It's (still) Christmas!! On the feast of St. Stephen's Day (AKA Boxing Day), we gather around the cozy fire with our egg nogg and our gifts to talk about...martyrdom? Here's one extra Christmas special on the full twelve days of the holiday and the connections between Christmas morning, the first Christian martyr, and the final festival of Epiphany, when wise men came from the east to seal Jesus as the Messiah, not just for the Jews, but for the whole world. Check out our sponsor, the Ancient La...
Dec 26, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 167
Academia delenda est...et tunc recolenda . "The academy must be destroyed...and then rebuilt." Today's guest, Inez Stepman, is a thoughtful obsesrver of the American education system and an insightful exponent of hard-nosed practical action plans to revive the country's academic health. We discuss the great American tradition of local, homegrown classical education and the role it will play in our uncertain future. Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.co...
Dec 22, 2023•47 min
It's that time of the year again: time for some very online doofus to point out that Christmas falls around the same date as the Saturanalia, as if no one figured this out until Reddit was invented. In fact, the date of Christmas is carefully posed against the date of Easter so that the whole liturgical year can emerge out of the "signs and markers" laid down in the heavens from the creation of the world. Chew on that, reddit bros! It's a very Young Heretics Christmas. Check out our sponsor, the...
Dec 19, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 166
How do you do church in the digital age? Is there such a thing as an atheist? To what extent are our crazy times really unprecedented, and to what extent are they nothing the Church hasn't seen before? These are some of the questions I tackle with my friend Paul VanderKlay, a minister in the Christian Reformed Church, a close observer of Jordan Peterson's rise to fame and the young men who find meaning in his work, and a rather unwitting YouTube sensation. Subscribe to Paul's YouTube channel: ht...
Dec 15, 2023•40 min
Is Christmas just a rebranded pagan holiday? Or does the rabbit hole go somewhat deeper? After last week's foray into hermeneutics, this week I take a closer look at the history of Christian allegory, and why this particular form of reading became so important to the early church--and why it's still essential for understanding the meaning of Christmas (and everything else). Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/ Sign up to be in the mail...
Dec 12, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 165
Does science disprove God, or reveal his handiwork? My guest today, Stephen C. Meyer, makes some of the most powerful contemporary arguments that the "God hypothesis" is becoming increasingly necessary to make sense of science and of human life. Stephen has a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from Cambridge, and his lucid explanations of his subject have drawn wide attention--as well as resistance from the more hidebound materialists of our age. Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Insti...
Dec 08, 2023•52 min
Literally, though, how do we read stuff? It's a question we rarely ask seriously, but it's an ancient one with profound implications for art, faith, and morality. This week I'm presenting an ancient distinction between literal and allegorical reading that helps to get past simplistic modern bickering over merely material truths. Carrying forward our conversation in art, this is a theme that will help guide the show in 2024. Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientla...
Dec 05, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 164
Faith Moore is BACK to kick off the Christmas season with a moving meditation on faith, loss, and the meaning of the nativity. We discuss how the characters in her new novel took shape, why Christmas always comes associated with a certain nostalgic melancholy, and what to eat for breakfast on Christmas morning. Plus some embarassing (maybe?) stories about when we were kids. Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/ Pre-order faith's book, C...
Dec 01, 2023•34 min
All your questions answered! This week, as the Thanksgiving daze settles gradually over us all, I dig into the mailbag and pull out three juicy questions I haven't had time to answer yet in the course of the show. Did Plato invent the myth of Atlantis? What kind of love does Jesus ask for from Peter after his betrayal? And what did Paul mean that personal spiritual gifts shall fall away when we see love "face to face"? It's a deep dive into questions linguistic, spiritual, and philosophical. Plu...
Nov 28, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 163
"Civility" is almost a dirty word these days on both the right and the left. But Lexi Hudson has written a book to defend it, arguing that being civil--being a good fellow citizen --doesn't mean being nice or tiptoeing around disagreements. Civility is always under a certain kind of assault, but that doesn't mean it's hopeless. We discuss pictures of civility in Homer, Ovid, and the Old Testament, as well as high and low trust societies and whether our age is a uniquely uncivil one. Check out ou...
Nov 24, 2023•44 min
What's to be thankful for? This Thanksgiving, the answer is: everything. Gratitude is a virtue we didn't cover during our series, but Cicero calls it the mother of all virtues and Aquinas files it cheek by jowl with justice. Spencer traces the etymology and rationale of thanksgiving down to its cosmic roots, opposing it to the philosophy of death that rises to confront us everywhere. Happy Thanksgiving--and again I say, rejoice! Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://anci...
Nov 21, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 162
Does not Wisdom cry out? Michael Martin joins me to discuss how and why God prepares our reading lists. Michael traces an alternate stream of modernity that flows quietly alongside the decadent materialist one. From Jakob Bohme, to Coleridge and the Romantics, to modern farmsteading, we talk about why the political parties switched places and how the everyday world breathes forth supernatural wisdom. Sign up for Michael's podcast, The Druid Stares Back . Read Michael's book, Sophia in Exile . Ch...
Nov 17, 2023•40 min
Do you want to see the world as it is, or as it ought to be? This difficult question is at the heart of the millennia-old debate over morality and art. Pulling back the camera to ask how we got to our current dysfunction, Spencer moves from Homer and Isaiah to Nabokov and Matthew Arnold, looking for answers to the questions that are currently wracking the culture. The digital age has shattered a lot of our old systems, but somewhere in the aftermath there is hope for a new middle ages and a re-e...
Nov 14, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 161
What does it mean to be a man in a fallen world and a degraded age? Crime novelist and professional person-I-have-never-heard-of Andrew Klavan joins the show to discuss his brilliant new novel The House of Love and Death . We discuss Klavan The Elder's literary inspirations, thoughts on chivalry, and experience writing a recurring character almost against his will. Plus: why university administrators are so annoying. Read Andrew Klavan's Cameron Winter novels Listen to The Andrew Klavan Show Sig...
Nov 10, 2023•42 min
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” So wrote Oscar Wilde in his preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray , defending himself against charges of corruption in his art. But was he right? His own art, no less than his own sad and morally compromised private life, suggest otherwise. Spencer discusses the history of “art for art’s sake” and the impossibility of excepting art from moral judgment, in Wilde’s day as well as our own....
Nov 07, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 160
Digital alienation, material politics, and the re-enchantment of the world: this week, reactionary feminist Mary Harrington joins Spencer to discuss the disorenting transformations wrought upon human societies and psyches by the advent of digital technology. The discussion ranges from Mary's realization that woke politics was destroying her life, to the war between the sexes, to the return of something that looks a lot like Medieval conditions--complete with angels and demons haunting the air. G...
Nov 03, 2023•46 min
At the turning of the year, as fall passes into winter, the world hovers for an instant between past and future in the "otherworld," the space between life and death. And that is where we meet the Aes Sidhe, fearsome people of the hollow hills, who roam the earth each year in what has become Halloween. In this holiday special, Spencer dives into the haunted history of the enchanted world. Sign up to be in the mailbag: https://rejoiceevermore.substack.com/ Check out my book, How to Save the West ...
Oct 31, 2023•1 hr 4 min
Do you even pray, bro? Teresa Mull is the assistant editor of The Spectator World . Her book, Woke-Proof Your Life, offers practical and concrete suggestions for opponents of the woke revolution to put their money where their mouths are. Spencer talks with Teresa about how families and single people alike can suit their actions to their words, and their words to their actions. Plus: some reflections on the definition of wokeness itself. Check out Teresa's book: https://a.co/d/550uQq2 Find Teresa...
Oct 27, 2023•43 min
Divine love: the most natural, and the least natural, thing in the universe. In this conclusion to his series on virtues, Spencer walks through the history of Christian love from its earliest origins in the church to its extremes in the most exalted realms of human life. We have arrived at last at the virtue that suffuses all others and defines their objective. It's been quite the journey. Sign up to be in the mailbag: https://rejoiceevermore.substack.com/ Check out my book, How to Save the West...
Oct 24, 2023•1 hr 5 min
What is going on with men? For that matter, what is going on with women? The war between the sexes has entered a new phase, as whatever wave of feminism we're currently surfing produces its own backlash. Helen Roy--mother, writer, and podcaster--joins Spencer to discuss how men and women alike can get past the narrative mill and come together again. Listen to Helen's podcast, Girlboss, Interrupted : https://girlbossinterrupted.podbean.com/ Read Helen's Substack, Ladies' Late Rome Journal : https...
Oct 20, 2023•39 min
It's been years since the days when we Young Heretics discussed Plato's Symposium . But now we've come back around a second time to that fundamental question: what is love? (Baby, don't hurt me.) This time, Spencer takes a thousand-year look at the question from the Hebrew angle while--GASP--actually saying something less than favorable about C.S. Lewis. As the series on virtue draws toward its close, it's time to discuss the most important one of all, and the hardest one to define. What, I ask ...
Oct 17, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 157
A revival in classical education is sweeping the nation. But where are we going to get good classical educators? In this interview, Josh Herring of Thales College discusses how he and his colleagues are equipping teachers to rise to that noble calling. From the humanities to the natural sciences, we need leaders who can do more than just pass on information. Josh and Spencer discusses who will shape the souls of the soul-shapers themselves, and how. Check out Thales College's degree in Classical...
Oct 13, 2023•39 min
If faith is the substance of things hoped for, what is hope? Reaching back into Jewish history and the Hebrew Bible, Spencer explains the gritty determination that saves us from despair in the valley of the shadow of death. As war rages in modern Israel after a savage terrorist attack by Hamas, it becomes as urgent as it's ever been to know where hope can reside securely in a darkened world. Sign up to be in the mailbag: https://rejoiceevermore.substack.com/ Check out my book, How to Save the We...
Oct 10, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 156
What does it look like when people who don't hate humanity build technology that doesn't suck? Emmet Penney is one of the most original thinkers when it comes to industry, energy, and the long history of human stewardship on earth. We discuss his departure from the left wing of the environmental movement, his search for a new aesthetics of nuclear energy, and the crisis of faith in the technological age. Check out Emmet's substack, Nuclear Barbarians : https://nuclearbarbarians.substack.com/ Sig...
Oct 06, 2023•49 min
A voice comes down from heaven--or was it thunder? Your answer will depend on what you believe, and what you beleive will change the way you see. In this episode, Spencer explores the twisted paradox of faith, and the Christian' Church's history of wrestling with it. From Heraclitus to Martin Luther, the question is who can possibly give sight to the blind. Sign up to be in the mailbag: https://rejoiceevermore.substack.com/ Check out my book, How to Save the West : https://a.co/d/9S57cfh...
Oct 03, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 155
Today's guest is someone whose life has been transformed by classical literature. Erik Rostad has reorganized his life around reading, with remarkable effects. We discuss how he was called to seek truth and beauty in the canon, which books have shaped him most deeply, and how he manages to read, run a business, and take care of his family all at once. If you're looking for strategies to get you started reading great works, Erik's your guy. Check out Erik's project, Books of Titans: https://www.b...
Sep 29, 2023•47 min
"Man of the worldly mind, do you believe in me or not?" That's what Jacob Marley's ghost asks Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol . In this episode, Spencer points out that everyone believes in something they can't see--the question is, what? So begins the first episode on faith in our tour through the three theological virtues. Sign up to be in the mailbag: https://rejoiceevermore.substack.com/ Check out my book, How to Save the West : https://a.co/d/9S57cfh...
Sep 26, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 154
Everyone wants to be happy--so why are so many people miserable? That's the simple question that the early Christian bishops posed to the canonical authors of the Greco-Roman world. It's also the question that kicks off Spencer's new series on the "theological virtues," or the Christian contribution to the classical philosophy of ethics. Using the basic experiences of everyday life, Spencer makes the practical case for--*gasp!*--going beyond Aristotle. Sign up to be in the mailbag: https://rejoi...
Sep 19, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 153
Today on Young Heretics, a minor topic: the origins of the universe. Very casual. New details and images from the James Webb Space Telescope have called into question the standard model of cosmology in Physics, leading Spencer into a series of reflections on the deeper histories of thought and of the universe (not so distinct as you might initially imagine). Plus, a cosmic mailbag question: what would you ask Satan if you met him? Sign up for my newsletter: https://rejoiceevermore.substack.com/ ...
Sep 12, 2023•59 min
In the interval between finishing the cardinal virtues and starting on the Christian virtues, Spencer takes some listener questions in a special Office Hours episode of Young Heretics. Topics include: Getting kids interested in the classics, differences between Judaism and Christianity, Body Count Discourse, and naked women doing political protests. Plus: a close read of The 6th Sense . Sign up for my mailing list at rejoiceevermore.substack.com . Check out my book, How to Save the West: https:/...
Sep 05, 2023•59 min
