here is more info on what happened when I recorded this in April and some of the background. https://www.buzzsprout.com/1231739/8447908-propertarianism-cult-kool-aid-warning-do-not-drink-it-trigger-warningsThe main clip in this bonus was from last year, https://www.buzzsprout.com/1231739/7011202 and was originally recorded on Boonn's podcast Far Out Wisdom.If you are considering to accuse me of something I didn't say or do, please read this first,https://medium.com/rebel-wisdom/sensemaking-gatekeeping-talking-with-fascists-fda652608f0eAnd watch,https://youtu.be/2p7_kncFQLw  This was an interview with David Fuller from Rebel wisdom where you can see Brandon doing exactly as we warned against, drop buzz words, big names, say big sounding ideas, complain about something everyone can have issue with like political lairs then insert fundamentalist ideology while denying it.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejQB6opBJIQThey do the same thing even with themselves, it's the ideology that takes over and they become only a conduit for that,https://youtu.be/ID6Td0EwLrsThis is the podcast they did that I took that clip from at the end of this bonus episode,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7KY6MvAp1s&t=2659sYou are free to view the cult information on their website about white separatism and other horrible ideas I don't want to spend much more time on.April was discussing what the propertarian leader did last summer than caused them to start falling apart. Anyone in the conversation who hasn't gotten seduced, has caught onto their circular code language. It's hard to find videos on YouTube about it because they get banned  or shadow banned, but it was mainly this,https://youtu.be/oAzu7RWO_fIIf you want to learn more about the deceptive ways cult movements work, I recommend this short work by Carl Jung:https://www.buzzsprout.com/1231739/5653621Here's a couple quotes from another important book on the subject,“This is Rank's devastating Kierkegaardian conclusion: if neurosis is sin, and not disease, then the only thing which can “cure” it is a world-view, some kind of affirmative collective ideology in which the person can perform the living drama of his acceptance as a creature. Only in this way can the neurotic come out of his isolation to become part of such a larger and higher wholeness as religion has always represented.”Ernest Becker“Man is a “theological being,” concludes Rank, and not a biological one. In all this it is as though Tillich were speaking and, behind him, Kierkegaard and Augustine; but what makes it uncanny in the present world of science is that these are the conclusions of the life-work of a psychoanalyst, not a theologian.”FromThe Denial of DeathErnest BeckerSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/Dailyarchetype)

The main clip in this bonus was from last year, https://www.buzzsprout.com/1231739/7011202 and was originally recorded on Boonn's podcast Far Out Wisdom.If you are considering to accuse me of something I didn't say or do, please read this first,https://medium.com/rebel-wisdom/sensemaking-gatekeeping-talking-with-fascists-fda652608f0eAnd watch,https://youtu.be/2p7_kncFQLw  This was an interview with David Fuller from Rebel wisdom where you can see Brandon doing exactly as we warned against, drop buzz words, big names, say big sounding ideas, complain about something everyone can have issue with like political lairs then insert fundamentalist ideology while denying it.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejQB6opBJIQThey do the same thing even with themselves, it's the ideology that takes over and they become only a conduit for that,https://youtu.be/ID6Td0EwLrsThis is the podcast they did that I took that clip from at the end of this bonus episode,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7KY6MvAp1s&t=2659sYou are free to view the cult information on their website about white separatism and other horrible ideas I don't want to spend much more time on.April was discussing what the propertarian leader did last summer than caused them to start falling apart. Anyone in the conversation who hasn't gotten seduced, has caught onto their circular code language. It's hard to find videos on YouTube about it because they get banned  or shadow banned, but it was mainly this,https://youtu.be/oAzu7RWO_fIIf you want to learn more about the deceptive ways cult movements work, I recommend this short work by Carl Jung:https://www.buzzsprout.com/1231739/5653621Here's a couple quotes from another important book on the subject,“This is Rank's devastating Kierkegaardian conclusion: if neurosis is sin, and not disease, then the only thing which can “cure” it is a world-view, some kind of affirmative collective ideology in which the person can perform the living drama of his acceptance as a creature. Only in this way can the neurotic come out of his isolation to become part of such a larger and higher wholeness as religion has always represented.”Ernest Becker“Man is a “theological being,” concludes Rank, and not a biological one. In all this it is as though Tillich were speaking and, behind him, Kierkegaard and Augustine; but what makes it uncanny in the present world of science is that these are the conclusions of the life-work of a psychoanalyst, not a theologian.”FromThe Denial of DeathErnest BeckerJoin the discussion on the FB grouphttps://www.facebook.com/groups/dailyarchetype/Also DailyArchetype on IGMusic (Three kinds of Sun) by Norma Rockwell and the theme by studio star gazer, with voices by:  Eli Harris, Katrice Beal, Annie Phung and Allison Drew (not in that order). Support on Venmo @isaac-Miller-83Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/Dailyarchetype)

Alienation and Courage. Let us not invent additional troubles for ourselves. Kierkegaardian maxims for power and presence in our daily lives. Turning our backs on "next day" abstractions, which can only clutter the divine proportionality. In spite of our tremendous "alienation" from American culture and institutions, we may find answers in calm courage. Describing the Leap of Faith required. Rising to "the task of the age," a la Solzhenitsyn. The Example of Trump. MAGA is The Way. We sample the CPAC speech of Sen. Josh Hawley, steadfast in the storm. Meanwhile, GOPe David Perdue decides to leave politics after losing Trump's support. Chalk up one less RINO. Additional notes on the hapless Liz Cheney. Plus, a lofty chat with a psychologist. The sequelae of alienation. With Listener Calls & Music via Miranda Lambert and Elastica. Sacred Song from Ernest Tubb. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, I develop some minor details of an apologetic method which finds inspiration from the writings of Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). Enjoy!

We finished Guards Guards! So, obviously what you all wanted was for us to use this book as a jumping off point to talk about communism for like an hour, which is what we did. Topics include: rocket dragons, fried food, Kierkegaardian existentialism. Happy Glorious 25th of May!

Svend Brinkmann was living a quiet life as a professor of psychology in Denmark when one of his nonfiction books became a surprise bestseller. Stand Firm: Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze argues against trendy self-help psychology that emphasizes self-esteem and personal growth. Brinkmann also wrote Standpoints: 10 Old Ideas in a New World, which features quotes from key figures ranging from Aristotle to Hannah Arendt. His latest book is The Joy of Missing Out, which the Financial Times described as “designed to liberate us from over-stimulated modern lives through the old fashioned ideas of restraint and moderation." This print interview has been edited, condensed, and annotated. Stephen Harrison: So what quote are we chatting about today? Svend Brinkmann: I’ve chosen a quote by Søren Kierkegaard, who was a Dane like myself. The quote is very short but also quite complex, so we need to unpack it. It goes like this: “The self is a relation that relates to itself.” That’s the short version that’s actually part of a much longer context. You include both this short version and the long version in your book Standpoints. Can you tell us a bit about the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard? He lived in the mid-19th century, the so-called Golden Age of Denmark. And he’s considered the grandfather of existentialism, this idea that we are free in our lives and we live with death, finitude, as our existential horizon, and [therefore] we should live in an authentic way and try to take responsibility for our lives. Later existentialists were typically atheists, like Jean-Paul Sartre in France in the 20th century. But Kierkegaard was a Christian thinker. He developed a complex philosophy. Complex is the sense that he wrote through pseudonyms. So he would take different existential positions on life’s issues: an aesthetic position, an ethical position, and a religious position, for example. It’s very much up to the reader to figure out for oneself the question of “How am I going to live my life?” Kierkegaard never really provides definite answers, but instead poses questions and challenges the reader to think for one’s self. I think that’s common for philosophers, posing questions without answers. That’s true! I would add that although I called him the grandfather of existentialism, I think that needs to be explained, because he was not an existentialist like Sartre or Camus. They saw human beings as completely free. Sartre famously said that existence precedes essence, and this means there is no essence in our humanity or anything that defines us. And Kierkegard would not have agreed with that. He would say there is much that defines me that I haven’t chosen myself. For example: I live in a certain place at a certain time. I’m faced with lots of challenges and demands in my life that I cannot turn my back on. But what I can choose is how to face reality. I cannot define myself but I can choose to choose myself, if you will. The quote is “The self is a relation that relates to itself.” I wondered about the translation of the word “relation” from the original by Kierkegaard. In Danish, we actually do have a word, relation which is equivalent of course to relation. But that’s not the word that Kierkegaard was using. The word in Danish is forhold. I think that adds an important dimension to what he was trying to say. Relation is a neutral concept. We can talk about a relation between apples and pears—it’s just a neutral connection between things. But forhold denotes something more active. It’s more like a task. You have to relate to yourself. That’s important because Kierkegaard is trying to say that being a self is not simply something that happens. It’s a process, yes, but it’s a process in which you are actively engaged as a self. It’s a task. It’s a job. It’s something that is demanded of you. It’s not a passive relation. It’s an active way of forming a relationship, you could say, to the relation itself. I was a bit surprised that you picked this quote because a lot of your work criticizes the self-help movement. And yet you picked a quote that’s about the self! How is the version of the self that is described in the quote different?   That’s a very good question. It’s true that I've been very critical of the way that the self functions in modern society. We are supposed to realize our inner true selves, be the best version of ourselves, and engage in constant self-development. So we talk a lot about the self. We put “self” before almost any positive word and it becomes even more positive. One should have self-esteem.  I see this as a symptom of a narcisstic culture in which we relate in a way to ourselves all the time and are told to do so. What about Kierkegaard? He also talks about relating to “the self.” But I think his approach to the self is different. In a way it’s an impersonal self. When he says that the self is a relation that relates to itself, he doesn't talk about a private self; he talks about the common human capacity for self-reflection, which is a good thing. For Kierkegaard, the self is a process. It’s in a way a conversation one has with oneself. And this process, this reflection, this conversation can only be had because there are other people in the world and in my life who have taught me how to do this. I first relate to other people. As a small child, I don’t have a self in the Kierkegaardian sense. I relate to the world. I have needs. But I don’t reflect on my needs. I only do that later, once I have acquired this capacity for self-reflection which I do by relating to others. According to this perspective, the self in Kierkegaard’s sense is not an inner private realm of thoughts and emotions. It’s a process that enables us to reach outwards to other people, to the world. I think this way of thinking may function as an important correction to this whole culture of narcissism where everybody wants to improve on themselves. That’s not at all the point when Kierkegaard talks about the self. The point for him is something more common and shared among human beings. And I think we need to hear this message today. Would people be happier today if they tried to think about the self in the Kierkegaardian sense? Yeah. The sad story today is that whenever people are unhappy, they are told that they just need to be themselves. And we don’t know what it means to be oneself. In my view, it would be much better to tell people to be human. Just aim for what is shared among us. If you’re going to a job interview, and are quite nervous, then your parents or your friends will tell you: “It’s alright. Just be yourself.” But that’s actually the most difficult thing you can do! I don’t think happiness is found within some mysterious realm of an inner private life. I think happiness is found by connecting with the world, connecting with other people, doing meaningful things. Kierkegaard’s conception of the self as a shared conversation might enable us to realize that. Can you expand on that idea of a shared conversation? This is how self-reflection emerges in our lives. The individual reflective self is a secondary product that comes after the way we relate socially to and with others. First, we have interpersonal conversations, and secondly, we internalize that to form a self of our own. I believe this immensely important today in an individualist culture where people think of themselves as little gods who can choose and who believe “happiness is a choice.” Those words are quoted all of the time. But I would say that it would be better if we understood that we are utterly dependent on others, and that our self is only there because of others—that we owe everything in our lives to the relationships that enable us to be our selves. This would give us an outlook of the world that is both truer and also give us a deeper sense of happiness—of belonging to the world. You’re a professor of psychology, but you have degrees in both psychology and philosophy. Do we need to incorporate more concepts from philosophy into modern psychology? Absolutely. For me this is essential. We have, as I see it, a psychologized culture. We use psychology for so many purposes in schools, workplaces, and our private lives. Psychology is of course a legitimate science. It does provide certain tools with which we can improve ourselves, live better lives, and possibly attain some level of happiness. But the problem with psychology, just as any other science, is that it easily forgets values—you know, the whole ethical, normative realm. And we need philosophy and philosophers to remind us of that and find the limits of psychology. Because there are so many questions that psychology cannot answer. Questions about existence, ethics, aesthetics, and politics are still very important—possibly the most important ones in our lives. And I fear that psychology has colonized our self-understanding. It has taught us to think of ourselves as creatures with these inner selves that we should realize or optimize. That’s a very questionable image of human beings, and I think we need a philosophical critique of the popular psychological conception. Philosophy has rarely provided answers. We have sciences to give us answers. But we need philosophy to raise questions, and that means raising questions in response to answers from psychology. Psychology is a young science. It only began in the late 19th century as an empirical investigation of how the mind works. Since then it has grown enormously and influenced how we think about the world in good ways—and in bad. I’m really skeptical about the way that ethics, politics, and so on have been psychologized. For someone new to Kierkegaard, would you have any recommendations on what books to start with. Maybe a simple primer or introductory text? I just admit that I have mainly read Kierkegaard’s original works, and I would actually recommend doing that. They’re not as difficult as people think. To start, I would recommend his book Either/Or. I’m sure there’s a wonderful English translation. It’s quite easy to read. It has two parts. First, you are presented with the aesthetic outlook on life, and then you are presented with the ethical outlook on life. I don’t think Kierkegaard wanted to say that one is right and the other is wrong. The job you have as a reader is to balance the two. Written by Stephen Harrison. Read the full article at Notes on Quotes.

How Leah realized that she should not "be herself" ... The mental health benefits of getting a dog ... Leah: We must bring back Kierkegaardian irony ... Leah on the scourge of "urgent earnestness" ... Is it ethical to not read the news? ... Leah's reflections on being "a year Twitter sober" ... Lessons from the great "horseface" controversy of 2018 ...

John & @sttheosaurusrex talk about how God can give us experience without experiencing, Kierkegaardian metaphysics convos, teaching science, meaningless numbers, liking what your supposed to like, the importance of art in illustrating abstract concepts, creativity & randomness, bringing back toodle-oo, new idioms, I can’t stand your friends, worldliness, people who say what we want to hear, Cannibis on the worship team, worshiping to remember who you are, % of our mores, Biblical fear is an impetus for change, rather than a reason for paralysis and dread, wise and courageous choices becoming second nature, fruits of the spirit, bad moods, and horses vs. Tanks.

Responsible for some of the funniest and most intelligent one-liners in the world, Simon Munnery has a brain like none other. Rarely will you find another comic so enthralled by serving "the idea", whether through Kierkegaardian prose or innovative but unreliable technology. Simon reveals his approach to writing epigrammatic jokes, and Stu gently bullies him into trying harder to get back on TV. Get ad-free new episodes, bonus content from interviews and much more by joining the Insiders Club at www.comedianscomedian.com/insiders@ComComPod | www.comedianscomedian.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode we talk about Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, relating it to the Coen Brothers' film rendition and existentialism. Overview The highway that is No Country for Old Men gets you lost even though the two-lane blacktop never deviates in direction. It’s just that that first wrong turn screwed everything up and turning back now is as impossible as turning back time itself. For those who’ve seen the Coen Brothers film, the novel No Country for Old Men is just as blood-soaked and cerebral as the silver screen ever portrayed it. Only a novelist as commanding as Cormac McCarthy can juxtapose sobering meditations on determinism and entropic decay with brutal tableaus of grisly violence along with their lurid aftermath on the body and soul. Because McCarthy is such a deliberate writer, aiming for palpable precision over entertainment, the violence he depicts is rendered all the more visual, all the more real in its considerations to weighing each word in measurements of time and mass. Violence here is not the murders of a few men, it’s the medical examination of death with the reader bearing witness as if you were pumping gas across the street, the bitter taste of iron in your mouth. Unlike the film, the novel underscores the loneliness of characters like the desperado Llewellyn Moss or the anachronous sheriff Bell ruefully looking back at his past as the future comes slamming at him. These existentialist undercurrents rise up like oceanic groundswells in the hushed moments of a firefight – a Kierkegaardian angst where a bullet between the eyes signifies more than just the end of one’s life. And then there’s the isolated terror of the film’s central antagonist, Chigurh: an entirely human force with an inhuman drive as inexorable as fate itself, whipping between the Texan counties as a sort of grim reaper hellbent on quashing man’s attempts to break away from a system of a demented (or natural) order of power, domination, and inevitability. Perhaps the highlight of the work is McCarthy’s adroit handling of the prose. It’s as if the man is not writing a novel but crafting some sort of austere furnishing for a friend, planing and sanding the wood with a carpenter’s finesse. The words are active and direct, the sentences laid bare as sun-streaked bones, paragraphs with such a strong physical sense they feel as if one can lift them out of the page and place them on a table. As dark as the mood and themes may be, everything is exposed and nothing is hidden, reminding one of what Stephen King once said about horror being a substitute for a far greater horror: the lack of meaning in the everyday. What’s truly frightening about NCFOM is how McCarthy redlines inhumanity not in Vietnam or Darfur but in the mid-afternoon sun of the American Heartland, the perfect setting for a case study in fate, violence, and meaning for our time. -Jordan Finn Further reading/listening Partially Examined Life podcast http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2012/09/21/ep63-cormac-mccarthy/ New York Times review http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/books/review/no-country-for-old-men-texas-noir.html?_r=0 Music on this episode was produced by Piecemeal, a track named "Chartreuse."

We're all Kierkegaardians, whether we know it or not. So why not hear 5 reasons to let Soren salt your theological grub. Stephen Backhouse, author of the new Kierkegaard biography, Kierkegaard: A Single Life, give us five reasons to embrace our Kierkegaardian inheritance. Why go Kierkegaard? There is not school or church of Kierkegaard. He made sure that there could not be. Instead, he is the salt to your steak, the pepper to the sauce, the lemon zest to the beer. Kierkegaard will: help you find the point help you articulate what the !£%$ is wrong with Christianity in your country help you articulate what the !£%$ is right with Christianity in your country help you become a person help you become a better person Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re all Kierkegaardians, whether we know it or not. So why not hear 5 reasons to let Soren salt your theological grub. Stephen Backhouse, author of the new Kierkegaard biography, Kierkegaard: A Single Life, give us five reasons to embrace our Kierkegaardian inheritance. Why go Kierkegaard? There is not school or church of Kierkegaard. He made sure… Read more about Why Go Kierkegaard? with Stephen Backhouse

Philip Dodd examines A Crisis of Brilliance a new exhibition at London's Dulwich Picture gallery with the curator David Boyd-Haycock. As Turkey's anti-government protest continues, Elif Shafak, Karl Sharro and Professor Benjamin Fortna, explore the underlying reasons for civil society's dissatisfactions. Sarah Dillon is one of this year's New Generation Thinkers and her column is on the role of analogy in science. Søren Kierkegaard, the grandfather of existentialism, was also a sophisticated humourist. Philip is joined by theologian George Pattison and the Danish comedian Claus Damgaard for a Kierkegaardian lesson in freedom.