Solomon & Smith

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All My Precious Madness is available at bookshops, both good and evil.

In this conversation, novelist Mark Bowles joins Jack and Milo to discuss his debut novel All My Precious Madness, a voice-driven, rage-filled, lyrical work about Henry Nash: an academic turned telesales worker whose inner life spills out through invective, memory, fantasy, grief, class resentment, and strange beauty.

The discussion begins with Mark’s early reading life, from Treasure Island and Enid Blyton to the shock of discovering Samuel Beckett. We talk about Beckett’s stripped-down language, floating voices, physical detail, and the formative experience of encountering a literature that seemed to open onto an entirely different world.

Much of the conversation centres on what it means to write a first novel. Mark reflects on the pressure and preciousness of the debut: the sense that a first book announces a voice, discloses something private, and gathers up material that may have been stored for years. We discuss how All My Precious Madness grew out of fragments, notebooks, and an insistent central voice rather than a conventional plot.

We also explore the influence of Thomas Bernhard and Walter Benjamin: rage, repetition, digression, fragments, the “left-handed” approach to thought, and the idea that some truths can only be reached indirectly. Along the way, we talk about autodidacticism, class, Oxford, northernness, high culture, business jargon, academia, and the ways language can be degraded by institutions.

Expect reflections on:

Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, and the literature of voice

Writing a first novel and the strange exposure of publication

Rage, lyricism, grief, melancholy, and comic invective

Autodidacticism, class, Oxford, and the labour of acquiring culture

Telesales, corporate language, and soul-destroying work

Academic jargon and the policing of intellectual tribes

Digression as literary method

Reading, audiobooks, and the reader’s role in creating a book

English humour, irony, resignation, and satire

Fantasy, inner life, and the “uncommitted crime” of art

In the later part of the conversation, Mark discusses his next novel, How Do People Stay the Same?, written as a backwards-moving journal across thirty years, as well as a further book inspired by the mysterious case of Peter Bergmann.

If you enjoy long-form conversations on literature, writing, style, philosophy, class, comedy, and the strange private life of fiction, subscribe to the channel and leave a comment below.

00:00:00 Fantasy, fiction, and inner life

00:01:19 Introduction to Mark B. and *All My Precious Madness*

00:04:31 Mark arrives

00:06:18 Poetic epigraph

00:09:24 Childhood reading, *Treasure Island*, and Beckett

00:13:44 Voice, physicality, and literary interiority

00:16:19 Becoming a writer

00:20:26 The pressure of the first novel

00:24:09 Voice, fragments, and Thomas Bernhard

00:30:16 Class, Oxford, and cultural self-invention

00:38:01 Silence, childhood, and imagination

00:40:10 Rage, lyricism, and catharsis

00:42:26 Telesales and soul-destroying work

00:46:24 Corporate language, academia, and jargon

00:54:50 Digression as method

01:01:18 Stream of consciousness and reading rhythm

01:05:55 Books, audiobooks, and the reader’s imagination

01:11:25 Humour, English irony, and resignation

01:18:00 Language, fantasy, and expression

01:22:23 Art as an uncommitted crime

01:24:27 Future novels and publication

01:29:24 Conclusion

*- Both out lists are pasted below -*

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In this video Jack and Milo discuss their favourite works of fiction decade by decade, starting in 1800 and going 200 years, decade by decade, until they reach the borders of our present century. If you would like to be interviewed by us about your favourite books, please send an email.

1800s

Jack: Michael Kohlhaas - Heinrich Von Kleist

Milo: Heinrich Von Ofterdingen - Novalis

1810s

Jack: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

Milo: Persuasion - Jane Austen

1820s

Jack: Don Juan - George Gordon Byron (If only prose allowed, The Red and the Black - Stendhal)

Milo: The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr - ETA Hoffmann

1830s

Jack: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym - Edgar Allan Poe

Milo - Nevsky Prospect - Nikolai Gogol

1840s

Jack: Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë

Milo: Mr. Prokharchin - Fyodor Dostoevsky

1850s

Jack: David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

Milo: The Whale - Herman Melville

1860s

Jack: War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

Milo: War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

1870s

Jack: Middlemarch - George Eliot

Milo: Middlemarch - George Eliot

1880s

Jack: Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K Jerome

Milo: Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche

1890s

Jack: The Lady with the Dog - Anton Chekhov

Milo: New Grub Street - George Gissing

1900s

Jack: The Man Who Was Thursday - GK Chesterton

Milo: The Man Who Was Thursday - GK Chesterton

1910s

Jack: Of Human Bondage - W Somerset Maugham

Milo: The Great Wall of China - Franz Kafka

1920s

Jack: To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

Milo: The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner

1930s

Jack: Die Blendung/ Auto de fe - Elias Canetti

Milo: The Hobbit - J R R Tolkein

1940s

Jack: The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint Exupery

Milo: The Plague - Albert Camus

1950s

Jack: The End of the Affair - Graham Greene

Milo: The Last Temptation of Christ - Nikos Kazantzakis

1960s

Jack: Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

Milo: The Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster

1970s

Jack: The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch

Milo: Suttree - Cormac McCarthy

1980s

Jack: Extinction - Thomas Bernhard

Milo: Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

1990s

Jack: Before and During - Vladimir Sharov

Milo: Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

00:00:00 Intro

00:04:45 1800s

00:12:52 1810s

00:24:20 1820s

00:30:24 1830s

00:37:38 1840s

00:48:35 1850s

00:55:22 1860s

00:59:29 1870s

01:05:25 1880s

01:10:41 1890s

01:17:42 1900s

01:22:07 1910s

01:28:50 1920s

01:37:22 1930s

01:47:48 1940s

01:53:51 1950s

02:05:49 1960s

02:12:44 1970s

02:19:49 1980s

02:27:15 1990s

02:36:12 Conclusion

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In this conversation, David Bentley Hart joins Jack and Milo to discuss among the most dangerous and controversial of all questions: where does morality come from? Is morality an evolutionary strategy for accruing power, or are love and compassion woven into the structure of being?

In philosophical, theological, literary, and evolutionary terms, Hart discusses the origins of moral instincts in humans and animals, the role of altruism and compassion in nature, and why he believes reductive accounts of morality ultimately fail to explain human experience. We talk about Nietzsche, Darwin, Dawkins, cooperation in nature, and the limits of evolutionary psychology.

Hart also reflects on Christianity’s moral revolution and argues that Christ represented a profound interruption in the moral imagination of the ancient world—placing the poor, the rejected, and the vulnerable at the center of ethical life. The discussion also touches on the Resurrection accounts, the Gospels, the Fall, late antiquity, slavery, philanthropy, and the relationship between love, truth, and spiritual transformation.

In the second half of the discussion we discuss literature, and where we put to Hart various author duels: Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, Chesterton or Wilde, Eliot or Dickens, Mann or Hesse.

Expect reflections on:

The metaphysical origins of morality

Whether animals and nature exhibit genuine moral behavior

Nietzsche, power, and the “discourse of suspicion”

Evolutionary psychology and The Selfish Gene

Christ’s challenge to ancient morality

Love, compassion, and the structure of reality

Cooperation, altruism, and the natural world

Otters, dolphins, crocodiles… and why philosophy should take them seriously

Plus: in the second half of the interview, Hart turns to literature, The Simpsons, baseball as beauty, and debates some of history’s greatest writers.

If you enjoy long-form conversations on philosophy, religion, literature, and metaphysics, subscribe and join the discussion below:

Where do you think morality comes from?

00:00:00 Introduction

00:07:22 DBH arrives

00:08:55 Poetic epigraph

00:13:00 The metaphysical origins of morality

00:18:30 How Christ interrupted late-antique morality

00:32:00 Was Christ necessary to philanthropy

00:42:12 The Nietzschean view of moral origins

00:48:50 Is Ressentiment a Natural Condition, Co-operative Evolution

00:56:00 Otters! Darwinian Reductionaism. Dawkins Bashing

01:00:20 Did we mechanise nature to morally neautralise it?

01:05:12 Terrence Malick - The Tree of Life - Jonh Ford

01:13:30 Walt Disney - Tolkein on Disney

01:21:50 Tolstoy vs. Dostoevsky

01:28:18 Oscar Wilde vs. G.K. Chesterton

01:35:49 Charles Dickens vs. George Eliot

01:38:50 Coffee - Balzac - Rodin - England

01:44:00 Thomas Mann vs. Hermann Hesse

01:47:09 Graham Hancock - Atlantis

01:52:25 Decline in reading - Nostalgia

01:55:19 Ecclesiastes vs. The Song of Songs - Swift vs. Defore - Whitman vs. Wordsworth

01:59:09 The Simpsons

02:04:30 Base ball

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In this long-form conversation, Milo and Jack speak with translator Simon Pare about the challenge of translating The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann for Oxford World’s Classics.

This discussion explores the language, style, and enormous technical challenges behind bringing one of the greatest novels of the 20th century into English. Simon discusses his new 2026 translation of The Magic Mountain, the legacy of earlier translators, and the strange experience of living inside Mann’s vast novel while translating it.

Topics include:

• Why Thomas Mann is so difficult to translate

• The challenge of translating The Magic Mountain’s long German sentences

• Hans Castorp, time, and the atmosphere of Davos

• Translation choices, compromises, and literary voice

• Settembrini, Naphta, Behrens, and Peeperkorn’s speech styles

• The legacy of H. T. Lowe-Porter and later English translations

• Translation theory and literary translation in practice

• Switzerland, Thomas Mann, and the culture surrounding the novel

• The relationship between language, rhythm, and character

The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) began as a short novella inspired by Thomas Mann’s visit to a Davos sanatorium and grew into a monumental meditation on time, illness, modernity, and European intellectual life before the First World War.

This interview focuses primarily on translation and language. A separate discussion with Richie Robertson on the novel’s themes and content will follow.

If you enjoy long-form literary conversations on literature, philosophy, translation, and European culture, please consider subscribing to Solomon & Smith.

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This long-form conversation explores the New Testament, the four Gospels, and the problem of biblical interpretation with New Testament scholar John Nelson. Together we examine contradiction, canon, authorship, apocalyptic expectation, and the strange literary texture of early Christian scripture.

A recurring theme throughout the discussion is the idea that contradiction may not weaken scripture, but deepen it. Rather than flattening the Gospels into a single harmonized account, we explore the possibility that their tensions, disagreements, and competing emphases are precisely what make them intellectually and spiritually alive. The Gospels become less a single voice than a conversation unfolding across texts, communities, and centuries.

We also explore:

The collapse of biblical literalism and reconstruction of faith

Why the Gospels disagree on the date of Jesus’ death

The “Messianic Secret” and why Jesus hides his identity in Mark

The strange anonymous figures of the Gospels, including the Beloved Disciple

Apocalyptic expectation in Jesus and Paul

How Christianity adapted after the delayed apocalypse

The development of the biblical canon and pseudonymous epistles

John’s Gospel, mysticism, and accusations of Gnosticism

Whether scripture should be read as history, theology, literature, or all three at once

From Mark’s abrupt ending to John’s cosmic theology, this conversation examines the New Testament as a dynamic and evolving body of texts—one shaped as much by interpretation and argument as by doctrine itself.

Whether you are interested in biblical studies, theology, literary interpretation, church history, or the philosophy of religion, this discussion provides a detailed and nuanced exploration of how the Christian scriptures were written, interpreted, and transformed.

00:00:00 Contradictions in scripture

00:00:55 Introduction

00:03:59 John Nelson and losing fundamentalism

00:12:04 Scripture, literalism, and reading historically

00:17:14 Why the Gospels disagree

00:27:32 The date of Jesus’ death

00:29:48 The strange mysteries of the Gospels

00:32:58 The Messianic Secret in Mark

00:41:05 Why Jesus hides his identity

00:47:21 Apocalypse and the end of the world

00:50:22 John’s Gospel and delayed eschatology

00:56:12 Canon, revision, and rewriting scripture

01:00:48 Gnosticism and non-canonical gospels

01:04:20 Can the biblical canon change?

01:10:47 Pseudonymous epistles and authorship

01:18:00 The Beloved Disciple

01:22:57 Closing poem and conclusion

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There is nothing more intimate than reading.

A book is not just paper, ink -- it isn't just an information-convoybelt. Somehow, through a handful of symbols, another consciousness begins speaking inside your mind. Across centuries, across languages, across death — reading allows one soul to inhabit another.

In this conversation, Professor Brian Cummings joins Jack and Milo to explore the strange power of books, writing, and reading.

What was intended as a discussion about the history of the book — from scrolls and manuscripts to Shakespeare’s First Folio — became something much richer and stranger: a philosophical exploration of consciousness, memory, religion, imagination, and why human beings treat books as almost sacred objects.

We discuss:

• Why reading feels like experiencing another soul

• Plato, Aristotle, and the philosophy of writing

• Shakespeare and the invention of literary immortality

• Why religions become “religions of the book”

• The mystery of language and symbols

• Tolkien, Dostoevsky, Milton, Borges, Beckett, and the first books that changed us

• Why owning books matters psychologically

• Whether books are humanity’s greatest technology

• The strange relationship between writers, readers, and consciousness itself

“If the soul is like a book, then reading is another person walking beside you.”

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This long-form conversation explores medieval travel, pilgrimage, and imagination with Professor Anthony Bale (University of Cambridge). We examine how people in the Middle Ages understood a world they knew to be vast, real, and inhabited—yet only partially accessible, navigable, or comprehensible.

A central theme is the tension between knowledge and uncertainty. Medieval travellers were often moving through spaces that were both physically real and imaginatively constructed: Jerusalem as both a city and a spiritual landscape; distant regions like Ethiopia or India as places shaped as much by myth as by experience. Travel writing reflects this duality—combining observation, theology, hearsay, and invention in ways that resist modern distinctions between fact and fiction.

We also explore:

* The difference between migration and “travel” as a chosen, meaningful journey

* Pilgrimage as both spiritual discipline and early form of tourism

* The role of Venice, the Franciscans, and the Mamluks in structuring routes to the Holy Land

* The economics of travel: currencies, credit, and material goods

* Language barriers, miscommunication, and strategies for getting by

* Figures such as Margery Kempe and the limits of medieval curiosity

* The persistence of myths like Prester John and their explanatory function

Throughout, the discussion returns to a broader question: how do people make sense of a world that exceeds their knowledge? Medieval travel offers one answer—not through systematic understanding, but through narrative, belief, and selective attention.

Whether you are interested in medieval history, literature, religion, or the philosophy of travel, this conversation provides a detailed and nuanced introduction to how movement shaped the medieval imagination.

00:00:00 Medieval world, mystery, and Prester John

00:01:01 Introduction

00:06:26 Anthony Bale

00:08:40 Becoming a medievalist

00:14:08 Medieval travel and modern tourism

00:23:09 Margery Kempe and pilgrimage inwardness

00:28:57 Jerusalem routes, Mamluks, and pilgrimage structure

00:38:14 Venice, money, and travel logistics

00:46:57 Language, misunderstanding, and communication

00:57:26 Beyond Europe: India, Ethiopia, China

01:00:50 Prester John and the unknown world

01:02:08 Conclusion

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This long-form interview explores the nature of devotional poetry in the 17th century, focusing on major figures such as John Donne, George Herbert, and their contemporaries. Together with Professor Helen Wilcox (Bangor University), we examine how early modern poets grappled with one of the central paradoxes of religious writing: the sense that language is both essential and ultimately insufficient to express God.

A recurring theme in this discussion is the idea that God exceeds language. Even the most inventive and intellectually rigorous poets—Donne with his metaphysical conceits, Herbert with his formal precision—acknowledge a limit to expression. Poetry becomes an act of striving: an attempt to articulate the divine while recognizing that it can never be fully contained in words.

We also explore:

The relationship between devotional poetry and prayer

The overlap between love poetry and religious expression

The influence of the Psalms and biblical translation

The role of music, liturgy, and communal worship

The tension between private faith and public poetry

The cultural and historical context of post-Reformation England

From the metaphysical intensity of Donne to Herbert’s quieter devotional struggles, this conversation offers an in-depth look at how poets used language to approach what lies beyond it—and why they so often felt they failed.

Whether you're interested in literature, theology, philosophy, or early modern history, this discussion provides a rich introduction to one of the most intellectually and spiritually complex traditions in English poetry.

00:00:00 Introduction

00:14:15 Is devotional poetry a form of prayer?

00:30:50 Should we only write to improve people's lives?

00:41:30 You can only remake a religion in a group - not alone

00:47:00 What we most relish in Donne

00:53:15 Can we find poets in their poems?

01:00:40 Devotion in the modern world

01:14:40 Devotional poetry and music

01:26:49 A blind man describing the abyss

01:38:14 The 18th century is a desert

01:46:00 Magnolia trees in full bloom

00:00:00 Introduction

00:06:00 Becky arrives - Cambridge slander

00:11:25 London slander

00:15:45 The Middle Ages

00:19:05 Actual beginning of interview

00:29:05 The intellect, the imagination

00:40:27 Teaching the Cloud

00:53:16 Words for God - Om - Words for Flowers

01:06:00 Many religions stuffed in one big bag

01:20:30 To love language, love the world, yet go beyond it

01:35:00 Meditation as preparation for death

01:43:29 The Cloud as a practice

01:53:30 Bible study as an intense book-club

02:00:10 Give yourself to the void

02:08:30 A single moment of reality is worth eternity

02:11:47 A composition based on Cloud

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How much do movies (especially schlocky movies) really shape what we believe?

In this episode of Solomon & Smith, we sit down with religious studies professor Dr. Joe Lacock to talk about how horror films like The Exorcist didn’t just reflect culture—they changed it.

We speak about the rise of modern exorcisms, figures like the Bradys (infleunce for the Conjuring franchise) the spread of the satanic panic, and other conspiracy theories, such as the Lizard people. We break down the surprising feedback loop between pop culture and real-world belief systems.

How does entertainment quietly influence how millions of people see reality itself?

What We Cover:

How The Exorcist influenced real exorcism practices

Why satanic panic took off in America

The link between horror films and religious belief

How media shapes fear, faith, and conspiracy thinking

Why educated people aren’t immune to these effects