Godward: A Lit-Wisdom Podcast

In this shady & obscure episode, hear an enthusiastic summary of Hawthorne's short story, "The Minister's Black Veil," and listen as your host tries to make it relevant in 2021 -- what do veils & masks signify psychologically? Do we wear them instead of simply repenting? Are we trying to hide from God? From each other? Has it become impossible to live truly -- has the punitive culture of "political correctness" forced us all to hide, even from ourselves? Questions of authority and authorship are woven together here, but the interpretation of the viewer is finally all that matters. American Romance fiction gets new life in this episode! As Joe Biden says, "Mask up, folks!" Wow, that's so condescending isn't it? But hey, I'm not a scientist or a financial advisor. Here's a way to support me though?

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Godward?fan_landing=true

In this all-American episode, we’ll talk about the German Higher Criticism, the Rosetta Stone, heiroglyphs, and Emerson’s notion of the Self. American Transcendentalism wasn’t the first iteration of Perennialist thinking, but it became one of the most interesting. It was a refuge for the intellectuals in Boston who couldn’t fit themselves in with the remnant of Puritanism that lingered in the 19th century, but who also weren’t satisfied with the strictly empirical worldview of the Enlightenment generation. Emerson inspired the likes of Whitman and Thoreau and Dickinson, as well as Hawthorne and Melville. Want to be a public intellectual in America? You have to go through Emerson! If you want to support the show, here’s a link:
https://www.patreon.com/Godward?fan_landing=true

The stoics, Marcus Aurelius -- be a better person. Attain virtue, etc. You know all that. This episode is about how Stoicism understood the Logos, and how we can tie together personal responsibility with... international politics? Yes!

In this multi-layered episode, you'll find yourself becoming an expert in the first seven lines of Dante's Inferno. We'll talk a little about his biography a little, but I tried to focus on explaining the most important literary elements (aside from rhythm and rhyme, which can't be translated perfectly). You know what, this one's about Dante and hell, and the way he was basically a psychologist before Psychology... but just go listen.

It's about Parmenides & Heraclitus! Mysticism, monism, and the real purpose of Philosophy. Also ontology & metaphysics, but also like, swimming & just talking with buddies all day!

In this brain-tingling episode, hear more from Peter Kingsley, as well as Casey's better-than-average hot take on what Heraclitus was all about. Do I have a Philosophy degree? Am I qualified to have authority on this topic? No. Do I have a serious opinion about it, yes. Heraclitus was a shaman, just like Parmenides and Socrates -- and that's the main thing. Comparing "what they said" is a mid-wit thing to do. It's like contrasting the different homily styles of 13th century Roman Catholic priests, and declaring that two of the "were total opposites" -- completely forgetting that they shared almost everything in common just because their method for converting, or their favorite subject matter, was different. Look, we're talking about saying the unsayable, speaking the unspeakable, effing the ineffable.

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In this heady episode, hear more from Hubert Dreyfus, as well as some choice cuts out of William James's classic, The Varieties of Religious Experience. Are there non-ordinary states of consciousness that are nevertheless not dangerous, and maybe even positively advantageous? Can those who have not experienced mystical experience ever understand those who have? Finally, is modern Psychiatry just another mechanism of institutional control? Is Thomas Szasz right? Is Tom Cruise!?

In this episode of Godward Podcast, we learn why eye-contact is so interesting, and what it has to do with social status -- and we learn of the psychology of depression and anxiety, although I don't like to use those labels. Dostoevsky seems to pull a trick on unwary readers, and shows them that the sad sack anti-hero main character of "Notes from Underground" may not be very different from most of us. In fact, he might be just a little more honest.

This provocative episode features a nice audio drop from Douglas Rushkoff and Duncan Trussell, as well as obscure references to 2010 articles published in the New York Times -- but the main thing is, we read chunks from Dostoevsky's (Dostoyevsky's) "Notes from Underground," and we try to figure out what's so interesting about the main character. It definitely has something to do with atheism and modernism, but there are even more subtle psychological things going on here, and this episode tries to communicate some of them. Plus, there's a funny visual joke at the end.