Solomon & Smith

Please help up to keep these conversations going, and join our reading community, by supporting us over on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membership How much do movies (especially schlocky movies) really shape what we believe? In this episode of Solomon & Smith, we sit down with religious studies professor Dr. Joe Lacock to talk about how horror films like The Exorcist didn’t j...

Please help up to keep these conversations going, and join our reading community, by supporting us over on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membership In this episode we talk to Professor Sue Niebrzydowski (Bangor) about Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe—two women who claimed to experience intense visions of the divine, but whose lives could not have been more different. Julian's v...

Please help up to keep these conversations going, and join our reading community, by supporting us over on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membership Modern civilisation: is it best explained by philosophy—or by myth? In this conversation we talk about Goethe’s Faust, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, the everlasting crisis of Western civilization, and the philosophy doomscape of modern acad...

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membership A discussion with composer Samuel Andreyev about one of the central questions in creativity: Should artists refine one definitive style… or constantly try to reinvent themselves? The conversation introduces the idea of the mono-artist vs the poly-artist. A mono-artist fi...

Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membership Napoleon (1927), the monumental silent film directed by Abel Gance is frequently (and correctly) described as one of the most astonishing, awe-inspiring achievements in the history of cinema. Joined by small-handed essayist and fiction writer (and the sole inventor of Go...

orbs and gems wedge here - https://www.patreon.com/cw/SolomonSmith/membership In this episode, we talk with Sean McCleod about the theological, cultural, and political logic behind contemporary belief in demon possession, spiritual warfare, and deliverance ministries within Third Wave Evangelicalism. How did demons return to the center of American religious life? What distinguishes Third Wave char...

Please consider supporting us over on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmith/membership In this long-form conversation, we look at how Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence applies to cinema — and what it might reveal about modern filmmakers. Bloom argued that strong artists are “born in debt,” and must struggle against the overwhelming presence of their creative fathers. What happens when...

If you’d like to support the channel (gold bars, gemstones, rare earth rocks accepted), check out the Patreon link: www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmith/membership Welcome back to Solomon and Smith — keep it juicy, large boys. In this second part of our deep dive into William Blake, we’re joined by Jodie Marley for a rich, wide-ranging conversation on prophecy, vision, mysticism, and the strange, electr...

👉 Support the channel on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membership William Blake still awes and unsettles us. In this long-form discussion, Mark Vernon — psychotherapist, author, and former Anglican priest — joins Milo and Jack for a deep exploration of Blake’s religious imagination, visionary cosmology, and misunderstood relationship to Christianity. Together we explore Blake’s p...

If you’d like to support the channel (gold bars, gemstones, rare earth rocks accepted) 👉 www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmith/membership In this long-form literary conversation, Emma Smith—Shakespeare scholar at Oxford (Hertford College)—joins us for a broad discussion of Shakespeare, with a special focus on Othello and Timon of Athens. The conversation explores why Iago has been imbued with such psych...

If you’d like to support the channel (gold bars, gemstones, rare earth rocks accepted) 👉 www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmith/membership What is satire for — laughter, outrage, moral attack? In this conversation, we explore the evolution of English satire from the 17th and 18th centuries, examining how writers like Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Dryden, and the Earl of Rochester used anger, wit,...

To help the channel grow, please consider supporting us on Patreon / membership In this wide-ranging literary conversation, Jack and Milo sit down with David Constantine — acclaimed poet, short story writer, and one of the leading English translators of German literature — to explore poetry, translation, Goethe’s Faust, Hölderlin, language, education, and the shaping power of reading. Constantine...

If you’d like to support the channel (gold bars, gemstones, rare earth rocks accepted) 👉 www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmith/membership What does it take to translate the entire Hebrew Bible — and what happens when it happens almost by accident? In this long-form conversation, we speak with Robert Alter, legendary literary scholar and translator of the Hebrew Bible, about language, beauty, storytellin...

If you’d like to support the channel (gold bars, gemstones, rare earth rocks accepted) 👉 www.patreon.com/c/SolomonSmith/membership Philosopher and theologian David Bentley Hart joins Milo and Jack for a wide-ranging long-form conversation on screens, smartphones, cinema, dreams, Gnosticism, and the spiritual consequences of modern technology. We explore Hart’s latest fiction collection Prisms and...