Bob Dylan: About Man and God and Law

Welcome to the final episode of the show. It's a map and a key to your door, a Last Waltz, and a final salute to Bob Dylan, holiness, and being free with the Band, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and many more. Check out the book About Man and God and Law: The Spiritual Wisdom of Bob Dylan wherever fine books are sold, and learn about related projects at mangodlaw.com. We are proud to be p...

We are still living on Tulsa time, reflecting back on the World of Bob Dylan conference in Tulsa at the beginning of June. This time we're talking about how Dylan plays inside and outside the lines of authenticity, roots, race, and the never-ending tour of the popular music hustle. Our very special guest is music impresario Mark Montgomery French, whose encyclopedic knowledge of music, framing of...

We are still living on Tulsa time, reflecting back on the World of Bob Dylan conference in Oklahoma at the beginning of June in a world gone wrong when Bob Dylan gets it all wrong. The set-up of these four stories of Dylan going off the path actually leads us back to where this podcast began three years ago. The destination for Dylan has always been salvation. Four paths, four windows, four doorwa...

It's time for the Bob Dylan's Top Ten - Bob Dylan's Ten Commandments, that is. Welcome to Bob Dylan and the Bible, a journey through the values, schemes, hopes and dreams that Bob Dylan holds sacred that might just be rules to consider living by ourselves. Check out the book About Man and God and Law: The Spiritual Wisdom of Bob Dylan wherever fine books are sold, and learn about related projects...

The Philosophy of Modern Song. We're going to take the title of Bob Dylan's recent book seriously and try to read between the lines: What is the philosophy here? What’s modern about it? Is there a code for living the good life embedded within? We’ll be calling on the writing of Father Richard Rohr for help. He’s a man of faith, myth, contemplation, and action whose work gives a parallel lay to Dyl...

Join us for a discussion of Greil Marcus's new book Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs. It reads like an elegy in many ways — for Dylan as a figure both shaped by and shaping his times, and also of Marcus reflecting on his own journey with Dylan and rock 'n' roll as a whole. With his generous, eloquent, signature voice, it is hard to imagine hearing Dylan without Marcus's harmony. Di...

We’re going bookish as this final season of Bob Dylan: About Man and God and Law comes to a close. From the bookends of Tarantula to the The Philosophy of Song, we are holding steady in the section marked Chronicles: Volume One. What's the wisdom of Dylan as a reader and author? What can be gleaned between the lines ofTarantula and Chronicles in particular? Find out in the second of a four part se...

We’re going bookish as this final season of Bob Dylan: About Man and God and Law comes to a close. First up, from the bookends of "Like a Rolling Stone" to Portnoy's Complaint in the 1960's to masterworks in 1997 and prophecies at unexpected peaks of their careers in the 2000's, Bob Dylan and Philip Roth has been laid down the Man, God, and Law as well as any artists of their era. Where do they in...

We are going electric with Bob Dylan and  Professor Kathryn Lofton.  Few pop culture moments have been analyzed more closely than Bob Dylan "going electric" at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. We ask what is all means for American religion, race, and music with our special guest, Kathryn Lofton. Kathryn is the Lex Hixon Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies, Professor of History and D...

What are the greatest friendships in rock and roll? The Boss and the Big Man? Lennon and McCartney? Mick and Keith? Joni Mitchell and Prince? This episode, we’ve got perhaps Dylan’s sweetest friendship, and also a brother – a brother of the Wilbury kind. That’s right. Meet George Harrison and Bob Dylan. Our guest Seth Rogovoy is the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet Mystic Poet, published by Scribner i...

Welcome to Episode 4 of Season Three in which Scott Warmuth unpacks the secret history of Bob Dylan's art of composition in a mind-blowing conversation. Check out Bob Dylan's bookshelf or a taste of the inventory from which Dylan invents music on the album Love and Theft. This is a fascinating journey into the mind of Dylan as a quirky, cunning, brilliant master of words and music. Find the book A...

No regrets, Coyote. And we really mean that. What better way to get into the depths of peerless artists Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, how they intersect, and how they work then by speaking with David Yaffe, author of Bob Dylan: Like a Complete Unknown and Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell. David is an esteemed and eminently creative music critic and scholar, a Professor of Humanities a...

Much of what we know about the gods of rock comes from their music. But it is the rock star interview, pioneered by the rock bible Rolling Stone magazine as named after Dylan’s own song, where testaments of rock and roll were given. Kind of like an oral tradition to the sacred texts of the songs, kind of a new testament to the old, explaining the gaps, coloring the personal details, humanizing the...

It was a weekend afternoon in March at Florida International University, and there was hardly another person in sight where a collection of Dylan's work — work as important as any painter of his age if not for the paintings themselves but rather because of the artist – offered a frame to begin looking one last time at Bob Dylan in this, the final season of this podcast, Bob Dylan: About Man and Go...

For this final episode of Season 2, we’re going to stick with what it’s really all about, what seeps through nearly all of our best entertainment, novels, movies, and dreams. Meatloaf of anti-vaxxing blessed memory said it too: Two out of three ain’t bad, but without that missing one, well, your goose is cooked.  In the words of the great Mike Patton: What is it?  It’s love.  Welcome to Episode 10...

It was a sad-eyed lady of the lowlands who came and never really stayed. Bob Dylan surely knows how this feels. We're talking those mothers and muses and sad eyed lady blues. Welcome to Episode 9 of Season 2 of Bob Dylan: About Man and God and Law: Mothers and Muses. Visit www.mangodlaw.com for info on the book, show notes, event information, and more. We're proud to be a part of the Pantheon Podc...

It happened in a coffee shop in Philly. We're talking about the new book About Man and God and Law: The Spiritual Wisdom of Bob Dylan, which is available for sale now as an ebook wherever books are sold and as a pre-order paperback prior to the May 3, 2022 release date. Picking up on themes from the book, David Billotti and I touch upon Bob Dylan and race, memory, and how he awakened something in...

We’re reflecting on light and timelessness and inspired by the holiday season here today, including both a new bit where Bob Dylan and Tom Waits share a sailor’s mouth as well as two oldies and goodies from Holiday Specialettes of seasons past. Welcome to Episode 7 of Season 2 of Bob Dylan: About Man and God and Law. Lights and Festivals. It has three parts, one right after the other. Now let’s ge...

Where is America, especially in these trying times? Bob Dylan offers a map to America, but only for those willing to accept its original sin. Special guests Paul Simon and John Lennon join us. Check out the forthcoming book About Man and God and Law: The Spiritual Wisdom of Bob Dylan and listen to all of our episodes here or wherever podcasts are found. For more info and a chance to receive a free...

I mean, you're talking to a person that feels like he's walking around in the ruins of Pompeii all the time. It's always been that way for one reason or another. - Bob Dylan, Rolling Stone Interview (2001) Like all great bards—Homer, the Psalmist, Shakespeare—Bob Dylan's creative superpower is his memory. The power of his art lies not just in what he remembers, but in how he remembers it. And this...

I practice a faith that's been long abandoned/Ain't no altars on this long and lonesome road - Bob Dylan, "Ain't Talkin' (2006) Episode One of Bob Dylan: About Man and God and Law sets the stage for how Bob Dylan recast popular music with the questions of purpose and meaning that had defined religion for millennia. In the words of Bruce Springsteen, Dylan's songs could contain the whole world. We'...

Every musician gets their start doing covers. The Beatles did Little Richard. The Stones, Chuck Berry. Aerosmith, the Stones. Pearl Jam, Neil Young. Nirvana, the Mekons. But what is revealed by a cover, and most particularly what is revealed by covering songs by Bob Dylan? We asked Adele, Richie Havens, Van Morrison, Iggy Pop, Nina Simone, and a few more pals. Find out the answer here! This is Epi...

What about Bob Dylan and God for those who cannot stand what religion does to the world? Can Dylan really be empathetic even with that Positively Fourth Street rage? And what do the Sages of Late Antiquity, Bob Dylan, and the Gospels all have in common? We're touching upon these questions and more with writer, thinker, and our expert guide to Bob Dylan in Stansville, Rebecca Slaman, Part Two of a...

Are eighty year-old rock stars talking to you directly on Twitter? Is Bob Dylan hot? What makes Dylan relevant to the grandchildren of his first fans? We're talking these questions and more with writer, thinker, and our expert guide to Bob Dylan in Stansville, Rebecca Slaman. This is Part One of a two-part conversation. Welcome to Episode 4 of Season 2 of Bob Dylan: About Man and God and Law. Chec...

Welcome to Bob Dylan's Halloween Hootenanny! One of Bob Dylan’s creative superpowers is to not be afraid of anything. His fearlessness as an artist means constant reinvention, forever changes in repertoire and style, pushing through low ebbs of popularity and ignoring minor blips of success like the Nobel Prize for Literature, responding to his own personal or spiritual concerns in private when ce...