Doug talks chiasmus with Dr. Andrew Harvey (aka X-Mule). We start with the basics of chiasmus as a rhetorical device with words placed in a mirroring structure: ABBA ("Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your count

PF24 Reading J. Alfred Prufrock and Loving Poetry

Aug 2nd, 2018 44m 48s

Doug and Shawn read through T. S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Much of the problem folks have with reading poetry (especially 'important' poetry) is that they don't trust themselves. We try to deal with the poem in a way that conn

PF23 Flannery O'Connor: A Good Man is Hard to Find

Jul 26th, 2018 49m 57s

Doug and Caren are back together to talk about Flannery O'Connor's most famous short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find." After a brief digression on summer road trips, they turn to the most famous account of a family trip gone horribly wrong. W

PF22 Maps and Selfhood

Jul 17th, 2018 34m 10s

Doug and his geographer-wife Shawn talk through what we lose when we lose physical maps and the ability to read them. The younger generation has lost the ability to read maps, relying (as we all do) on Google Maps and navigation. This brings ab

PF21 Classical Philosophy and the Nicene Creed

Jul 13th, 2018 41m 15s

Doug talks with Dr. Robert Schaefer about Athens and Jerusalem, the ancient confluence of classical philosophy with Christian revelation. We pay particular attention to the case of the Nicene Creed. Plus, our Top 10 works of political philosoph

PF20 The Place of Poetry in Reviving the Wasteland (Inner and Outer)

Jul 3rd, 2018 35m 50s

Doug is joined by poet and teacher Will Justice Drake for a discussion of the place of poetry in preserving the human and renewing our lives and communities. Starting with Walker Percy’s analysis of the loss of language and viable selfhood, we

PF19 Man on the Way: The Need for Pilgrimage in the Present Age

Jun 26th, 2018 32m 41s

Doug and his wife Shawn, a cultural geographer, talk through the essentials and purpose of pilgrimage. Today, ‘pilgrimage’ can mean most anything, from going to Graceland to sanctifying the daily grind. But what is the traditional understanding

PF18 Ideology and Sacrament: Katherine Anne Porter's "Flowering Judas"

Jun 19th, 2018 42m 21s

Doug and Caren talk over Katherine Anne Porter’s great short story “Flowering Judas.” We start with a bit of background on her life and career, including her conversion to Catholicism and failed marriages, but our focus is on the story itself.

PF17 Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life

Jun 13th, 2018 52m 6s

In our second Jordan Peterson episode, we look more closely at his bestselling new book, 12 Rules for Life. Our epigraph is from T.S. Eliot's "Little Gidding." We go rule by rule, looking at the main thrust of each and the repeated themes that

PF16 Who's Afraid of Jordan Peterson?

Jun 6th, 2018 35m 5s

Caren and Doug talk over the controversy that has launched Dr. Jordan Peterson, a University of Toronto Clinical Psychologist, to international celebrity. Some of his ideas on the biological basis of gender, the respective roles and inclination

PF15 Maxims, Aphorisms, Truisms: Distilled Wisdom or Enemy of Thought?

May 30th, 2018 43m 28s

Go on Etsy and you'll find quotations of all sorts emblazoned on pillows and painted on canvases. Doug and Caren talk through our culture's fascination with wise or motivational quotations. What function do they serve? After an epigraph from Be

PF14 Mary, Mother of the Church; A Memorial Reflection

May 22nd, 2018 32m 54s

On this inaugural Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, Doug and Caren reflect on the significance of this day and the importance of Mary's place as Mother of the Church. We deal with some of the things that seem strange in

PF13 The Fiction of Flannery O'Connor: Revelation

May 15th, 2018 39m 5s

On Caren's 50th birthday, she and Doug talk over Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor's short story "Revelation." What is the purpose behind O'Connor's strange characters and often disturbing situations? What makes for the moral blindness of the g

PF12 Failure Is Not An Option; It's An Essential

May 8th, 2018 45m 20s

Doug and Caren talk about the pain of failure and ways to grow through it. Failure is inevitable, whether our daily failures in love and virtue or truly catastrophic failures, such as the loss of a marriage or career. We talk through the psycho

PF11 Food in Film and TV

May 1st, 2018 38m 21s

Doug and Caren talk over the significance of food in film and TV, whether in a 'food film' proper, a scene, or a TV show. After Caren tells us a bit about the Indy 500 prep and the joys of succotash, we get into the endless appeal of food movie

PF10 The Case for Real Books: E-Books Don't Burn

Apr 24th, 2018 30m 20s

Doug and Caren talk over the advantages of physical books vs. e-books. A soliloquy from Shakespeare provides our epigraph (in honor of his birthday). Kindle and other e-books provide some advantages, but at what cost? We weigh the heft of physi

PF9 Lost in the Cosmos: Walker Percy and the Self

Apr 17th, 2018 40m 10s

Doug and Caren talk Walker Percy and the vagaries of the self in our age. We focus our discussion on Percy's immensely entertaining Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book after an epigraph from The Moviegoer. We touch on what brought about

PF8 Personality Profiles: Tool, Diversion, or Trap?

Apr 10th, 2018 36m 48s

Caren and Doug talk over our culture's obsession with personality profiles and the instruments to construct them, ranging from "What is Your Hogwart's House?" to Myers-Briggs and Big Five Factors. We also touch on StrengthsFinder, Gretchen Rubi

PF7 The Fiction of George MacDonald

Apr 3rd, 2018 44m 35s

Dr. Bethany Hebbard joins us to talk about the fiction of George MacDonald, the father of modern Christian fantasy. Bethany provides us with with an overview of MacDonald's career, setting the biographical and historical context. We focus our d

PF6 Entering the Church at Easter

Mar 27th, 2018 43m 35s

This Holy Week, Doug and Caren reflect back on their own entry into the Catholic Church at Easter and offer some advice to those preparing to be received this week. G.K. Chesterton provides our starting point. We recall the wonderful strangenes

PF5 Food and Family Life

Mar 20th, 2018 31m 2s

Doug and Caren have a wide-ranging discussion on the place of food in family and community life. This episode sets the stage for more focused food and cooking episodes to come. Does our (often necessary) focus on efficiency in the kitchen steal

PF4 Recovering Intrinsic Value in a Utilitarian World

Mar 13th, 2018 29m 29s

Doug and Caren talk through some of the ways a utilitarian outlook has affected our public policy, churches, educational institutions, our work, and even family lives. Dostoevsky provides the epigraph and starting point for a discussion ranging

PF3 Stuff and Clutter: Reordering Our Relationship to Things

Mar 6th, 2018 32m 26s

Doug and Caren talk about stuff and clutter, how it hinders our daily life and work, and how to reorder our relationship to things. Our starting point is Thoreau's Walden, the great experiment in testing the essentials. We touch on some popular

PF2 Fight the Atrophy; or, Starting Anew at Midlife

Feb 27th, 2018 33m 20s

Doug and Caren talk about the wonderful, albeit terrifying, position of mid-life (49 and holding). We examine what creates the illusion of exhausted possibilities and how one can get going again, recover from atrophy, and live more deeply. Emil