Nikole and I try to get to the bottom of why she was disappointed after reading Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot'. We wonder whether Prince Myshkin was good, bad, pathetic, cowardly, and then ask why he was the way he was, and why Dostoevsky (who rumor has it was portraying himself), made him this way, as a counterpoint to Russian society of the time, which was embracing industrialization, capitalism, and the so-called modern progress of the West. What is a person to do or say, who knows the way of the modern world isn't right, but who maybe realizes too that they are nonetheless powerless to stop it.

Inaugural episode! Hello and welcome! We start with a preface for the series, then begin our journey to discover the wisdom of the past, as found in books, books, books, with a reading of an excerpt from 'Mr Sammler's Planet', by Saul Bellow, written in 1970.