The Troubadour Podcast
298 episodes - English - Latest episode: 23 days ago -"It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind." William Wordsworth The Troubadour Podcast invites you into a world where art is conversation and conversation is art. The conversations on this show will be with some living people and some dead writers of our past. I aim to make both equally entertaining and educational.In 1798 William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, which Wordsworth called an experiment to discover how far the language of everyday conversation is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure. With this publication, he set in motion the formal movement called "Romanticism." 220 years later the experiment is continued on this podcast. This podcast seeks to reach those of us who wish to improve our inner world, increase our stores of happiness, and yet not succumb to the mystical or the subjective.Here, in this place of the imagination, you will find many conversation with those humans creating things that interest the human mind.
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Episodes
Jordan Peterson's 4th Rule, with Robert Frost, Dostoevsky and Rand's esthetics
May 06, 2018 04:00 - 3 hours - 87.8 MBSend us a Text Message. Why Jordan Peterson is dangerous. On this fourth installment of my grapplings with Peterson I explore Peterson's rule "Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today." For the first time I express some serious disagreements with Peterson, though I definitely agree with much of his underlying reasoning for the rule. After giving an overview of his method for expressing the underlying reasoning for this rule, I dive into where we diverge. ...
Business is Business by Berton Braley - With Guest Sean Doherty
April 30, 2018 04:00 - 1 hour - 41.6 MBSend us a Text Message. My business Mastermind friend Sean Doherty came all the way from China JUST to be on my show! ;) And we talked about the poem Business is Business by Berton Braley. Is business actually beneficial to people if all it cares about is making money? Can those big boys ever really care about the little man? Or will they always just step all over them?
2 Poems for Alfie Evans
April 29, 2018 04:00 - 1 hour - 39.6 MBSend us a Text Message. Rather than bringing us together, the case of Alfie Evans, the 23 month old boy who was taken off life support in the UK and died on Saturday April 28th, has further polarized our views in the west. This has been a devastating journey for both Tom and Kate, Alfie's parents. It has "shattered their family." It has devastated all of the #alfiesarmy. Death is an instructor. We must face it courageously and with heartfelt desire to exit the chaos of such a tragedy, bett...
The Flea by John Donne (Or, Seduce Like a Poet!)
April 25, 2018 04:00 - 23 minutes - 11 MBSend us a Text Message. Poetry refines your view of the world, and sometimes gives you fun arguments to help you with the ladies. Only a poet can make a flea erotic.
Reacting to the news of your death with poet John Donne
April 24, 2018 04:00 - 20 minutes - 9.28 MBSend us a Text Message. A reading and discussion of the poem "Death, be not proud" By John Donne Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery. Thou art slave to...
Ayn Rand's Favorite Poem: The Westerner by Badger Clark
April 22, 2018 04:00 - 1 hour - 44.9 MBSend us a Text Message. "The Westerner" by Badger Clark doesn't seem at first very spiritual, but upon consideration like many poems about building your own world the poem rests on many spiritual ideas.Ayn Rand once said in a TV Interview she did that she is not afraid of death because "it is not I who will die, but the world that will end."This I think has a lot to do with her unique form of philosophy. In her younger years she was enamored with Nietzsche and his idea that God is Dead. @jor...
The Abysmal Dismal Mr. Boomerang
April 20, 2018 04:00 - 32 minutes - 15 MBSend us a Text Message. I moved to San Antonio 17 years ago and read about Mr. Boomerang in a newspaper. At 15 I didn't understand this bizarre tale. Now at 32 I think I do. It's a story that opens as many stories do today. One day a man, seemingly without reason, leaves his wife of ten years. But here's the strange part. One day 20 years later, he returned as if he'd never left. Where had he been? Why had he gone? Oh poor Abysmal Dismal Mr. Boomerang.
Jordan Peterson's 3rd Rule, Blake's a Poison Tree and The Elixir of Valor
April 17, 2018 04:00 - 1 hour - 49.9 MBSend us a Text Message. You've probably heard the observation "you are the product of the five people" you spend the most time with." Sounds good, right? Just surround yourself with 5 great people and voila! You'll be great too. Doesn't work like that though. If we blindly drop one friend we are just as likely to attract a new friend of the same exact type and replay the past. In this episode we explore Peterson's 3rd rule from his book "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos." The rule i...
SMP #5: Ulysses by Tennyson, and The Power of Atheists Praying
April 15, 2018 04:00 - 1 hour - 50.6 MBSend us a Text Message. For today's Sunday Morning Poem we will be exploring "Ulysses" by Alfred Lord Tennyson. Or, on living rather than merely existing.Few poems say so much in so little space. This is a poem that touches on the very core of being human. We'll be talking about:The role of affirmations to a humanist atheistImportance of community to individualistsAnd a converse with verse on "Ulysses"
SMP #4: Directive" by Robert Frost and breaking a Religious Monopoly
April 08, 2018 04:00 - 1 hour - 44.9 MBSend us a Text Message. Sunday Morning Poem: "Directive" by Robert Frost. Subscribe to the podcast here! https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/p... Continuing our discussion of breaking the monopoly that religions hold on important emotional concepts such as Exaltation, Reverence, Glory, Serenity, and even Peace, today we will be discussing Robert Frosts directive on finding inner peace and serenity in our chaotic world. Some who come from a strong religious background will not be able to h...
#3. Sunday Morning Poetry: Art as Religion
April 01, 2018 04:00 - 1 hour - 53.5 MBSend us a Text Message. Happy Easter! On Sunday Morning Poetry #3 I'm reading the poem "Sailing to Byzantium" by William Butler Yeats. This is a poem often thought to be about Yeats' views on life after death. But I believe it's about Art as a religion, and, specifically, about the idea of reincarnation or "resurrection in our natural lives."The coward dies many deaths, but the brave man dies but once." Julius Caesar.How can we worship reincarnation if we are an humanist atheist? How can we ...
#2. Sunday Morning Poetry: Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
March 25, 2018 04:00 - 1 hour - 48.7 MBSend us a Text Message. Last week we discussed Wallace Stevens poem "Sunday Morning," and how to create a secular "church." In his poem he rejects Christian Doctrine and celebrates the actualities of human life and the physical universe as fulfilling man's needs without any compensating hope of immortality.His solution is essentially to enjoy the sensual world and to live in harmony with nature. A good message for sure, but he neglects one critical component of the human condition: pain, su...
Jordan Peterson's 2nd Rule, Prometheus' Gift, And T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding
March 20, 2018 04:00 - 4 hours - 119 MBSend us a Text Message. Peterson's 2nd rule is "Treat Yourself Like Someone You are Responsible for Helping." What is it about people that makes many of us more likely to take care of our pets and less likely to take care of ourselves? Or why are so many of us willing to dole out sound advice but not take it? We tell our loved ones that it's important to exercise regularly, as we sit around eating burgers and failing to exercise. If we are to take care of any entity in the world, it seems ...
#1. Sunday Morning Poetry: Humanist Church
March 18, 2018 04:00 - 2 hours - 62.8 MBSend us a Text Message. In this inaugural episode of Sunday Morning Poetry I go through the poem "Sunday Morning" By Wallace Stevens. This humanist poem rejects Christian doctrine while celebrating spiritual values. How can an atheist pray? Poetically
I Sing The Body Electric by Whitman -- With Guest Alex Spenser
March 15, 2018 04:00 - 2 hours - 80.2 MBSend us a Text Message. For thousands of years the West has inculcated a "mind-body" or "soul-body" dichotomy. This is the idea that the body is inferior to the spirit, or consciousness. This dichotomy has given us religious ascetics who destroy their own bodies as well as sadism. In modern America it has given us a bizarre coyness and bashfullness to our own nudity.In this poem by Walt Whitman, he glorifies the body as equal to the soul. The poem is a song to the body electric, or our bodie...
Kubla Khan by Samuel Coleridge - With Guest Rhys Morgan
March 13, 2018 04:00 - 1 hour - 48.4 MBSend us a Text Message. Kubla Khan is a Trip man, for real. It's not surprising to hear that Coleridge was on drugs when he wrote this.I chatted with a fellow podcaster, Rhys Morgan from socialgoodpodcast.com. Rhys lives in Birmingham—England! We've never met, but we swapped travel stories (both real and metaphorical) and conversed with this trippy verse, man.Enjoy as we go to middle earth with Good ol Coleridge!
A Noiseless Patient Spider by Whitman - With Local Poet Rohn Bayes
March 02, 2018 05:00 - 1 hour - 46.7 MBSend us a Text Message. I had the pleasure of sitting down with local San Antonio poet, Rohn Bayes.We talked about Whitman's great, short poem "A Noiseless Patient Spider," and how its metaphor "takes you places."That, after all, is the etymology of metaphor--to take you some where. This particular metaphor is special to poets, writers, and creators of all sorts. Anyone who has every created "filament, filament, filament!" can sympathize with the meaning of this poem.Stay tuned till the end...
Epithalamium by Pablu Neruda - With Guest Cristina Sanchez
February 27, 2018 05:00 - 1 hour - 51.4 MBSend us a Text Message. Epithalamium is a song you would sing outside the doors of newlyweds - love poems.Today I discuss the nature of poetry, romantic relationships, cheating, and the secret life of Pablo Neruda with guest, Cristina Sanchez.She introduced me to this poem, and I really enjoyed it. If you haven't read Neruda before, it's worth your time.
Invictus by Henley - With Halelly Azulay
February 25, 2018 05:00 - 1 hour - 46.7 MBSend us a Text Message. I believe that wisdom comes through suffering not smiles. Today I talk with the host of the TalentGrow Show, Halelly Azulay. Halelly is an author, speaker, facilitator, and leadership development strategist and an expert in communication skills and emotional intelligence.We talked quite a bit about emotional intelligence and how poetry could improve one in that area. We also delved into this wonderful poem by Henley.
Peterson's 1st Rule, Ayn Rand, and the poem Horatius by Thomas Macaulay
February 15, 2018 05:00 - 1 hour - 50.3 MBSend us a Text Message. Buck up Buckaroo! I love Westerns. I often wonder if the death of the western has led to some of our confidence problems today. In this episode I compare Jordan Peterson's Rule Number 1 "Stand Up Straight WIth Your Shoulders Back" to the westerns of the 1939 to 1969 era as well as to the poem Horatius by Macaulay. I'll discuss Ayn Rand and the mind/body integration How the wester American hero illuminates Peterson's number one rule A full analysis of the rule with ...
Jordan Peterson's #1 Rule - With Guest Ken Briggs
February 04, 2018 05:00 - 2 hours - 70.4 MBSend us a Text Message. We discuss rule number one in Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's book "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos." The rule is "Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back." it seems simple, but there is a lot to discuss in this chapter. What do lobsters have to do with human confidence? Do men need to be dominant to get the girl? What about women? And most importantly why do we need to to follow laws and rules in the first place? What if we just "live and let live." In this ...
Reluctance by Robert Frost - With Phone Guest Stephanie Scheller
January 31, 2018 05:00 - 1 hour - 42.6 MBSend us a Text Message. Are you reluctant to give up a passion? When is it time to let go? Does giving up on one stage of your journey inevitable to moving toward the next?These are some of the questions Stephanie Scheller and I discuss in our fun little conversation with the great poet Robert Frost.
For You O Democracy by Walt Whitman - With Guest Ken Briggs
January 24, 2018 05:00 - 2 hours - 59.9 MBSend us a Text Message. In this poem Walt Whitman suggests we build a new race of men in America. Who better to converse with this verse than an engineer!
Dulce Et Decorum Est - With Guest Aziz Mejia
January 22, 2018 05:00 - 3 hours - 101 MBSend us a Text Message. Is it honorable to die for one's country?War has always been sold to the public as an honorable and glorious thing. Is there anything honorable about death? Wilfred Owen in his famous anti-war poem draws a terrifying description of the realities of war in order to counter the propaganda urging young men to fight for their country. After all "it's the honorable thing to do."
The New Jerusalem by William Blake - With Guest Eric Robert Morse
January 19, 2018 05:00 - 3 hours - 85.2 MBSend us a Text Message. So an Atheist and a Catholic enter a podcast studio...I had a great time and a great conversation with Eric Robert Morse, author of The Juggernaut: Why the System Crushes the Only People Who Can Save it."This poem by William Blake was great fodder for a much larger discussion: What is the ideal society and how does one build it.What I found most interesting in this discussion was that eventually we got to the point where we were discussing out methods of thinking. Thi...
Sean Doherty: "I saw a man this morning who did not wish to die"
January 15, 2018 05:00 - 1 hour - 33.5 MBSend us a Text Message. My friend Sean Doherty and I discuss the famous WWI poem "I saw a man this morning" by Patrick Shaw Stewart.Hopefully no one listening to this podcast, including the men reading it, will ever have to go to war. Yet, it is an activity that is apart of us. It was once believed that war was necessary to bring out our deepest virtues.Sean is a man of peace. He wrote a peace poem campaign and sent it to every US Senator in the hopes of spreading the message that war is not...
Dr. Johnson: "A Sick Child" by Randall Jarell
January 13, 2018 05:00 - 2 hours - 69.5 MBSend us a Text Message. How do you tell a child that he is dying?This poem terrified me. It made me never want to have a child. What if this were to happen to my child? Literature cannot solve all of our problems, but it can be a salve to many of them. In talking to my old high school friend, Dr. Lamar Johnson, about this emotional issue, I came to appreciate the grandiosity of life and our role in society. Dr Johnson is a pediatrician who has to think about how to deliver terrible news to p...
Invictus by William Ernest Henley - With Guest Alex Hrin
January 08, 2018 05:00 - 1 hour - 45.4 MBSend us a Text Message. A Physics teacher and I converse with William Ernest Henley's beautiful poem, Invictus.We converse in depth with this poem and I learn a lot from Alex.One big question we cover is "what is a terrible event that has occurred to you and how did you overcome it?"
Jake Rivas: "A Poison Tree" And How to Escape Your Inner Monster
January 01, 2018 05:00 - 1 hour - 34.5 MBSend us a Text Message. This was my first LIVE IN-PERSON interview and I had a blast. I hope Jake had a blast too!We talked about a lot. Our poem was "A Poison Tree" by William Blake. (yaaay JAKE chose BLAKE!) We opened the discussion with some spiked egg-nog and the mass exodus from blue states to red and then discussed why Jake, like myself, is a poetry hater.Then we dug deep to investigate why this poem in particular spoke to a cloistered West Texas boy.We got into the problems with build...
Poetry and the Magic of Christmas
December 25, 2017 05:00 - 54 minutes - 24.9 MBSend us a Text Message. Tonight I read "Twas the Night before Christmas." Why did the Protestant Reformers, The New England Puritans and the Communist Soviets all HATE Christmas and St Nick? They squashed it and did all they could to bury it. Yet in America it took hold and morphed into something special.Often, to understand an idea we must see what happens when our enemies destroy it. This does happen in history. This is not a podcast about the war on Christmas. Instead, it is an episode ab...
The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus by Ogden Nash
December 22, 2017 05:00 - 6 minutes - 3.03 MBSend us a Text Message. On this mini episode I read the classic Ogden Nash Christmas poem about the mischievous Jabez Dawes. Don't be an uncivil mean little brute like boy Dawes!
Brad Beck: The Optimist Creed poem
December 20, 2017 05:00 - 2 hours - 64.5 MBSend us a Text Message. We all know that person. That person, who, no matter what you do, they just will not stop smiling!Brad Beck is one of those people. He's a career salesman, and he's made a mantra out of optimism. In fact he changed his title from "National Sales Manager" to Director of YES! And that really speaks to the soul of Brad Beck.Brad and I are not psychologists any more than we are literature experts. We're salesmen. We may not have all the theory, but Brad has spent a great ...
Amy Chou: "Baby It's Cold Outside" And The Garden Of Love
December 13, 2017 05:00 - 2 hours - 58.5 MBSend us a Text Message. Feminists today are attacking one of my favorite songs. They are also making up nonsensical words like "rapey."In this conversation my friend Amy Chou and I converse with both the song Baby it's Cold Outside and the classic poem by William Blake "The Garden of Love."Feminists should stay away from this one.
"Gunga Din" and How to Read Racist Poetry
December 09, 2017 05:00 - 46 minutes - 21.4 MBSend us a Text Message. Poem: "Gunga Din" By Rudyard KiplingGunga Din is a "blackfaced crewman" who brings water to British troops in "Injia" If any of those words seemed racist and offend you, by god you had better run for the hills! That is only the beginning. Just Google these two words "Racist Poetry," And Gunga DIn is one of the top poems selected by El Google.If words can "trigger" someone and make them uncomfortable or even violent, then almost all of the words in literature and poetr...
Chase Abendschein: The Road Not Taken and a Well Earned Beer
December 07, 2017 05:00 - 1 hour - 39.3 MBSend us a Text Message. Today my friend Chase Abendschein and I talk about the poem The Road Not Taken, which is one of those poems that people who know a little bit about poetry love to school others on. "ACTUALLY that poems is about..." Chase is a salesmen, like a super salesman. He works in global enterprise sales, meaning he sells to major major corporations. But he loves this poem and he enjoys poetry. He's not trained in it, as I'm not trained in it. So we go off on some ridiculous tan...
Making Love Like a Poet
November 22, 2017 05:00 - 50 minutes - 23 MBSend us a Text Message. Today's poem is Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress. In the midst of these sexual allegations and confessions we should as men and women take a step back and remember that words must serve as the basis of seduction. Not Power, Cars, Cash, Clothes and Casa. Men should use words to persuade a woman to sleep with them. The best purveyor of words are the poets. How, then, do great poets go about trying to get laid.Listen in.
Jesse McCarthy: The Emperor's New Clothes and Raising independent Children
November 15, 2017 05:00 - 1 hour - 40.1 MBSend us a Text Message. We all know the story "The Emperor's New Clothes." It's meant to illustrate the vanity of human desires and the problem with excessive pride. In our daily lives we may experience a moment when we realize our boss or, heaven forbid, we are not wearing any clothes. We believe something that isn't real. We believe the idea for a new business marketing plan is great, but it's really a waste of time. We believe that perfect couple is perfect, merely from a social media pos...
Ozymandias by Percy Shelley
November 12, 2017 05:00 - 46 minutes - 21.4 MBSend us a Text Message. How will you be remembered? Men like Paul Revere and Gary Vaynerchuk understand the importance of legacy, because they understand the power of TIME. Time will take us all eventually. By experiencing the ravishes of time, as one would experience a war, we can better come to order our daily lives, now. But first you must answer the question. Are you pursuing a legacy or prestige?
The Cookie Thief -- With Special Guest Sean Doherty
November 02, 2017 04:00 - 52 minutes - 23.9 MBSend us a Text Message. Have you ever believed yourself to be SOOOO right only to find out you were SOOOO wrong. Then you're a cookie thief.Sean Doherty is worried about Cookie Thieves and you should be too! Sean's the Business Development manager for a major fashion brand in Hong Kong (68).Listen to a modern poem about how oblivious we can be about how wrong we are. And then listen as Sean and I converse with the verse.
Napoleon Hill and the power of Auto-Suggestion
November 01, 2017 04:00 - 40 minutes - 18.4 MBSend us a Text Message. Why does the best selling book on how to build wealth have numerous poems in it?Wherever you start in life, you have the power to program your subconscious mind, according to Hill. But what he doesn't explain is how you can do that.In this episode, I converse with the verse by Walter Winkle "If you Think You Are Beaten," which is included in chapter 3 of Hill's book. And I explain HOW you can program your own subconscious mind through auto-suggestion.
Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson
October 29, 2017 04:00 - 52 minutes - 23.9 MBSend us a Text Message. Rich people need love too.It's routine today to belittle "white people problems," but problems are experienced as an individual not global phenomena. Every single human being is important, no matter their color or upbringing.In this poem, my friend and Founder of Deep Drilling Insights, Donovan Schafer converse with this verse by Robinson, and bring up topics such as suicide, white privilege, and the tide of history.
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
October 24, 2017 04:00 - 33 minutes - 15.4 MBSend us a Text Message. Poe writes about the haunting side of dreams, but he rarely calls them nightmares. Do all dreams carry within them the potential for nightmares? In this Poe piece, we experience the emotion of loss. To lose a loved one. Not just any love, but a love that was more than love. Imagine if you will being in love as a teenager. The intensity of it. Now imagine if you will losing that person right at the height of that emotional intensity. How would that feel? What would tha...
A Poem for Gary Vee
October 23, 2017 04:00 - 26 minutes - 12.3 MBSend us a Text Message. Gary Vee was not the first man to spout a love of the hustle. In fact, 100 years ago was a man named Berton Braley, who was dubbed "The Minstrel of Business," He, too expressed in poetic terms Gary' Vees philosophee in "The Joy of Life.enJOY.
Dream-Land by Edgar Allan Poe
October 22, 2017 04:00 - 1 hour - 31.1 MBSend us a Text Message. In this conversation Poe explains to us the positive value of negative emotions. Anyone ever tell you "be happier," or "Be more positive," right in the moment when you were frustrated, angry, annoyed, sad? In our culture we have a tendency to teach our friends and children to "bear and forebear" (as the stoics say). When we should wallow and understand.I'd be willing to bet that the parts of your life where you have grown the most are not happy moments. They are momen...
El Dorado by Edgar Allan Poe
October 16, 2017 04:00 - 25 minutes - 11.8 MBSend us a Text Message. We're always told to dream, but what if that dream leads you nowhere? What if you are forever chasing a pipe-dream? In this poem for people who hate poetry we converse with a verse by Poe, and we can hear that maybe dreams that fail aren't so bad after all.
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
October 13, 2017 04:00 - 41 minutes - 19 MBSend us a Text Message. Fear plays an interesting role in our lives. It guides us and help us to avoid danger. But we also must face our fears, in order to discover if they are rational and proper. What happens, when your fears face you? What happens when fear comes knocking at your door? Will you stand it? Or will you go mad?
Troubadour Poetry: The Poetry of Napoleon Hill
September 22, 2017 04:00 - 19 minutes - 9.14 MBSend us a Text Message. Napoleon Hill read 100s of poems and even encouraged his readers to read poetry from time to time.Why would a guru of self-help and wealth building advocate for such a silly activity as reading poetry? Find out in this episode as we explore the very first poem that Napoleon Hill put in his great book Think and Grow Rich.
The Poetry of Napoleon Hill
September 22, 2017 04:00 - 19 minutes - 9.16 MBNapoleon Hill read 100s of poems and even encouraged his readers to read poetry from time to time.Why would a guru of self-help and wealth building advocate for such a silly activity as reading poetry? Find out in this episode as we explore the very first poem that Napoleon Hill put in his great book Think and Grow Rich.