Podcasts about Memento mori

It's been said that Muriel Spark's career was not so much a life as a plot, and she did indeed repeatedly reinvent herself, closing one chapter of her life and opening another, regardless of how many friends and business associates she abandoned along the way. This month the Slightly Foxed team were joined by Muriel Spark's biographer Martin Stannard, and Spark enthusiast Emily Rhodes of Emily's Walking Book Club, to discuss the work of this highly original and somewhat forgotten writer and learn how Muriel first invited Martin to write her biography and then did her best to prevent it seeing the light of day. Born in 1918, Muriel grew up in a working class family in Edinburgh – the setting for her most famous novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which was based on a charismatic teacher at her own school. At the age of 19 she closed that chapter of her life by marrying an older maths teacher, Sydney Oswald Spark, known (appropriately) thereafter as SOS, and going with him to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where their son Robin was born. Unfortunately it soon became obvious that Sydney had severe psychiatric problems and in 1943 Muriel left husband and son and returned to London where she began her career as a novelist. Several times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and much admired by Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene, Muriel produced 22 novels, most of them drawing on events in her own life. Everyone at the Slightly Foxed table had their favourites, including The Girls of Slender Means, A Far Cry from Kensington, Loitering with Intent, and Memento Mori, a clear eyed and also very funny look at old age. Everyone agreed on the brilliance of her writing with its dark humour, preoccupation with the supernatural and with the presence of evil in unlikely places. Her life was equally fascinating, moving from poverty to great wealth and success, and from the shabbier parts of London to intellectual life in New York centred on The New Yorker magazine, to which she became a contributor. In 1954 she was received into the Roman Catholic church and for some time she lived in Rome, relishing the glitter of Italian high society, finally settling in Tuscany with her friend Penelope Jardine, where she died in 2005. Summer reading recommendations included Caledonian Road by Andrew O'Hagan, Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson, Homework by Geoff Dyer and Of Thorn and Briar by Paul Lamb. Martin also praised Electric Spark, the new – and very different – biography of Muriel Spark by Frances Wilson. For episode show notes, please see the Slightly Foxed website. Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No. 3 in E Major by Bach Hosted by Rosie Goldsmith Produced by Philippa Goodrich

The most misunderstood Stoic practice is Memento Mori - remember you will die. Dr. Laurie Santos, an expert on the science of happiness, joins Ryan to share the research behind why thinking about your mortality is proven to increase happiness. Dr. Laurie shares how to balance negative and positive visualizations for a fulfilling life, the Stoic practices that she swears by, and practical applications of Stoic and Buddhist teachings. Dr. Laurie Santos is an expert on the science of happiness and the ways in which our minds lie to us about what makes us happy. Her Yale course, “Psychology and the Good Life,” teaches students how the science of psychology can provide important hints about how to make wiser choices and live a life that's happier and more fulfilling. The class became Yale's most popular course in over 300 years, with almost one out of four students enrolled. Her course has been featured in the New York Times, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, GQ Magazine, Slate and O! Magazine. The online version of the class—The Science of Well-Being on Coursera.org—has attracted more than 4 million learners from around the world. A winner of numerous awards both for her science and teaching, she was recently voted as one of Popular Science Magazine's “Brilliant 10” young minds, and was named in Time Magazine as a “Leading Campus Celebrity.” Listen to Dr. Laurie's podcast, The Happiness Lab, where she shares the latest scientific research on what it means to be truly happy. Check out more of Dr. Laurie's work at DrLaurieSantos.com and follow her Instagram @LaurieSantosOfficial, X @LaurieSantos, and on YouTube and TikTok @DrLaurieSantos

Einon's Journal Summary: As we worked our way through our trials, both parties encountered a fair amount of heart break. Maxine revealed some broken sections of the Core. Kade attempted a leap of linguistics. I did my best to recover pieces of a broken man's past. Through sweat and tears, we pressed onward. ------ Content Warning: Language ------ You can support The Critshow through our Patreon to get more weekly TTRPG Actual Play content, access to our discord community, and much more! Follow The Critshow on twitter, join our subreddit, and follow us on Instagram.  Get two free MotW mysteries and some Keeper tips from Rev by signing up on our website!  Check out what's coming up on our monthly publication calendar. And don't forget to check out our wonderful sponsors! This episode of The Critshow featured Megan as Maxine Hollis, Rev as Arkady Atwater, Tass as Einon Kerning, and Jake as the GM This episode was edited and produced by Brandon (Rev) Wentz with music by Jake Pierle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week's episode of the Jewellers Academy podcast, host Elin Horgan is joined by Hannah Royce-Greensill, founder of Slab Jewellery, whose path to becoming a full-time jeweller began in an unexpected place, freelance web design. Hannah shares how she balanced both careers in the early stages, using her digital skills to support herself while slowly and steadily growing her jewellery business. Hannah opens up about the power of being bold in growing her jewellery business and how a single, heartfelt Instagram post about her dream to be stocked at Clifton Rocks in Bristol led to real-world results. With guidance on refining her collection and setting pricing with stockists in mind, Hannah began transforming her creative passion into a sustainable, professional business. We also dive into her unique approach to events and selling. Rather than traditional craft fairs, Hannah found success in alternative spaces like tattoo conventions, where her hand-carved skulls and spiky designs resonate deeply with the crowd. She shares how travelling to new cities has helped her build a following and forge lasting connections. Even without formal training, Hannah's journey shows how belief in your work, customer engagement, and smart business planning can fuel a thriving jewellery brand.   About Slab Jewellery Handmade gothic jewellery with attitude. From chunky signet skull rings and dagger charm earrings to bone necklaces and spiked stacking rings, each piece of SLAB Jewellery is crafted in Bristol, using low-impact recycled silver and gold. Inspired by historic Memento Mori jewellery, SLAB Jewellery creates perfect gifts and arresting adornments for those who aren't afraid to express their individuality. Website: https://www.slabjewellery.com/ Instagram: @slab_jewellery   Ready to grow your own business? Check out our Jewellery Business Academy.  A 1-Year group training & mentoring programme with monthly content, accountability calls and one to one mentoring. Click the link to find out more. https://www.jewellersacademy.com/the-jewellery-business-academy

Frances Wilson has written biographies of Dorothy Wordsworth, Thomas De Quincey, D.H. Lawrence, and, most recently, Muriel Spark. I thought Electric Spark was excellent. In my review, I wrote: “Wilson has done far more than string the facts together. She has created a strange and vivid portrait of one of the most curious of twentieth century novelists.” In this interview, we covered questions like why Thomas De Quincey is more widely read, why D.H. Lawrence's best books aren't his novels, Frances's conversion to spookiness, what she thinks about a whole range of modern biographers, literature and parasocial relationships, Elizabeth Bowen, George Meredith, and plenty about Muriel Spark.Here are two brief extracts. There is a full transcript below.Henry: De Quincey and Lawrence were the people you wrote about before Muriel Spark, and even though they seem like three very different people, but in their own way, they're all a little bit mad, aren't they?Frances: Yes, that is, I think, something that they have in common. It's something that I'm drawn to. I like writing about difficult people. I don't think I could write about anyone who wasn't difficult. I like difficult people in general. I like the fact that they pose a puzzle and they're hard to crack, and that their difficulty is laid out in their work and as a code. I like tackling really, really stubborn personalities as well. Yes, they were all a bit mad. The madness was what fuelled their journeys without doubt.Henry: This must make it very hard as a biographer. Is there always a code to be cracked, or are you sometimes dealing with someone who is slippery and protean and uncrackable?And.Henry: People listening will be able to tell that Spark is a very spooky person in several different ways. She had what I suppose we would call spiritual beliefs to do with ghosts and other sorts of things. You had a sort of conversion of your own while writing this book, didn't you?Frances: Yes, I did. [laughs] Every time I write a biography, I become very, very, very immersed in who I'm writing about. I learned this from Richard Holmes, who I see as a method biographer. He Footsteps his subjects. He becomes his subjects. I think I recognized when I first read Holmes's Coleridge, when I was a student, that this was how I also wanted to live. I wanted to live inside the minds of the people that I wrote about, because it was very preferable to live inside my own mind. Why not live inside the mind of someone really, really exciting, one with genius?What I felt with Spark wasn't so much that I was immersed by-- I wasn't immersed by her. I felt actually possessed by her. I think this is the Spark effect. I think a lot of her friends felt like this. I think that her lovers possibly felt like this. There is an extraordinary force to her character, which absolutely lives on, even though she's dead, but only recently dead. The conversion I felt, I think, was that I have always been a very enlightenment thinker, very rational, very scientific, very Freudian in my approach to-- I will acknowledge the unconscious but no more.By the time I finished with Spark, I'm pure woo-woo now.TranscriptHenry: Today, I am talking to Frances Wilson. Frances is a biographer. Her latest book, Electric Spark, is a biography of the novelist Muriel Spark, but she has also written about Dorothy Wordsworth, Thomas De Quincey, DH Lawrence and others. Frances, welcome.Frances Wilson: Thank you so much for having me on.Henry: Why don't more people read Thomas De Quincey's work?Frances: [laughs] Oh, God. We're going right into the deep end.[laughter]Frances: I think because there's too much of it. When I chose to write about Thomas De Quincey, I just followed one thread in his writing because Thomas De Quincey was an addict. One of the things he was addicted to was writing. He wrote far, far, far too much. He was a professional hack. He was a transcendental hack, if you like, because all of his writing he did while on opium, which made the sentences too long and too high and very, very hard to read.When I wrote about him, I just followed his interest in murder. He was fascinated by murder as a fine art. The title of one of his best essays is On Murder as One of the Fine Arts. I was also interested in his relationship with Wordsworth. I twinned those together, which meant cutting out about 97% of the rest of his work. I think people do read his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. I think that's a cult text. It was the memoir, if you want to call it a memoir, that kick-started the whole pharmaceutical memoir business on drugs.It was also the first addict's memoir and the first recovery memoir, and I'd say also the first misery memoir. He's very much at the root of English literary culture. We're all De Quincey-an without knowing it, is my argument.Henry: Oh, no, I fully agree. That's what surprises me, that they don't read him more often.Frances: I know it's a shame, isn't it? Of all the Romantic Circle, he's the one who's the most exciting to read. Also, Lamb is wonderfully exciting to read as well, but Lamb's a tiny little bit more grounded than De Quincey, who was literally not grounded. He's floating in an opium haze above you.[laughter]Henry: What I liked about your book was the way you emphasized the book addiction, not just the opium addiction. It is shocking the way he piled up chests full of books and notebooks, and couldn't get into the room because there were too many books in there. He was [crosstalk].Frances: Yes. He had this in common with Muriel Spark. He was a hoarder, but in a much more chaotic way than Spark, because, as you say, he piled up rooms with papers and books until he couldn't get into the room, and so just rented another room. He was someone who had no money at all. The no money he had went on paying rent for rooms, storing what we would be giving to Oxfam, or putting in the recycling bin. Then he'd forget that he was paying rent on all these rooms filled with his mountains of paper. The man was chaos.Henry: What is D.H. Lawrence's best book?Frances: Oh, my argument about Lawrence is that we've gone very badly wrong in our reading of him, in seeing him primarily as a novelist and only secondarily as an essayist and critic and short story writer, and poet. This is because of F.R. Leavis writing that celebration of him called D.H. Lawrence: Novelist, because novels are not the best of Lawrence. I think the best of his novels is absolutely, without doubt, Sons and Lovers. I think we should put the novels in the margins and put in the centre, the poems, travel writing.Absolutely at the centre of the centre should be his studies in classic American literature. His criticism was- We still haven't come to terms with it. It was so good. We haven't heard all of Lawrence's various voices yet. When Lawrence was writing, contemporaries didn't think of Lawrence as a novelist at all. It was anyone's guess what he was going to come out with next. Sometimes it was a novel [laughs] and it was usually a rant about-- sometimes it was a prophecy. Posterity has not treated Lawrence well in any way, but I think where we've been most savage to him is in marginalizing his best writing.Henry: The short fiction is truly extraordinary.Frances: Isn't it?Henry: I always thought Lawrence was someone I didn't want to read, and then I read the short fiction, and I was just obsessed.Frances: It's because in the short fiction, he doesn't have time to go wrong. I think brevity was his perfect length. Give him too much space, and you know he's going to get on his soapbox and start ranting, start mansplaining. He was a terrible mansplainer. Mansplaining his versions of what had gone wrong in the world. It is like a drunk at the end of a too-long dinner party, and you really want to just bundle him out. Give him only a tiny bit of space, and he comes out with the perfection that is his writing.Henry: De Quincey and Lawrence were the people you wrote about before Muriel Spark, and even though they seem like three very different people, but in their own way, they're all a little bit mad, aren't they?Frances: Yes, that is, I think, something that they have in common. It's something that I'm drawn to. I like writing about difficult people. I don't think I could write about anyone who wasn't difficult. I like difficult people in general. I like the fact that they pose a puzzle and they're hard to crack, and that their difficulty is laid out in their work and as a code. I like tackling really, really stubborn personalities as well. Yes, they were all a bit mad. The madness was what fuelled their journeys without doubt.Henry: This must make it very hard as a biographer. Is there always a code to be cracked, or are you sometimes dealing with someone who is slippery and protean and uncrackable?Frances: I think that the way I approach biography is that there is a code to crack, but I'm not necessarily concerned with whether I crack it or not. I think it's just recognizing that there's a hell of a lot going on in the writing and that, in certain cases and not in every case at all, the best way of exploring the psyche of the writer and the complexity of the life is through the writing, which is a argument for psycho biography, which isn't something I necessarily would argue for, because it can be very, very crude.I think with the writers I choose, there is no option. Muriel Spark argued for this as well. She said in her own work as a biographer, which was really very, very strong. She was a biographer before she became a novelist. She thought hard about biography and absolutely in advance of anyone else who thought about biography, she said, "Of course, the only way we can approach the minds of writers is through their work, and the writer's life is encoded in the concerns of their work."When I was writing about Muriel Spark, I followed, as much as I could, to the letter, her own theories of biography, believing that that was part of the code that she left. She said very, very strong and very definitive things about what biography was about and how to write a biography. I tried to follow those rules.Henry: Can we play a little game where I say the names of some biographers and you tell me what you think of them?Frances: Oh my goodness. Okay.Henry: We're not trying to get you into trouble. We just want some quick opinions. A.N. Wilson.Frances: I think he's wonderful as a biographer. I think he's unzipped and he's enthusiastic and he's unpredictable and he's often off the rails. I think his Goethe biography-- Have you read the Goethe biography?Henry: Yes, I thought that was great.Frances: It's just great, isn't it? It's so exciting. I like the way that when he writes about someone, it's almost as if he's memorized the whole of their work.Henry: Yes.Frances: You don't imagine him sitting at a desk piled with books and having to score through his marginalia. It sits in his head, and he just pours it down on a page. I'm always excited by an A.N. Wilson biography. He is one of the few biographers who I would read regardless of who the subject was.Henry: Yes.Frances: I just want to read him.Henry: He does have good range.Frances: He absolutely does have good range.Henry: Selina Hastings.Frances: I was thinking about Selina Hastings this morning, funnily enough, because I had been talking to people over the weekend about her Sybil Bedford biography and why that hadn't lifted. She wrote a very excitingly good life of Nancy Mitford and then a very unexcitingly not good life of Sybil Bedford. I was interested in why the Sybil Bedford simply hadn't worked. I met people this weekend who were saying the same thing, that she was a very good biographer who had just failed [laughs] to give us anything about Sybil Bedford.I think what went wrong in that biography was that she just could not give us her opinions. It's as if she just withdrew from her subject as if she was writing a Wikipedia entry. There were no opinions at all. What the friends I was talking to said was that she just fell out with her subject during the book. That's what happened. She stopped being interested in her. She fell out with her and therefore couldn't be bothered. That's what went wrong.Henry: Interesting. I think her Evelyn Waugh biography is superb.Frances: Yes, I absolutely agree. She was on fire until this last one.Henry: That's one of the best books on Waugh, I think.Frances: Yes.Henry: Absolutely magical.Frances: I also remember, it's a very rare thing, of reading a review of it by Hilary Mantel saying that she had not read a biography that had been as good, ever, as Selina Hastings' on Evelyn Waugh. My goodness, that's high praise, isn't it?Henry: Yes, it is. It is. I'm always trying to push that book on people. Richard Holmes.Frances: He's my favourite. He's the reason that I'm a biographer at all. I think his Coleridge, especially the first volume of the two-volume Coleridge, is one of the great books. It left me breathless when I read it. It was devastating. I also think that his Johnson and Savage book is one of the great books. I love Footsteps as well, his account of the books he didn't write in Footsteps. I think he has a strange magic. When Muriel Spark talked about certain writers and critics having a sixth literary sense, which meant that they tuned into language and thought in a way that the rest of us don't, I think that Richard Holmes does have that. I think he absolutely has it in relation to Coleridge. I'm longing for his Tennyson to come out.Henry: Oh, I know. I know.Frances: Oh, I just can't wait. I'm holding off on reading Tennyson until I've got Holmes to help me read him. Yes, he is quite extraordinary.Henry: I would have given my finger to write the Johnson and Savage book.Frances: Yes, I know. I agree. How often do you return to it?Henry: Oh, all the time. All the time.Frances: Me too.Henry: Michael Holroyd.Frances: Oh, that's interesting, Michael Holroyd, because I think he's one of the great unreads. I think he's in this strange position of being known as a greatest living biographer, but nobody's read him on Augustus John. [laughs] I haven't read his biographies cover to cover because they're too long and it's not in my subject area, but I do look in them, and they're novelistic in their wit and complexity. His sentences are very, very, very entertaining, and there's a lot of freight in each paragraph. I hope that he keeps selling.I love his essays as well, and also, I think that he has been a wonderful ambassador for biography. He's very, very supportive of younger biographers, which not every biographer is, but I know he's been very supportive of younger biographers and is incredibly approachable.Henry: Let's do a few Muriel Spark questions. Why was the Book of Job so important to Muriel Spark?Frances: I think she liked it because it was rogue, because it was the only book of the Bible that wasn't based on any evidence, it wasn't based on any truth. It was a fictional book, and she liked fiction sitting in the middle of fact. That was one of her main things, as all Spark lovers know. She liked the fact that there was this work of pure imagination and extraordinarily powerful imagination sitting in the middle of the Old Testament, and also, she thought it was an absolutely magnificent poem.She saw herself primarily as a poet, and she responded to it as a poem, which, of course, it is. Also, she liked God in it. She described Him as the Incredible Hulk [laughs] and she liked His boastfulness. She enjoyed, as I do, difficult personalities, and she liked the fact that God had such an incredibly difficult personality. She liked the fact that God boasted and boasted and boasted, "I made this and I made that," to Job, but also I think she liked the fact that you hear God's voice.She was much more interested in voices than she was in faces. The fact that God's voice comes out of the burning bush, I think it was an image for her of early radio, this voice speaking, and she liked the fact that what the voice said was tricksy and touchy and impossibly arrogant. He gives Moses all these instructions to lead the Israelites, and Moses says, "But who shall I say sent me? Who are you?" He says, "I am who I am." [laughs] She thought that was completely wonderful. She quotes that all the time about herself. She says, "I know it's a bit large quoting God, but I am who I am." [laughs]Henry: That disembodied voice is very important to her fiction.Frances: Yes.Henry: It's the telephone in Memento Mori.Frances: Yes.Henry: Also, to some extent, tell me what you think of this, the narrator often acts like that.Frances: Like this disembodied voice?Henry: Yes, like you're supposed to feel like you're not quite sure who's telling you this or where you're being told it from. That's why it gets, like in The Ballad of Peckham Rye or something, very weird.Frances: Yes. I'm waiting for the PhD on Muriel Sparks' narrators. Maybe it's being done as we speak, but she's very, very interested in narrators and the difference between first-person and third-person. She was very keen on not having warm narrators, to put it mildly. She makes a strong argument throughout her work for the absence of the seductive narrative. Her narratives are, as we know, unbelievably seductive, but not because we are being flattered as readers and not because the narrator makes herself or himself pretty. The narrator says what they feel like saying, withholds most of what you would like them to say, plays with us, like in a Spark expression, describing her ideal narrator like a cat with a bird [laughs].Henry: I like that. Could she have been a novelist if she had not become a Catholic?Frances: No, she couldn't. The two things happened at the same time. I wonder, actually, whether she became a Catholic in order to become a novelist. It wasn't that becoming a novelist was an accidental effect of being a Catholic. The conversion was, I think, from being a biographer to a novelist rather than from being an Anglican to a Catholic. What happened is a tremendous interest. I think it's the most interesting moment in any life that I've ever written about is the moment of Sparks' conversion because it did break her life in two.She converted when she was in her mid-30s, and several things happened at once. She converted to Catholicism, she became a Catholic, she became a novelist, but she also had this breakdown. The breakdown was very much part of that conversion package. The breakdown was brought on, she says, by taking Dexys. There was slimming pills, amphetamines. She wanted to lose weight. She put on weight very easily, and her weight went up and down throughout her life.She wanted to take these diet pills, but I think she was also taking the pills because she needed to do all-nighters, because she never, ever, ever stopped working. She was addicted to writing, but also she was impoverished and she had to sell her work, and she worked all night. She was in a rush to get her writing done because she'd wasted so much of her life in her early 20s, in a bad marriage trapped in Africa. She needed to buy herself time. She was on these pills, which have terrible side effects, one of which is hallucinations.I think there were other reasons for her breakdown as well. She was very, very sensitive and I think psychologically fragile. Her mother lived in a state of mental fragility, too. She had a crash when she finished her book. She became depressed. Of course, a breakdown isn't the same as depression, but what happened to her in her breakdown was a paranoid attack rather than a breakdown. She didn't crack into nothing and then have to rebuild herself. She just became very paranoid. That paranoia was always there.Again, it's what's exciting about her writing. She was drawn to paranoia in other writers. She liked Cardinal Newman's paranoia. She liked Charlotte Brontë's paranoia, and she had paranoia. During her paranoid attack, she felt very, very interestingly, because nothing that happened in her life was not interesting, that T.S. Eliot was sending her coded messages. He was encoding these messages in his play, The Confidential Clerk, in the program notes to the play, but also in the blurbs he wrote for Faber and Faber, where he was an editor. These messages were very malign and they were encoded in anagrams.The word lived, for example, became devil. I wonder whether one of the things that happened during her breakdown wasn't that she discovered God, but that she met the devil. I don't think that that's unusual as a conversion experience. In fact, the only conversion experience she ever describes, you'll remember, is in The Girls of Slender Means, when she's describing Nicholas Farrington's conversion. That's the only conversion experience she ever describes. She says that his conversion is when he sees one of the girls leaving the burning building, holding a Schiaparelli dress. Suddenly, he's converted because he's seen a vision of evil.She says, "Conversion can be as a result of a recognition of evil, rather than a recognition of good." I think that what might have happened in this big cocktail of things that happened to her during her breakdown/conversion, is that a writer whom she had idolized, T.S. Eliot, who taught her everything that she needed to know about the impersonality of art. Her narrative coldness comes from Eliot, who thought that emotions had no place in art because they were messy, and art should be clean.I think a writer whom she had idolized, she suddenly felt was her enemy because she was converting from his church, because he was an Anglo-Catholic. He was a high Anglican, and she was leaving Anglo-Catholicism to go through the Rubicon, to cross the Rubicon into Catholicism. She felt very strongly that that is something he would not have approved of.Henry: She's also leaving poetry to become a prose writer.Frances: She was leaving his world of poetry. That's absolutely right.Henry: This is a very curious parallel because the same thing exactly happens to De Quincey with his worship of Wordsworth.Frances: You're right.Henry: They have the same obsessive mania. Then this, as you say, not quite a breakdown, but a kind of explosive mania in the break. De Quincey goes out and destroys that mossy hut or whatever it is in the orchard, doesn't he?Frances: Yes, that disgusting hut in the orchard. Yes, you're completely right. What fascinated me about De Quincey, and this was at the heart of the De Quincey book, was how he had been guided his whole life by Wordsworth. He discovered Wordsworth as a boy when he read We Are Seven, that very creepy poem about a little girl sitting on her sibling's grave, describing the sibling as still alive. For De Quincey, who had lost his very adored sister, he felt that Wordsworth had seen into his soul and that Wordsworth was his mentor and his lodestar.He worshipped Wordsworth as someone who understood him and stalked Wordsworth, pursued and stalked him. When he met him, what he discovered was a man without any redeeming qualities at all. He thought he was a dry monster, but it didn't stop him loving the work. In fact, he loved the work more and more. What threw De Quincey completely was that there was such a difference between Wordsworth, the man who had no genius, and Wordsworth, the poet who had nothing but.Eliot described it, the difference between the man who suffers and the mind which creates. What De Quincey was trying to deal with was the fact that he adulated the work, but was absolutely appalled by the man. Yes, you're right, this same experience happened to spark when she began to feel that T.S. Eliot, whom she had never met, was a malign person, but the work was still not only of immense importance to her, but the work had formed her.Henry: You see the Wasteland all over her own work and the shared Dante obsession.Frances: Yes.Henry: It's remarkably strong. She got to the point of thinking that T.S. Eliot was breaking into her house.Frances: Yes. As I said, she had this paranoid imagination, but also what fired her imagination and what repeated itself again and again in the imaginative scenarios that recur in her fiction and nonfiction is the idea of the intruder. It was the image of someone rifling around in cupboards, drawers, looking at manuscripts. This image, you first find it in a piece she wrote about finding herself completely coincidentally, staying the night during the war in the poet Louis MacNeice's house. She didn't know it was Louis MacNeice's house, but he was a poet who was very, very important to her.Spark's coming back from visiting her parents in Edinburgh in 1944. She gets talking to an au pair on the train. By the time they pull into Houston, there's an air raid, and the au pair says, "Come and spend the night at mine. My employers are away and they live nearby in St. John's Wood." Spark goes to this house and sees it's packed with books and papers, and she's fascinated by the quality of the material she finds there.She looks in all the books. She goes into the attic, and she looks at all the papers, and she asks the au pair whose house it is, and the au pair said, "Oh, he's a professor called Professor Louis MacNeice." Spark had just been reading Whitney. He's one of her favourite poets. She retells this story four times in four different forms, as non-fiction, as fiction, as a broadcast, as reflections, but the image that keeps coming back, what she can't get rid of, is the idea of herself as snooping around in this poet's study.She describes herself, in one of the versions, as trying to draw from his papers his power as a writer. She says she sniffs his pens, she puts her hands over his papers, telling herself, "I must become a writer. I must become a writer." Then she makes this weird anonymous phone call. She loved the phone because it was the most strange form of electrical device. She makes a weird anonymous phone call to an agent, saying, "I'm ringing from Louis MacNeice's house, would you like to see my manuscript?" She doesn't give her name, and the agent says yes.Now I don't believe this phone call took place. I think it's part of Sparks' imagination. This idea of someone snooping around in someone else's room was very, very powerful to her. Then she transposed it in her paranoid attack about T.S. Eliot. She transposed the image that Eliot was now in her house, but not going through her papers, but going through her food cupboards. [laughs] In her food cupboards, all she actually had was baked beans because she was a terrible cook. Part of her unwellness at that point was malnutrition. No, she thought that T.S. Eliot was spying on her. She was obsessed with spies. Spies, snoopers, blackmailers.Henry: T.S. Eliot is Stealing My Baked Beans would have been a very good title for a memoir.Frances: It actually would, wouldn't it?Henry: Yes, it'd be great.[laughter]Henry: People listening will be able to tell that Spark is a very spooky person in several different ways. She had what I suppose we would call spiritual beliefs to do with ghosts and other sorts of things. You had a sort of conversion of your own while writing this book, didn't you?Frances: Yes, I did. [laughs] Every time I write a biography, I become very, very, very immersed in who I'm writing about. I learned this from Richard Holmes, who I see as a method biographer. He Footsteps his subjects. He becomes his subjects. I think I recognized when I first read Holmes's Coleridge, when I was a student, that this was how I also wanted to live. I wanted to live inside the minds of the people that I wrote about, because it was very preferable to live inside my own mind. Why not live inside the mind of someone really, really exciting, one with genius?What I felt with Spark wasn't so much that I was immersed by-- I wasn't immersed by her. I felt actually possessed by her. I think this is the Spark effect. I think a lot of her friends felt like this. I think that her lovers possibly felt like this. There is an extraordinary force to her character, which absolutely lives on, even though she's dead, but only recently dead. The conversion I felt, I think, was that I have always been a very enlightenment thinker, very rational, very scientific, very Freudian in my approach to-- I will acknowledge the unconscious but no more.By the time I finished with Spark, I'm pure woo-woo now. Anything can happen. This is one of the reasons Spark was attracted to Catholicism because anything can happen, because it legitimizes the supernatural. I felt so strongly that the supernatural experiences that Spark had were real, that what Spark was describing as the spookiness of our own life were things that actually happened.One of the things I found very, very unsettling about her was that everything that happened to her, she had written about first. She didn't describe her experiences in retrospect. She described them as in foresight. For example, her first single authored published book, because she wrote for a while in collaboration with her lover, Derek Stanford, but her first single authored book was a biography of Mary Shelley.Henry: Great book.Frances: An absolutely wonderful book, which really should be better than any of the other Mary Shelley biographies. She completely got to Mary Shelley. Everything she described in Mary Shelley's life would then happen to Spark. For example, she described Mary Shelley as having her love letters sold. Her lover sold Mary Shelley's love letters, and Mary Shelley was then blackmailed by the person who bought them. This happened to Spark. She described Mary Shelley's closest friends all becoming incredibly jealous of her literary talent. This happened to Spark. She described trusting people who betrayed her. This happened to Spark.Spark was the first person to write about Frankenstein seriously, to treat Frankenstein as a masterpiece rather than as a one-off weird novel that is actually just the screenplay for a Hammer Horror film. This was 1951, remember. Everything she described in Frankenstein as its power is a hybrid text, described the powerful hybrid text that she would later write about. What fascinated her in Frankenstein was the relationship between the creator and the monster, and which one was the monster. This is exactly the story of her own life. I think where she is. She was really interested in art monsters and in the fact that the only powerful writers out there, the only writers who make a dent, are monsters.If you're not a monster, you're just not competing. I think Spark has always spoken about as having a monster-like quality. She says at the end of one of her short stories, Bang-bang You're Dead, "Am I an intellectual woman, or am I a monster?" It's the question that is frequently asked of Spark. I think she worked so hard to monsterize herself. Again, she learnt this from Elliot. She learnt her coldness from Elliot. She learnt indifference from Elliot. There's a very good letter where she's writing to a friend, Shirley Hazzard, in New York.It's after she discovers that her lover, Derek Stanford, has sold her love letters, 70 love letters, which describe two very, very painfully raw, very tender love letters. She describes to Shirley Hazzard this terrible betrayal. She says, "But, I'm over it. I'm over it now. Now I'm just going to be indifferent." She's telling herself to just be indifferent about this. You watch her tutoring herself into the indifference that she needed in order to become the artist that she knew she was.Henry: Is this why she's attracted to mediocrities, because she can possess them and monsterize them, and they're good feeding for her artistic programme?Frances: Her attraction to mediocrities is completely baffling, and it makes writing her biography, a comedy, because the men she was surrounded by were so speck-like. Saw themselves as so important, but were, in fact, so speck-like that you have to laugh, and it was one after another after another. I'd never come across, in my life, so many men I'd never heard of. This was the literary world that she was surrounded by. It's odd, I don't know whether, at the time, she knew how mediocre these mediocrities were.She certainly recognised it in her novels where they're all put together into one corporate personality called the pisseur de copie in A Far Cry from Kensington, where every single literary mediocrity is in that critic who she describes as pissing and vomiting out copy. With Derek Stanford, who was obviously no one's ever heard of now, because he wrote nothing that was memorable, he was her partner from the end of the 40s until-- They ceased their sexual relationship when she started to be interested in becoming a Catholic in 1953, but she was devoted to him up until 1958. She seemed to be completely incapable of recognising that she had the genius and he had none.Her letters to him deferred to him, all the time, as having literary powers that she hadn't got, as having insights that she hadn't got, he's better read than she was. She was such an amazingly good critic. Why could she not see when she looked at his baggy, bad prose that it wasn't good enough? She rated him so highly. When she was co-authoring books with him, which was how she started her literary career, they would occasionally write alternative sentences. Some of her sentences are always absolutely-- they're sharp, lean, sparkling, and witty, and his are way too long and really baggy and they don't say anything. Obviously, you can see that she's irritated by it.She still doesn't say, "Look, I'm going now." It was only when she became a novelist that she said, "I want my mind to myself." She puts, "I want my mind to myself." She didn't want to be in a double act with him. Doubles were important to her. She didn't want to be in a double act with him anymore. He obviously had bought into her adulation of him and hadn't recognised that she had this terrifying power as a writer. It was now his turn to have the breakdown. Spark had the mental breakdown in 1950, '45. When her first novel came out in 1957, it was Stanford who had the breakdown because he couldn't take on board who she was as a novelist.What he didn't know about her as a novelist was her comic sense, how that would fuel the fiction, but also, he didn't recognize because he reviewed her books badly. He didn't recognise that the woman who had been so tender, vulnerable, and loving with him could be this novelist who had nothing to say about tenderness or love. In his reviews, he says, "Why are her characters so cold?" because he thought that she should be writing from the core of her as a human being rather than the core of her as an intellect.Henry: What are her best novels?Frances: Every one I read, I think this has to be the best.[laughter]This is particularly the case in the early novels, where I'm dazzled by The Comforters and think there cannot have been a better first novel of the 20th century or even the 21st century so far. The Comforters. Then read Robinson, her second novel, and think, "Oh God, no, that is her best novel. Then Memento Mori, I think, "Actually, that must be the best novel of the 20th century." [laughs] Then you move on to The Ballad of Peckham Rye, I think, "No, that's even better."The novels landed. It's one of the strange things about her; it took her so long to become a novelist. When she had become one, the novels just landed. Once in one year, two novels landed. In 1959, she had, it was The Bachelors and The Ballad of Peckham Rye, both just completely extraordinary. The novels had been the storing up, and then they just fell on the page. They're different, but samey. They're samey in as much as they're very, very, very clever. They're clever about Catholicism, and they have the same narrative wit. My God, do the plots work in different ways. She was wonderful at plots. She was a great plotter. She liked plots in both senses of the world.She liked the idea of plotting against someone, also laying a plot. She was, at the same time, absolutely horrified by being caught inside someone's plot. That's what The Comforters is about, a young writer called Caroline Rose, who has a breakdown, it's a dramatisation of Sparks' own breakdown, who has a breakdown, and believes that she is caught inside someone else's story. She is a typewriter repeating all of her thoughts. Typewriter and a chorus repeating all of her thoughts.What people say about The Comforters is that Caroline Rose thought she is a heroine of a novel who finds herself trapped in a novel. Actually, if you read what Caroline Rose says in the novel, she doesn't think she's trapped in a novel; she thinks she's trapped in a biography. "There is a typewriter typing the story of our lives," she says to her boyfriend. "Of our lives." Muriel Sparks' first book was about being trapped in a biography, which is, of course, what she brought on herself when she decided to trap herself in a biography. [laughs]Henry: I think I would vote for Loitering with Intent, The Girls of Slender Means as my favourites. I can see that Memento Mori is a good book, but I don't love it, actually.Frances: Really? Interesting. Okay. I completely agree with you about-- I think Loitering with Intent is my overall favourite. Don't you find every time you read it, it's a different book? There are about 12 books I've discovered so far in that book. She loved books inside books, but every time I read it, I think, "Oh my God, it's changed shape again. It's a shape-shifting novel."Henry: We all now need the Frances Wilson essay about the 12 books inside Loitering with Intent.Frances: I know.[laughter]Henry: A few more general questions to close. Did Thomas De Quincey waste his talents?Frances: I wouldn't have said so. I think that's because every single day of his life, he was on opium.Henry: I think the argument is a combination of too much opium and also too much magazine work and not enough "real serious" philosophy, big poems, whatever.Frances: I think the best of his work went into Blackwood's, so the magazine work. When he was taken on by Blackwood's, the razor-sharp Edinburgh magazine, then the best of his work took place. I think that had he only written the murder essays, that would have been enough for me, On Murder as a Fine Art.That was enough. I don't need any more of De Quincey. I think Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is also enough in as much as it's the great memoir of addiction. We don't need any more memoirs of addiction, just read that. It's not just a memoir of being addicted to opium. It's about being addicted to what's what. It's about being a super fan and addicted to writing. He was addicted to everything. If he was in AA now, they'd say, apparently, there are 12 addictions, he had all of them. [laughs]Henry: Yes. People talk a lot about parasocial relationships online, where you read someone online or you follow them, and you have this strange idea in your head that you know them in some way, even though they're just this disembodied online person. You sometimes see people say, "Oh, we should understand this more." I think, "Well, read the history of literature, parasocial relationships everywhere."Frances: That's completely true. I hadn't heard that term before. The history of literature, a parasocial relationship. That's your next book.Henry: There we go. I think what I want from De Quincey is more about Shakespeare, because I think the Macbeth essay is superb.Frances: Absolutely brilliant. On Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth.Henry: Yes, and then you think, "Wait, where's the rest of this book? There should be an essay about every play."Frances: That's an absolutely brilliant example of microhistory, isn't it? Just taking a moment in a play, just the knocking at the gate, the morning after the murders, and blowing that moment up, so it becomes the whole play. Oh, my God, it's good. You're right.Henry: It's so good. What is, I think, "important about it", is that in the 20th century, critics started saying or scholars started saying a lot, "We can't just look at the words on the page. We've got to think about the dramaturgy. We've got to really, really think about how it plays out." De Quincey was an absolute master of that. It's really brilliant.Frances: Yes.Henry: What's your favourite modern novel or novelist?Frances: Oh, Hilary Mantel, without doubt, I think. I think we were lucky enough to live alongside a great, great, great novelist. I think the Wolf Hall trilogy is absolutely the greatest piece of narrative fiction that's come out of the 21st century. I also love her. I love her work as an essayist. I love her. She's spooky like Spark. She was inspired.Henry: Yes, she is. Yes.Frances: She learnt a lot of her cunning from Spark, I think. She's written a very spooky memoir. In fact, the only women novelists who acknowledge Spark as their influencer are Ali Smith and Hilary Mantel, although you can see Spark in William Boyd all the time. I think we're pretty lucky to live alongside William Boyd as well. Looking for real, real greatness, I think there's no one to compare with Mantel. Do you agree?Henry: I don't like the third volume of the trilogy.Frances: Okay. Right.Henry: Yes, in general, I do agree. Yes. I think some people don't like historical fiction for a variety of reasons. It may take some time for her to get it. I think she's acknowledged as being really good. I don't know that she's yet acknowledged at the level that you're saying.Frances: Yes.Henry: I think that will take a little bit longer. Maybe as and when there's a biography that will help with that, which I'm sure there will be a biography.Frances: I think they need to wait. I do think it's important to wait for a reputation to settle before starting the biography. Her biography will be very interesting because she married the same man twice. Her growth as a novelist was so extraordinary. Spark, she spent time in Africa. She had this terrible, terrible illness. She knew something. I think what I love about Mantel is, as with Spark, she knew something. She knew something, and she didn't quite know what it was that she knew. She had to write because of this knowledge. When you read her, you know that she's on a different level of understanding.Henry: You specialise in slightly neglected figures of English literature. Who else among the canonical writers deserves a bit more attention?Frances: Oh, that's interesting. I love minor characters. I think Spark was very witty about describing herself as a minor novelist or a writer of minor novels when she was evidently major. She always saw the comedy in being a minor. All the minor writers interest me. Elizabeth Bowen, Henry Green. No, they have heard Elizabeth Bowen has been treated well by Hermione Lee and Henry Green has been treated well by Jeremy Treglown.Why are they not up there yet? They're so much better than most of their contemporaries. I am mystified and fascinated by why it is that the most powerful writers tend to be kicked into the long grass. It's dazzling. When you read a Henry Green novel, you think, "But this is what it's all about. He's understood everything about what the novel can do. Why has no one heard of him?"Henry: I think Elizabeth Bowen's problem is that she's so concise, dense, and well-structured, and everything really plays its part in the pattern of the whole that it's not breezy reading.Frances: No, it's absolutely not.Henry: I think that probably holds her back in some way, even though when I have pushed it on people, most of the time they've said, "Gosh, she's a genius."Frances: Yes.Henry: It's not an easy genius. Whereas Dickens, the pages sort of fly along, something like that.Frances: Yes. One of the really interesting things about Spark is that she really, really is easy reading. At the same time, there's so much freight in those books. There's so much intellectual weight and so many games being played. There's so many books inside the books. Yet you can just read them for the pleasure. You can just read them for the plot. You can read one in an afternoon and think that you've been lost inside a book for 10 years. You don't get that from Elizabeth Bowen. That's true. The novels, you feel the weight, don't you?Henry: Yes.Frances: She's Jamesian. She's more Jamesian, I think, than Spark is.Henry: Something like A World of Love, it requires quite a lot of you.Frances: Yes, it does. Yes, it's not bedtime reading.Henry: No, exactly.Frances: Sitting up in a library.Henry: Yes. Now, you mentioned James. You're a Henry James expert.Frances: I did my PhD on Henry James.Henry: Yes. Will you ever write about him?Frances: I have, actually. Just a little plug. I've just done a selection of James's short stories, three volumes, which are coming out, I think, later this year for Riverrun with a separate introduction for each volume. I think that's all the writing I'm going to do on James. When I was an academic, I did some academic essays on him for collections and things. No, I've never felt, ever, ready to write on James because he's too complicated. I can only take tiny, tiny bits of James and home in on them.Henry: He's a great one for trying to crack the code.Frances: He really is. In fact, I was struck all the way through writing Electric Spark by James's understanding of the comedy of biography, which is described in the figure in the carpet. Remember that wonderful story where there's a writer called Verica who explains to a young critic that none of the critics have understood what his work's about. Everything that's written about him, it's fine, but it's absolutely missed his main point, his beautiful point. He said that in order to understand what the work's about, you have to look for The Figure in the Carpet. It's The Figure in the CarpetIt's the string on which my pearls are strung. A couple of critics become completely obsessed with looking for this Figure in the Carpet. Of course, Spark loved James's short stories. You feel James's short stories playing inside her own short stories. I think that one of the games she left for her biographers was the idea of The Figure in the Carpet. Go on, find it then. Find it. [laughs] The string on which my pearls are strung.Henry: Why did you leave academia? We should say that you did this before it became the thing that everyone's doing.Frances: Is everyone leaving now?Henry: A lot of people are leaving now.Frances: Oh, I didn't know. I was ahead of the curve. I left 20 years ago because I wasn't able to write the books I wanted to write. I left when I'd written two books as an academic. My first was Literary Seductions, and my second was a biography of a blackmailing courtesan called Harriet Wilson, and the book was called The Courtesan's Revenge. My department was sniffy about the books because they were published by Faber and not by OUP, and suggested that somehow I was lowering the tone of the department.This is what things were like 20 years ago. Then I got a contract to write The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, my third book, again with Faber. I didn't want to write the book with my head of department in the back of my mind saying, "Make this into an academic tome and put footnotes in." I decided then that I would leave, and I left very suddenly. Now, I said I'm leaving sort of now, and I've got books to write, and felt completely liberated. Then for The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, I decided not to have footnotes. It's the only book I've ever written without footnotes, simply as a celebration of no longer being in academia.Then the things I loved about being in academia, I loved teaching, and I loved being immersed in literature, but I really couldn't be around colleagues and couldn't be around the ridiculous rules of what was seen as okay. In fact, the university I left, then asked me to come back on a 0.5 basis when they realised that it was now fashionable to have someone who was a trade author. They asked me to come back, which I did not want to do. I wanted to spend days where I didn't see people rather than days where I had to talk to colleagues all the time. I think that academia is very unhappy. The department I was in was incredibly unhappy.Since then, I took up a job very briefly in another English department where I taught creative writing part-time. That was also incredibly unhappy. I don't know whether other French departments or engineering departments are happier places than English departments, but English departments are the most unhappy places I think I've ever seen.[laughter]Henry: What do you admire about the work of George Meredith?Frances: Oh, I love George Meredith. [laughs] Yes. I think Modern Love, his first novel, Modern Love, in a strange sonnet form, where it's not 14 lines, but 16 lines. By the time you get to the bottom two lines, the novel, the sonnet has become hysterical. Modern Love hasn't been properly recognised. It's an account of the breakdown of his marriage. His wife, who was the daughter of the romantic, minor novelist, Thomas Love Peacock. His wife had an affair with the artist who painted the famous Death of Chatterton. Meredith was the model for Chatterton, the dead poet in his purple silks, with his hand falling on the ground. There's a lot of mythology around Meredith.I think, as with Elizabeth Bowen and Henry Green, he's difficult. He's difficult. The other week, I tried to reread Diana of the Crossways, which was a really important novel, and I still love it. I really recognise that it's not an easy read. He doesn't try, in any way, to seduce his readers. They absolutely have to crawl inside each book to sit inside his mind and see the world as he's seeing it.Henry: Can you tell us what you will do next?Frances: At the moment, I'm testing some ideas out. I feel, at the end of every biography, you need a writer. You need to cleanse your palate. Otherwise, there's a danger of writing the same book again. I need this time, I think, to write about, to move century and move genders. I want to go back, I think, to the 19th century. I want to write about a male writer for a moment, and possibly not a novelist as well, because after being immersed in Muriel Sparks' novels, no other novel is going to seem good enough. I'm testing 19th-century men who didn't write novels, and it will probably be a minor character.Henry: Whatever it is, I look forward to reading it. Frances Wilson, thank you very much.Frances: Thank you so much, Henry. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk/subscribe

Happy Canada Day, Dreadites! Throw a 2-4 of Old Style in the cooler, grab a lawn chair, and join Desmond and Duane as we give'r during our reviews of FUBAR and FUBAR II. Then, Des goes solo on a Dread Media Top Five Canadian Films! And, finally, every song we play is from Canadian artists: ""Hey Hey My My (Into the Black" by Nomeansno, "FUBAR Is a Super Rocker" by Thor, "The Gem" by Priestess, "Memento Mori" by Agonist, and "The Second Stage - Denial" by Mares of Thrace. Send feedback to: dreadmediapodcast@gmail.com. Follow @DevilDinosaurJr and @dreadmedia on Twitter! Join the Facebook group! Support the show at www.patreon.com/dreadmedia. Visit www.desmondreddick.com, www.stayscary.wordpress.com, www.dreadmedia.bandcamp.com, www.kccinephile.com, and www.dejasdomicileofdread.blogspot.com.

Happy Canada Day, Dreadites! Throw a 2-4 of Old Style in the cooler, grab a lawn chair, and join Desmond and Duane as we give'r during our reviews of FUBAR and FUBAR II. Then, Des goes solo on a Dread Media Top Five Canadian Films! And, finally, every song we play is from Canadian artists: ""Hey Hey My My (Into the Black" by Nomeansno, "FUBAR Is a Super Rocker" by Thor, "The Gem" by Priestess, "Memento Mori" by Agonist, and "The Second Stage - Denial" by Mares of Thrace. Send feedback to: dreadmediapodcast@gmail.com. Follow @DevilDinosaurJr and @dreadmedia on Twitter! Join the Facebook group! Support the show at www.patreon.com/dreadmedia. Visit www.desmondreddick.com, www.stayscary.wordpress.com, www.dreadmedia.bandcamp.com, www.kccinephile.com, and www.dejasdomicileofdread.blogspot.com.

It's quite the shocking day dear Blerdizens! We have a review of the 28 Years Later movie, a movie that was much anticipated by our dear hosts. However, after the review (7:10), one host has succumbed to the eponymous Rage Virus, reviving a thought-dead segment! You absolutely cannot miss this one! Memento Mori!

Dnes sa ponoríme do jednej z najstarších filozofických pripomienok – memento mori, „pamätaj, že zomrieš“. Nie preto, aby sme sa báli. Ale aby sme žili lepšie, plnšie a odvážnejšie. Ukážem ti tri situácie zo života, ktoré sa môžu zdať extrémne dôležité, no keď si pripomenieš memento mori – zrazu všetko vidíš inak.

What if the secret to living your best life... is remembering that it won't last forever? In this episode of Love, Happiness, and Success, I'm joined by author and mindset coach Karen Salmansohn to explore how the ancient principle of memento mori—remembering that you will die—can radically transform the way you live right now.  Together, we unpack how mortality awareness isn't morbid at all—it's deeply motivational. When you get clear on what truly matters, you can stop spinning your wheels and start living for meaning with clarity, courage, and joy. We'll explore identity-based habits, reverse-engineering your values, and how writing your own eulogy (yep, really!) can actually help you build a life you're proud to live. This isn't about bucket lists or productivity hacks—it's about being intentional and making sure your time, energy, and love are going exactly where you want them to. Timestamps: 0:00 – The Problem With To-Do Lists 3:12 – Facing the Funeral Test: What Will They Say About You? 6:38 – Memento Mori: Mortality as a Motivator 15:05 – Identity-Based Habits and Core Values 20:44 – Who Do You Need to Become? 24:18 – A Ripple Effect That Lasts Generations 27:35 – Aristotle's Happiness Formula 32:10 – The Near-Life Experience We Must Escape 36:42 – Your “To-Die” List vs Your To-Do List 40:55 – Creating Daily Habits That Reflect Who You Want to Be 44:00 – What Happens When You Align With Your Core Values 47:26 – The Marble Ritual: Measuring Time With Intention 53:18 – Monthly Reflections and Making This Summer Count 58:01 – Why Fun and Gratitude Are Core Values Too 1:02:20 – It's Not About Death—It's About Life 1:07:08 – How to Start Living for Meaning Now Don't wait for a crisis to wake you up. Choose to wake up now. Live for meaning. Be intentional. Remember that life is short, and that's what makes it beautiful. And if you're feeling stuck or overwhelmed by where to begin, I'd love to help. My Clarity and Confidence Coaching was made for moments just like this one. In this powerful work, you'll reconnect with your deepest values, rediscover your purpose, and learn how to make intentional choices that move you toward the life you truly want. Whether you're navigating a big life transition or simply ready to stop running on autopilot, coaching gives you tools, insight, and support to create lasting, meaningful change. Curious if it's right for you? You can schedule a free consultation with our team. We'll talk about where you are, where you want to go, and how clarity and confidence coaching can help you bridge the gap. Also, come hang out with me on Instagram or YouTube — I'm always sharing tips, inspiration, and behind-the-scenes real talk to help you stay connected to what really matters. Xoxo Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby www.growingself.com P.S. If this message resonated with you, think of someone in your life who might need to hear it too. Forward this article to them. Let's keep the ripple going. That's living for meaning, too.  

Snowy Shaw is one of the most versatile and visually distinctive figures in heavy metal. A Swedish multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and visual artist, Snowy first made a name for himself in the late 1980s as the drummer for doom pioneers Memento Mori, and later King Diamond, where his theatrical approach to drumming and showmanship stood out. He would go on to play in a long list of influential bands, contributing vocals, bass, drums, and guitar with equal confidence.Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Shaw became known as a kind of musical chameleon, joining forces with a number of high-profile metal acts including Mercyful Fate, Notre Dame, Dream Evil, and Therion. His ability to adapt stylistically while leaving his own artistic stamp made him a sought-after collaborator. Shaw often brought more than just musicianship—he had a hand in stage design, costumes, and overall presentation, giving many projects a more theatrical, immersive quality.Shaw's talents weren't limited to traditional band settings. He also built a solo career, blending gothic, symphonic, and extreme metal influences into his own theatrical brand. His solo shows featured elaborate costumes, character-driven songs, and a dark sense of humor. Albums like The Liveshow – 25 Years of Madness in the Name of Metal showcased his wide-ranging influences and deep roots in everything from classic rock to extreme metal.His silence came to an end with this exclusive interview. After weeks of avoiding the topic, Snowy sat down with me to tell the full story of what happened with Eurovision, how it impacted him, and why he stayed quiet. This marks the first and only time he has opened up about the situation, offering his honest thoughts and reflections on the next stage in his career.In addition to sharing that story, Snowy talks about his journey through the highs and lows of the music industry, his creative process, and what drives him today. Whether you're a longtime fan or just discovering his work, this conversation is a deep look into one of metal's most interesting minds. To learn more, hear his music, or grab some of his signature merch, visit www.snowyshaw.net.

The whole future is uncertain, Seneca reminds us. Live virtuously, of course, but also live immediately.

Trevor Barrette is a queer theatre maker based in Montreal, known for his kaleidoscopic productions and joy-forward storytelling. A graduate of John Abbott College's Professional Theatre program, he founded the award-winning KaleidoscopeMTL, producing and directing ten productions, including the hit Fringe musical Captain Aurora and the immersive Memento Mori. Trevor's work explores dynamic timescapes, ensemble casting, and enchanting worlds that foster a sense of wonder. Directorial highlights include The Sages of Chelm and The Great Divide for the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre at the Segal Centre, as well as serving as assistant director for Les Belles Soeurs at the Stratford Festival. Trevor has performed with institutions such as the National Arts Centre, Centaur Theatre, Segal Centre, Geordie Theatre and teaches at the Segal Centre Academy and Geordie Theatre School. Currently, he is developing new works, including a musical inspired by Dr. Brenda Milner's legacy. This July, he will direct Hudson Village Theatre's presentation of Bed and Breakfast.Rylan Allen is thrilled to be part of the MAWAM team and to bring this touching, hilarious show to life. Hailing from Hamilton, Ontario, he graduated from Sheridan College's Musical Theatre Program and performed with Canadiana Productions Inc. in Niagara as a performer, dance captain, and choreographer until lockdown. During that time, he discovered a passion for teaching, working as a Music Director for Hamilton's Conservatory for the Arts. Favorite roles include Peter in Jesus Christ Superstar (Brott Music Festival), Noel Gruder in Ride the Cyclone (Playhouse Collective), and Monsieur André in Phantom of the Opera (Theatre Sheridan). Rylan thanks his mentors for sharing their toolboxes with him, the MAWAM team for this incredible experience, and his friends and family for their unwavering support.Émile Auger is a multidisciplinary performer and teacher from Montréal. He began his artistic journey in the music and jazz band program at St-Luc High School. He went on to study musical theatre at Collège Lionel-Groulx's professional theatre program and graduated in the spring of 2022. In 2023, he completed his third and final semester in musical theatre at Sheridan College, Ontario. His performance credits include Jazz Noisette (Les Jeunesses Musicales du Canada), Lucky Stiff (Stephenville Theatre Festival), Rock of Ages (STF), Let's Bop! (Terra Bruce Productions) and Lorenzo Sterzi's latest film, Cadavre Exquis (LostandKik Pictures). Émile is thrilled to make his Segal Center debut as part of this original musical theatre production.Max + Aaron Write A MusicalSet in present-day Montreal, two childhood friends and creative collaborators race against the clock to finish their latest project: a coming-of-age musical loosely based on their lives. But as they deep dive into the work, long-repressed truths rise to the surface and threaten their partnership. A sexy cautionary tale about writing what you know.

In this special episode, Joseph travels to Georgia to interview Wayne. The two discuss life, impending death, and many things in between. Please visit us at http://hailsatanpodcast.comAlso, find us on all social media platforms, as well as Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/hailsatan666

Artist, curator and writer Joanna Ebenstein joins host Stephen Rumford to explore the rich, sometimes eerie, but always fascinating ways we try to make sense of death. Joanna is the founder of the Morbid Anatomy project and author of Memento Mori, a beautiful collection of imagery showing how death has been depicted throughout history and across cultures. Her work invites us to consider what these depictions can teach us about grief, memory, and how we live alongside the knowledge that we'll one day die. Together, Joanna and Stephen talk about why people are drawn to the macabre, how rituals and aesthetics can help us process mortality, and what happens when we stop turning away from death, and start looking more closely. This is a thought-provoking, tender conversation for anyone curious about the spaces where death, beauty and culture overlap. Follow Ashgate on Instagram: @ashgate_hospice Support resources: Ashgate Hospice Resource Centre Explore Joanna's work: morbidanatomy.org This episode of The Life and Death Podcast was produced by Olivia Swift and it's a Reform Radio production.

Un proyecto de Castilla y León Film Commission en colaboración con Fuera de Series. En este quinto programa de Castilla y León Fuera de Series, C.J. Navas conversa con César Pérez Gellida, autor de 'Memento Mori' y guionista de la exitosa adaptación a serie en Prime Video. A continuación, Sergio del Campo, responsable de localización de la ficción, nos cuenta cómo fue el proceso de trabajo en el rodaje de las dos temporadas de la ficción. El nuevo libro de César Pérez Gellida: Nada bueno Germina: https://amzn.to/45wH7wW Únete a nuestro chat de Telegram en el que miles de personas hablamos cada día de series: Telegram – Grupo de debate: https://telegram.me/fueradeseries Telegram – Canal de noticias: https://t.me/noticiasfds Síguenos en nuestras plataformas y podcast sobre series: Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/es/podcast/fuera-de-series/id288039262 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/3RTDss6AAGjSNozVOhDNzX?si=700febbf305144b7&nd=1 iVoox - https://www.ivoox.com/podcast-fuera-series_sq_f12063_1.html Twitter: https://twitter.com/fueradeseries Facebook: https://twitter.com/fueradeseries Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fueradeseries/ Youtube: youtube.com/fueradeseries Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Episode 283 of the Spun Today podcast—the only podcast anchored in writing, but unlimited in scope. I'm your host, Tony Ortiz, and in this deeply personal and heartfelt episode, I invite you to join me as I honor the memory of my dear friend and Spun Today alumni, Pablo Mosquera Jr., who tragically passed away earlier this year.   This episode is a special re-release of one of my favorite beachside conversations with Pablo, originally recorded on a traditional day off in Coney Island—a ritual we created to escape the grind, share stories, and reflect on life while soaking up the summer sun. It's an episode filled with laughter, nostalgia, and the kind of meaningful storytelling that makes the Spun Today podcast what it is.   Throughout this episode, I touch on everything from cherished friendship catchphrases and cycling marathons, to our first jobs and the profound impact travel can have on creativity and perspective. We reminisce about coming-of-age moments, family reunions, and the small rituals that inspire us.   As you listen, I hope you'll appreciate the raw emotion and candid storytelling as much as I did revisiting it. Whether you're tuning in as a writer looking for inspiration, or as someone seeking comfort in community, this episode is a reminder to cherish every moment, tell your stories, and put pen to paper while you still can.   So pull up a chair (or a spot on the sand), and get ready for an episode that's as much a tribute as it is a celebration of creative living. Rest in peace, Pablo—you are missed, and your story lives on through the words and memories we share.   Let's get into it.   The Spun Today Podcast is a Podcast that is anchored in Writing & Random Rants, but unlimited in scope.  Give it a whirl.    Twitter: https://twitter.com/spuntoday Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spuntoday/ Website: http://www.spuntoday.com/home Newsletter: http://www.spuntoday.com/subscribe   Links referenced in this episode:     Follow Pablo on Twitter: @pabs711 & Instagram: @pabs711   Get your Podcast Started Today! https://signup.libsyn.com/?promo_code=SPUN (Use Promo code SPUN and get up to 2-months of free service!) Check out all the Spun Today Merch, and other ways to help support this show! https://www.spuntoday.com/support   Check out my Books Make Way for You – Tips for getting out of your own way FRACTAL – A Time Travel Tale Melted Cold – A Collection of Short Stories http://www.spuntoday.com/books/ (e-Book, Paperback & Hardcover are now available).   Fill out my Spun Today Questionnaire if you're passionate about your craft.  I'll share your insight and motivation on the Podcast: http://www.spuntoday.com/questionnaire/    Shop on Amazon using this link, to support the Podcast: http://www.amazon.com//ref=as_sl_pc_tf_lc?&tag=sputod0c-20&camp=216797&creative=446321&linkCode=ur1&adid=104DDN7SG8A2HXW52TFB&&ref-refURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spuntoday.com%2Fcontact%2F   Shop on iTunes using this link, to support the Podcast: https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewTop?genreId=38&id=27820&popId=42&uo=10   Shop at the Spun Today store for Mugs, T-Shirts and more: https://viralstyle.com/store/spuntoday/tonyortiz   Music: https://www.purple-planet.com   Outro Background Music: https://www.bensound.com   Spun Today Logo by: https://www.naveendhanalak.com/   Sound effects are credited to: http://www.freesfx.co.uk Listen on: iTunes | Spotify| Pocket Casts| YouTube | Website 

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford commencement speech changed lives — but beneath the stories of failure, love, and death lies a deeper philosophy almost no one talks about.This isn't just Stoicism.This isn't just mindfulness.This is the eternal return.This is Amor Fati.This is Nietzsche — the philosopher who may have shaped Jobs' worldview more than anyone else.In this video, we break down Jobs' famous speech and reveal the eternal truths at its core — truths that connect to Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher of resilience, reinvention, and radical affirmation of life.Chapters: 0:00 Intro – The Modern Sermon1:45 Story One – Connecting the Dots & Stoicism4:20 Story Two – Love, Loss & Amor Fati7:00 Story Three – Death, Memento Mori & The Eternal Return10:00 The Hidden Philosopher Revealed13:00 Conclusion – Say Yes to It AllSubscribe for more on hidden philosophy, modern wisdom, and deep healing.#SteveJobs #Nietzsche #Stoicism #AmorFati #EternalReturn #CommencementSpeech #ModernPhilosophy #SelfHelp #Motivation #Mindfulness #StanfordSpeech

Subscribe for more insights: www.unrealizedpurpose.comFollow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/isaacjwooden/Need help building your brand? Go to: www.getnameless.comIn this episode, Isaac and Dalton dive into Book 2.4–2.7 of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. What starts as a joke about “not being a book club” turns into a deeply reflective conversation on Stoic philosophy, procrastination, presence, death, and the pursuit of purpose.We explore:Why Memento Mori isn't dark—it's clarifyingHow to use your mornings and evenings with intentionThe danger of tying your worth to others' opinionsWhy the present moment is all you ever truly haveIf you've been feeling distracted, stuck, or like you're running out of time… this episode is for you.Timestamps00:00 – Intro & “Book Club” Banter00:42 – On 2.4: Time is limited—use it well02:30 – Morning routines & Stoic daily intentions04:00 – Memento Mori & Motorcycle Mindfulness07:00 – Why each act should be treated as your last09:00 – On 2.6: Respect for life, not fear of death12:00 – Negative Visualization & emotional mastery14:00 – 2.7: Reason, integrity, and serving others17:30 – The eternal purpose behind finite life

Tune in to hear:What is the idea of Lindy's Law, also known as The Lindy Effect? What is statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb's unique take on this?How has an acceptance of our finitude been expressed, and even celebrated, by cultures all over the world?What is the Zen Buddhist concept of “Satori” and what can we learn from it?LinksThe Soul of WealthConnect with UsMeet Dr. Daniel CrosbyCheck Out All of Orion's PodcastsPower Your Growth with OrionCompliance Code:

Special agent Payton McCarthy-Simas joins Candy to discuss David Cronenberg's new movie THE SHROUDS.   Payton McCarty-Simas is a an author, programmer, and film critic based in New York City. They hold a Masters in film and media studies from Columbia University, where she focused her research on horror film, psychedelia, and the occult in particular. Payton's writing has been featured in The Brooklyn Rail, Metrograph's Journal, Rue Morgue, Film Daze, and others, and she is the author of two books, One Step Short of Crazy: National Treasure and the Landscape of American Conspiracy Culture, and the forthcoming All of Them Witches: Fear, Feminism, and the American Witch Film (July 2025). Payton is also a member of the Online Association of Female Film Critics and GALECA, the Society for LGBTQ Film Critics. She lives with her partner and their cat, Shirley Jackson.      In the wonderfully complicated new Cronenberg movie there is a motif of dogs. This motif occurs between three characters and possibly one AI avatar/assistant. We talk about several dog scenes within the movie. Something extra to consider is gods and dogs.    The protagonist's wife is wearing a collar for cancer treatment that helps monitor her procedures and needs and presumably the progress or slowing of cancer. Her twin sister is a dog groomer. A future date is blind and has a seeing eye dog. Some scenes occur in a. dog park. There are a few goddesses associated with dogs, Hecate, a goddess of magic, and witchcraft portrayed with dogs and sometimes as being part dog herself.(the wife?) Kali is a Hindu goddess whose portrayal with a dog symbolizes her loyalty. (The sister-in law?) And there is Artemis a goddess of the hunt portrayed with dogs hunting. (The new lover?) Iamma, goddess associated with fertility, love, war also associated with a dog. Gula was a deity associated with dogs and healing. So was Ianna.So...it seems like there could be further exploration in The Shrouds about the dogs.

Pastor Brian DrakeTEXT: Genesis 35:16-29OUTLINE:1. God's Promise is for those afflicted by the fall.2. The Promised Son will conquer and comfort like an older brother.3. Death cannot separate us from the Promise of God.

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a new contender for the highest bat flip, meet major leaguers (14:28) Ryan Johnson and Alan Roden, and (48:35) answer listener emails about how different baseball would be if losses were free for fans and wins cost extra, whether the Rockies will finish in first before the Dodgers […]

Director Rob Bowman

Writer Frank Spotnitz

In this episode, Smith and Mayhew dive deep into some uncomfortable—but essential truths about becoming a better man. From Stoic principles like Memento Mori to redefining success beyond image and ego, they explore how real growth starts with hard choices, emotional honesty, and a willingness to confront your own excuses. They break down how to respond (not react) to adversity, why self-awareness and self-perception are not the same thing, and how your current excuses might be fuelling your future regrets. There's a powerful story involving football fans on a packed Amsterdam train, a lesson from a punchy Mike Tyson quote, and a surprising amount of wisdom packed into a single tattoo. Plus, we uncover why you don't need to swim with sharks or wear a backpack in Bali to live a meaningful life—unless you really want to. If you want your question answered on a future episode, please drop the lads a line : hello@agameconsultancy.com   Adam Smith From depressed and suicidal to the happiest and fittest he's ever been, Adam Smith's self-development journey hasn't been easy but it has been worth it. Today, he's a qualified mindset coach in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and a certified Time Line Therapist®. Adam has coached many high performers, using NLP to rewire his clients' thoughts and behaviours so they can destroy limiting beliefs and engineer the change needed to excel. Connect with Adam Smith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-smith-high-performance-coach/ Adam Mayhew Adam Mayhew swapped burnout and binge drinking for ultra marathons, CrossFit and sobriety. A registered nutritional therapist specialising in performance nutrition, Adam supports everyone from office workers to athletes to build healthy eating habits. Using science (and never fad diets, quick fixes or gym bro culture) he helps clients target their problem areas and confidently master diet, training and lifestyle. Connect with Adam Mayhew: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-mayhew-nutrition-coaching/ To find out more about Smith & Mayhew: https://agameconsultancy.com/about/

Jo Harkin discusses with Ivan six things which should be better known. Jo Harkin studied literature at university. She daydreamed her way through various jobs in her twenties before becoming a full-time writer. Her debut novel Tell Me an Ending was a New York Times book of the year. Her new novel is The Pretender, which is available at https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-pretender/jo-harkin/9781526678348. She lives in Berkshire, England. The ruin of Minster Lovell. This was the estate of the Viscount Lovell, one of the main characters in The Pretender. It's got enough standing walls and a beautiful vaulted entryway to allow you to imagine life there, but also the setting is stunning. Alice Chaucer's tomb, and the concept of the Memento Mori. An hour away from Minster Lovell, in Oxfordshire, are the former lands of the Earl of Lincoln, another main character in the novel. In the pretty village of Ewelme, St Mary's church contains the tomb of Alice Chaucer – grand-daughter of the poet himself, and the grandmother of Lincoln. The Fabliaux. A modern English verse translation of medieval French Fabliaux. These were stories told across all levels of medieval society. And they were absolutely filthy. Food/drink suggestion. A recipe for an overlooked and delicious medieval dish – the pre-potato pea pottage. Exhibition. The British Library Treasures room has a permanent display of original books, maps and manuscripts, including medieval and Tudor era items such as pages from Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, Beowulf, and the first printing of the Canterbury Tales. Misericords. Westminster Abbey is on every London tourist's must see list, but often-overlooked feature are the misericords. In the magnificent Henry VII's chapel, where his and Elizabeth of York's tombs are located, the original 16th century hinged oak seats were not visible to the general public. This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm

The Captain's Quarters is an unofficial Star Trek Rewatch Podcast where Jason and Gabe (@kaeporagabeora) are rewatching the entire Star Trek catalog starting at the beginning of the chronology. In this episode, we cover Star Trek Strange New Worlds S1E4 "Memento Mori” Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠aaron-kenny.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @youtube: contactkennya

This week in the world we live in and life in general w/ host Jon Justice - Depeche Mode Announce Concert Film Documenting ‘Memento Mori' Mexico City Gigs- Listener feedback. SUPPORT JON JUSTICE THRU KO-FI: https://ko-fi.com/jonjusticeOR YOU CAN SUPPORT JON JUSTICE BY PICKING UP YOUR COPY OF THE EMBARK, THE SCIENCE FICTION SERIES WRITTEN BY JON JUSTICEAn exciting mix of Fast and Furious, Star Wars, Ready Player One and the sci-fi adventures of the 70's - 1990'sEMBARK: Book 1 and EMBARK: Treasure in Darkness (Book 2) EMBARK: The Vanishing War (Book 3) Gahan Corbijn and the Asteroid of Misfortune, The Rocket Queen (Book 5) Fear the Dangerous Night (Book 6) are available now in ebook, paperback, audiobook and free on Kindle Unlimited!EMBARK Battle Planet (Book 7) is now available!https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K7LLFZYEmail: TalkShowNerd@gmail.com@X @JonJusticeInstagram TheJonJusticeFacebook Jon JusticeJoin the mailing list! TalkShowNerd@gmail.com

April 6, 2025. Fr. Tyler's homily for the 5th Sunday in Lent. Gospel John 11:1-45 Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany,  the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil  and dried his feet with her hair;  it was her brother Lazarus who was ill. So the sisters sent word to him saying,  “Master, the one you love is ill.” When Jesus heard this he said, “This illness is not to end in death,  but is for the glory of God,  that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill,  he remained for two days in the place where he was. Then after this he said to his disciples,  “Let us go back to Judea.” The disciples said to him,  “Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you,  and you want to go back there?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in a day? If one walks during the day, he does not stumble,  because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks at night, he stumbles,  because the light is not in him.”  He said this, and then told them, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him.” So the disciples said to him, “Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.” But Jesus was talking about his death,  while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep.  So then Jesus said to them clearly, “Lazarus has died. And I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe.  Let us go to him.” So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples,  “Let us also go to die with him.” When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus  had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away. And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary  to comfort them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home. Martha said to Jesus,  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life;  whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,  and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” When she had said this,  she went and called her sister Mary secretly, saying,  “The teacher is here and is asking for you.” As soon as she heard this, she rose quickly and went to him. For Jesus had not yet come into the village,  but was still where Martha had met him. So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her  saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her,  presuming that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him,  she fell at his feet and said to him,  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping,  he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said,  “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Sir, come and see.” And Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.” But some of them said,  “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man  have done something so that this man would not have died?” So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man's sister, said to him,  “Lord, by now there will be a stench;  he has been dead for four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe  you will see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus raised his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me;  but because of the crowd here I have said this,  that they may believe that you sent me.” And when he had said this, He cried out in a loud voice,  “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands,  and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.” Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done began to believe in him. OR:  John 11:3-7, 17, 20-27, 33b-45 The sisters of Lazarus sent word to Jesus, saying,  “Master, the one you love is ill.” When Jesus heard this he said, “This illness is not to end in death,  but is for the glory of God,  that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill,  he remained for two days in the place where he was. Then after this he said to his disciples,  "Let us go back to Judea.” When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus  had already been in the tomb for four days. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him;  but Mary sat at home. Martha said to Jesus,  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.” Martha said, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life;  whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,  and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.” He became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said,  “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Sir, come and see.” And Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.” But some of them said,  “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man  have done something so that this man would not have died?” So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man's sister, said to him,  “Lord, by now there will be a stench;  he has been dead for four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe  you will see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus raised his eyes and said,  “Father, I thank you for hearing me. I know that you always hear me;  but because of the crowd here I have said this,  that they may believe that you sent me.” And when he had said this, He cried out in a loud voice,  “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands,  and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.” Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what he had done began to believe in him.

Parece que vivimos en una época de negación. Hay una falta palpable de apreciación por la muerte, no solo como un hecho inevitable y a menudo triste, sino como algo necesario, incluso bello, dentro del gran ciclo de la existencia. Nuestro instinto de supervivencia, lógicamente, rechaza la idea del fin, pero ¿hemos llevado este rechazo a un extremo cultural poco saludable? Origen

This week in the world we live in and life in general w/ host Jon Justice - Christian Eigner talks about the future of the band - Instrumental Version of Just Can't Get Enough in a New Film- About those 4 Memento Mori Unreleased Tracks- Listener feedback. SUPPORT JON JUSTICE THRU KO-FI: https://ko-fi.com/jonjusticeOR YOU CAN SUPPORT JON JUSTICE BY PICKING UP YOUR COPY OF THE EMBARK, THE SCIENCE FICTION SERIES WRITTEN BY JON JUSTICEAn exciting mix of Fast and Furious, Star Wars, Ready Player One and the sci-fi adventures of the 70's - 1990'sEMBARK: Book 1 and EMBARK: Treasure in Darkness (Book 2) EMBARK: The Vanishing War (Book 3) Gahan Corbijn and the Asteroid of Misfortune, The Rocket Queen (Book 5) Fear the Dangerous Night (Book 6) are available now in ebook, paperback, audiobook and free on Kindle Unlimited!EMBARK Battle Planet (Book 7) is now available!https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K7LLFZYEmail: TalkShowNerd@gmail.com@X @JonJusticeInstagram TheJonJusticeFacebook Jon JusticeJoin the mailing list! TalkShowNerd@gmail.com

Visit our website BeautifulIllusions.org for a complete set of show notes and links to almost everything discussed in this episodeSelected References:3:00 - Emerson: The Mind on Fire by Robert D. Richardson7:32 - Listen to Mindscape Episode 300 - Solo: Does Time Exist? from January, 20257:36 - From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time by Sean Carroll7:38 - The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli12:58 - Read Nature and Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson20:28 - “Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years” is an idea popularized most recently by Bill Gates and sometimes referred to as Gates' Law.21:42 - Derek Jeter played in 20 major league seasons starting in 1995 and retiring after the 2014 seasonListen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 37 - Memento Mori from February, 202526:05 - Rickey Henderson played in 25 major league seasons from 1979 to 2003. He passed away on December 20, 2004 and is remembered as one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived. See “Rickey Henderson, 'greatest of all time,' dies at 65” (ESPN.com)29:34 - Read “The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going To Miss Almost Everything” by Linda Holmes (NPR, 2011)31:10 - See the “Great American Novel” Wikipedia entry32:51 - Listen to the “Songs About Time” Spotify playlist36:05 - See “What Is Memento Mori?” (Daily Stoic)38:45 - The 2006 Adam Sandler movie Click is about “a workaholic architect [who] finds a universal remote that allows him to fast-forward and rewind to different parts of his life. Complications arise when the remote starts to overrule his choices.”40:40 - See “Eternal Recurrence: What Did Nietzsche Really Mean?” (Philosophy Break) and “The Eternal Return: Nietzsche's Brilliant Thought Experiment Illustrating the Key to Existential Contentment” from The Marginalian46:14 - Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution by Carlo Rovelli56:22 - Listen to Richard Feynman's “Ode To A Flower” (YouTube)57:03 - See the “Deep time” Wikipedia entry and the Deep Time: A History of the Earth interactive infographicThis episode was recorded in February 2025The “Beautiful Illusions Theme” was performed by Darron Vigliotti (guitar) and Joseph Vigliotti (drums), and was written and recorded by Darron Vigliotti

In our first 7 Minutes In Heaven of the Spring season, the DIE team pulls a few cards from the Memento Mori deck (an extension of Morbid Curiosity). #deathiseverything #DeathIsEverythingPodcast #7MinutesInHeaven#7MinutesInHeavenwithMarianneandChris #7MinutesInHeavenwithMCA #7MinutesInHeavenwithDIEpod #deathpodcast #LApodcast #takingchances #landoftheliving #morbidcuriositygame #mementomorigame Thanks for listening, Land of the Living! Subscribe, and follow us on Instagram @die.podcast  for updates! Check out deathiseverything.com for merchandise and more!If you want to say hello, email us at hello@deathiseverything.com . We're dying to hear from you!

RU336: BLANCHE BARTON ON DANCING IN THE GRAVEYARD: DEATH IMAGERY IN SATANISM & CARL ABRAHAMSSON PRESENTS MEMENTO MORI FOREVER: https://renderingunconscious.substack.com/p/ru336-psychoanalysis-art-and-the Join Rendering Unconscious at Substack: https://renderingunconscious.substack.com Rendering Unconscious episode 336. For this episode, we have two lectures from the Psychoanalysis, Art and the Occult series of events at Morbid Anatomy Museum: Dancing in the Graveyard: Death Imagery in Satanism by Blanche Barton and Memento Mori Forever by Carl Abrahamsson. Dancing in the Graveyard: Death Imagery in Satanism by Blanche Barton “Life is the great indulgence—death, the great abstinence. Therefore, make the most of life—HERE AND NOW!” So reads a phrase from the opening chapter of The Satanic Bible. But if Satanism, true Satanism as defined by Anton LaVey in 1966, is a profoundly life-loving religion, why all the black candles, skulls, and funerary trappings? The use of a coffin in the ceremony known as “L'air Epais—the Ceremony of the Stifling Air”, for example, goes well beyond a simple memento mori to remind ourselves how fleeting is our time here on Earth. The coffin becomes, like the Hanged Man in the tarot, a symbol of both death and transformation. Memento Mori Forever by Carl Abrahamsson For the human individual, there is no greater arbiter than death itself. Anxiety and fear are the very shadow-side fundaments of human religiosity, and nowhere is magical thinking as present as in thoughts and emotions touching upon (the fear of) death. One reason why human neurosis reaches ever new heights in contemporary culture is our distancing from death itself, and our painting ourselves into a corner of abstracted and compensatory imagination. How to cope? How to improve this highly detrimental neurosis and its dangerous side effects, such as monotheism? Carl Abrahamsson is a Swedish author, photographer, and filmmaker. He is also the editor and publisher of the highly renowned anthologies in The Fenris Wolf series. https://amzn.to/4bFDWnP Follow him at Linktree: https://linktr.ee/CarlAbrahamsson The Fenris Wolf Substack: https://thefenriswolf.substack.com An Art Apart Substack: https://anartapart.substack.com Blanche Barton is the present Magistra Templi Rex of the Church of Satan, having been a member for 45 years. She is the author of The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton Szandor LaVey (2014), as well as her most recent book, We Are Satanists: The History and Future of the Church of Satan (2021). https://amzn.to/4ikE4f2 News & updates: Beginning this Sunday, Carl and I are hosting monthly workshops! Introducing: The Sentient Solar Cycle, with author Carl Abrahamsson and psychoanalyst Vanessa Sinclair. Join us for a year long empowering psychic refinement process, with monthly meetings via Zoom. Each 23rd of the month, we will shine the light on what's ahead in the coming month, using astrological concepts, oracular pointers, (twenty)third mind dialogs, guided meditations, and more. After each session there will also be time for Q & A and discussions. Read more here: https://thefenriswolf.substack.com/p/the-sentient-solar-cycle https://www.patreon.com/c/vanessa23carl Photo of Blanche Barton, Carl Abrahamsson, Ruth Waytz.

Send us a textWe get into some good stuff:1) You will die2) Go to heaven3) Life your life to make your heaven self proud4) Don't plan on living forever5) The practical preparation: Spiritual, financial, legal

We're all gonna die someday! Also it's almost spring, and that's nice.   Songs discussed in this episode: Arthur Lee - Everybody's Gotta Live (1972) Sufjan Stevens - Fourth of July (2015) William Onyeabor - Try And Try (1979) Yard Act - 100% Endurance (2022) Tol-Puddle Martyrs - Time Will Come (1967) Viagra Boys - Worms (2018) Paul Williams - The Hell Of It (1974) Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over The Sea (1998) La Luz - Sure As Spring (2013) Slow Children - Spring In Fialta (1981) Max Richter - Spring 1 (2012) (2014) Operating Theater - Spring Is Coming With a Strawberry In The Mouth (1986)

Ash Wednesday March 5, 2025 St. John's, Lafayette Square Washington, DC

"Remember Man that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return!"There's no time like Lent to reflect a little more deeply on death.  Find the catechism section here: https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_one/section_two/chapter_three/article_11/ii_dying_in_christ_jesus.html As always, check out our work, and join our email list, at https://ouroutpost.org/join our free resource library platform herecatch our other podcast, Love Your Marriage, by clicking here: https://ouroutpost.org/podcasts/see what we have upcoming in terms of events here: https://ouroutpost.org/events/send us an email at hello@ouroutpost.organd please rate, review, and share!If you're a Catholic husband, feel free to sign up for some time to chat with Joseph! https://bookme.name/ouroutpost/45-minutes-with-joseph

Who gathers to talk about death—your own death? In contemporary culture, death has been pushed to the margin. Meanwhile, 150,000 people die every single day. Psalm 90:12 says we gain heart of wisdom when we learn to number our days. Listen to Pastor Zach's homily from the Memento Mori service.

This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, and it is on that day that Christians are really reminded of their mortality. Fr. Ben talks on the difficult topic of death as a way to prepare for this coming Lent. How can we prepare for death? Why should we reflect on our mortality? These questions, and others, are addressed in this homily. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear from you! You can email us at soulfoodpriestmemphis@gmail.com or at Soul Food Priest Facebook page to submit questions and topic ideas for the podcast. You can also follow us on YouTube!

What happens in the final moments of our lives? Jeff shares his personal experience as he faces his mother's imminent passing, emphasizing the Catholic tradition of Last Rites, the Apostolic Pardon, and various prayers offered by the Church during the final hours of a loved one's life. Snippet from the Show We need spiritual strength for the process of going from this life to the life to come. Email us with comments or questions at thejeffcavinsshow@ascensionpress.com. Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get Jeff's shownotes delivered straight to your email! Or visit https://media.ascensionpress.com/?s=&page=2&category%5B0%5D=Ascension%20Podcasts&category%5B1%5D=The%20Jeff%20Cavins%20Show for full shownotes!

Discussing SNW episodes 03-04. "Ghosts of Illyria" (103) @ 00:50, "Memento Mori" (104) @ 17:40.

In this Part 2 episode, Randy Blythe, the lead singer of Lamb of God shares how his time in a Czech prison flipped his whole perspective on life, the cost of genius, and how thinking about mortality rewired his mindset. In his new book, Just Beyond the Light, Randy shares his approach to life, talks about what he's learned touring the world as the vocalist of a successful heavy metal band, and the ways he is doing what he can to leave the world a better place.Randy's coming to a city near you! Grab tickets here: https://randyblythe.com/Follow Randy on Instagram and X @DRandallBlythe and check out his Substack

#584: Think about how you spend an average day. Would the 10-year-old version of yourself be impressed? What about the 90-year-old version? These two powerful questions frame our conversation with Sahil Bloom, founder and managing partner of an early-stage venture fund with investments in over 60 startups and author of The Curiosity Chronicle, a newsletter that reaches more than a million readers worldwide. Sahil shares the story of his own wake-up call. While living in California and earning massive money as a venture inventor, he had a drink with an old friend who asked how often he saw his parents. When Sahil answered "about once a year," his friend asked how old they were. Learning they were in their mid-60s, his friend calculated: "So you're going to see your parents 15 more times before they die," assuming they'd live to about 80. That gut-punch realization led to massive change. Within 45 days, Sahil had left his job, sold his house, and moved across the country to be closer to family. This shift represents the core of Sahil's philosophy about the five types of wealth: 1. Time wealth: Control over your calendar and priorities 2. Social wealth: Deep, meaningful connections with others 3. Mental wealth: Curiosity, purpose, and personal growth 4. Physical wealth: Health and vitality 5. Financial wealth: Traditional money and assets Most of us focus exclusively on financial wealth because it's easily measurable. But Sahil argues that true wealth encompasses all five domains, and we should intentionally invest in each one. Sahil shares practical exercises for building each type of wealth: - For time wealth, create an "energy calendar" by tracking which activities energize versus drain you - For social wealth, map your relationships based on how healthy and frequent they are - For purpose, ask yourself what your world (family, community, etc.) needs from you - For physical wealth, focus on movement, nutrition, and recovery through simple practices - For financial wealth, clearly define what "enough" looks like for you These five domains aren't meant to be balanced perfectly every day. Instead, Sahil suggests thinking in seasons — some periods might emphasize financial growth while others prioritize family time. Sahil also discusses powerful concepts like goals versus anti-goals (what you're unwilling to sacrifice to reach your goals) and "Memento Mori" — the ancient Roman practice of remembering one's mortality to inspire present action. The conversation ends with a reminder that "your life has seasons" just like the weather — you don't expect to experience all four seasons in a single day, so don't expect perfect balance in every area of life simultaneously. For more from Sahil Bloom, find him on major social platforms or visit fivetypesofwealth.com. Timestamps: Note: Timestamps will vary on individual listening devices based on dynamic advertising run times. The provided timestamps are approximate and may be several minutes off due to changing ad lengths. # Episode Timestamps (0:00) Would your 10-year-old self be impressed with your life? (1:46) Sahil's wake-up call: seeing parents only 15 more times before they die (4:19) The Tail End: visualizing how few books and moments remain in life (6:56) Small changes that dramatically increase time with loved ones (13:26) The tension between ambition and presence; why "later" becomes "never" (17:42) Why we measure financial wealth but not other forms of wealth (19:47) The five types of wealth: financial, time, social, mental, physical (30:09) Creating an "energy calendar" to track what energizes vs drains you (38:09) Relationship mapping: evaluating connections by health and frequency (42:33) Goals vs anti-goals: what you're unwilling to sacrifice for success (51:17) Why your purpose doesn't need to be your work (54:46) The 30-day health challenge: movement, nutrition, recovery (57:05) Vonnegut and Heller on having "enough" vs wanting more Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

[Angel Xiques Mansion] Nestled in the heart of the French Quarter, 521 Dauphine Street looks like just another historic New Orleans home—until the past reaches out to remind you it never left. Behind its elegant facade lurks a history steeped in tragedy, betrayal, and restless spirits that refuse to be forgotten. Join us as we unravel the spectral secrets of Angel Xiques Mansion, where history refuses to stay buried, and the veil between past and present is frighteningly thin._____________________________Please be sure to like us on social media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shadowcarriersInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/shadowcarriersIf you like what you hear and want to buy your storytellers a drink, you can catch us at @shadowcarriers on Venmo.If you've enjoyed this episode and want to support our work, become a patron of the podcast! Your support is greatly appreciated and is invested back into helping us create bold and new content for you throughout the year. Check out our Patreon Page at patreon.com/ShadowCarriers.If you'd like to get in touch with us, our email address is shadowcarriers@gmail.com.This Podcast and all endeavors by these individuals believe strongly that Black Lives Matter. 

Randy Blythe, lead singer of Lamb of God, joins Ryan to talk about the role ego plays as a successful frontman, conquering fears, and the intersections between Stoicism and heavy metal in his life.In his new book, Just Beyond the Light, Randy shares his approach to life, talks about what he's learned touring the world as the vocalist of a successful heavy metal band, and of the very real ways he is doing what he can to leave the world a better place.Follow Randy on Instagram and X @DRandallBlythe and check out his Substack

In this fascinating interview, I sit down with Joanna Ebenstein, founder of Morbid Anatomy, to discuss why embracing death helps us live a more meaningful life. We explore: The history of death rituals and why society hides from mortality The power of near-death experiences and what they reveal The surprising link between contemplating death & happiness Can science cheat death? The truth about immortality myths What hospice nurses, psychologists, and ancient cultures tell us about dying Joanna's book: Memento Mori: The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life → https://amzn.to/40YwJvb Also, check out Morbid Anatomy at https://www.morbidanatomy.org/ Thanks Joanna! This post contains Amazon affiliate links that benefit Jim Harold Media when you make a qualifying purchase. Thank you for your support! -- For more information on our podcast data policy CLICK HERE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, my guest is Dr. Laurie Santos, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale University and a leading researcher on happiness and fulfillment. We discuss what truly increases happiness, examining factors such as money, social comparison, free time, alone time versus time spent with others, pets, and the surprising positive impact of negative visualizations. We also explore common myths and truths about introverts and extroverts, the science of motivation, and how to adjust your hedonic set point to experience significantly more joy in daily life. Throughout the episode, Dr. Santos shares science-supported strategies for enhancing emotional well-being and cultivating a deeper sense of meaning and happiness. Read the full show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman ExpressVPN: https://expressvpn.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman David: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Timestamps 00:00:00 Dr. Laurie Santos 00:02:52 Sponsors: Eight Sleep & ExpressVPN 00:06:00 Happiness, Emotion & Cognition; Emotional Contagion 00:11:18 Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Rewards 00:14:43 Money, Comparison & Happiness 00:21:39 Tool: Increase Social Connection; Real-Time Communication 00:32:16 Sponsor: AG1 00:33:47 Technology, Information, Social Interaction 00:39:22 Loneliness, Youth, Technology 00:42:16 Cravings, Sustainable Actions, Dopamine 00:47:01 Social Connection & Predictions; Introverts & Extroverts 00:57:22 Sponsors: Function & LMNT 01:00:41 Social Connection & Frequency; Tools: Fun; “Presence” & Technology 01:07:53 Technology & Negative Effects; Tool: Senses & Grounding; Podcasts 01:15:11 Negativity Bias, Gratitude, Tool: “Delight” Practice & Shifting Emotions 01:25:01 Sponsor: David  01:26:17 Importance of Negative Emotions; Judgements about Happiness 01:34:16 Happiness & Cultural Differences, Tool: Focus on Small Pleasures 01:41:00 Dogs, Monkeys & Brain, “Monkey Mind” 01:47:40 Monkeys, Perspective, Planning 01:53:58 Dogs, Cats, Dingos; Pets & Happiness 02:00:49 Time Famish; Tools: Time Affluence Breaks; Time Confetti & Free Time  02:07:46 Hedonic Adaptation; Tool: Spacing Happy Experiences 02:15:27 Contrast, Comparison & Happiness; Tool: Bronze Lining, Negative Visualization 02:24:08 Visualization, Bannister Effect; Tool: Imagine Obstacles 02:29:12 Culture; Arrival Fallacy, Tool: Journey Mindset 02:37:11 Mortality, Memento Mori, Tool: Fleeting Experiences & Contrast 02:44:33 Awe  02:48:15 Timescales; Community Engagement & Signature Strengths; Tool: Job Crafting 02:56:55 Strength Date, Leisure Time; Tool: Doing for Others, Feel Good Do Good 03:01:42 Tool: Asking for Help 03:05:32 Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow & Reviews, Sponsors, YouTube Feedback, Social Media, Protocols Book, Neural Network Newsletter Disclaimer & Disclosures