Michial Farmer hosts a a conversation with Danny Anderson and Nathan Gilmour about metamodernism, a philosophical movement described recently in an article by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker. Metamodernism claims to move beyodn postmodernism by giving up the latter's pervasive cynicism, preferring instead to oscillate between naivete and cynicism. A fight over the relative worth or worthlessness of the movement ensues.
Nathan Gilmour hosts a a conversation with Michial Farmer and Danny Anderson on "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi." Taking a close-reading, mythological approach to the final Star Wars episode, the trio dig into images of descending into the underworld, gathering the heroes, watching power lose its grip on order, and other such things. Among the characters, mythological constructs, and other realities engaged are the Orpheus myth, Mon Mothma, redemption of betrayers, the self-destructiveness of evi...
Danny Anderson hosts a a conversation with Michial Farmer and Nathan Gilmour on "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back." Conversation focuses on the changing role and character of the Force, its increasing prominence with the introduction of Yoda, and the ways in which the episodes of Star Wars fit together as parts of a trilogy. Among the characters, plot turns, and other matters discussed are the "I am your father" reveal, the Dagobah cave, the religious character of Yoda, and what giant asteroid...
Michial Farmer hosts a a conversation with Danny Anderson and Nathan Gilmour on "Star Wars: A New Hope." Focusing on the movie's place in film history and more specifically in the career of George Lucas, the trio talks about its status as one of the first summer blockbusters; the influence of Joseph Campbell's mythological criticism on the film; and what, despite the film's shortcomings, makes it the sort of movie that shapes a whole generation's sense of the universe. Among the people, scenes, ...
Nathan Gilmour talks with Danny Anderson and Michial Farmer about Plato's dialogue "Meno." The dialogue's central question is whether arete, a word meaning excellence or virtue, can be taught or whether it's naturally part of some people's character but not others'. Among the questions, concepts, and other realities discussed are the pre-existence of the soul, the nature of "Socratic" pedagogy, relationships between dialectic and rhetoric in education, and whether there is any such thing as "the...
Michial Farmer talks with Danny Anderson and Nathan Gilmour about tradition. Starting with its roots in Roman law and its mixed reputation in the New Testament, the crew digs into the strange designator "traditional music," the relationships between Scripture and tradition, a few hard-hitting books on tradition, and some ways to imagine Christian existence as traditional without being static. Among the texts, traditions, and other realities engaged are Alasdair MacIntyre, Matthew Arnold, Hans-Ge...
Nathan Gilmour talks with Michial Farmer and Danny Anderson about authenticity. A term with etymological roots in reflexive pronouns and historical roots in art criticism, authenticity has taken on philosophical, cultural-critical and pop-cultural meanings that deserve some exploration. Among the texts, trends, and other realities explored are Heidegger's Being and Time, Lionel Trilling's Sincerity and Authenticity, youth ministry, Emerging Church, and faculty workshop speakers.
Michial Farmer talks with Nathan Gilmour and Danny Anderson about Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." A classic piece of American written rhetoric, beloved by Christians and unbelievers alike, King's letter invokes a rich array of philosophical, Biblical, and other intellectual traditions to make the case for immediate, direct, nonviolent resistance to unjust governments. Among the ideas and other realities discussed in the episode are divine law, gradualism, civil d...
Nathan Gilmour talks with Michial Farmer and Danny Anderson about Jewish-American novels. Drawing from the experiences of immigrants and of internationally persecuted minorities, these writers offer readers a side of the human experience that other writers can't see and offer a look at the particularities of being Jewish in a changing america. Among the novelists and other realities discussed are Saul Bellow, Michael Chabon, Philip Roth, E.L. Doctorow, and Woody Allen.
Michial Farmer moderates a conversation with Danny Anderson and Nathan Gilmour on the roots, the heart, and the history of country music. Along the way familiar figures like the Carter family, Waylon Jennings, and even Taylor Swift show up, and the question of genre in popular music is never far away. Among the singers and other realities discussed are the early mixtures of country with blues and folk music; the rise of outlaw country and the question fo what "real" county music might be; George...
Nathan Gilmour moderates a conversation with Michial Farmer and Danny Anderson on the hot topic of socilogical "generations" and specifically the character of Generation Y or the Millennials. Discussing technological changes that drive such "generation gap" moments as the present one, the trio takes on Rachel Held Evans's recent column about Millennials leaving the church by doing what Christian Humanists do so well, situating it in a larger historical frame. Among the texts, generations, and ot...
Michial Farmer moderates a conversation with David Grubbs and Nathan Gilmour on the middle ages, those thousand years in western Europe that gave us scholastic theology, nominalist philosophy, and so many bad stereotypes that they're not worth listing here. Focusing on the historian's task of saying something about the period without saying too much, the trio bring forth some of the great intellectual, poetic, and cultural developments that arise in the shadow of the Roman Empire. Among the text...
David Grubbs conducts a conversation with Nathan Gilmour and Michial Farmer regarding witches, from the ancient Near East all the way up to Broadway musicals. As figures of darkness and danger, witches occupy particular places in the worlds of Egyptian, Roman, medieval Christian, and modern mythologies, and their recent appropriation as figures of heroic resistance makes them even mroe fascinating. Among the texts, witches, and other realities discussed are Medea, Apuleius, the necromancer at En...
Nathan Gilmour, Michial Farmer, and David Grubbs chat a spell about "On the Freedom of a Christian," one of Martin Luther's famous 1520 theological treatises. Addressing the central questions of faith and works, the trio digs into the visions of anthropology, interpretations of Scripture, and the ethical innovations that make the text so interesting. Among the other realities discussed in this episode are faith, ritual, rhetoric, Pope Leo, Dante, and the nature of goodness.
Michial Farmer holds forth with David Grubbs and Nathan Gilmour on the subject of intellectuals. Starting with some historical and lexical discussions of waht an intellectual means as opposed to a philosopher, an academic, a scholar, or a scientist, the trio focuses in on the public intellectual and specifically the Christian public intellectual as a particular character in the story of the life of the mind. Among the texts, intellectuals, and other realities on the table are Augustine, Byron, "...
David Grubbs moderates a conversation with Michial Farmer and Nathan Gilmour about Edgar Allen Poe. Exploring popular questions of authors' biography and literary/entertainment celebrity culture, the trio appreciates some of the genuine craft in his short stories, clucks our tongues at his genuinely insufferable verse, and otherwise takes on one of the strange characters of American literature. Among the texts and other realities discussed are "The Raven," "Cask of Amontillado," the Dupin storie...
Nathan Gilmour moderates a conversation with Michial Farmer and David Grubbs about Elijah, the Biblical prophet whose main narratives happen in 1 Kings. Touching on some of the best-known episodes and exploring the literary character of those episodes (and why they're better stories than the children's Sunday school versions would let on), the trio wraps up with a discussion of modern uses of the adjective "prophetic." Among the stories and other realities engaged are the etymology of "Elijah," ...
Michial Farmer talks with David Grubbs and Nathan Gilmour about Modernism, the moment in 20th-century art, music, philosophy, and literature that is at once a call to "make it new" and a return to some of the forms that the Romantics abandoned. Among the artists, artifacts, and other realities discussed are Futurism, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Picasso, Dali, and Le Corbusier.
David Grubbs talks with Michial Farmer and Nathan Gilmour about doxology as a musical and literary genre as well as doxology as a philosophical and theological move. As a nod to "The Old Hundredth," the tune of a common doxology hymn, the trio find something to say about each line as praise relates to the enterprise of doing the Christian Humanist Podcast. Among the questions and other realities addressed are the history and etymology of doxology, relationships between 21st-century Christian int...
Nathan Gilmour talks with Michial Farmer and David Grubbs on the topic of online education and its worth (or worthlessness) for liberal arts education. Starting with its roots in correspondence courses, the trio takes on the classroom experiences that the online course tries to emulate and transcend, some of the limitations inherent to online education and some arising out of current practice, and the recent craze over MOOCs. Among the ohter realities we take on are the status differences among ...
Michial Farmer converses with David Grubbs and Nathan Gilmour about John Keats's poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn." After some conversation about the formal innovations of this and other Keats odes, the crew digs into the strong Platonic strains of the poem, its place in the larger phenomenon called "Romanticism," and the poem's particular ideology of art and life. Among the ohter realities we take on are elegiac poetry, ekphrasis, whether the urn ever existed, and the ashtray outside of the Universit...
David Grubbs holds forth with Michial Farmer and Nathan Gilmour about "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge's particular philosophy of poetry comes across strongly in this conversation, as does the history of the poem and especially its larger-than-verse backstory. Among other things we take on the connections between drug abuse, madness, and art; the category "Romantic Poetry;" the ideology of the prophet-poet; and Orientalism as it manifests in "Kubla Khan."
Nathan Gilmour talks with Michial Farmer and David Grubbs about William Wordsworth's poem "Ode: Intimations of Immortality." From its place in the Romantic era to its influence on Latter-Day-Saints theology, our conversation takes on the poem's ideology of childhood and its accompanying passages about the pre-existence of the soul. Among other things we discuss are possible Platonic and Buddhist influences, how Romantic poetry departs from its predecessors and how it doesn't, and the end of chil...
Michial Farmer moderates a conversation with David Grubbs and Nathan Gilmour about Plato's writings on poetry, painting, music, and other kinds of art. Stepping beyond the standard "Plato hates poets" treatment, the trio starts with a conversation about the state of literary, visual, and musical arts in Athens, then enters into a handful of dialogues in which Socrates and his interlocutors make a complex array of assertions about the places of music and poetry and such in the good life. Among th...
David Grubbs moderates a conversation with Michial Farmer and Nathan Gilmour about the literature, theology, and other fascinating facets of forests. At the heart of the conversation is the shifting conceptions of the woods, from a place of dread to a place of wonder to a vulnerable place that needs human protection. Among the texts, writers, and other realities discussed are Gilgamesh, 2 Samuel, Dryads, Sir Orfeo, The Faerie Queene, Inferno, Macbeth, Henry David Thoreau, environmentalism, and (...
Michial Farmer and Nathan Gilmour converse about musicals on the stage and screen. From European roots to the essentially American stage musical and beyond into Disney movie musicals, the conversation explores the philosophies that inform musicals and the places that musical theater has gone with a catchy tune and a quick rhyme. Among the musicals and other realities discussed are Wagner, Gilbert and Sullivan, South Pacific, Oklahoma!, The Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, Evita!, Rent, The ...
Michial Farmer and Nathan Gilmour converse about Pragmatism, a distinctly American philosophical tradition, and its roots in logic, capitalism, and pluralism. Along the way we discuss the three famous figures of early-twentieth-century pragmatism, the postmodern turn that neo-pragmatism takes in the late twentieth century, and the ways in which pragmatism and Christianity exist uneasily but undeniably together in American thought. Among the philosophers and other realities discussed are C.S. Pei...
Michial Farmer and Nathan Gilmour respond to some listener feedback from the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013.
Michial Farmer moderates a conversation with David Grubbs, Nathan Gilmour, and special guest hosts Stephen Sandridge and Tim Rhodes (from the Night Cheese podcast) about the television Christmas special. Starting with adaptations of A Christmas Carol and moving through the weirdness of Rankin-Bass, the crossover crew digs into the ways that sentimentality gives way to irony in the course of television's brief Christmas history but never quite overcomes Charlie Brown. Among the television shows a...
Nathan Gilmour moderates a discussion with Michial Farmer and David Grubbs about the much-maligned Christian book industry. After a discussion of the Christian bookstore's place in the history of the novel, the trio goes on to take on the apocalyptic thriller and the Christian romance novel, two very popular subsets in the industry, and finishes with some utopian suggestions for the Christian fiction world. Among the books, ideas, and other realities discussed are Janette Oke, Frank Peretti, Tim...
