The Independent Scholar

The Independent Scholar - May 26, 2026

Listen Later

In this week's issue:

  • The $500M Hindutva Ramayana film — and the 1991 essay by A.K. Ramanujan its producers would rather you had never read
  • Harper's on Esperanto, including the Vatican's largely forgotten endorsement of a constructed language invented by a Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist
  • The lost Sholom Aleichem novella whose protagonist makes Tevye the dairyman look like a saint
  • Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, which makes its case for human dignity in the age of AI by citing, among others, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings

    • Read on.

    ...more
    View all episodesView all episodes
    Download on the App Store
    The Independent ScholarBy Julia Murphy