In this episode, Director Hodges and Ben discuss the nature of children's stories and how they offer another world for contemplation, a world beyond our own that lives on in our minds long into adulthood.

Are there similarities between the decline of the West today and the decline of the Republic of Rome after the Punic Wars? Director Hodges muses about the similarities, and comments on an article written by H. A. Scott Trask, in Chronicles Magazine.

Other important recommendations: Tom Holland's book RUBICON, Will and Ariel Durant's CAESAR AND CHRIST, and the podcasts History of Rome (Mike Duncan), and Hard Core History (Dan Carlin).

We will be going into further detail in future podcasts.

As we continue to consider the cultural works of the West, this is another of our Director's live conference lectures, given in 2011, just months after the death of the composer Henryk Gorecki, a Polish Catholic, who's Symphony #3 became an international hit on the popular song charts of 1993. In this work, Gorecki departs from his more avant-garde styles, and takes up a kind of minimalism, into which he injects his Faith. The recording excerpted here is with Dawn Upshaw singing.

As we continue to investigate the great books, music, and ideas of our Western Civilization, we thought it would be good to offer a live conference lecture from 2010 that Director Hodges gave on Olivier Messiaen's masterful QUARTET FOR THE END OF TIME, for violin, cello, clarinet, and piano. Coming as it did out of his time in a Nazi prison camp during WW II, it is a sobering work, but its purpose is one of liberation of the soul. We hope you like it.

In 1970, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel prize for literature, but due to the repressive regime of the USSR, was not allowed to leave his native Russia to receive it. His speech, written with the intention of reading it in Sweden, was never given -- but it has circulated ever since as a great apology for the true, the good, and the beautiful, and for the importance of the work of the writer. We have it here, and Director Hodges reads it for us. It ends with his famous line "One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world."

In this episode, we dive into the second part of the great myth of Cupid and Psyche, told from the perspective of one of her ugly stepsisters -- and we finally come to the meaning of the title.

Director Hodges and Ben Cumming discuss CS Lewis' marvelous fiction, TILL WE HAVE FACES, a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche.

In this episode, our culture samplers dive into another of Flannery O'Connors great short stories, REVELATION. In it we compare Mrs. Turpin with Mrs. May of GREENLEAF, and the point of pride that tempts us all to judge one another.

In this episode, Director Hodges, and co-host Ben discuss the great Flannery O'Connor short story GREENLEAF. If you have not read it, we suggest that you take the 20 minutes to read it before you listen, as we give spoilers...who is this Mrs. May, and does she see the world correctly?

Director Hodges and co-host Ben Cumming discuss Joseph Conrad's book HEART OF DARKNESS and address the death of Romanticism and the beginning of the 20th century.