Episodes

1 Aug 2025 Episode 6.07 - In Defense of Fantasy Riddle: What do Beowulf, Palmolive dish liquid, and Sarah Maas have in common? Hint: Ursula K. Le Guin knows! Today we wonder at both the disdain of fantasy as genre and its enduring popularity, examine some of Le Guin’s arguments for it as literature, and take a crash course in the history of fantasy across the millennia. Some key texts discussed in this episode: Ancient Texts: Gilgamesh, The Iliad, The Odyssey Roman Epics: The Aeneid, Afric...

What do a children's story and horror film have in common? Maybe our Suffering Child question, with very different approaches to it.

18 July 2025 Episode 6.05 - Negotiating for Space: Compromise and Flag-Planting This is getting challenging. What are we to do with the Suffering Child question? And on which form of suffering do I plant my flag of resistance? Dostoevsky and Langston Hughes both offer clues. The complete reading of Dostoevsky’s “Rebellion” in The Brothers Karamazov: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17z89hjeEz1Rl_hcx4jUdkQi1M0jzbwv2/view?usp=drive_link Langston Hughes: “Let America Be America Again” - https://w...

Still another famous writer has posed the Le Guin question, and he did it in one of Russia's most famous novels, The Brothers Karamazov. Here it is.

Le Guin leans on an essay by William James, but what does that have to do with all our garden talk? It's about our blind spots and our privilege.

Speaking of links back to Andrew Marvell's poetry--weren't we?--we expose some of our misapprehensions about nature, leisure, and work. And we read Marvell's poem "The Garden" while we think green thoughts about it.

What does it mean to embrace "Other"? And how might we understand carpe diem if we truly had "world enough and time?" Le Guin shows us in her famous science fiction short story.

Where we've been and where we're going, and we take a pause in a museum gallery, too!

Looking ahead at Season 6: Ursula K. Le Guin's story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," and all the wrestling we do with dilemmas of ethics.

We finish a carpe diem journey and I reflect back on what I've learned, what I believe, and where we are going next.

It's time for the end of our carpe diem journey, and we celebrate with a congratulatory essay! Hey, why so glum?

9 May 2025 Episode 5.15 - Bellow Seizes Our Day Sure we can philosophize, but what happens when we put carpe diem to the test in the modern world of capital? We work through Saul Bellow’s approach to carpe diem, how his ironies may not all be what we expect them to be, what separates Seize the Day from other modernist American literature, and how he spins our ethical discussion on carpe diem with still more complexity. Our analysis will focus on the final mystifying scene of the novel. Oh, and...

2 May 2025 Episode 5.14 - Rilke and Carpe Don’t Rhyme Finding carpe diem in art and literature; abandoning “seize the day” and ending in uncertainty. What is required of us to find the power and meaning in art? in poetry? Is it related to carpe diem? And does it give us any guidance in how to approach meaningful lives? In a continuation of our carpe diem talk last episode, we return to Roman Krznaric, to Rainer Maria Rilke’s sonnet “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” and consider immanence, a kind of ...

25 April 2025 Episode 5.13 - Carpe All Over the Place How far away are we from the original meaning of carpe diem? And does it matter? Looking back across our wanderings so far, it seems that our literature and culture has gotten fairly sloppy (or cavalier?) in its popular imagination of philosophy, perhaps dangerously so. We investigate those understandings, capturing several modern approaches to carpe diem and contrasting them dramatically to where Epicurus and friends began. Along the way,...

18 April 2025 Episode 5.12 - Star Trek: “World Enough and Time” Can some fan-fiction teach us more about carpe diem than a classic Roman poet? Let’s get over ourselves a bit and give this fan-produced Star Trek episode a chance. How we decide literary quality, how we work with allusion, and how we interpret contemporary texts are all fair game in this episode that finds some surprising depth in the screenwriting in a science fiction literary niche. Watch the New Voyages episode, “World Enoug...

Can an ancient Roman poet illuminate the concept of carpe diem? Perhaps, but then again . . .

Writing back to authors and their works is essential to the literary culture; it also helps us answer our essential questions. Let's do some of that, then!

28 March 2025 Episode 5.09 - Kipling’s “If” and Irony-Hunting Where do we find irony, anyway? And how? An answer in an offer of cheese. === Chapters 00:00 Cheese, Please 06:00 Opening Theme 06:40 Yes, But Is It Irony? 15:17 It’s Like, Literally, Everywhere 26:26 Reading of “If—“ 28:32 If There’s Irony in “If” 42:33 Mailbag: Other Literary Terms? 45:51 Outro and Credits === “Suicide’s Note” by Langston Hughes: The calm, Cool face of the river Asked me for a kiss. === “We Real Cool” by Gwend...

12 March 2025 Episode 5.07 - Dorian Gray and Difficult Conversations Where do we find people to talk to about our reading? And what do we say when we find them? === Chapters 00:00 Disturbing the Olive Garden 06:14 Opening Theme 06:47 Lost Roads and Madness 16:31 Dorian: The Seduction Fulfilled 23:11 Some Discussion Strategies 32:00 Yes, But Where? 42:04 Do I Have To? 44:49 Mailbag: Too Much? 48:56 Closing Shot & Theme === Goals of Good Literature Talks: Maintain and grow relationships Avoi...

14 March 2025 Episode 5.07 - Reading and Living in Uncertainty What do we mean by uncertainty in reading? And why do we have to look for it? === Chapters 00:00 Pianos and Birds and Empty Spaces 04:32 Opening Theme 05:13 Fear and Uncertainty and Fuzzy Dice 10:33 Books and Literature and Rubik’s Cubes 16:18 Healthy and Sustained Uncertainty and Ralph Ellison 24:19 Crisis and Volatility and the Role of Literature 32:28 Wondering and Noticing and Talking 35:36 Mailbag: Too Much? 38:05 Closing Shot...

What questions do we carry with us as we leave Marvell's famous poem?

28 February 2025 Episode 5.05 - Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” - Part 4 Who is the speaker in this poem? Who the audience? Who the Marvell? The conclusion of our four part series. === Chapters 00:00 Marvell as Sculpture 02:37 - In the Museum 06:02 Opening Theme 06:42 Manyness 13:02 Constructed Speakers, Constructed Authors 14:04 - Failed Seductions 28:12 - Silence in Response 37:20 A Many-Hearted Sculpture 42:31 Accountability to Our Talk 53:17 Closing / Outro === To His Coy Mistre...

We trace Marvell's poetry back to its perhaps distressing roots.

14 February 2025 Episode 5.03 - Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” - Part 2 What did Marvell know and how did he use it? We look at the sexism in the poem and discover how this provocation is hardly unique in the carpe diem tradition. === Chapters 00:00 Theme 00:34 Intro and Recap 03:44 The Offensive Act - Feminism 16:29 Historicist Qualifiers 18:36 Back to School: Studia Humanitatus 24:39 Catullus and Friends 33:02 Closing Questions 34:27 Outro === To His Coy Mistress Andrew Marvell, 16...