From the Center

In this episode, Director Hodges and Ben discuss the nature of children's stories and how they offer another world for contemplation, a world beyond our own that lives on in our minds long into adulthood.

Are there similarities between the decline of the West today and the decline of the Republic of Rome after the Punic Wars? Director Hodges muses about the similarities, and comments on an article written by H. A. Scott Trask, in Chronicles Magazine. Other important recommendations: Tom Holland's book RUBICON, Will and Ariel Durant's CAESAR AND CHRIST, and the podcasts History of Rome (Mike...

As we continue to consider the cultural works of the West, this is another of our Director's live conference lectures, given in 2011, just months after the death of the composer Henryk Gorecki, a Polish Catholic, who's Symphony #3 became an international hit on the popular song charts of 1993. In this work, Gorecki departs from his more avant-garde styles, and takes up a kind of minimalism...

As we continue to investigate the great books, music, and ideas of our Western Civilization, we thought it would be good to offer a live conference lecture from 2010 that Director Hodges gave on Olivier Messiaen's masterful QUARTET FOR THE END OF TIME, for violin, cello, clarinet, and piano. Coming as it did out of his time in a Nazi prison camp during WW II, it is a sobering work, but its pur...

In 1970, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel prize for literature, but due to the repressive regime of the USSR, was not allowed to leave his native Russia to receive it. His speech, written with the intention of reading it in Sweden, was never given -- but it has circulated ever since as a great apology for the true, the good, and the beautiful, and for the importance of the work of the w...

In this episode, we dive into the second part of the great myth of Cupid and Psyche, told from the perspective of one of her ugly stepsisters -- and we finally come to the meaning of the title.

Director Hodges and Ben Cumming discuss CS Lewis' marvelous fiction, TILL WE HAVE FACES, a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche.

In this episode, our culture samplers dive into another of Flannery O'Connors great short stories, REVELATION. In it we compare Mrs. Turpin with Mrs. May of GREENLEAF, and the point of pride that tempts us all to judge one another.

In this episode, Director Hodges, and co-host Ben discuss the great Flannery O'Connor short story GREENLEAF. If you have not read it, we suggest that you take the 20 minutes to read it before you listen, as we give spoilers...who is this Mrs. May, and does she see the world correctly?

Director Hodges and co-host Ben Cumming discuss Joseph Conrad's book HEART OF DARKNESS and address the death of Romanticism and the beginning of the 20th century.

In this episode, Director Hodges and Ben finish off the long series that has investigated the elements of civilization, and come to some conclusions about how we might best preserve ours. Hint: it is not by aiming to preserve civilization...

Jordan Peterson doesn't know us from Adam, but he gave a precise rendering of the points we have been making since last October about the need to recognize Faith as the basis for any rational activity. Director Hodges and Ben discuss "those cheeky French" and how their modern ideas have led the West away from the rich legacy of the Middle Ages where they themselves used to reign. And...

Here is a speech Director Hodges gave for a fund raising dinner for Classical Education. It places education in the ongoing discussion about civilization and culture. Education is how we pass on the insights of our forefathers to our children, and the best way to do that is through a recovery of the lost telos of education.

In the ongoing process of summarizing the last 6 months of podcasts about civilization, Director Hodges walks us through an essay by Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who asks many of the same questions we have been considering in a far more concise way. In it, we assess the place of power, the law, and revelation.

What is the point of the signs in THE SILVER CHAIR if even after muffing three of the four, the children complete the quest anyway? Is Lewis depicting an aspect of the Christian life? What would that be?

In this episode, we discuss CS Lewis' magnum opus. Both Benedict and Lewis argued that without the Tao, civilization will die, and Mankind will be abolished. Destroying all restraints leads not to freedom but to meaninglessness. How does that happen? Have a listen.

What did the late Pope have to say about the importance of the Faith in culture? Director Hodges and Ben Cumming discuss an article Joseph Ratzinger wrote.

Director Hodges comments on an article by Anthony Esolen, found in Chronicles of American Culture magazine, entitled: There Is A Culture War, Like it Or Not.

One of the most important of the ideas that constitute the foundation of a civilization is the idea of beauty. Director Hodges offers one of his recent lectures on our human experience of the beautiful, touching on the field of aesthetics, including thinkers from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. Thomas Aquinas, Hume, Kant, and Hans von Balthasar.

TS Eliot wrote a very pithy essay, The Idea of A Christian Society which addresses something of what we have been talking about for several months: what is a civilization, and what must we do to retain it? Director Hodges and Ben Cumming discuss Eliot's essay, and consider definitions of some of the terms found in Schumpeter's book on Communism and Capitalism.

When God wants to get our attention, He brings suffering, or He brings beauty -- how are we to address beauty?

Can God speak to us through our suffering? In this episode, Director Hodges and Ben discuss how suffering can be used to draw us closer to Him, and how similarly He can use beauty to do the same thing.

In this next episode about Civilization, Director Hodges and Ben extend their discussion about identity, addressing our modern day fixation on self-identity. Can we know who we are when we define ourselves?

It seems that our identities as individuals and as members of a civilization are intermingled. In this episode, Director Hodges and Ben Cumming discuss the notions of identity - how do we teach our children who they are? Includes a description of the track of modern philosophy from Descartes to Nihilism.

In our series on the foundations of civilization, we have come through the Logos, to definitions of words and the importance of a common language, and now to how language leads to stories that give voice to meaning. In this discussion, Director Hodges speaks with Dr. Junius Johnson, scholar and writer, about his book on Fairy Stories and the importance of story to define the identity of a people.