Godward: A Lit-Wisdom Podcast

In this monomaniacal episode, hear your humble host summarize the Odyssey and then offer a close analysis of the part involving the conflict between Odysseus and the Cyclops. There are powerful political ramifications when a dialogic culture like the Greeks' bumps up against a monologic culture like the one they discover among the Cyclops. Which is the better way? Let's get realpolitik. Hear clips from Jordan Peterson and some other guy!

In this groundbreaking episode, hear about how Melville was likely what psychiatrists call "bipolar," and learn about how that allowed him to write some of the most mystical scenes in the history of literature. We'll talk about non-ordinary states of consciousness, near-death experiences, and the relationship between trauma and revelation. Hear quotes from Melville's novels "Pierre" and "Mardi," and receive upon your eardrums some of the sweetest passages from Moby-Dick that you'll ever hear read aloud on YouTube. Turn the news off. Forget what you think you know. Focus on the vastness of the whale's forehead.

In the best episode to date, you'll hear our boy Hubert Dreyfus along with some stuff about the Enlightenment, but mainly, just take huge quaffs of straight up literary, philosophical, and metaphysical TRUTH... or at least, hear good questions about those, including: is Captain Ahab really an okay guy, maybe, in some ways? Ahem. There's lots of talk about whether Moby-Dick is gay (it is Romantic and Hellenic, not gay) and whether the whiteness of the whale is really because Sperm Whales are Anglo-Saxon. Seriously, just thank me, even if you can't do the Patreon. I'm going to be the Jordan Peterson of 2029 at this pace.

In this super-serious episode, you'll accept responsibility or else be banished to outer darkness! Hear quotes from numerous professors and a country Bible preacher, but more importantly, some finely chosen excerpts from Moby-Dick itself. Morality matters, even if Ishmael pretends like it doesn't.

Yes, the Puritans hated art and subverted the Catholic hierarchy, but they weren't totally without insight. In this episode, hear a few sections from William Bradford's "Of Plymouth Plantation," including the primary source for the Thanksgiving story. It includes mention of eating wild turkey!

In this fiery episode, the first of a three or five part series on Melville, you get to hear clips from Dreyfus and some expert on painting, but more importantly, you hear a relaxed summary of Moby-Dick and just the right amount of Melville biography to whet your appetite for the greatest novel ever written.

In this improved episode, your host merely follows the Holy Spirit and goes on a 44 minute tirade about what's wrong with everything and offers tentative suggestions about how we can begin to fix it.

This special episode is simply a reading of Stephen Crane's short story, "The Open Boat," and it's meant to accompany episode 16.2, which will be a wide-ranging discussion concerning Truth, epistemology, metaphor, lying, postmodernism, and the nature of Nature.

In this razor sharp episode, hear the story of the destruction of Jerusalem as told by the Jewish historian, Josephus. Clips from Rabbi Tovia Singer and Pastor Chuck Baldwin form the poles of the discussion, and the outro music is especially poignant this time!

In this controversial and borderline heretical episode, we delve into the process of moving from a synopsis to an interpretation -- how does History come to have meaning? Quotes from Hubert Dreyfus illuminate us and a backdrop of Vivaldi makes this episode extra perfect for late Fall.