Odysseus, when he sees nubile and beautiful Nausicaa when he washes up on shore at the beginning of Book 6, does not try to capture her in any way.  This in a time with raiding parties and the famous r*pes of ancient myths.

Ian links this true appreciation of her beauty to what he needs to go on on his journey.

(From a discussion on Odysseus, Nausicaa, & Beauty’s Education)

Thank you for watching!  Please see below for the full conversation:

The full video episode:

https://youtu.be/WsujhE2muTQ

Audio episode:

https://benomtad.podbean.com/e/odysseus-nausicaa-beauty-s-education/?token=9ad8205849556b9910a95e0b5885fc5a

The Podcast Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T

The Episode Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIszqVpagDQ

The Odyssey’s translations we used:

https://a.co/d/04Ud8j0d

https://a.co/d/0dd7Svhh

For more in this podcast, please go to:

Podbean:

https://benomtad.podbean.com

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863

YouTube:

https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/4kJPGlaJjGVyLa9AKhci6t?si=8XXrX9FUT3CU71reCfA5kQ

X:

https://x.com/Benomtad

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/benomtad

About our guest:

Ian Reclusado offers guidance services for those interested in facing and befriending their inner monsters:

 https://thekindknife.substack.com/p/guidance-services

I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

Sea Short Photo by Henrique Hanemann on Unsplash

Photo of Nausicaa by Leighton (1878), courtesy of picryl

Man is he who suffers, and Odysseus is the man “of twists and turns,” the builder and destroyer, the journeyer trying to reach his beloved homeland.  Here Ian and I discuss what draws this man forward at his nadir in Book VI of Homer’s sequel epic.

Beauty, sing to me of that man of twists and turns!

He who washed up on shore, belched from the belly of the raging sea god.

Wisdom roused young Nausicaa, who stood rooted to the ground,

Odysseus’ welcome into the world.

This crusted roaming lion remembered her in a palm.

Eternal sun shimmering through its leaves near the navel of the world

Now the maw with guardian of Truth, the twinned virtue;

He sung her praises, and she acknowledged his manifold sufferings,

Counseled him to bear them silently.

He accompanied the retinue up to the haven, 

And prayed, waiting in Wisdom’s grove

For the right time.

Please join us for this discussion of “The Odyssey,” Book 6, and the discussion of beauty in Elaine Scarry’s wonderful exploration “On Beauty & Being Just.”

Chapters: 

00:00 Introduction & Summary of Book 6

16:00 Ancient Soap

17:40 Prepossessing Beauty

26:21 Beauty & Pornography

31:45 Beauty & Truth

36:37 Beauty and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion

40:04 The Ugliness of Our Buildings

47:39 Ian’s Photography

51:50 Calling all Artists

54:25 A Humble, Loose Call to the God

1:02:41 Beauty and Being Wrong

1:08:43 Beauty and Nature

1:09:50 Beauty and Relationality

1:15:30 Beauty is an Ally of Truth

1:24:46 You Forgot What Beauty Is

Thank you for watching!  Please see below for more on us:

The Odyssey’s translations we used:

https://a.co/d/04Ud8j0d

https://a.co/d/0dd7Svhh

The full video episode:

https://youtu.be/WsujhE2muTQ

The Podcast Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T

The Episode Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIszqVpagDQ

For more in this podcast, please go to:

Podbean:

https://benomtad.podbean.com

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863

YouTube:

https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/4kJPGlaJjGVyLa9AKhci6t?si=8XXrX9FUT3CU71reCfA5kQ

X:

https://x.com/Benomtad

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/benomtad

About our guest:

Ian Reclusado is currently off exploring the poetic wilds of psychology, neuroscience, and spirituality. 

He also offers guidance services for those interested in delving into their own inner wilderness.

You can find his weekly dispatches at www.thekindknife.com or follow him on Instagram: @ian_reclusado

I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

Sea Short Photo by Henrique Hanemann on Unsplash

Photo of Nausicaa by Leighton (1878), courtesy of picryl

A dying queen demands that her husband remarry only someone as beautiful as she.  After the mourning period, his advisors scramble around to find a new monarch, but the king’s eye alights on his very own daughter.  She demands abstrusse wedding gifts, but they are manufactured.  In desperation, she flees with her dowry, including a fur made from all the kingdom’s animals, and hides in the forest.

What can come from an impossible promise to a dying monarch, and how does one redeem oneself from a horrific crime by one’s own father?  Ian and I summarize and then discuss this tale that begins in tragedy, runs through trauma, butts up against cruelty and envy, and culminates in the tearing away of an old wound.  

00:00 Story Summary

08:04 This Story and Trauma

11:40 An Inability to Grieve

19:40 Why Did the Queen Demand Another Like Herself?

28:24 The Power of Images

35:25 Getting Lost in a Dying Wish

38:45 Three-Step Reveals

45:19 The Ripped Away Old Protective Persona

51:29 The Fur-of-All-Kinds

55:48 The King Rips off the Cloak

1:00:19 Only the King Recognizes Her

1:08:02 Working Mindfully for Personal Development

1:12:49 The Three Grand Balls

Thank you for watching!  

A Summary of the Story:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allerleirauh

The Story’s Full Text:

https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm065.html

The Podcast Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T

For more in this podcast, please go to:

Podbean:

https://benomtad.podbean.com

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863

YouTube:

https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/4kJPGlaJjGVyLa9AKhci6t?si=8XXrX9FUT3CU71reCfA5kQ

X:

https://x.com/Benomtad

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/benomtad

About our guest:

Ian Reclusado is currently off exploring the poetic wilds of psychology, neuroscience, and spirituality. 

He also offers guidance services for those interested in delving into their own inner wilderness.

You can find his weekly dispatches at www.thekindknife.com or follow him on Instagram: @ian_reclusado

I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

Why do we like folktales and myths?  I think one reason is that they help us learn to pay attention to instinct.  It’s not that I don’t think rationality is important–it is a key to a wise life.  But following John Vervaeke, who sees rationality as much larger than propositional logic, and more how, when, and how much to be logical, I see rationality and being wise as a larger and more embodied process.

Killing one’s lion is “self-castrating,” as Ian says, and the rationalistic knee-jerk rejection of many ways of thinking is not even real science.

(From a discussion on the Brothers’ Grimm’s “The Twelve Huntsmen”)

Thank you for watching!  I love and have faith in dialogue.  Please leave a suggestion for new guests, topics, or this conversation.  How I can expand this Open Minded Thought and Discussion?  And if you’re interested, please check out the following:

The full video episode:

https://youtu.be/-yZySp8Qshs?si=pDyETKJjS7546OZC

Audio episode:

https://benomtad.podbean.com/e/on-the-brothers-grimms-the-twelve-huntsmen-the-guys-of-truth/

The Podcast Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T

The Episode Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vr3DwaH1OZBg239-GJ7AE6x

For more in this podcast, please go to:

Podbean:

https://benomtad.podbean.com

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863

YouTube:

https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/4kJPGlaJjGVyLa9AKhci6t?si=8XXrX9FUT3CU71reCfA5kQ

X:

https://x.com/Benomtad

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/benomtad

I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

The Virtue of Beauty, the Beauty of Virtue: A king is cursed to live as an old man with his servant– now animal attendants–until they are saved by one with kindness for all life.  A poor woodcutter goes hungry while his three daughters get lost in the wood.  The birds of the forest bewilder them to save the kingdom from darkness.

Plot Synopsis of the Story: 

A poor woodcutter, his wife, and three daughters live on the edge of the forest.  When the woodcutter goes out to work, he tells his wife for his eldest daughter to bring his dinner.  He strews a path of millet on the ground so that she can find him, but by dinner-time when she goes out with the soup the birds of the forest have eaten all the seeds up. 

Lost, she sees a glimmer through the trees and finds a hut with all its windows lit up.  She calls to it, and a gravelly voices tells her to come in, where she finds an old man with a beard down to the floor at a table, and three animals around the stove: a hen, a cock, and a brindled cow.  She asks for food and shelter, and he asks the animals, who reply, “Duks.”  She makes dinner from the plentiful cupboard, and she and the old man eat.  She asks where she should sleep, and the animals reply in a jingle that she has had no thought for them and must find her own.  The man directs her upstairs to beds she should make; she does so and falls asleep without waiting for him, and he sends her through a trap door into the cellar.

The woodcutter comes home without his dinner, and the next day he sets out lentils, which are bigger and harder for the birds to pick up, but the birds get them anyway.  The middle daughter goes out with the soup, and the same thing happens.  Down to the cellar.

Then it was the third and last daughter’s turn.  Mother objects, but father says she’s always been the most caring and obedient, and she’ll come through, especially since he will strew the heaviest food–peas.  This time the wood-pigeons get it, but when the youngest comes into the hut, she caresses the animals, and when she makes dinner, she goes out and gets food and draught for the animals, and she eats what is leftover of the man’s dinner.  The jingle of the animals praises her, and she waits for the old man after making the beds, and she is not sent down to the cellar.  

In the middle of the night, she is awoken by loud creaking and bursting sounds, but she falls asleep again, and wakes up in an ivory bed with a velvet canopy.  The man is now a handsome youth, and three servants come to do her bidding.  The man–a King cursed until a girl whose heart was full of love not only for mankind but for animals came and rescued them–orders the servants to get her parents for the wedding.  Her sisters, however, would be servants of charcoal-men deep in the woods until they learned to be kinder, and not let poor animals suffer.

Chapters:

00:00 “The Hut in the Forest” Summary

10:50 Like Beauty and the Beast

13:50 Love Breaks the Spell 

20:50 The Hyperfocused Woodcutter

21:46 In the Fullness of Being

22:18 Why was the Prince Bewitched?

(From a discussion on “The Hut in the Forest”)

Thank you for watching!  Please see below for the full conversation:

The full video episode:

https://youtu.be/_7PddDonuU0

The Podcast Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T

The Episode Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVozxPpnLfIY

For more in this podcast, please go to:

Podbean:

https://benomtad.podbean.com

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863

YouTube:

https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/4kJPGlaJjGVyLa9AKhci6t?si=8XXrX9FUT3CU71reCfA5kQ

X:

https://x.com/Benomtad

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/benomtad

About Our Guest: LL is a graduate of the Immaculate University of California, Davis.  She majored in psychology and has worked for years in the field of mental health.  She is currently getting training in accounting and loves almost all things weird: aliens, cryptids, ghosts, and sweet bovine love.

I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

Thumbnail Background Illustration: Arthur Rackham

In “Fight Club,” the protagonist tries to find meaning in life through filling his life with purchases.  But that doesn’t give him fullness–he feels dead.  So he goes to cancer support groups, and then group violence in fight clubs.

The zombie culture is a feverish emptiness eating itself.  It has no depth and builds nothing. Everything is seen as a commodity.

(From a discussion on “Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis,” Ch. 1)

Thank you for watching!  Please see below for the full conversation:

The full video episode:

https://youtu.be/9Cab_C9YhNk?si=x5SDEOQlL0vAU1Iq

Audio episode:

https://benomtad.podbean.com/e/why-are-zombies-everywhere/

The Podcast Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T

The Episode Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqibKcegyTVC5o4oxLsO4Z7

For more in this podcast, please go to:

Podbean:

https://benomtad.podbean.com

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863

YouTube:

https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/4kJPGlaJjGVyLa9AKhci6t?si=8XXrX9FUT3CU71reCfA5kQ

X:

https://x.com/Benomtad

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/benomtad

About our guest:

Ian Reclusado is currently off exploring the poetic wilds of psychology, neuroscience, and spirituality. 

He also offers guidance services for those interested in delving into their own inner wilderness.

You can find his weekly dispatches at www.thekindknife.com or follow him on Instagram: @ian_reclusado

Photo by Jose Rueda on Unsplash

I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

Zombies are everywhere in our culture, in movies and shows, and even in real life, on zombie walks.  They’ve gone from being an object of horror to one of fascination, one that seems to reflect something back to us.  In “Zombies in Western Culture,” zombies are analyzed as a myth of Western culture and a symbol of the meaning crisis.  In this episode, we discuss chapter one, where Vervaeke and his coauthors discuss the zombie as part of the zeitgeist, of something hugely significant in and about our culture.  They think this reflects the crisis based in the loss of the “sacred canopy” of Christianity.  

We briefly summarize the chapter and the riff off it.  We compare the zombie with other monsters and discuss its link to consumerism.  We discuss other attempts to awaken us from our slumber and the difficulty to doing so, and we talk about returning to the senses, the body, knowledge, and life.

“Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis,” by John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro, and Filip Miscevic:

http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0113

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction 

03:31 General Thoughts & the Aesthetic of the Zombie

05:35 “A Choice to Sleep Through Modernity”

16:00 The Hebrew Golem

17:22 Play Acting a Walking Dead

22:15 Zombie Walks and Serious Play

30:15 Muay Thai, Civilization, and “Fight Club”

34:54 No Meaning Out of Consumption

42:42 The Zombie Mirror, Marketing, & Anger in Society Now

48:45 “The White Zombie” 

52:15 Everything is Seen from Your Own Need

56:55 The Zombie & Christian Resurrection

1:01:49 Healthy Seeing by Returning to the Body

1:08:01 The Nightmare of Descartes’ Idea

1:10:30 HP Lovecraft’s Monster and the Desacralization of Our World

1:15:10 The Artist as Shaman

1:22:03 The Usefulness of Form in Art & Twisted Messages

1:29:45 Articulate the Meaning of Your Monsters

(From a discussion on “Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis,” Ch. 1)

Thank you for watching!  If you’re interested in the full discussion, see below:

The full video episode:

https://youtu.be/9Cab_C9YhNk?si=x5SDEOQlL0vAU1Iq

The Podcast Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T

The Episode Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqibKcegyTVC5o4oxLsO4Z7

For more in this podcast, please go to:

Podbean:

https://benomtad.podbean.com

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863

YouTube:

https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/4kJPGlaJjGVyLa9AKhci6t?si=8XXrX9FUT3CU71reCfA5kQ

X:

https://x.com/Benomtad

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/benomtad

About our guest:

Ian Reclusado is currently off exploring the poetic wilds of psychology, neuroscience, and spirituality. 

He also offers guidance services for those interested in delving into their own inner wilderness.

You can find his weekly dispatches at www.thekindknife.com or follow him on Instagram: @ian_reclusado

Photo by Jose Rueda on Unsplash

I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

At the beginning of the story, the man has had his 13th child, and in a panic he runs out into the street looking for a godfather, and God shows up.  He turns him down, pontificating to the Almighty, and showing the creator his puny reasoning and narrow focus.

(From a discussion on the Brothers’ Grimm’s “Godfather Death”)

Thank you for watching!  If you’re interested in the full discussion, see below:

The full video episode:

https://youtu.be/QMR3sj33mRo

Audio episode:

https://benomtad.podbean.com/e/the-brothers-grimms-godfather-death/

The Podcast Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T

The Episode Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vpY9MModKJtD9o999pFQ34L

For more in this podcast, please go to:

Podbean:

https://benomtad.podbean.com

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863

YouTube:

https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/4kJPGlaJjGVyLa9AKhci6t?si=8XXrX9FUT3CU71reCfA5kQ

X:

https://x.com/Benomtad

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/benomtad

About our guest:

Ian Reclusado is currently off exploring the poetic wilds of psychology, neuroscience, and spirituality. 

He also offers guidance services for those interested in delving into their own inner wilderness.

You can find his weekly dispatches at www.thekindknife.com or follow him on Instagram: @ian_reclusado

Illustration by Heinrich Lefler (1863-1919)

Illustrations by Otto Ubbelohde, 1909

I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

A man works very hard but there is no one left to ask to be the godfather as his 13th child is on the way.  He rushes out into the street and is approached by three prospects.  The first is God, whom he rejects because of the unfair assortment of lots, the second, the Devil, he rejects because of his trickery.  The third, however, he accepts because he treats everyone equally: Death.

The boy starts to grow up, and his godfather gives him a gift that will make him rich and famous: he will be a physician who will be able to tell who will die and who won’t.  His fame spreads, and when the king is ill, he sees that the king will die.  However, thinking the godfather will be indulgent with him, the physician uses trickery to save him.  He does get a pass, but then when he sees that the beautiful daughter of the king is sick and he can marry  her if he saves her, he counts on his relationship with Death to spare him once again.

This time, Death grips him with his icy hand and takes him down into a cavern filled with candles.  These, he explains, are the lives of each human on earth, and the more one is burned down, the less that person has to live.  The physician asks to see his own, and it’s a mere nub.  He asks to be saved, and he is told another would have to die in his place.  When Death goes to light the big candle with the little one’s flame, he drops it and kills his wayward godson.

Chapters: 

00:00 Reading of “Godfather Death”

07:27 The Original Tale Without Death’s Trick

09:00 Death is Friendly

11:36 God Shows Up at the Beginning

20:00 First Thought, Best Thought

25:50 The Devil as Godfather?

30:49 Why He Says No to God’s Offer

35:36 Death’s Gift of Life

47:25 “Be on Time, Death”

48:18 Why Does the Physician want to Save the King?

57:58 Death’s Revenge

1:06:31 The Doctor and his Godfather, Death

1:16:24 Living in the Present and Learning how to Die

1:25:10 Religious Need for a Figure of Death

1:26:43 Does Closeness to Death Help the Physician Heal?

1:28:46 There’s No Changing Your Nature

1:34:42 Trying to Control Others is Like Necromancy’s Dark Side

Thank you for watching!  Please check out:

The full video episode:

https://youtu.be/QMR3sj33mRo

The Podcast Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T

The Episode Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vpY9MModKJtD9o999pFQ34L

For more in this podcast, please go to:

Podbean:

https://benomtad.podbean.com

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863

YouTube:

https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/4kJPGlaJjGVyLa9AKhci6t?si=8XXrX9FUT3CU71reCfA5kQ

X:

https://x.com/Benomtad

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/benomtad

About our guest:

Ian Reclusado is currently off exploring the poetic wilds of psychology, neuroscience, and spirituality. 

He also offers guidance services for those interested in delving into their own inner wilderness.

You can find his weekly dispatches at www.thekindknife.com or follow him on Instagram: @ian_reclusado

I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

The queen bathes in the stream in the garden with her angelic babe, a scene of pure life and innocence.  Into this scene slinks the power-hungry cook, who manipulates the scene to look like that of a beastly killing, leading to the imprisonment of the mother and his absconding with the young princeling.  

The story goes from one of God's grace to one of greed and justice.

(From a discussion on the Brothers’ Grimm’s “The Pink (Carnation)”)

Thank you for watching!  If you’re interested in the full discussion, see below:

The full video episode:

https://youtu.be/1a8GjTiQYNM

Audio episode:

https://benomtad.podbean.com/e/the-pink-carnation-by-the-brothers-grimm/

The Podcast Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqfEOVgfclRgZNXO4boyP3T

The Episode Playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMIlJwXEK2vqg2DhM7puvzo3VNwUsShLf

For more in this podcast, please go to:

Podbean:

https://benomtad.podbean.com

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863

YouTube:

https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/4kJPGlaJjGVyLa9AKhci6t?si=8XXrX9FUT3CU71reCfA5kQ

X:

https://x.com/Benomtad

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/benomtad

I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

Pink Carnation Girl Photo by Alka Rautela on Unsplash