Online Great Books Podcast
180 episodes - English - Latest episode: 9 months ago - ★★★★★ - 366 ratingsWe discuss the great books, the great ideas and the process of liberal education.
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Episodes
#80- J.R.R. Tolkien's "On Fairy-stories"
July 16, 2020 15:00 - 1 hour - 101 MBWhat are fairy-stories? What is their origin? What is the use of them? This week, Scott and Karl read “On Fairy-Stories” and “Leaf by Niggle” by J. R. R. Tolkien. Both works offer answers to these questions while providing the underlying philosophy of Tolkien's own fantastical writing, such as The Lord of the Rings. In his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien discusses the nature of fairy tales and fantasy in an effort to rescue the genre from those who would relegate it only to the nursery...
#79- Rooted in Community: Berry's Jayber Crow
July 09, 2020 15:09 - 1 hour - 98.6 MBThis week, Scott and Karl read Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. The role of community in the shaping of character is a recurring theme for Berry, who is the author of more than forty books that largely serve as an extended conversation about the life he values. Berry is a writer, a novelist, an essayist, but also a poet, a farmer, and an environmental activist. He now lives and works on a 125-acre farm in the same community in Kentucky where he was born. According to Scott, “There’s a kind ...
#78- Jünger's Storm of Steel
July 02, 2020 16:59 - 1 hour - 79.3 MBThis week Scott and Karl read Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger, the memoir widely viewed as the best account ever written of fighting in WW1. Printed in 1920, this book illuminates not only the horrors but also the fascination of total war, seen through the eyes of a German soldier. "Ernst is a generous soul who can see the good in all things," according to Scott. Forged by the storm of steel, Jünger is able to share a thoughtful depiction of both the good and the bad parts of war as part ...
#77- MacIntyre's After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory
June 25, 2020 14:42 - 1 hour - 81.7 MBWhy are modern debates on morality so shrill? This week, Scott and Karl read After Virtue, a book on moral philosophy by Alasdair MacIntyre. Published in 1981, MacIntyre examines the historical and conceptual roots of the idea of virtue and diagnoses the reasons for its absence in personal and public life. In Karl's words, "Ethical conversations are currently pointless and unable to be resolved. We talk about reason, we talk about right and wrong, but we don’t really mean it." Maclntyr...
#76- A British Humor Classic: Wodehouse's The Inimitable Jeeves
June 18, 2020 14:42 - 1 hour - 64.9 MBThis week, Scott and Karl read The Inimitable Jeeves, the second collection of Jeeves stories written by P. G. Wodehouse, published in 1923. First appearing in print in 1915, Jeeves continued to feature in Wodehouse's work until his last completed novel Aunts Aren't Gentlemen in 1974, a span of 60 years. The Inimitable Jeeves follows the adventures of Bertie Wooster and his valet, Jeeves, through a hilarious parade of linked short stories. You'll find a certain harmony in their relation...
#75- General Smedley D. Butler's War is a Racket
June 11, 2020 14:55 - 1 hour - 78.9 MBThis week, Scott and Karl read War is a Racket, the antiwar classic, written by one of America's most decorated soldiers— General Smedley D. Butler. When he published this essay in 1935, General Bulter was already a retired United States Marine Corps Major General and two-time Medal of Honor recipient. In his essay, you'll find that he argues against war because war is a racket. But what is a 'racket'? According to the General, "A racket is best described, I believe, as something that i...
#74- Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals Part 2
June 04, 2020 21:17 - 1 hour - 64.2 MBScott, Karl, and Brett Veinotte of the School Sucks Project continue their discussion of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals. Picking up where they left off from last week, the trio polishes off the remaining rules on Alinsky's list. Scott says, “What he outlines here is pretty much the way things work. I don’t think he invented anything. I think he discovered, codified, and learned how to teach what really works and what really happens to people."...
#73- Alinsky's Rules for Radicals Part 1
May 28, 2020 15:10 - 1 hour - 78.5 MBScott and Karl are joined by Brett Veinotte, creator of the School Sucks Project, for a special two-part discussion on Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals. Divided into ten chapters, Rules for Radicals provides 10 lessons on how a community organizer can accomplish the goal of successfully uniting disenfranchised people with the power to effect change on a variety of issues. Alinsky also offers his list of 13 “Rules for Radicals," tactics which Kar...
#72- G. K. Chesterton's What I Saw In America
May 21, 2020 20:34 - 1 hour - 106 MBThis week, Scott and Karl read and heartily discuss G.K. Chesterson's What I Saw In America. Chesterson was a prolific English journalist and author who traveled to America on a lecture tour of the US in 1921. What I Saw In America begins as a travelogue of his journey but eventually becomes an extended reflection on what makes a nation a nation. Chesterton is often referred to as the "prince of paradox" and his opening line doesn't disappoint. He writes, “I have never managed to lose...
#71- Citizenship In Heinlein’s Starship Troopers
May 14, 2020 15:04 - 1 hour - 87.8 MBWhat’s the proper cost of being a citizen? This week, Scott and Karl read and discuss Starship Troopers, written by Robert A. Heinlein in 1959. Labeled both a seminal and controversial military Sci-Fi read, this book is a provocative challenge that makes you think about citizenship, leadership, and moral philosophy. As the plot goes, a recruit of the future goes through the toughest boot camp in the universe and into battle with the Terran Mobile Infantry against humankind's most frighte...
#70- Are We Living in Orwell’s 1984?
May 07, 2020 15:19 - 1 hour - 73.6 MBThis week, Scott and Karl put on their tin foil hats for a reading of George Orwell's 1984. Published in 1949, the enduring relevance in 1984 is hard to overlook. Of its message, Karl says, “There are definitely right stories to tell and wrong stories to tell. The wrong stories get pulled which is why I’m frustrated with George Orwell— you wrote the instruction manual!" In a world where language is used solely for political purposes and family life is replaced by pure economic calculus,...
#69- The Original Adventures of Conan the Barbarian
April 30, 2020 14:25 - 1 hour - 74.2 MBThis week, Scott and Karl read a collection of stories starring Conan the Barbarian, a series by Robert E. Howard. Known as the “Father of Sword and Sorcery,” Howard helped create this subgenre of fiction. To this point, Karl adds, "There is so much of your popular culture, dear listeners, that comes out of Conan." You think of other heroes that we read like King Arthur, Beowulf, and Achilles: none of them are like this barbarian. After reading about him, you may find Conan to be one of...
#68- Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and “The Masque Of The Red Death”
April 23, 2020 14:08 - 1 hour - 68.6 MBThis week, Scott and Karl read two short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s stories are known for following many traditions of Gothic fiction, and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and “The Masque Of The Red Death” are no different. First, the duo dives into “The Masque of the Red Death” published in 1842. The story follows Prince Prospero's attempts to avoid a mysterious plague, known as the Red Death, by hiding in his abbey. You may find a modern-day parallel in times of emergency and prec...
#67- Montaigne's "Of the Education of Children”
April 16, 2020 15:32 - 1 hour - 80.9 MBIn 1580, Michel De Montaigne is asked by the pregnant Madame Diane de Foix on what the best way of educating a child is. In his essay "Of the Education of Children," Montaigne provides her with a glimpse into his own upbringing, advising her on how children should apply their education to their own life. Karl warns, “I don’t think you should let anyone read this because they will become dissatisfied with the current state of education.” There’s nothing that will squash curiosity and a ...
#66- The Other Side of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
April 09, 2020 15:24 - 1 hour - 105 MBThis week, Scott and Karl are joined by Aristotelian scholar and OGB seminar host, John Pascarella. The trio talks about the not-so-obvious side of Jane Austen's novel, Pride and Prejudice. Austen’s Aristotelian ethical ideas are often overlooked by the majority of readers, but as Scott points out, "This isn’t a chick book. This is a people book. This is about rational people trying to pursue a rational happiness, making decisions about their life, and taking agency in doing things on the...
#65- Schopenhauer's Metaphysics of Love
April 02, 2020 15:23 - 1 hour - 74.3 MBThis week, Scott and Karl discuss Schopenhauer's Metaphysics of Love. Among 19th-century philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer was one of the first to contend that at its core, the universe is not a rational place. His view of love is no different— earnest but slightly unromantic. Scott sums up Schopenhauer's theory by saying, “Love is an experience you have that entices you to select a mate that would make up your genetic shortcomings and this force that acts on you... is the will to live ...
#64- Transmitting Culture in Mishima's The Sound of Waves
March 27, 2020 12:52 - 1 hour - 86.7 MBThis week, Scott and Karl read The Sound of Waves, a 1954 novel by the Japanese author Yukio Mishima. The novel follows Shinji and his romance with Hatsue, the beautiful daughter of the wealthy shipowner, on the island of Uta-Jima (Song Island). It’s a charming coming-of-age story, but as Scott points out, “There’s not a reformer in this book.” Do you believe it is the obligation of a good and just society to protect the material circumstances in a place? To this point, Scott adds, “If...
#63- Frank Herbert's Dune: Testing the Limits of What it Means to be Human
March 21, 2020 01:28 - 1 hour - 88.9 MBWelcome, dear listeners, to a show that explores what it means to be human. Sound intriguing? This week, Scott and Karl read Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel Dune which is a book thought to be The Lord of the Rings equivalent in the science fiction genre. Scott expands, "In The Lord of the Rings, there’s something comforting and familiar about that world even when it get’s scary and the outcomes look uncertain. This world is much scarier, much more uncanny. It may be because there are elemen...
#62- The Magna Carta: Exploring the 800-Year Legacy
March 12, 2020 15:11 - 1 hour - 60.1 MBThis week, Scott and Karl read and discuss the 63 clauses of the Magna Carta. In 1215, Bad King John pledged, under duress, to his barons that he would obey “the law of the land” when he affixed his seal to a charter that came to be called Magna Carta. Few men have been less mourned, few legal documents more adored. Although most of the charter deals with medieval rights and customs, the Magna Carta has become a powerful symbol of liberty, influencing the likes of Thomas Jefferson an...
#61- Why Did the Articles of Confederation Fail?
March 05, 2020 17:03 - 1 hour - 73.6 MBThis week, Scott and Karl read the Articles of Confederation. This "firm league of friendship" was written in 1777, stemming from wartime urgency. However, it was not actually ratified until 1781. It now lays on the ash heap of history, formally replaced by the present United States Constitution on March 4, 1789. Under these articles, the states remained sovereign and independent, with Congress serving as the last resort on appeal of disputes. Karl says, “It does not impose anything fr...
#60- The Master of Satire: Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal
February 28, 2020 00:44 - 1 hour - 58.9 MBThis week, Scott and Karl read A Modest Proposal, a satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Are human lives the sort of things you should add up like numbers? Despite suggesting that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food to rich gentlemen and ladies, Swift actually thinks you should treat people like humans. Needless to say, Swift's essay is widely held to be one of the greatest examples of sustain...
#59- Henry David Thoreau's Walden: Why Are We Always So Busy?
February 20, 2020 16:13 - 1 hour - 82.9 MBIn the spring of 1845, Henry David Thoreau borrowed an ax, walked into the woods, and started cutting down trees to make a shack to live in. Walden is the result of this endeavor. Through this process, Thoreau spells out his distinctly American project — simple living with as few compromises as possible. Karl says, “The book is not a guide to your life, the book is a challenge to your life.” In the woods, Thoreau makes precise, scientific observations of nature, writing his thoughts down...
#58- Tom Wolfe’s The Painted Word: The History of Tastemakers and Influencers
February 13, 2020 16:01 - 1 hour - 71.7 MBScott and Karl are back at it again, this time with Tom Wolfe and his book, The Painted Word. Wolfe is a mid-century American writer and the inventor of New Journalism. He’s known for straddling multiple genres at once, reporting back to his readers on a world we ultimately couldn't see without him. In The Painted Word, Wolfe provides a critique of modern art and the world that surrounds it. In a way only Tom Wolfe can, he's able to describe how the art world of the 1970s was controlled b...
#57- Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago: How Literature Can Save Us
February 06, 2020 16:49 - 1 hour - 87.6 MBThis week, Scott and Karl dive into The Gulag Archipelago by Russian writer and historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Published in 1973, the title refers to a series of disconnected prisons in the Soviet Union that, nevertheless, all shared the same culture. The manuscript had to be hidden, originally published by the underground Samizdat press which reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader. This work of literature, and countless others like it, ...
#56- How to Listen to Classical Music and Actually Enjoy It: Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 and The Heiligenstadt Testament with Michelle Hawkins
January 30, 2020 16:31 - 1 hour - 73 MBIn this week’s episode, Scott and Karl talk with Michelle Hawkins, music professor and Online Great Book’s member. The trio listen and discuss Beethoven’s Third Symphony and read The Heiligenstadt Testament, a heartbreaking letter written by Beethoven to his brothers. Beethoven's Third Symphony is regarded as a turning point in musical history, the ideas for which began during his tumultuous "Heiligenstadt Testament" period. Why is it that so few of us are listening to this landmark symph...
#55- The FAQ Show
January 23, 2020 16:04 - 1 hour - 60.9 MBWe’re switching up our normal routine to answer your Online Great Books questions. In this episode, Scott and Karl address everything from membership, seminar, accountability, and our mission. What will reading the books on this list do for you, anyway? Scott says, “If you read them in earnest and you take them seriously and actually go to the seminar, they will make you address the bedrock questions behind so many of your opinions.” In short, “it'll ruin the life you’ve got but you’...
#54- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
January 16, 2020 15:26 - 1 hour - 77 MBThis week, Scott and Karl read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, author unknown. This narrative poem is considered to be one of the jewels of English Literature and a crowning achievement of Middle English poetry. Filled with chivalric knights, seductive sirens, and plenty of temptation and testing, this Arthurian legend lives up to the name. This poem was lost for a while, from a region that didn’t win the language war. Karl remarks, “It’s a pattern of language that still works, even if ...
#53- The Medium is the Massage
January 09, 2020 16:25 - 1 hour - 78.7 MBThe medium is the… massage? In 1967, Marshall McLuhan teamed up with graphic designer Quentin Fiore to write The Medium is the Massage, a short 160-page picture book that offers us a glimpse as to how the medium "shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action,” of work and leisure. Karl points out, “to say the media is the massage means the medium, this conceptional world, is massaging you— it’s rhetoric." Have societies always been shaped more by the nature of ...
#52- Melville’s "Bartleby, the Scrivener"
January 02, 2020 22:45 - 1 hour - 66.4 MB“I would prefer not to.” In their simplicity and politeness, these five words illustrate a story of passive resistance that will both move you and leave you searching for answers. You may have even uttered the line yourself at work. "Bartleby, the Scrivener, A Story of Wall-Street," was published in Putnam's magazine in November and December 1853 by Herman Melville. It is centered around the dehumanization of Bartleby the scrivener, the nineteenth-century equivalent of a photocopy machine....
#51- Edward Bernays' Propaganda
December 26, 2019 16:00 - 1 hour - 87.6 MBIn this week’s episode, Scott and Karl discuss Edward Bernays’ 1928 book Propaganda. Referred to as “the father of public relations,” and “the Machiavelli of the 20th century,” Bernays pioneered the scientific technique of shaping and manipulating public opinion which he famously dubbed “engineering of consent.” His seminal work, Propaganda, is a look behind the veil of the most powerful and influential institutions orchestrating the unseen mechanisms of society. In Karl’s own words, “It’s...
#50- Why Read the Great Books?
December 19, 2019 15:23 - 50 minutes - 46.2 MBWhen you begin reading the Great Books, family and friends may be puzzled. They will see you toting around huge books, taking notes, and gazing off thoughtfully into the void. Greg, one of our members, was questioned by a coworker. “Why are you reading Thucydides at lunch?” He restated this question on our OGB Slack channel. We have an active community of readers, friends who help each other work through the texts. In this week's episode, Scott and Karl dive into the many reasons why we...
#49- Leisure, the Basis of Culture
December 12, 2019 15:36 - 1 hour - 81.3 MBThis week, Scott and Karl read Josef Pieper’s Leisure the Basis of Culture. The duo dives into the Pieper-style definition of leisure, work, and their relationship. Pieper shows us that the Greeks and medieval Europeans understood the great value and importance of leisure. But do we? Most of us have been brought up on heavy doses of careerism, or what Pieper would define as work related to the servile arts, with the sole purpose of survival. Leisure, in effect, becomes a bad word, merely...
#48- Emerson's "The American Scholar"
December 05, 2019 15:46 - 1 hour - 69 MBThis week, Scott and Karl discuss Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The America Scholar.” This address was delivered at Cambridge in 1837, before the Harvard Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. According to Emerson, there’s a fundamental challenge American scholars are faced with— what is it they ought to be doing? Emerson has a reverence for work and the common man. The scholar must realize the importance of action in the life of the American intellectual or risk becoming a mere thinker. Emerso...
#47- How We Read
November 28, 2019 15:45 - 1 hour - 64 MBIn this week’s episode, Scott and Karl discuss all things related to reading. Before opening a book, it’s crucial to define your “why” and then your “how.” If you are reading for entertainment, your methods will differ than if you’re reading for enlightenment. Here at Online Great Books, the first book our members read in the program is How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler. Adler has four basic questions a reader should have in active reading: What is this book about was a whole? What is b...
#46- Defining Happiness: Scott and Karl Discuss Aristotle's Ethics
November 21, 2019 16:19 - 1 hour - 78.1 MBThis week, Scott and Karl discuss Book I of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle may seem like an intimidating figure that you can’t tap into, but this just isn’t true. As the author of the first book on ethics, Aristotle treats human behaviors like a science. If you believe in reason, if the world is a place you want to learn about and explore, what things must hinge on each other? Are things good because we aim at them or do we do things because they aim at the good? Aristotle asks ...
#45- Plutarch on Progress in Virtue
November 14, 2019 16:02 - 1 hour - 67.4 MBIn this week's episode, Scott and Karl discuss an essay by Plutarch, “How a Man May Become Aware of His Progress in Virtue.” As an eminent biographer and moralist, Plutarch is best known for his Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans arranged in tandem to illuminate their common vices and virtues. To Karl’s initial dismay, Plutarch’s essay is less about the metaphysical elements of virtue and more of a self-evaluation for the reader. Presuming you already want ...
#44- The Lost Tools of Learning
November 07, 2019 15:12 - 1 hour - 83.1 MBThis week, Scott and Karl discuss Dorthy Sayers’ paper, "The Lost Tools of Learning." This groundbreaking work is a great deal important to our mission here at Online Great Books, and for anyone else who wants a redo on their education. What did Sayers notice was lost back in 1947? Why does it matter that we have lost the tools of learning? In this episode, the guys talk about the all-encompassing ideas behind the Trivium, the downfalls of specialization, and the purpose of school. In ...
#43- Karl Drops Out Of School
October 31, 2019 15:00 - 48 minutes - 44 MBOne year ago, Karl decided to give up his 20-year teaching career as a university professor of humanities and philosophy. Why did he make this decision? In Karl’s own words, “It was no longer rewarding for me or valuable to the students.” Towards the end of his teaching career, Karl started to notice a decline in his student’s ability to read and a general reluctance to share opinions. Scott and Karl dig into the dismal state of higher education today and the problem of chasing credentials...
#42- Harold Bloom, You'll Be Missed
October 24, 2019 14:35 - 1 hour - 60.9 MBIn this week’s episode, Scott and Karl pay homage to the recently deceased Harold Bloom, a great ally to our mission at Online Great Books. Once hailed the most notorious literary critic in America, Bloom was a professor of humanities at Yale and a fierce defender of canonicity. His version of the canon, with Shakespeare reigning at its center, is far more extensive than the Adlerian version. Scott and Karl read Chapter 1 of Bloom’s The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. T...
#41- Gabriel Marcel on Avoiding The Loss Of Our Humanity
October 17, 2019 18:15 - 1 hour - 66.5 MBThis week, Scott and Karl read Chapters 1-3 of Gabriel Marcel’s Man Against Mass Society. Mass society doesn’t just include people for Marcel, he also includes art, media, and technology. Marcel is concerned with human existence, or more specifically, with the quality of human life in relation to the transcendent. Written in 1952, Marcel’s discussion of these topics is remarkably contemporary. He believes we are in danger of losing our humanity and certain “techniques of degradation” in...
#40- Hobbes' Leviathan
October 11, 2019 20:38 - 1 hour - 72.8 MBThomas Hobbes is the type of writer you love to hate– but he’s also the guy you’d love to play cards with. Scott believes Hobbes’ Leviathan is one of the most fruitful books he has ever read. It’s a founding text of western thought filled with original ideas that are still relevant to contemporary politics. In today’s episode, Scott and Karl dig into chapters 13-15 and 17. It's only 36 pages so make sure to read it before listening in! For Karl, Hobbes says things about human nature tha...
#39- Emerson on Self-Reliance
October 03, 2019 22:12 - 59 minutes - 54.2 MBScott is joined by Karl Schudt in this week’s discussion of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, “Self-Reliance.” For Emerson, authentic, unmediated thought has some sort of divine truth in it. This is crucial to our mission at Online Great Books. In seminar discussion, everyone has a unique perspective that we need to hear about. Your thoughts are worth a whole lot! Despite that freedom Emerson felt, and wrote about, and saw in transcendentalism, we are more conformist than ever as a natio...
#38- On Love
September 26, 2019 17:15 - 59 minutes - 54.9 MBDo we reveal our most authentic inner selves by our choice of partner? How can you identify meaningful love in others? In what ways does love grow? Scott discusses the role of choice in love with fellow OGB interlocutors Karl Schudt and Marsha Enright. The trio digs into a chapter from José Ortega y Gasset’s book On Love. Gasset is a prolific 20th-century Spanish philosopher who, in his writings, focuses on the subtle, almost ineffable aspects of human personality that are oftentimes ove...
#37- A Scandal In Bohemia
September 19, 2019 13:06 - 1 hour - 61.4 MBThe tables have turned. Scott makes Karl read “A Scandal In Bohemia” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Understanding this short story is to understand what made young Scott tick. Sherlock Holmes is a saint of reason. The world is an explicable place- one where he can deduce who you are simply by looking at your shoes. To Holmes, humans are rational actors with incentives and motivations. So long as he can find out what their motives are, all that’s left is looking at the sense data to figure out...
#36- The Lord of the Rings Part 2
September 13, 2019 01:50 - 59 minutes - 54.6 MBIn the second installment of the series, Scott Hambrick and Karl Schudt continue their discussion of Tolkien’s magic in The Lord of the Rings. The two talk about the problem of evil in this Homeric story, what the good life actually looks like, models of hope we see in many of the characters, the unyielding power of friendship, language’s captivating ability to transmit culture, and so much more. Not only is The Lord of the Rings a monumental work of a single intellect, but it’s also so ex...
#35- The Lord of the Rings Part 1
September 05, 2019 12:59 - 1 hour - 61.6 MBAfter years of Karl’s persistent hounding, Scott finally reads The Lord of the Rings. The two discuss elves, orcs, dwarfs, hobbits, and so much more. Disclaimer: If you haven’t yet already, do not watch The Lord of the Ring movies before reading the books. Don’t let your first Tolkien experience be from Peter Jackson. Karl will find you and scold you. The whole genre of fantasy literature, creating a world that isn’t this one and giving it a history, originates from one man— J.R.R. Tolki...
#34 - Against Dryness
July 31, 2019 09:00 - 55 minutes - 50.7 MBIf you don't believe in anything, how can you make meaningful art? Scott and Dr. Karl Schudt discuss their first encounter with philosopher-novelist Iris Murdoch. Her essay "Against Dryness" addresses that question, along with the ideas and forces that brought that question about. Looking at art and of literature, Murdoch laments the loss of moral context, concepts and a full vocabulary for the examination of human personality. Scott and Karl agree. Use the discount OGBPODCAST to save ...
#33 - The Loss of the Creature
July 24, 2019 09:00 - 53 minutes - 48.6 MBScott and Dr. Karl Schudt discuss Walker Percy's essay on how preconceived ideas about experiences cause us to overlook their essence. Why do so many people surrender their experiences of things to the way others want those people to experience them? How do we get around Percy's "symbolic complex" of a book or a place, and find a way to experience the thing in itself? Can we be sovereign in our engagement with the world? Use the discount OGBPODCAST to save 25% on enrollment at Online...
#32 - Plato's Seventh Letter
July 17, 2019 09:00 - 1 hour - 57.9 MBPlato's Seventh Letter has it all - history, politics, epistemology, pedagogy. And the complaints of an old man who has watched his life's work...fail? Scott and Dr. Karl Schudt discuss the letter and the drama behind it, and then wrestle with the question of whether or not a lover of wisdom actually has the ability to "make people good." And even if the answer is no, is it still a worthwhile pursuit? Use the discount OGBPODCAST to save 25% on enrollment at Online Great Books!
#31 - Moments II: Thucydides & The Thin Veneer of Civility
July 10, 2019 15:00 - 5 minutes - 8.34 MBIn the second installment of the Moments miniseries, seminar leader Karl Schudt reflects on the capricious and tenuous nature of our current political environment. As Thucydides reminds us, extreme partisanship is nothing new: "reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal supporter... prudent hesitation specious cowardice." And where there is partisan rancor, violence and revolution is often not far behind. If Thucydides was right, we should be worried. OGB enro...