Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind, where we pursue wisdom
Speaker 1: on the past between primary secondary worlds. I'm doctor Andrew Snyder,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that you're here. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: hundredth episode of Mythic Mind. Not too long ago, Aaron
Speaker 1: Bear reached out to me who he's been on the
Speaker 1: show before. We've talked with the farmer Giles of ham
Speaker 1: Me even on once or twice. Other than that, I
Speaker 1: possibly in any case and again yeah, yeah, he's the
Speaker 1: renowned author of Joyful Outposts, a book about the beavers
Speaker 1: in Narnia, and he recently came to me and came
Speaker 1: with this idea of us having this conversation about stories
Speaker 1: that inspired us, especially from our youth, and happened to
Speaker 1: coincide with the one hundredth episode of Mythic Mind. About
Speaker 1: time to do that, and so I take you let's
Speaker 1: just make it that. I mean, this has increasingly become
Speaker 1: a group effort, and so I'm more than happy to
Speaker 1: hand over the reins for the milestone. So Aarin, you
Speaker 1: can go ahead and friend this conversation with anything else
Speaker 1: that we need to know and take it wherever you
Speaker 1: want to go.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Well, thanks Andrew and congrats on episode one hundred.
Speaker 2: You got a really cool thing going on with mythic
Speaker 2: mind and so may there be you know, one hundreds
Speaker 2: more and thank you.
Speaker 1: I like to think so well cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah. To start, I'm going to just share what I
Speaker 2: put the synopsis of our discussion that I put in
Speaker 2: the discords kind of just get things rolling. And so
Speaker 2: I use the term personal enchantment for today's discussion And
Speaker 2: the question that I asked the group was, what was
Speaker 2: your fantastis that's a fairy tale by George McDonald? What
Speaker 2: was your fantastes growing up? We all have stories from
Speaker 2: our youth that served and enchanting our souls and helping
Speaker 2: shape who we are today. What story or stories serve
Speaker 2: that role for you and in what ways did it
Speaker 2: shape you? And so I thought it would be a
Speaker 2: topic worth discussing for a couple of reasons. So reason
Speaker 2: number one, you know, we're all Christians who are involved
Speaker 2: on some level in the humanities. So we have an
Speaker 2: acute awareness then of the bridge between myth and truth, right,
Speaker 2: and we have a very bested interest in it. Maybe
Speaker 2: it's even to go farther. We have acute awareness in
Speaker 2: myth and reality. Lewis that cotomizes in this famous essay
Speaker 2: myth becames fact. And so as these stories, these myths,
Speaker 2: you can take a modern one like or the Rings,
Speaker 2: or maybe the Rest with the Ancient Mariner, which is one
Speaker 2: of my favorites by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, or even go
Speaker 2: farther back in our history and look at the ancients
Speaker 2: like Homer and Virgil and Ovid, all those myths. They
Speaker 2: they really serve in leading us further up and further
Speaker 2: into goodness, truth and beauty, and oftentimes it it's more
Speaker 2: potent and it does a better job than a mere
Speaker 2: you know, propositional claim or argument could do. And bringing
Speaker 2: it back to Lewis, that's that was definitely the case
Speaker 2: for him. I guess he had a very logical and
Speaker 2: rational mind. But what really stirred him towards the Christian
Speaker 2: faith was this idea of story a myth. And there's
Speaker 2: the of course, the famous walk of the Addison's walk
Speaker 2: with Tolkien and Dyson where he really starts to think
Speaker 2: seriously about the Christian myth and then eventually accepts it right,
Speaker 2: and a big story that Lewis read growing up that
Speaker 2: he then started to realize how significant it was to
Speaker 2: him later on in life was Fantasties by George MacDonald
Speaker 2: and later in life, so he read it first as
Speaker 2: a boy, but later in life he's reflecting on the
Speaker 2: book's impact on his life and he ends up calling
Speaker 2: it a devotional work for him. And I think that's
Speaker 2: probably a good way to set up this idea of
Speaker 2: personal enchantment, is that for us, what are the stories,
Speaker 2: the myths, the whatever we consumed early in our life
Speaker 2: that really kind of set us up to accept this
Speaker 2: Christian myth that for us we have, Like Lewis had
Speaker 2: a very high reverence for McDonald, and I imagine that
Speaker 2: the stories that we bring up today, we'll have a
Speaker 2: high amount of reverence and respect for them, more so
Speaker 2: than than other stories. So that's kind of where I'm
Speaker 2: coming at with the personal enchantment thing. So are there
Speaker 2: any like questions or clarifications? It's working okay well In
Speaker 2: reason number two. On more on a practical level, I
Speaker 2: think this could be a pretty meaningful work of legacy,
Speaker 2: not just for the Mythic Mind podcast. It is that
Speaker 2: for sure, but also for us as individuals. So as
Speaker 2: uh men, Uh, and as husbands, fathers, as Christians? What
Speaker 2: are some of the stories uh that we that they
Speaker 2: affected us so much that we want to impart them
Speaker 2: to our children and our children's children and and see
Speaker 2: those stories continue on to shape shape young minds. And so, uh,
Speaker 2: I know this was formative for me kind of thinking through. Okay,
Speaker 2: so which stories really impacted me in my youth that
Speaker 2: I would want to see you know, my my children
Speaker 2: four of them?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 2: Which stories I want them to read? And so that's
Speaker 2: kind of where I'm coming at with this. And uh,
Speaker 2: I'd imagine, since this is largely uh everyone in this
Speaker 2: group has a love for Lewis and Tolkien, I imagine we're
Speaker 2: going to I'm gonna hear Lord of the Rings or
Speaker 2: Narnia once or twice in this podcast. Totally fine, Totally fine.
Speaker 2: But how I want to structure this conversation, That's all right,
Speaker 2: since we have we have five here, so I have
Speaker 2: multiple stories that I want to bring in to the conversation.
Speaker 2: But maybe I'll probably just start with one and then
Speaker 2: pass it off to the person next to me, so
Speaker 2: that'd be Ian, and then we'll each take a story
Speaker 2: and just kind of circle back around until we hit
Speaker 2: all the stories that we want to talk about, and
Speaker 2: feel free to bring in personal experience, feel free to
Speaker 2: bring in quotes or anything that kind of stuck out
Speaker 2: to you that really resonated with you. Just kind of
Speaker 2: showcase you know the importance of that story. Does that
Speaker 2: make sense? Everyone's going with that? Okay, awesome, Well how
Speaker 2: about maybe just set the tone. I'll start and this
Speaker 2: these stories we read them as reading them later on
Speaker 2: in life. It's not like the best writing just spoiler alert,
Speaker 2: but it was really important for me, and it is
Speaker 2: The Prideing Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander brought brought my classroom
Speaker 2: copy here, particularly number two, The Black Cauldron. That one
Speaker 2: was really uh profound for me. And uh so this
Speaker 2: is essentially the first besides like the Magic Treehouse books,
Speaker 2: It's like the first series I ever read and finished.
Speaker 2: I remember when I was I think I was nine.
Speaker 2: I was just kind of walking through the library and
Speaker 2: the book covers just astounded me. I really wanted to
Speaker 2: read them just based off of the book covers, but
Speaker 2: the first couple of times I checked them out from
Speaker 2: the library, I just could not get through them. It's
Speaker 2: just I probably was a little bit young in my reading,
Speaker 2: and so I wasn't that strong of a reader. So
Speaker 2: that's probably one of the reasons why I kind of
Speaker 2: just fizzled out after a chapter or two. But then
Speaker 2: finally I just you know, hunkered down and read them
Speaker 2: and I loved them. And it's great fantasy. It's it's
Speaker 2: definitely inspired by by Tolking them the US. Again, not
Speaker 2: as great as Narnia or Lord of the Rings or
Speaker 2: The Hobbit, but a really good story. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's my my first book. Has anyone else read it?
Speaker 3: The Priday Chronicles I have, although I actually prefer the
Speaker 3: west Mark books, also by Alexander Whereas Pardine is kind
Speaker 3: of a mishmash of Narnia and King Arthur for kids,
Speaker 3: West Mark is Lima's rob for kids.
Speaker 4: Okay, well I haven't read them, and but so the
Speaker 4: Disney movie is loosely based on the first two of
Speaker 4: those books.
Speaker 2: Wow, and they called it the Black Cauldron, I believe,
Speaker 2: so it's based off as the second books title. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's mm.
Speaker 1: So, so what about those stories? Looking obviously, as a kid,
Speaker 1: you don't always know why certain things are enchanting you
Speaker 1: or inspiring you. Or capturing your imagine nation and looking back,
Speaker 1: what do you think it is about these stories that
Speaker 1: gripped you as a child.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it was besides like watching Star Wars
Speaker 2: and watching Lord of the Rings films. It was getting
Speaker 2: a sense of this small, insignificant person, this who's just
Speaker 2: looking after a pig, which turned out to be a
Speaker 2: pretty special pig. He gets called on an adventure. You
Speaker 2: kind of could get this sense of, like the world
Speaker 2: building is really good, and you see this young man
Speaker 2: kind of coming of age, gaining courage, and then finally,
Speaker 2: you know, finding out what his his calling, his destiny is.
Speaker 2: And so I just as a young reader, I hadn't
Speaker 2: really read much of that of that kind, and so
Speaker 2: that's one reasons why I was pretty for me.
Speaker 3: So should I jump in? Yeah, go for it in Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 3: I actually have a stack of seven books that I
Speaker 3: tried to think through. I was thinking specifically from when
Speaker 3: I really started reading, around the time when I was
Speaker 3: nine to about when I was eleven or twelve. A lot.
Speaker 3: I hit a lot more serious books when I was
Speaker 3: thirteen and fourteen. I didn't read Load of the Rings
Speaker 3: until I was thirteen. So I view this as like
Speaker 3: the first Layer, that first enchantment, and I did read
Speaker 3: George McDonald does, specifically the Princess and the Goblin books
Speaker 3: as a kid, but they didn't stick with me or
Speaker 3: really foundationally change who I am in the way that
Speaker 3: the books I picked dead. So the first one, I'm
Speaker 3: just going to start with one. The first one is
Speaker 3: The Complete Troll Clones by Arthur Conan Doyle. I actually
Speaker 3: had a slightly different edition of this, but it was
Speaker 3: the one that happ the original illustrations from the eighteen nineties,
Speaker 3: and this book did so many things. It introduced me
Speaker 3: to really the adult short story, that structure of beginning,
Speaker 3: middle end, and that shorter, compressed time frame, the idea
Speaker 3: of a narrator who's not the hero. Doctor Watson isn't
Speaker 3: the person who resolves the problems. He's there to just
Speaker 3: record what's happening, So a little more complexity than just
Speaker 3: your standard first person kid book that a lot of
Speaker 3: books when you're reading at that age have. But most
Speaker 3: of all, what I think really enchanted me and still
Speaker 3: enchants me is the idea of Sherlock Holmes as the
Speaker 3: modern day Knight. He's a battler for justice, for those
Speaker 3: who can't help themselves against powerful forces that want to
Speaker 3: destroy them, and that idea of a huge even though,
Speaker 3: of course Holmes is very flawed. You know, he's arrogant,
Speaker 3: he's not very considerate towards other people. He has a
Speaker 3: drug addiction, but he still strives for justice. He strives
Speaker 3: to help people who need help. I think that really
Speaker 3: enchanted me and continues to enchant me in a lot
Speaker 3: of the things I love today and the things that
Speaker 3: are important to me today.
Speaker 2: It's a question, fore Ian, who is the best Sherlock
Speaker 2: Holmes on screen.
Speaker 3: Jeremy Brett from the nineteen eighties and early nineties. I
Speaker 3: appreciate Basil Rathbone and Johnny Lee Miller from Elementary but
Speaker 3: Jeremy Brett partly because he had pretty much just the
Speaker 3: original stories. He wasn't working with new material. He was
Speaker 3: trying to interpret the original character. But also just because
Speaker 3: of the intensity of his performance. He really gives you
Speaker 3: a sense of the genius bind with the passion for
Speaker 3: justice that I think a lot of the other Sherlock
Speaker 3: Holmes is.
Speaker 1: Miss I think that's fair. I'm by no means an
Speaker 1: expert on Sherlock Holmes, but it definitely seems like some
Speaker 1: of the more recent takes, which I enjoy watching the
Speaker 1: you know, cumber Badge or you know, Robert Downey Junior, Like,
Speaker 1: I think they're fun films, fun show, but it definitely
Speaker 1: seems like they're almost doing a caricature of a character
Speaker 1: rather than living out the character or or you know,
Speaker 1: doing their own portrayal. That's my my amateur opinion, and.
Speaker 3: I would argue that both of them are leading heavily
Speaker 3: into the anti hero interpretation rather than the hero. And
Speaker 3: I think there's room for an anti hero interpretation for Holmes.
Speaker 3: But since we're talking about you know, enchantment in a
Speaker 3: book that kind of brought some goodness into my brain
Speaker 3: as a you know, eight nine year old boy, I
Speaker 3: think that Holmes is a here. I think he teaches
Speaker 3: kids to you know, observe and to do and use
Speaker 3: their brains, but not just use their brains for anything.
Speaker 3: He's not like becoming a super villain. He's using his
Speaker 3: brains to help people. I think that's it's a message
Speaker 3: that's not didactic, but it's modeled really well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a really important point that we've
Speaker 1: definitely gone through and maybe we're still in a stage
Speaker 1: of anti heroes where there are very few real, genuine
Speaker 1: heroes that are firmly on the side of good. You know,
Speaker 1: you might get a good outcome, but have actually a
Speaker 1: good heroic figure. It's kind of rare, and I think
Speaker 1: people don't recognize how much they want that. You know,
Speaker 1: some time ago, I've gotten to it spat with some
Speaker 1: people who are trying to argue that Jackson's Fermuir is
Speaker 1: somehow improved upon what Tolkien gave us, because he's such
Speaker 1: a muddled character and you know, you don't know what
Speaker 1: he's gonna do. It's like, no, like if you are
Speaker 1: at all in tune with like what it means to
Speaker 1: be human, what it is you actually want, Like you
Speaker 1: want a good guy. You want that at refreshing, wholesome
Speaker 1: reminder that there is goodness in this world and that's
Speaker 1: worth fighting for. Yeah, but I don't want to take
Speaker 1: over here, Aaron. Do you have any any follow up
Speaker 1: or where do you want to go from there?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 2: I think that's great. If we're going discussing Shirlock, we
Speaker 2: could go to your book Andrew.
Speaker 1: Well, see this is tough. I would like to say
Speaker 1: that five year old me was reading the Odyssey or
Speaker 1: even Lord of the Rings. But that's just simply isn't
Speaker 1: the case. I really wasn't as super active reader as
Speaker 1: a kid. Now, if we're talking a young child, there
Speaker 1: are certain things that come to mind. My parents did
Speaker 1: do a good job of reading to me regularly when
Speaker 1: I was a young child. You know, I think of this,
Speaker 1: see it came up with. It's like a treasury of
Speaker 1: bedtime stories, which I still have and reach my kids sometimes.
Speaker 1: It's a collection of fairy tales, but like the more
Speaker 1: grim versions where you know, not not the kind that
Speaker 1: typically are provided in children's books today, but you know,
Speaker 1: the ones where like people die and things go wrong sometimes.
Speaker 1: And that was definitely one of my favorite collections. And
Speaker 1: you know, as I've rediscovered reading and fantasy and fairy tales,
Speaker 1: I'm continually reminded of that line, that well known line
Speaker 1: from Lewis about becoming old enough to read fairy tales again,
Speaker 1: because that is exactly the arc that my life has taken.
Speaker 1: That as a young child, I love fairy tales. But
Speaker 1: then as I got a little bit older, especially later
Speaker 1: elementary school into middle aged, not middle aged, but middle grades,
Speaker 1: I just really stopped reading a whole lot. It's really
Speaker 1: not something I discovered again until adulthood, or at least
Speaker 1: I stopped reading fiction. And so when I think about
Speaker 1: what isolated times of reading I did have in my adolescence,
Speaker 1: I do very fondly remember my parents reading Narnia to me.
Speaker 1: So there's the Lewist that was already predicted to come up,
Speaker 1: and so we read through all of the Narnia books together,
Speaker 1: and I like, I would like to say that that
Speaker 1: radically shaped me, but I think that the experience of
Speaker 1: experiencing those stories with my parents at the time as
Speaker 1: a young child, I think that was actually the most
Speaker 1: enriching part of that experience of talking with them, of
Speaker 1: encountering it and being read to, rather than simply reading
Speaker 1: on my own. And so I think having that experiential
Speaker 1: connection is actually even more important at the time than
Speaker 1: the content of what I was reading. And so I
Speaker 1: guess if nothing else, that's that's a big plug for
Speaker 1: reading with your kids, not only for what you're reading,
Speaker 1: even though that is important, but also I think that
Speaker 1: just having that dynamic of encountering adventure, encountering story, encountering
Speaker 1: important ideas with somebody who is equipped to lead you
Speaker 1: through them because young child, I think that is one
Speaker 1: of the most formative things about reading in youth. Now
Speaker 1: beyond that, I can get to more to this in
Speaker 1: the next round. I mean, honestly, as a child, video
Speaker 1: games were probably more of where I got my literary
Speaker 1: fix at the time. So maybe I can circle back
Speaker 1: to some of that from my next run.
Speaker 2: And well just to echo that, you know, I love
Speaker 2: reading Narnia as a kid. Definitely one of those top
Speaker 2: stories I've enchanted me. But you know, there's only a
Speaker 2: first time that you can read this story right and
Speaker 2: kind of experience it a whole new world for the
Speaker 2: very first time. But bringing it stories to your kids,
Speaker 2: like I'm currently reading through the Narnia series with my children.
Speaker 2: I'm older two. We're on the silver chair and seeing
Speaker 2: Narnia through their eyes is it's not the same thing
Speaker 2: as you know, me reading it personally for the first time,
Speaker 2: but it's super rewarding and it's it's changed my rankings
Speaker 2: quite a bit too, Like just seeing the questions that
Speaker 2: my kids ask about about certain stories. I think I
Speaker 2: I think it was actually a post that you you
Speaker 2: made andrew your ranking Narnia books and then I comment,
Speaker 2: like the language and wardrobe is too it's too low
Speaker 2: on your rankings. Read it to your kids and then
Speaker 2: tell me what the ranking is, because I imagine it's
Speaker 2: just going to uh to go to the towards the top.
Speaker 1: If they don't tell me that the silver Chair is
Speaker 1: the best, I'm going to tell them they're wrong.
Speaker 2: I'm with you. I'm with you on that, but Lion
Speaker 2: with the Wardrobe is number two. Just maybe set some controversy. Well.
Speaker 2: Other thoughts on I'm reading two kids, any of your
Speaker 2: thoughts on that.
Speaker 3: I really love the point you make about getting to
Speaker 3: experience a book for the first time again when reading
Speaker 3: it to a child. I really like watching people on
Speaker 3: YouTube react to TV shows or movies that I really
Speaker 3: like and seeing that experienced the emotions I felt the
Speaker 3: first time. So I think I think we need to
Speaker 3: start reading books to kids for the first time. Channel
Speaker 3: on YouTube.
Speaker 1: You know, I will say we have a board book
Speaker 1: child's version of The Lion of Witch and the Wardrobe,
Speaker 1: which some people said, don't do that, just wait for
Speaker 1: the real book. And I get the arguments, but at
Speaker 1: the same time, I think it's healthy for kids to
Speaker 1: be familiar with the world. I think that itself is healthy.
Speaker 1: And even Lewis says that what's good about a book
Speaker 1: is not the excitement of what's going to happen. What's
Speaker 1: good about a book is the familiarity that you get
Speaker 1: with the ideas and with what's happening. And that's where
Speaker 1: it really deepens. And so even when I read this,
Speaker 1: you know, board book, when I've read this board book
Speaker 1: with my then two year olds, like they love the
Speaker 1: story to the point where I get to the page
Speaker 1: of you know, Aslan coming back to life, which the
Speaker 1: book doesn't even clearly specify exactly what's happening, but I
Speaker 1: kind of feel that in form in my reading, and
Speaker 1: they just just like get so excited, and so, you know,
Speaker 1: even on their level, you know, I'm able to experience
Speaker 1: some of that just enchantment with Narnia and with the
Speaker 1: story and the hope and excitement that the figure of
Speaker 1: Asland provides, and so I can. And at this point,
Speaker 1: like they're capable of very long stories, and so I
Speaker 1: don't think it will be much longer before we just
Speaker 1: get into the real thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I didn't read then.
Speaker 4: I read the Language in the Wardrobe when I was
Speaker 4: probably twelve or thirteen, but I didn't read any of
Speaker 4: the other ones until my wife was pregnant with our son,
Speaker 4: and I bought a complete set and read through them
Speaker 4: in anticipation of them reading them with him.
Speaker 6: And I remember.
Speaker 4: His reaction, you know, like when Diggery rang the bell,
Speaker 4: you know, he was petrified. You know, I'd love how
Speaker 4: real and how much to watch a kid really get
Speaker 4: into the story like that, and his concerns When he
Speaker 4: was he was very much a rule follower, so anytime
Speaker 4: someone was breaking the rules in a story, he was
Speaker 4: not very excited about it. So it is interesting to
Speaker 4: see from a child's perspective what story points hit differently
Speaker 4: than they do as an adult.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it was towards the end of reading
Speaker 2: The Lion in Witch and the Wardrobe to my daughter.
Speaker 2: This is after some people cracks athlun rises again and
Speaker 2: then ah, my daughter Lucy, so there's a narname that
Speaker 2: I get there. But she asked me Dad as like Jesus,
Speaker 2: I'm like, why do you say that? And then she
Speaker 2: kind of just lifts off some reasons. Well, you know,
Speaker 2: he he died and he study't for Edmund and now
Speaker 2: he's he rose again. Like, that's interesting, but it's just
Speaker 2: kind of cool to see the experiencing and kind of
Speaker 2: figure it out on their own. I don't want to
Speaker 2: the dad that just like explains everything to them. I
Speaker 2: want them to, you know, to be maybe not as
Speaker 2: as carefree as like a Dumbledore, where it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is my school, but you guys just whoever you
Speaker 2: want and experience it for yourself. But I want to
Speaker 2: guide them for sure. Yeah. IVE seen them kind of
Speaker 2: figure out and put the pieces together. It's really cool,
Speaker 2: really special. All right, David, what's your first story?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 4: All right, well, I yeah, I started thinking about elementary
Speaker 4: school and our school library. There was a book that
Speaker 4: I was always checking out and I've got it here.
Speaker 4: It was The Iron Giant and this is the original
Speaker 4: printing from nineteen sixty eight, which and looking it up today,
Speaker 4: I discovered this is worth four hundred bucks, so I'm
Speaker 4: going to be careful with it. But yeah, the movie
Speaker 4: in ninety nine is based on the book, but it's
Speaker 4: so different that when that movie came out, I didn't
Speaker 4: even realize it was supposed to be based on the book.
Speaker 4: There's a metal giant man who eats some farm equipment
Speaker 4: and can put itself back together, and there's a boy
Speaker 4: named Hogarth, and other than that, there are not really
Speaker 4: any similarities. But yeah, and the original British title was
Speaker 4: The Iron Man, but even in nineteen sixty eight, that
Speaker 4: comic already existed here, and so I think they call
Speaker 4: it The Iron Giant all over the world now because
Speaker 4: the other Iron Man got much more popular. But yeah,
Speaker 4: he's like a nuisance when he first shows up and
Speaker 4: they trap him, but eventually they're welcome him in the community.
Speaker 4: But then there's this really weird sudden turn in the
Speaker 4: story where astronomers see a giant monster coming through space
Speaker 4: to the Earth and it's they call it the Space
Speaker 4: Bat Angel Dragon, and it just lands on Australia and
Speaker 4: demands to be fed, and the Iron Giant challenges it
Speaker 4: to a contest, and it's it's in five chapters. It's
Speaker 4: meant to be read to a kid over five nights,
Speaker 4: and Ted Hughes he's English poet laureate, and so the
Speaker 4: writing is very interesting. Sometimes there's a unique rhythm, lots
Speaker 4: of short sentences and sound effects written out in repetition
Speaker 4: and things. But I was always just fascinated largely by
Speaker 4: the illustrations like there, I think they're like etchings, and
Speaker 4: only this first edition has these illustrations in it. But
Speaker 4: he looks like he's made out of car parts and
Speaker 4: stuff basically, like I don't know, you can see like
Speaker 4: these kinds of strange things like that, like he's got.
Speaker 6: A car headlights for.
Speaker 4: Eyes in the radiator of a car for a nose,
Speaker 4: and stuff like that. But I did become an artist,
Speaker 4: and I think books and the illustrations in them, they
Speaker 4: had a big impact on me in that way. But
Speaker 4: just the how far out the story is. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's only like fifty pages, but like this monster just
Speaker 4: kind of hanging on the sun.
Speaker 6: It really fascinated me.
Speaker 4: But in the beginning, he just it starts with this
Speaker 4: iron man seeing the ocean for the first time and
Speaker 4: then falling off a cliff and falling apart, and then
Speaker 4: in great detail, the first chapter describes his parts like
Speaker 4: a hand finds an eyeball and finds another hand, and
Speaker 4: they find a leg and they're just describing when all
Speaker 4: coming back together. And I remember when I was in
Speaker 4: third grade, and this would have been like nineteen eighty
Speaker 4: three or four, all the kids in school had to
Speaker 4: read for fifteen minutes from whatever book they picked to
Speaker 4: the principle in his office and I picked book and
Speaker 4: I read that absurd first chapter to him and he
Speaker 4: was like, well, that was very interesting, but.
Speaker 6: That it stuck with me. I don't know.
Speaker 4: I kind of forgot about it for a while, but
Speaker 4: then it came back and it really stuck with me.
Speaker 4: And I found a probably twenty years ago, I found
Speaker 4: this copy of the book.
Speaker 6: But you know, it's.
Speaker 4: Vaguely environmental and anti Cold War. I think he wrote
Speaker 4: it to console his children because his wife had committed suicide,
Speaker 4: if I remember correctly, which is kind of a sad
Speaker 4: bit of the story. But yeah, I think this book
Speaker 4: and other books like that really activated my imagination and
Speaker 4: made me want to be a person who tried to,
Speaker 4: I don't know, create these kinds of stories and that
Speaker 4: kind of imagery specifically that was in the book I have.
Speaker 2: I have not read The Iron Giant, but I'm putting
Speaker 2: it on my list to read now. Anyone else read it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, like I said, fifty pages, so it's a pretty
Speaker 4: It seemed huge. I remember when I was a kid
Speaker 4: getting it in the library, thinking it was about twice
Speaker 4: this size. You know, but I was I was much
Speaker 4: smaller compared to it, I guess, but.
Speaker 3: You just said it was four hundred dollars.
Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, you know, And you were talking about
Speaker 4: original illustrations earlier. I don't know why they changed the illustrations, Like,
Speaker 4: you know, the original Narnia illustrations are the best. I
Speaker 4: think these originals are the best. There's even like Doctor
Speaker 4: Seuss books, sometimes they go and try to change the illustrations,
Speaker 4: and they were there was nothing wrong with them.
Speaker 6: They're they're beautiful.
Speaker 5: But yeah, So for mine, I was trying to think
Speaker 5: of stuff that I read as a kid, and the
Speaker 5: number one series I read was definitely Red Wall. I
Speaker 5: know that Brian Jake's mentions them not being religious of
Speaker 5: any kind, but there's definitely a lot of themes throughout
Speaker 5: it that go well with Christianity and just also just bravery.
Speaker 5: And I always wanted to be, you know, one of
Speaker 5: those badgers that's just going through and taking out all
Speaker 5: the evil villains, you know. And the good thing about
Speaker 5: it is like the villains are always I mean, they're
Speaker 5: like you know when they're you're reading about it, like Okay,
Speaker 5: this rat's going to be evil or the weasel's going
Speaker 5: to be evil or the snake, and it's not like
Speaker 5: they're like super they weren't wrong. They're just evil and
Speaker 5: they're trying to punish all the like the peaceful animals.
Speaker 5: So just seeing like that courage it was great. And
Speaker 5: it's it's funny because I would always pick them out
Speaker 5: when I was a kid and I was going to
Speaker 5: read them from my class because you had to read
Speaker 5: a certain about before the end of the month, and
Speaker 5: I'd always procrastinate. So it ended up being my dad
Speaker 5: reading the book to me, like on a Sunday, just
Speaker 5: reading like fifteen chapters and I'm just sitting there watching them.
Speaker 5: So it was always a good talk.
Speaker 4: I think my wife really likes those books that I
Speaker 4: have not read them.
Speaker 2: I was first introduced to Redwall actually through the cartoon
Speaker 2: they did. Do I watch the cartoon chase. It was
Speaker 2: on PBS, remember, and I think it just detailed the
Speaker 2: first book with Matthias and Clooney, and I just loved it.
Speaker 2: It was awesome. And then for some reason the show
Speaker 2: went away, and this was before TVO. I couldn't really, like,
Speaker 2: you know, find it ever again until later on. But
Speaker 2: the first book, especially I love it's fantastic, great world building,
Speaker 2: just really excellent world building, tales of courage. And to
Speaker 2: your point, like there's he's not really playing the game
Speaker 2: with subjective morals or they trying to make a sympathize
Speaker 2: with these characters that are clearly villainous or gilling a vice.
Speaker 2: He's coloring within the lines in that regard instead trying
Speaker 2: to blur him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, it's really it's it's cool that he
Speaker 5: I know that he'd mentioned writing about all the food
Speaker 5: because he was writing for blind kids because he had
Speaker 5: worked with them or something or had you had a
Speaker 5: place in his hard for him, and man, I always
Speaker 5: wanted to eat whatever they were eating, so it was
Speaker 5: it was well done.
Speaker 2: Well, who writes eating scenes better? Tolkien or or Brian
Speaker 2: Jacks put you on the spot.
Speaker 3: Well, I will say that Brian Jakes was on my list.
Speaker 3: So here's the one I picked A long patrol. I
Speaker 3: always loved the Hairs because they were such a distinct
Speaker 3: culture of Later I found out British military officer class.
Speaker 3: But I loved the sense of brotherhood and community that
Speaker 3: the Red Bull books hold up as an ideal.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I haven't read Law Control but I have read
Speaker 1: some my kids, like some of the Paw Patrol books.
Speaker 1: If that qualifies here.
Speaker 3: No, No, that's a completely different thing.
Speaker 2: Yes, we'll circle back around to me, Chase. I want
Speaker 2: to hear your answer, though, who writes better eating scenes.
Speaker 2: I'll give you some time to think about it though, Okay, man,
Speaker 2: all right, So my next one, and I think there
Speaker 2: are some other millennials here on this call, so I'm
Speaker 2: curious to get your thoughts on this, but probably this
Speaker 2: is actually probably number one besides Narnia, and that's the
Speaker 2: Harry Potter series. And so what I'm pulling up right
Speaker 2: now is the seventh book, The Deathly Hallows. This is
Speaker 2: actually the Canadian version as well. So the story behind
Speaker 2: it is I was on vacation in Canada when the
Speaker 2: book came out, and I'm one of those diehard Harry
Speaker 2: Potter fans where we went to Barnes and Noble say
Speaker 2: up till Midnight, got our copy of the book, and
Speaker 2: then went home. But I couldn't do that on vacation,
Speaker 2: and so the day after it was released, we found
Speaker 2: this bookstore in small town, Canada and grab a copy,
Speaker 2: and then my vacation was Harry Potter. I essentially just read,
Speaker 2: ate and slept. That's all I did finishing it, I
Speaker 2: think like two or three days. And I just love
Speaker 2: the Harry Potter series, and it's a series that it
Speaker 2: kind of speaks to the power of how myth shapes
Speaker 2: culture because Rowling, you know, for what we know about her,
Speaker 2: I don't think she's a Christian, but you wouldn't know
Speaker 2: that if you didn't know anything of it, If you
Speaker 2: didn't know anything about Rolling, you was going you're judging
Speaker 2: her off of the books, you might suspect that she's
Speaker 2: a Christian, especially with that definitely hollow she just goes
Speaker 2: full hill and there's so many different Christian elements to it,
Speaker 2: but they're also present in the previous ones as well,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, it was definitely a very formative book
Speaker 2: for me. Is still very profound for me. I love
Speaker 2: going back through them. They're one of the series I
Speaker 2: try to get to once a year, once every other
Speaker 2: year if things are busy. So, the Harry Potter series,
Speaker 2: what are your guys' thoughts on that? I wonder if
Speaker 2: it's a little controversial just based off of Rawling herself.
Speaker 1: Well, I have a couple of questions. First, of all,
Speaker 1: how long have you worshiped the devil?
Speaker 2: Well, I like witchcraft, man this.
Speaker 1: Kidding, Well, that'll be the tiger line.
Speaker 2: Oh, come on, if you're going to you know, demonizes rowling.
Speaker 2: But then at the same time pray Shakespeare, I mean,
Speaker 2: just stop it, just stop it. There's mh like some
Speaker 2: other stories that deal in witchcraft, which I mean Narnia
Speaker 2: is also one of them, guys, and so is Lord
Speaker 2: of the Rings to an extent, at least dealing with
Speaker 2: dark magic. She is an nothing that really still colors
Speaker 2: within the right lines. Uh, there's a sense of a
Speaker 2: good and evil objective, good and evil. It's it's not
Speaker 2: she's not playing a game with it, even though she's
Speaker 2: writing in the modern age. And so you can see
Speaker 2: the influence that that Lewis Tolkien in going back farther,
Speaker 2: she there's a lot of callbacks the Greco Roman mythology.
Speaker 2: She's influenced by a lot of the right stories this
Speaker 2: and like the the series succeeds I think in part
Speaker 2: because of those Christian elements that are present once that
Speaker 2: she's probably aware of, and also some other ones that
Speaker 2: she may even realized. You say, you have a second
Speaker 2: question for me, Yeah, I'm a devil worship for where
Speaker 2: I established that.
Speaker 1: The second one, yeah, I actually completely forgot that as
Speaker 1: a kid that i'd read the first four and a
Speaker 1: half Harry Potter books. I don't really know why, for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, I dropped off during the Order of the Phoenix,
Speaker 1: But those were actually.
Speaker 3: The first what's that because they got worse?
Speaker 1: Well, I haven't read the messin adults, so I can't
Speaker 1: really give any firm criticism of them, since I really
Speaker 1: discovered what literature is about. But those were actually the
Speaker 1: first long books that I read as a kid, so
Speaker 1: that that should have probably been mentioned my first go around.
Speaker 1: That I think there is something very enchanting about them,
Speaker 1: and I think that the firm lines between good and
Speaker 1: evil is an important part of that. For me, that's
Speaker 1: almost required for genuine enchantment, because it's reality, like there
Speaker 1: is such a thing as the good and there is
Speaker 1: such a thing as the opposite of that, and for honest, we,
Speaker 1: even as children, let alone as adults, like we know
Speaker 1: that's the case. And so when that starts to get
Speaker 1: blurred and everything just becomes an amorphous gray blob, it
Speaker 1: doesn't really resonate with us the same way, or at
Speaker 1: least it requires layers of propaganda for it to resonate,
Speaker 1: and then it's not really resonating with us. And so
Speaker 1: I think to really provide the kind of enchantment that
Speaker 1: helps us to become more grounded in reality, you need
Speaker 1: those lines of good and evil. And I agree that's
Speaker 1: definitely there in Harry Potter. But my follow up, my
Speaker 1: actual question here is we said that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of Christian themes in Harry Potter, Like you don't
Speaker 1: have to give a you know, full analysis, We don't
Speaker 1: spend the rest of the night doing that. But like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean by that? What are some some
Speaker 1: of the broad Christian connections here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, So let's just take nothing alos for
Speaker 2: for instance, like there's there's a scene where Harry has
Speaker 2: to go into the water to grab this a certain item.
Speaker 2: I think I want to spoil it, but there there's
Speaker 2: an element of baptism in that that that's that's that's
Speaker 2: pretty clear, and he's pulled out the water. He saved
Speaker 2: by by someone else. There's a guy who I was
Speaker 2: just reading. He called him Ron the Baptist, which I
Speaker 2: thought was pretty funny. Harry essentially dying becoming death, to
Speaker 2: rise again, to conquer the dark Lord h for good.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's kind of all over the place.
Speaker 2: It's really hard to if you're, you know, reading through it,
Speaker 2: especially as an adult, you're like, oh wow, there's there's
Speaker 2: quite a bit here. Touch on that. But Ian has
Speaker 2: some disagreements. I can sense, So Ian, let's hear it. Man.
Speaker 3: Well, So I lived with a family after grad school
Speaker 3: for about four years where what are my close friends
Speaker 3: in the face family was a huge Harry Potter fan,
Speaker 3: and I have never been a Harry Potter fan. I
Speaker 3: actually didn't read Harry Potter until the last book came
Speaker 3: out and I was in college. I was about twenty
Speaker 3: one when I read all seven books. So definitely wouldn't
Speaker 3: be a candidate for enchantment, even if I liked them.
Speaker 3: So what I'm about to say I wanted to say.
Speaker 3: I think there is certainly an enchanted and Christian appreciation
Speaker 3: you can have for the Harry Potter books. But when
Speaker 3: I look at the impact the Harry Potter books, and
Speaker 3: this is completely divorced from Welling herself. When I look
Speaker 3: at how people read the books, and I'm kind of
Speaker 3: influenced here by CEUs Lewis's experiment in criticism criticism, what
Speaker 3: I see most dominant in the behavior of self proclaimed
Speaker 3: Harry Potter fans is a tribalism. It's most easily seen
Speaker 3: in the the house system. You know, the Gryffindors are
Speaker 3: clearly the good guys, the Slytherins are clearly the bad guys,
Speaker 3: the Hufflepuffs are clearly the servant class, and the raven
Speaker 3: Claus are clearly the nerds. And as the books attempt
Speaker 3: to tackle more difficult subjects like racism and a clear
Speaker 3: Nazi analog with Voldemort, I see people applying Voldemort's pretty
Speaker 3: much motiveless evil. He's just kind of born evil. He
Speaker 3: doesn't have an ideology other than might makes right, and
Speaker 3: he uses racism to kind of motivate some of his followers,
Speaker 3: but there's no indication that he has any real racial
Speaker 3: animis outside of everyone who's not Voldemort is less than me.
Speaker 3: And I think the way people use Harry Potter to
Speaker 3: see the world, whether you're on the right and you say, oh,
Speaker 3: Biden and his people, they're all like, you know, umbrage,
Speaker 3: like school marms trying to police our speech, or if
Speaker 3: you're on the left, and you're like, oh, Trump and
Speaker 3: all his you know, jack booted thugs are like Voldemort
Speaker 3: and his death eaters. I think that's an extremely unhealthy
Speaker 3: and unhelpful way to apply literature to your everyday life,
Speaker 3: because whether you agree with Biden or Trump, or Republicans
Speaker 3: or Democrats or whatever your political context is, there's way
Speaker 3: more complexity in those situations than with Voldemort versus Harry Potter.
Speaker 3: Voldemort's not a real character. He's a symbol that has
Speaker 3: resonance with historical things. So there's a semblance of politics there,
Speaker 3: but it's not it's not something that helpfully maps onto
Speaker 3: today's situations. And so I really struggle with Harry Potter
Speaker 3: having a positive effect on the population because I see
Speaker 3: so much negative impact in that.
Speaker 1: Would you say that as a la and that I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I know he cut you off. That's got to this
Speaker 1: one follow up. Would you say that as a villain,
Speaker 1: that Voldemort is substantially different than say Suran.
Speaker 3: Yes, although if you haven't read you know it so Mellion,
Speaker 3: you won't have as full understanding of Sauran. But I
Speaker 3: think Surin makes a lot more sense as a more
Speaker 3: medieval king whose primary goal is power.
Speaker 5: I would disagree with you for most of the points.
Speaker 5: I think that could be said for like the fandom
Speaker 5: of pretty much any of the popular things, like I've
Speaker 5: seen all those like looking through like Jedi and Sith
Speaker 5: is like you're I mean, everyone uses it, right if
Speaker 5: you're like a fan on one side, like mant Trump
Speaker 5: is just Sith board Empire, he just you know, fascist
Speaker 5: or whatever. You know, you could you can apply that.
Speaker 5: And in terms of I wouldn't even say like Voldemorre's
Speaker 5: really like Saurron or anything. I think in Half Blood Prince,
Speaker 5: like he's kind of an abandoned kid by his family
Speaker 5: and that leads him to like turning against it.
Speaker 6: I wouldn't.
Speaker 5: I know, people make like the you know, like it's
Speaker 5: a like there's a lot of racism in it, but
Speaker 5: I would even see it more like kind of like
Speaker 5: classism if you're going to make that argument, because you know,
Speaker 5: it's it's somebody that doesn't have, you know, like the
Speaker 5: wealthier people or like the Weasleys are looked down upon
Speaker 5: because they're closer to like like Muggles or something like that.
Speaker 5: So I mean, I think I say this bias because
Speaker 5: I did grow up with Harry Potter, and just like Aaron,
Speaker 5: I remember coming back on a like coming back from
Speaker 5: a trip and calling my dad and I ended up
Speaker 5: picking it up in the airports, like I read it
Speaker 5: on the plane back, you know, and so we were
Speaker 5: both reading it. But I think there is good there.
Speaker 5: I think people definitely do misuse it, being fans, for.
Speaker 3: Sure, And I do want to emphasize, and this is
Speaker 3: why I had such a rambling prologue. I lived with
Speaker 3: someone who I still love very deeply as a friend,
Speaker 3: who I think does read Harry Potter in a Christian way,
Speaker 3: in a way that encourages them to be kinder to
Speaker 3: people and live out the Christian life. So I do
Speaker 3: think it's very possible to read them like I just
Speaker 3: look at its impact on the wider world, and I
Speaker 3: don't see that positive impact in the way I see
Speaker 3: it for Narnia and for even Star Wars.
Speaker 1: Now, for those of you who are the Harry Potter
Speaker 1: apologists here, you know, I very much segment out my
Speaker 1: relationship with literature from kind of before and after my
Speaker 1: relatively recent literary renaissance of like a few years ago.
Speaker 1: Really it's where just so much my life changes. I
Speaker 1: just discovered books. Do you would you recommend that, you know, adults,
Speaker 1: Like if I pick up Harry pot and try to
Speaker 1: give it a read again, like without having like a
Speaker 1: life changing experience with it as a kid, Like am
Speaker 1: I going to enjoy it? Am I going to read
Speaker 1: it as great literature? Or is it going to read
Speaker 1: like a kid's book? Like? How does it read? Do
Speaker 1: you think for an adult.
Speaker 2: The writing does hold up? I would say it definitely
Speaker 2: isn't on the level of talking. I one a second,
Speaker 2: the writing is okay, it's it's definitely not on the
Speaker 2: level of talking the most. But the world building, especially
Speaker 2: the character building. There's so many good elements to to
Speaker 2: to Harry Potter. Uh so, yeah, I'm with Chase on that,
Speaker 2: and also just kind of echo to the misuse of
Speaker 2: a story of a fandom shouldn't apply to the work itself.
Speaker 2: How how the phantom treats it. I don't think that's
Speaker 2: necessarily fair either. I think my favorite example in the
Speaker 2: past year was is there are some MSMB what what's
Speaker 2: your name?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Joy read? She had this post where I think it
Speaker 2: was during the time where like Trump was talking about
Speaker 2: like how he wants like a third term and they're
Speaker 2: like always gonna be king or something, and so she
Speaker 2: like quotes bora mirror. He's like, well, gon Door has
Speaker 2: no king. Gon Door needs no king. And it's the
Speaker 2: same character who's just like, moments later in the stories
Speaker 2: is like my king Eric gone. It's just like this
Speaker 2: is this is stupid. So, I mean the point is,
Speaker 2: like everyone, you can't judge a work based off of
Speaker 2: how the fandom treats it. And what was the third point?
Speaker 2: I had a third point, but I think I think
Speaker 2: I lost it because I was laughing at joy read Sorry.
Speaker 2: Someone else responds no.
Speaker 1: So we don't need to get into this now. But
Speaker 1: I mean, right now a lot of the Harry Potter
Speaker 1: fan base is and too keen on Harry Potter anymore.
Speaker 1: But I guess we don't need to get into the
Speaker 1: current events.
Speaker 3: Well, when I say I do think that saying ex
Speaker 3: political parties voldemornt would be a misapplication, I think I
Speaker 3: would still say that it would be fair to say
Speaker 3: that Harry Potter at the very least falls into an
Speaker 3: unhealthy tribalism. And it's not just fandom misinterpretation or misapplication.
Speaker 3: I think that the way the house system is constructed
Speaker 3: is far too easily good, lesser, lesser evil, and that's
Speaker 3: not how human organizations work, particularly the way that Rolling
Speaker 3: writes to Zen. I understand that Rolling has attempted to say, oh,
Speaker 3: there's good Slytherins. Being Slytherin isn't necessarily bad. But there
Speaker 3: is not a single Slytherin who demonstrates real courage and
Speaker 3: real virtue at the end of the day. Except maybe
Speaker 3: you can argue system malfoy, but that's a reach in
Speaker 3: my opinion.
Speaker 2: That's the other point. Oh, sorry's chase you gumming.
Speaker 5: I was just gonna say I can get what you're
Speaker 5: saying in terms of like sorting into the different houses is.
Speaker 6: Like a hard pill to swallow.
Speaker 5: But I also would argue that they're counter to what
Speaker 5: our society says, like not everyone's going to be president,
Speaker 5: not everyone could be present. I couldn't be president, you know,
Speaker 5: like everyone has their certain abilities that are you know,
Speaker 5: their personality type made line and I think more modern
Speaker 5: thought it is just anyone could be anything, and I
Speaker 5: think that's caused some trouble. I think by her making
Speaker 5: Slytherin like the evil house. Let's say it's also because
Speaker 5: they're like people that you would need a slytherin for
Speaker 5: a certain task, right, you would need someone that's cunning
Speaker 5: in a different maybe a business deal. Like they're not
Speaker 5: going to cheat somebody, but but they're looking at like
Speaker 5: all the ways to do certain things, and so just
Speaker 5: saying that someone could use that for evil is definitely
Speaker 5: I mean, like, I don't know, I think those are
Speaker 5: personality types and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: So remember we're talking about books that enchanted us as children, right,
Speaker 4: so it doesn't matter if Ian wasn't enchanted by it.
Speaker 4: I you know, I'm tired of always having to point
Speaker 4: out that I'm the old man here. But I was
Speaker 4: twenty three when the first Harry Potter book came out, so.
Speaker 6: I haven't read them at all.
Speaker 4: My wife is a much more avid reader than I am,
Speaker 4: Like she just she just reads through books at rapid speed.
Speaker 4: So I bought her a British complete set of the
Speaker 4: books so that it like didn't have the localizations, you know,
Speaker 4: it says trainers instead of tennis shoes and stuff like that,
Speaker 4: just so that she'd have the original text for fun.
Speaker 4: And she really enjoyed the books. But yeah, my only
Speaker 4: experience is the movies, most of which I've only seen once.
Speaker 6: I really liked the earlier like the first one.
Speaker 4: The first story in series like this are always my
Speaker 4: favorite because I love being brought into this new world
Speaker 4: with the character who's also being brought into this world,
Speaker 4: and I always find that fascinating and seeing how they
Speaker 4: seeing it through their eyes is interesting to me. And
Speaker 4: then later on, I'm just like, what kind of parent
Speaker 4: would allow their kids to go to this school where
Speaker 4: they are in constant peril all the time.
Speaker 6: But I do enjoy the stories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, maybe a final thing I'll say on it,
Speaker 2: then we can move on to your next book. Ina
Speaker 2: is just trying to truncate it into a historical time period.
Speaker 2: I think there's a disservice to the text. Sure, you
Speaker 2: can draw some parallels to World World War two and
Speaker 2: the Nazi Party, but I think one of the things.
Speaker 2: I think one of the reasons why we'll still be
Speaker 2: reading Harry Potter forty fifty years from now is because
Speaker 2: it has some of those timeless truths in there, and
Speaker 2: she does a better job of it than a lot
Speaker 2: of other stories that you read nowadays. And I think
Speaker 2: that's because she was influenced by a lot of the
Speaker 2: right stuff. Feel free to respond to that, but then
Speaker 2: you can move on to your next next book.
Speaker 3: Then, no, I appreciate you've humored me. I hope I
Speaker 3: didn't come across as too negative. I mean, I do
Speaker 3: have a negative view of the books, but I hope
Speaker 3: it was taking in good spirit. I feel like you've
Speaker 3: heard what I had to say. So my next book
Speaker 3: is Star Wars x Wing Work Squadron. And I'm a
Speaker 3: big science fiction and military fiction fan, and the x
Speaker 3: Wing books were the first books that I ever read
Speaker 3: in that genre, and so well, a lot of people
Speaker 3: might point to a book like Enders Game or Starship Troopers,
Speaker 3: both of which I love, but I didn't come to
Speaker 3: those until I was in my teens. And so again,
Speaker 3: this is the first layer, the first book that really
Speaker 3: enchanted my brain with things. And so the things that
Speaker 3: really enchanted me about the X Wing series is the
Speaker 3: sort of what I talked about with the long patrol
Speaker 3: of the band of brothers, the sense of duty and honor.
Speaker 3: But in Star Wars, these were books that were written
Speaker 3: for adults, whereas Redwall was written for kids, and so
Speaker 3: I was exposed to ideas of you know, political machinations
Speaker 3: on both the good and the evil side. The idea
Speaker 3: that not all enemies you face are you know, slavering
Speaker 3: evil people like Emperor Palpatine, but some of the bad
Speaker 3: guys actually have motivations and fears and can be sympathetic.
Speaker 3: And that I think expanded me and enchanted me in
Speaker 3: ways that I think are really helpful today in our
Speaker 3: very tribalized political and religious times. I think being able
Speaker 3: to look at your opponent's point of view and seeing
Speaker 3: you might have a point, or even if I disagree
Speaker 3: with that point, I understand how you came to that.
Speaker 3: And I think that the X Wing books really force
Speaker 3: you to look at the world in these different ways,
Speaker 3: because that's the way most battles are, even in Star Wars,
Speaker 3: where it is good versus evil. When a strong writer
Speaker 3: like Michael Stackpole or Aaron Alston takes on that conflict,
Speaker 3: they're able to give depth to both sides and give
Speaker 3: complexity that you can say, I believe I'm fighting for
Speaker 3: the right side, but there are still rules in combat.
Speaker 3: Just because I think the other side is fighting for,
Speaker 3: you know, an evil thing, doesn't mean there are no rules.
Speaker 3: I should just slaughter everyone on that side. So warfare
Speaker 3: with integrity, warriors with honor. Those are the things that
Speaker 3: enchanted be about the X Wing series.
Speaker 2: I would say, now, is this series? Is this canon?
Speaker 3: Or is?
Speaker 2: Disney said no, I actually I'm not familiar with a
Speaker 2: lot of the story literature posts.
Speaker 3: I read them when I was you know, ten and eleven.
Speaker 3: This was in the nineties. It's definitely from the old
Speaker 3: Star Wars the Good Star Wars.
Speaker 2: Shall we say, well, I think there are some thoughts
Speaker 2: on on the X Wing series. By all means, go
Speaker 2: for it. But if not, then it's you're up. Andrew.
Speaker 1: Well, I think for me to be most productive, to
Speaker 1: jump ahead a few years from say, early childhood. When
Speaker 1: I think about the books that have most enchanted me,
Speaker 1: I feel like the first book that really got me,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I opened me up. I think to
Speaker 1: just reality on a deeper level, I gotta go shift
Speaker 1: gears a little bit Augustin's Confessions. First read it in
Speaker 1: I don't know, ish twenties, early in mid twenties something
Speaker 1: like that, and it just resonated with me in a
Speaker 1: deep way. At that point, I had just finished my
Speaker 1: bachelor's degree in philosophy, and so I was obviously interested
Speaker 1: in ideas and asking some of these questions, but I
Speaker 1: didn't really like I was a Christian, So I had
Speaker 1: some of the answers, but not early on a deep level.
Speaker 1: And something about reading Augustine's confessions, reading his philosophical his
Speaker 1: existential wanderings, his restlessness in pursuit of real substantial wisdom
Speaker 1: like that just resonated with me. I never read anything
Speaker 1: like this, someone who has such a deep understanding of
Speaker 1: himself and his own motivations as well as a desire
Speaker 1: for the truth and the way that he had delved
Speaker 1: into his own psyche. It just helped me to see
Speaker 1: the world with the kind of wonder that he sees
Speaker 1: the world. With you, this is kind of a mean
Speaker 1: level analysis, but you know, Augusta will be going off on,
Speaker 1: you know, some element of his biography and then just
Speaker 1: like ask the question like what is time? And then
Speaker 1: you know, go off on that tangent, and you know
Speaker 1: that very much resonates with the way that I kind
Speaker 1: of think and the way that I feel. And so
Speaker 1: even though this is very much it's nonfiction, it's the
Speaker 1: first narrative I think deeply gripped me and caused me
Speaker 1: to see the world in a different way, which is
Speaker 1: largely what we mean by enchantment. And so it was
Speaker 1: from here when I took a class at the beginning
Speaker 1: of my master's degree where we read just about all
Speaker 1: of Augustin's major works. She read The Confession City of God,
Speaker 1: on Christian Doctrine, on the Trinity, Antiplagian writings, and through
Speaker 1: both his biographical insights as well as his broader philosophy,
Speaker 1: so much of it it just built on this idea
Speaker 1: of wonder and desire, and so I think that really
Speaker 1: laid the groundwork for all of my reading role that's
Speaker 1: followed from Carecguard, who became essential to my doctoral work,
Speaker 1: which continues to lovely scene august Indian themes that drew
Speaker 1: me to him to begin with, And then from careke Guard,
Speaker 1: I was able to enter into fiction in a new
Speaker 1: kind of way, in a new more existential kind of way.
Speaker 1: And that's actually what led me back to discovering the
Speaker 1: significance in fairy tales and entering into myths, and that's
Speaker 1: what led to Tolkien and then from there basically the
Speaker 1: entire history of the Western canon. And so for me.
Speaker 1: When I think of the books that really enchanted me,
Speaker 1: I have to go to early adult years, specifically with
Speaker 1: The Confessions. This copy, this Penguin copy in particular. Although
Speaker 1: since then some of our listeners will know the Sun
Speaker 1: guys told me I was reading the wrong edition. So
Speaker 1: now I read the sheet translation, which is much better,
Speaker 1: and that's what we're using for our book club on
Speaker 1: some of the other episodes.
Speaker 2: How far are you guys in your book study?
Speaker 1: I think we just finished book six, Is that right, Chase?
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's been a year since I read The Confessions.
Speaker 2: I'd love to return to it at some point.
Speaker 3: It's so fascinating to me how relevant Augustine remains. Maybe
Speaker 3: it's because you know, we're kind of in a similar
Speaker 3: stage of society as late Roman Empire, Late American whatever
Speaker 3: we are. But you know, things like the obsession with
Speaker 3: the Gladiators and how people would be really drawn to
Speaker 3: those things even though they knew it was bad for them.
Speaker 3: I think there's plenty of spectacles that we in America,
Speaker 3: not just violence or fictional violence, but you know, political
Speaker 3: violence and viewing warfare's entertainment across the globe. I think
Speaker 3: there's a lot we can learn from Augustine all through
Speaker 3: his wisdom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely think his deep insights into really desire, Right,
Speaker 1: this comes down to what you're talking about, Like, all
Speaker 1: that we do is driven by desire for something, and
Speaker 1: ultimately we all have this innate desire for the good.
Speaker 1: But the problem is we watch our on two lesser goods,
Speaker 1: and so it's as Lewis says, that it's not that
Speaker 1: our desires are too strong, it's that they're not strong enough.
Speaker 1: And I think that Augustine, in the Confessions particular as
Speaker 1: well as elsewhere, that he does such a good job
Speaker 1: of capturing that essential human characteristic that you know, while
Speaker 1: Aristotle would say that we are first and foremost the
Speaker 1: rational animal, I think that Augustine would say that, I mean,
Speaker 1: if we're going to frame in those terms that were
Speaker 1: the desiring animal. He takes a much more platonic kind
Speaker 1: of approach. And obviously he has a lot of debt
Speaker 1: to Plato, and he, just more than anyone else, is
Speaker 1: such an incredible job of baptizing what's good in Plato
Speaker 1: and bringing that into a explicitly Christian context. And there
Speaker 1: are there are a few figures that both sides of
Speaker 1: the Reformation would vehemently rely upon.
Speaker 4: Well, if we're if we're going to go into college years.
Speaker 4: I was going to talk about how, you know, every
Speaker 4: time I had to write a book report when I
Speaker 4: I was in junior high and high school, and they
Speaker 4: would give us a list of books, you know, that
Speaker 4: we could pick from. If there was a Robert Heinlein book,
Speaker 4: I always picked it. So I read like Stranger in
Speaker 4: a Strange Land and Door into Summer and Starship Troopers
Speaker 4: and books like that, which I really enjoyed as strange
Speaker 4: and definitely not Christian, as a.
Speaker 6: Lot of his writings were there.
Speaker 4: It was an interesting rite and very detailed. It got
Speaker 4: me into the hard sci fi kind of stuff. But
Speaker 4: when I was probably about twenty in college, I had
Speaker 4: a bit of a crisis of faith where I'd been
Speaker 4: so firm and you know, if anybody could ever tell
Speaker 4: me that anything in the Bible was not true, then
Speaker 4: I would I would throw the whole thing out.
Speaker 6: You know. I was just so sure like.
Speaker 4: In my belief, but my belief was not deep as
Speaker 4: I thought it was as a late teenager. And then
Speaker 4: the Internet came around and I started to argue with
Speaker 4: atheists online and they started bringing up all sorts of
Speaker 4: objections that I'd never heard of. You know, this was
Speaker 4: in Usenet groups and whatnot, because it predated social media,
Speaker 4: and it just was dragging me down in a way
Speaker 4: I didn't even realize.
Speaker 6: And then one day.
Speaker 4: I remember I was driving and I just thought, I
Speaker 4: don't know if I believe this anymore, and it was
Speaker 4: just suffocating to me, and I.
Speaker 6: Was really kind of in despair.
Speaker 4: And then I really feel like it was maybe even
Speaker 4: the next day, a professor of mine who didn't really
Speaker 4: know the struggles that were going on, but he was
Speaker 4: a Christian, he gave me a copy of Mere Christianity
Speaker 4: and told me that I should read it, and it
Speaker 4: absolutely blew my mind that, hey, I I can ask
Speaker 4: these questions, I can think and reason about what I believe,
Speaker 4: So I I know God used that in my life massively,
Speaker 4: and I just started devouring everything that Lewis wrote from
Speaker 4: then on. So I read pretty much all of his
Speaker 4: nonfiction first and then moved in to all of his fiction.
Speaker 6: So that was a pivotal point in my life.
Speaker 4: So even though while I wasn't a child, that was
Speaker 4: a seriously important book for me.
Speaker 2: Was Mere Christianity, Pray Scott, that's awesome. I think we
Speaker 2: probably all a test on some level to the importance
Speaker 2: of Lewis or you token in there of shaping our
Speaker 2: worldview and maybe answering some of those those questions that
Speaker 2: kind of you know, we're wrestling with at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely believe that I'm just as much Lewis
Speaker 1: as you can in a year is going to be
Speaker 1: better than most apologetics degrees or even most theology degrees,
Speaker 1: philosophy degrees, whatever. I mean. I know that in my
Speaker 1: own experience of I'm pretty sure when I was younger
Speaker 1: I might have read Mere christian anywhey I was younger,
Speaker 1: I know I read screwtape letters somewhere along the way.
Speaker 1: But you know, when I towards the end, or maybe
Speaker 1: even after, I don't know, at some point in last
Speaker 1: few years, when I really got into Lewis, like on
Speaker 1: an extreme level, I definitely became convinced that, like as
Speaker 1: far as just that this content goes, reading a bunch
Speaker 1: of Lewis is better than most advanced degrees on not
Speaker 1: just an academic level, but i'll kind of deeply existential level.
Speaker 1: He has such an insight into the faith that he
Speaker 1: could defend rationally as well as engage with as somebody
Speaker 1: who actually loves Christ and the wisdom that the Christian
Speaker 1: faith has to offer. So I mean, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: that we can all echoes something of that regarding what
Speaker 1: Lewis has provided.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I wish I would have as a teenager or
Speaker 5: read more Lewis unless of the Left Behind series.
Speaker 2: But we all have our regrets.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as as a teenager, I Inhaled Lewis's nonfiction and
Speaker 3: it's it's so good, it's so foundational. Even where I
Speaker 3: disagree with it, he helps me to learn how to
Speaker 3: disagree with fellow Christians in a healthy way. And I
Speaker 3: would absolutely say Mere Christianity is a book that you
Speaker 3: could read every year and get something new and refreshing
Speaker 3: and soul constructing every time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Lewis famously thought that Harry Potter books were great.
Speaker 2: It's true, He's right.
Speaker 1: I think I saw that on an inspirational post going
Speaker 1: around Facebook recently.
Speaker 5: I think it was followed by hashtag rallying did nothing
Speaker 5: wrong for my next one, I think, which was interesting.
Speaker 5: I think I got more of it now that I'm
Speaker 5: an adult than when I was forced to read it
Speaker 5: in school, but going through the study at Beowulf actually
Speaker 5: realized deeper meaning some of the Christian themes that were
Speaker 5: going through it, compared to like pub book school just
Speaker 5: making you read a bad translation the whole way through.
Speaker 5: And that's just led me to definitely, in this time
Speaker 5: of my life read a lot more.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: Obviously I could go off on Beaiwell for a while,
Speaker 1: which I'm not going to, but I will say that
Speaker 1: there's so much material that is sometimes taught in schools.
Speaker 1: All the things like Baywolf are being taught less and
Speaker 1: less often, as I find speaking with my undergrad students
Speaker 1: that a lot of them have never read anything from Beywolf.
Speaker 1: Those who have, I've just read a little bit. I
Speaker 1: know when I was in school we read I think
Speaker 1: I basically just helped to the fight with Grendel and
Speaker 1: that was it. And the only insights I walked away
Speaker 1: with is it's an old story about a guy fighting
Speaker 1: a monster. Like That's about the level of analysis that
Speaker 1: I got. It's just there's so much in great literature
Speaker 1: that even if students are exposed to it, it's almost
Speaker 1: worse that they are exposed to it, because they end
Speaker 1: up with a twisted understanding of what it is, whereas
Speaker 1: you know, when I read something like Beaywulf, now it's
Speaker 1: just it's abounding in deep wisdom. But I'm gonna stop
Speaker 1: myself there. Otherwise I'm just gonna talk about Beywolf for
Speaker 1: the rest of the night. Well, Aaron, is there is
Speaker 1: there anyhere else you wanted to go?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I actually wanted to ask you guys first because
Speaker 2: I'm on the west coast, so it's it's still fairly
Speaker 2: early for me. I know some of you are on
Speaker 2: the East coast. How are we doing on time?
Speaker 1: I will probably need to drop off relatively soon, coming
Speaker 1: up on eleven o'clock here, But I mean, if you
Speaker 1: guys want to keep partying on feel free.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, what if we did like more rapid fire
Speaker 2: round of one more book for each of us, and
Speaker 2: then we can probably call it good for today?
Speaker 6: Okay?
Speaker 2: All right? Well, I actually only prepared three, so this
Speaker 2: works out for me. So we talked a lot about
Speaker 2: Lewis and we Tolkien has been mentioned here and there,
Speaker 2: and you think I'm gonna choose Lord of the Rings,
Speaker 2: but I'm actually going to be choosing the Hobbit.
Speaker 3: I do it.
Speaker 2: That is one of my favorite books of all time. Now,
Speaker 2: obviously it is as mature and as in depth as
Speaker 2: Lord of the Rings. No, and it's not meant to be.
Speaker 2: It's I first read it as as a teenager, and
Speaker 2: it was written for someone like me at that age.
Speaker 2: You know, he token wrote it for his children around
Speaker 2: that age as well, And so I just loved reading
Speaker 2: The Hobbit. It's one of the best books I read
Speaker 2: during my teenage years. And then after that I read
Speaker 2: the Little or the Rings books and they were good.
Speaker 2: Obviously they're better now than I'm reading it as an adult,
Speaker 2: but reading The Hobbit as a teenager was just super
Speaker 2: formative that they were funny, they were witty. Now i'm
Speaker 2: teaching it as well to my ninth graders, and just
Speaker 2: in every single year, I'm just experiencing seeing new things
Speaker 2: from the text. And so is it as again, is
Speaker 2: it as sophisticated as as Lord of the Rings are
Speaker 2: somewhere realian No, but it is pretty dang sophisticated. There's
Speaker 2: a lot going on with the Hobbit, so pro Hobbit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm really glad you said that it's still really sophisticated,
Speaker 3: because I think there's this sense that you know, it's
Speaker 3: the kiddie book, and yes, it's completely appropriate for our kids,
Speaker 3: but there's sophisticated stuff going on there. And not to
Speaker 3: mention the just beauty of Tolkien's language, which as always
Speaker 3: is just phenomenal, the poetry and the songs, and even
Speaker 3: just some of the narration, like describing the eagles and
Speaker 3: the flying it still qualifies for Lewis's here are Beauties
Speaker 3: that pierce the soul.
Speaker 2: All right, well, Ian's what's your last book?
Speaker 3: So I did do a prioritization, and my last book
Speaker 3: is going to be the Anna green Gables series by
Speaker 3: Ellen Montgomery. One of my favorite three authors as an
Speaker 3: adult is Jane Austen, and I would trace my love
Speaker 3: of her character and morality focused writing to falling in
Speaker 3: love with Ant of green Gables when I was ten
Speaker 3: and I read all eight of the books the summer
Speaker 3: I turned ten, and I thought they were just delightful
Speaker 3: community studies, romance, all the little coming of age things,
Speaker 3: and they enchanted my little mind with the ideals of
Speaker 3: what is living the good life in a mundane setting?
Speaker 3: Of course, you know, you had Red Wall, you had
Speaker 3: Tarlock Holmes, you know, a great detective or a mouse
Speaker 3: with a magic sword. But you know, a normal guy
Speaker 3: who becomes a doctor and marries his childhood sweetheart, a
Speaker 3: girl who becomes a teacher and then a mother. How
Speaker 3: can you live a good life, a life of joy
Speaker 3: and delight even through great pain and loss and hardship.
Speaker 3: And the Anaquen Cables books give you a great model
Speaker 3: for that, and I recommend them. Obviously they're more typical
Speaker 3: for boys, sorry for girls to read those, but I
Speaker 3: read them at ten. I have many of my brothers
Speaker 3: and my dad have also read them and loved them,
Speaker 3: So I think they're kind of a thing that can
Speaker 3: be universal. If you're willing to get over there about
Speaker 3: a girl.
Speaker 1: Well, first one rapid fire, then I'll move on with mine.
Speaker 1: I think that. I mean, I just gotta pick Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings. You know, even though I didn't read
Speaker 1: the books until a little bit later in life, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, I was taken with the general atmosphere or
Speaker 1: general world as permeedi at the culture. You know. I
Speaker 1: watched the Jackson movies when they came out, you know,
Speaker 1: played some of the games that are connected to it,
Speaker 1: you know, Big Battle for Metal Earth fan, but you
Speaker 1: know when when I discovered the books at the right time,
Speaker 1: that was personally it was one of the most difficult
Speaker 1: times in my life. And what I needed was not
Speaker 1: so much to know some philosophical concept or theological concept.
Speaker 1: What I needed to do is to experience it. And
Speaker 1: that's what Tolkien had to offer. One of the most
Speaker 1: compelling elements of Talken to me is how he blends
Speaker 1: sorrow and hope of this Christian idea that joy is
Speaker 1: found in suffering. One of the best lines in the book.
Speaker 1: You know, it comes from Haldier. The world is indeed
Speaker 1: full apparel, and then there are many dark places, but
Speaker 1: still there's much that is fair. And though in all
Speaker 1: lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps
Speaker 1: the greater, And that idea just permeates talk in the world.
Speaker 1: And I think that it's again much as Augustin did before.
Speaker 1: He allowed me to experience the depth of reality and
Speaker 1: its beauty and its brokenness more profoundly than I was
Speaker 1: equipped to do so before. So I gotta give my
Speaker 1: my last vote to Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't have.
Speaker 5: A third book, but these were all good.
Speaker 6: Go ahead, David, No, I didn't I didn't have anything
Speaker 6: else either.
Speaker 4: I prepared one. I thought that was the assignment. I
Speaker 4: spent the rest of my elementary school years playing on
Speaker 4: my Commodore sixty four.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, And that's why we have a video game podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So, I mean we we have branched off
Speaker 1: into a couple kind of side gigs here. So in
Speaker 1: addition to this this main podcast, we also have Mythic
Speaker 1: Mind Movies and shows, which is where we're continuing our
Speaker 1: Star Wars, and then we've got Mythic Mind Games where
Speaker 1: we're doing video game analysis, doing some kind of kind
Speaker 1: of stuff with that medium. In fact, I thought about
Speaker 1: mentioned before that if we're talking about stories that grip
Speaker 1: Us and I should probably throw in through something like
Speaker 1: morowined in there. It's something that that you kind of
Speaker 1: just as a child, like those kinds of things that
Speaker 1: really captured my attention and brought me into a world
Speaker 1: of enchantment. But I was trying to keep it literally focused.
Speaker 2: Well, I learned something new. I'm glad you gotta plug
Speaker 2: those those two other podcasts promotion, that's right, that's right,
Speaker 2: an honorable mention for me. Again, it's not great writing,
Speaker 2: but it was really formative for me is the Inheritance
Speaker 2: Cycle by Christopher Paolini. So Aragon eldest singer and I
Speaker 2: remember what last one is. I don't know, but I
Speaker 2: really enjoyed reading. There's actually hanging in my classroom. I
Speaker 2: can't get to right now because it's buried behind desks.
Speaker 2: But you know like those old read posters where it
Speaker 2: has like a character and then just has the word
Speaker 2: the word read on it. Well, my one of my
Speaker 2: ninth grade teachers made a picture of me in ninth grade.
Speaker 2: I still had a very full beard back in ninth grade. Guy,
Speaker 2: So it's toy legit, but of me reading eldest the
Speaker 2: second in the story. And so I brought it in
Speaker 2: into the class to kind of show that the students
Speaker 2: use it as a motivation, like, hey, just you know,
Speaker 2: read read out of high school. I don't think any
Speaker 2: extra reading has gotten done. One thing that my students
Speaker 2: did do and this will never see the light of day.
Speaker 2: I'll just mention it. Anyways, a student grabbed hold of
Speaker 2: the photo and made a flag of it, and so
Speaker 2: there's like a flag of like ten of me, just
Speaker 2: like plaster all over this.
Speaker 5: This.
Speaker 2: It's a super loud red flag it's awful, but it's
Speaker 2: it's really funny at the same time. But again, you
Speaker 2: guys are never going to see that.
Speaker 1: All right, Is there anything else that you wanted to mention?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks
Speaker 2: for being part of it, guys. I hope those who
Speaker 2: are listening and watching they maybe have some titles that
Speaker 2: they want to, you know, put on the short list
Speaker 2: to read and or maybe putting in their kids' hands.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I really appreciate you guys jumping on a
Speaker 2: call and sharing your wisdom.
Speaker 1: Cool, and and thank you Erin for facilitating this. Definitely
Speaker 1: hope to see you in some future conversations. I know
Speaker 1: you're a busy man, got lots of books to sell,
Speaker 1: and so everyone go go buy his books. Enjoy flat post.
Speaker 1: All right, Thanks Aaron, thank you everyone else for showing up,
Speaker 1: and we'll go ahead and wrap it there, all right.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening, and thank you for joining us
Speaker 1: for the one hundredth episode of the Main Mythic Mind podcast.
Speaker 1: We've come a long way since the beginning. We've really
Speaker 1: just we've transformed what this is. This is no longer
Speaker 1: just a guy with a podcast it truly is a
Speaker 1: community effort, is a fellowship built around significant ideas, built
Speaker 1: around a desire for wisdom, built around the compelling nature
Speaker 1: of stories that speak deeply to ongoing realities of what
Speaker 1: it means to be human. I mean, in some we've
Speaker 1: established a fellowship that is really intent on going further
Speaker 1: up and further in, and I hope that you'll consider
Speaker 1: joining us if you would like to be a part
Speaker 1: of what we do. If you want to fund what
Speaker 1: we do, then head over to patreon dot com slash
Speaker 1: Mythic Mind and become a patron today. Even a small
Speaker 1: bit of support is helpful and will give you full
Speaker 1: access to all three of the Mythic Mind podcasts delivered
Speaker 1: early in ad free into one feed, as well as
Speaker 1: full discord access. And you can find what out with
Speaker 1: the other tears do if you head over to patreon
Speaker 1: dot com slash Mythic Mind. But I do want to
Speaker 1: think all of our patrons. We currently have of seventy
Speaker 1: active patrons and by name, I would like to thank
Speaker 1: all Tier three patrons and higher, So thank you to Mark, Aaron, Amanda,
Speaker 1: Andrew Chase, Chaz, Christopher Clinton, David Don, Aaron Evy, Adam Jack, Jamie, Justin, Justin, Kyle, Paul, Roger,
Speaker 1: Ross Tyler, and William. All my patrons helped me to
Speaker 1: make these things possible, but of course the higher tier
Speaker 1: helped me to go a little bit further. And so
Speaker 1: if you would like to support us, if you want
Speaker 1: to be a part of what we're doing here, head
Speaker 1: over to Patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind. But that's
Speaker 1: it for now. If you're going to keep listening on
Speaker 1: the free platforms, then the next thing to come out
Speaker 1: from Mythic Mind, see we'll be on Wednesday. We have
Speaker 1: something coming out from the Mythic Mind movies and Charis podcasts,
Speaker 1: although I don't quite know what that's going to be
Speaker 1: yet because we replaced our normal recording time for this episode,
Speaker 1: so I had something will be coming out over there
Speaker 1: on Wednesday, the sixteen, that Mythic Mind movies and shows.
Speaker 1: But that's for now until next time, Godspeeding Plato Stoicism
Speaker 1: until we have Faces, an eight week course led by
Speaker 1: doctor ANDREWS. Snyder beginning August twenty twenty five. I have always,
Speaker 1: at least ever since I can remember, had a kind
Speaker 1: of longing for death. It was when I was happiest
Speaker 1: that I longed most. It was on happy days when
Speaker 1: we were up in the hills, the three of us,
Speaker 1: with the wind and the sunshine, where you couldn't see
Speaker 1: Gloam or the palace. Do you remember the color and
Speaker 1: the smell, and looking across at the gray mountain in
Speaker 1: the distance, And because it was so beautiful, it set
Speaker 1: me longing, always longing somewhere else, there must be more
Speaker 1: of it. Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche, come, but
Speaker 1: I couldn't come, and I didn't know where I was
Speaker 1: to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt like
Speaker 1: a bird in a cage when the other birds of
Speaker 1: its kind are flying home. And now I will make
Speaker 1: answer to you, o, my judges, and show that he
Speaker 1: who has lived as a true philosopher has reason to
Speaker 1: be of good cheer when he is about to die,
Speaker 1: that after death he may hope to receive the greatest
Speaker 1: good in the other world. For I deem that the
Speaker 1: true disciple of philosophy is likely to be misunderstood by
Speaker 1: other men. They do not perceive that he is ever
Speaker 1: pursuing death and dying. And if this is true, why
Speaker 1: having had the desire of death all his life long
Speaker 1: should he regret the arrival of that which he has
Speaker 1: always been pursuing and desiring. The longing of Plato and
Speaker 1: the control of the Stoics pervades Louis's retelling of the
Speaker 1: Cupid and psyche Myth until we have faces with this
Speaker 1: incredible novel, which he believed to be his best. Lewis
Speaker 1: demonstrates the tensions in ancient thought, and even more significantly,
Speaker 1: the limits of rational philosophy, which can only go as
Speaker 1: deep as the foxes can dig beyond that, under that
Speaker 1: and provide the life of that thought, we find the
Speaker 1: dark and holy places that blind our faculties of reason.
Speaker 1: What then, shall we do? This is a topic that
Speaker 1: we will explore after first surveying some important philosophical contributions
Speaker 1: in the ancient world that have had some significant bearing
Speaker 1: on Lewis's great novel. To this end, we will begin
Speaker 1: with Plato's Phato, which discusses the immortality of the soul
Speaker 1: and what those who love wisdom might expect in the
Speaker 1: life to come, and then we'll spend four weeks with
Speaker 1: some of the great Stoics, including Epictetus, Emperor Marcus Aurelius,
Speaker 1: and Seneca. Finally, we will turn our attention to till
Speaker 1: we have faces for the final two weeks with original
Speaker 1: content and so this will not be the same as
Speaker 1: what you may have seen in the Fiction and Philosophy
Speaker 1: of CS. Lewis course. Each week of this eight week
Speaker 1: study will include readings from primary sources that will be
Speaker 1: provided as PDFs, although these are all texts that belong
Speaker 1: in your personal library. You'll be provided with recommendations for
Speaker 1: secondary readings. You'll have recorded presentations for you to watch
Speaker 1: at your leisure, ongoing discord checks, and weekly life meetings
Speaker 1: to discuss the readings enrolled today by going to patreon
Speaker 1: dot com slash Mythic Mind and checking out the job.
Speaker 1: Or we can gain access to all courses, past, present
Speaker 1: and future this year by purchasing a Tier three annual subscription.
Speaker 1: I hope to see you there.