Leaves in the Wind - By David Bentley Hart

Episode #40 - "A Farewell to Harms: On departing the US, bards, miracles, Hell, philosophers, and a few other things" - Eugene McCaraher and David Bentley Hart

https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p/a-farewell-to-harms?utm_source=youtube

The latest posting over at Sesame and Lilies is a conversation between our two barbigerous (or, if you prefer plainer English, pogonous) heroes on the eve of the departure of one of them (Lily) for a distant shore. It touches on many things oft discussed over here at Leaves in the Wind, religious, political, cultural. Among the topics addressed are my adventures in heavily medicated debates—if that is the right word—regarding hell and tarnation. In my run-through of the papers of J. Schmid Esq. that I read last week, I neglected to mention the one on the “Aloneness Argument”, but otherwise I cover my partial survey of his oeuvre and explain why I think it explains one or two things about his susceptibility to bad arguments from miracles.

Who’ll Ever Forget Them? https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p...

Tomorrow, the two of us—Sesame and Lily—will be talking to David Albertson and Jason Blakely about their new book Utopia for Our Century: A Manifesto of Hope. As ever, we are releasing a preliminary bit of chatter between the two of us, touching lightly upon tomorrow’s interview, but mostly taking stock of the current state of things, weighing it in the balance, and finding it wanting. We discuss the sad story of Jason Arday, the current political situation, the disappointing quality of today’s political scandals, blue books, surgery, the failure of perfect beauty and perfect moral goodness to establish any stable relationship between themselves, Ross Douthat’s odd estimate of the relative proportions of evil on left and right, 60 Minutes, time and tide, tide and time, POTUS and Natalie and First Love, and many things beside.

Episode #38 - Burl Horniachek and To Heaven's Rim

I had a conversation with the poet and anthologist Burl Horniachek, prompted by, but not limited to, his recently released anthology of Christian verse To Heaven's Rim, which collects poetry dating from the earliest centuries of the faith up until 1800. It is dedicated entirely, moreover, to poets outside the Anglophone world (in translation), and succeeds better than any other anthology at giving readers a proper sense of the sheer scope--cultural, historical, and geographical--of the Christian world.

We discussed the anthology, particular poets in it, and particular poets excluded from it. We also spent some time talking about the nature of translation and the special problems that attend translating verse.

Episode #37 - "Tom Holland's School Days" - Eugene McCarraher and David Bentley Hart

That was the closest thing to a clever title we could think of https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p...

Tomorrow, deo volente, we shall record a conversation with Tom Holland, despite having discovered at the last moment that he is not, in fact, the fellow who plays Spider-Man or Telemachus, but rather the distinguished British historian. As is our wont, we have recorded some idle banter on the Vorabend. Our topics, as ever, were no better organized than our wandering wits. We discussed, among other things, J. D. Vance’s recent “memoir” of his “conversion” to “Catholic” “Christianity”, Integralism, Christian Nationalism, Post-Liberal Orderlies, J. D. Vance’s natural resemblance to the demonic titan at the end of Ghostbusters, the mystery of American white Evangelicalism, the Great Library of Alexandria, the World Cup, the utter spiritual vacuity of J. D. Vance, J. D. Vance’s blood-and-soil resentments, Rhode Island’s ethnic mix, Tom Holland (not the historian, the actor who plays Spider-Man), and Tom Holland (not the actor who plays Spider-Man, the historian), and much much more.

Capitalism, Myth, Helen of Troy, Jonathan Pageau's Hysterics, Automated Vistas... https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p...

Eugene McCarraher and David Bentley Hart resume their monthly conversation after a hiatus occasioned by David's house move and the submission of Eugene's manuscript, The Automated Vistas, to Yale University Press. The conversation begins by touching on AI-generated correspondence, David's recent translation of the Tao Te Ching, and anecdotes about Thomas Aquinas. David and Eugene also discuss Sven Beckert's recent historiography of capitalism, which Eugene compares to Trevor Jackson's The Insatiable Machine, and proposes a distinction between industrial and "super-industrial" society. The discussion then turns to J.D. Vance's conversion memoir Communion, Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, and Malcolm Muggeridge. The conversation concludes with an extended critique, led by Hart, of the right-wing cultural commentator Jonathan Pageau's objections to Lupita Nyongo's casting in Christopher Nolan's upcoming Odyssey adaptation, including a detailed discussion of the etymology of "Helen."

Forthcoming on the podcast is a conversation with Tom Holland (not the one playing Telemachus in The Odyssey).

#30 - A conversation on Magic, Media, Machines, Modernity

...and ever so many other things beginning with M - with Eugene McCarraher, PhD., and Tara Isabella Burton, PhD.

https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p...

Eugene McCarraher, PhD., is an Associate Professor of Humanities at Villanova and author of The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity.

Tara Isabella Burton, PhD., is a novelist, cultural critic. She writes on religion, secular spirituality, identity, ritual, aesthetics and finding meaning in the modern age. She holds a doctorate in theology from Oxford University.

Episode #35 - "On the Road to Christman" with Eugene McCarraher

A Wandering Conversation https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p...

Eugene McCarraher, PhD., is an Associate Professor of Humanities at Villanova and author of The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity.

Episode #33 - "Before Minniecon" with Eugene McCarraher

A desultory exchange between two elderly man wearied by the interesting times they live in... https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p...

Eugene McCarraher, PhD., is an Associate Professor of Humanities at Villanova and author of The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity.

Episode #31 - "Before Seymour" with Eugene McCarraher

The Moment We Are In https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p...

Eugene McCarraher, PhD., is an Associate Professor of Humanities at Villanova and author of The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity.

You may notice that neither I nor my interviewer made any attempt here to appear especially elegantly turned out. The recording was for an audio article, but I have been given leave to use the video record (though, if I had any sense of shame or style, I would not).

The young man interviewing me is named Gabriel Ellison-Scowcroft, a journalist for the CBC in Montreal (though on Anglophone radio). Our conversation began with a consideration of the changes the smartphone has made in our lives, personal and social, but soon expanded into any number of related topics, including philosophy of mind, information theory, the progressive dissolution of human experience in the solvent of virtual space, the ubiquity of the algorithm, and (of course) dogs and otters.