Mosaic Ark

What makes a monster a monster? In this episode, we continue our discussion of Stranger Things , focusing appropriately enough for Halloween night on the monsters. From the Demogorgon of season 1, to Henry Creel’s transformation into Vecna in season 4, we tried to determine exactly why each of the monsters worked as vectors of horror. Why was the Demogorgon terrifying? Why was the body horror of t...

On last week’s episode of The Mosaic Ark, the ladies were reveling in the nostalgia of the 1980s that Stranger Things presents; this week we wondered how to pinpoint the source of that strong nostalgic feeling. Though the show takes place during what were our high school years, the time period itself was not solely the source of the nostalgia; if it were, Stranger Things wouldn’t have as many youn...

What story are we in? This is the question the ladies of the Mosaic Ark asked ourselves while watching Season 1 of the Duffer Brothers’ amazing series, Stranger Things . As everyone knows, it is a nostalgic trip back to the early 1980s with strong elements from the movies of Steven King, Steven Spielberg, and Ridley Scott. But what kind of horror story is it? Is it one where the characters live in...

This week the ladies of the Mosaic Ark welcomed Professor Robert J. Dobie aboard to discuss his book The Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien, Mythopoeia and the Recovery of Creation . Dobie is a Professor and Chair of Philosophy at LaSalle University in Philadelphia. He specializes in the medieval philosophers, but has had a fascination with Tolkien since he first read The Lord of the Rings when he was twel...

On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies continued their discussion of “The Dream of Scipio,” that short, narrative work written by Cicero which served as an instructive parable about civic duty to the citizens of Rome. However mundane that purpose may have been, its descriptions of what Romans believed about the physical universe and religion are fascinating in their familiarity. Cicero used these i...

In Acts, St. Paul talked of prophesy and visions and dreams, and so these are very Christian actions; yes? But in the Roman orator Cicero’s “Dream of Scipio,” Cicero writes of both a vision and a prophesy that was experienced by the pagan Scipio in his dream. This work presented a model of creation and the creator that is very close to what Christians living a century later would profess. Does thi...

This week the ladies of the Mosaic Ark welcomed medieval scholar Robert Keim, who discussed his translation of the psalms which uses some of the lost vocabulary of medieval England. Professor Keim is in love with the Lord; he is also in love with the English language. He believes that the power of the psalms is in their poetry, and that this poetry helps Christians to understand who their Lord is...

This week the ladies of the Mosaic Ark welcomed medieval scholar Robert Keim, who discussed his translation of the psalms which uses some of the lost vocabulary of medieval England. Professor Keim is in love with the Lord; he is also in love with the English language. He believes that the power of the psalms is in their poetry, and that this poetry helps Christians to understand who their Lord is...

This week the ladies of the Mosaic Ark took a break from talking about C.S. Lewis’s “The Discarded Image” so that we could tackle something a little easier, the war between the sexes! At the end of last week’s stream, KC said something she thought everyone knew — that women are more spiritual than men. The Professor, no stranger to the subject of Western Christendom’s most famous spiritual writers...

How do you re-enchant the world? We’ve asked that question in past streams, but this week the ladies of the Mosaic Ark asked it in a more direct way that goes back to the very point in history where the “enchantment” was lost, when Isaac Newton published his laws of motion in his book "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" in 1687. This is the point at which “Scientism” was born and the wo...

Do you ever feel like you’re in a simulation? Have you seen this show before? Heard this song before? Had this conversation before? Read this book before? We know what C.S. Lewis would say about the last question. The answer is yes, you have read this book before, because all books in our tradition are just fan fiction of previous books, going all the way back to ancient Greece and Rome. On this w...

What is the “discarded image” that C.S. Lewis spoke about in his lectures at Oxford University, and why did he think it was necessary for his literature students to know what it was? This week the ladies discussed the first few chapters of the collections of Lewis’ lectures called The Discarded Image . Lewis taught that medieval peoples’ worldview was one where all knowledge was integrated into a...

On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies were joined by theoretical physicist and author Hans G. Schantz. Hans is a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction. His fiction includes the alternate science techno-thrillers The Hidden Truth , A Rambling Wreck , and The Brave and the Bold . He also wrote a biting satire of modern day academia in his ode to the Scopes monkey trial called The Wise of H...

On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies were joined by writer Sarah Pierzchala, author of the award winning Cyberpunk series of novels, “Beyond Cascadia,” which Sarah describes as “ Blade Runner meets The Brothers Karamazov. ” As a Catholic wife, mother and artist, from a family of artists, Sarah has a unique perspective on writing science fiction. She also has some interesting things to say about e...

On tonight’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies were joined by Aisha Fajardo of Grimmer Arts. Aisha has years of experience illustrating high fantasy, and her artwork in this area is captivating, but she was looking for an opportunity to create something with deeper meaning, something that wasn’t just more “elves and orcs.” Happily for us, this led her to become our illustrator for Draco Alchemicus, Act II: T...

Ciao! La professoressa Fulton Brown è tornata da Roma! And what did she see on her Roman Holiday? Maybe a better question would be, what did she feel? Fresh back from Italy and giving a talk on St. Francis as the great herald of the King, the Professor regales KC with the amazing feeling she got by simply being in the Eternal City. With all of the churches, and ancient structures, and so much famo...

On tonight’s episode of the Mosaic Ark, the ladies welcomed BasedCon founder and author Rob Kroese to talk about his latest Kickstarter (his fifteenth!) for his new book series, Ransom’s Law, which he described as a space opera where Better Call Saul meets The Expanse . Rob is a prolific writer who has authored thirty-six novels in a variety of genres, both humorous and dark. In addition to the Ki...

Quinn Kimball joined the ladies on tonight’s Mosaic Ark to discuss his epic fantasy poem, The Monster and the Foundling . Quinn joined Professor Rachel Fulton Brown’s Telegram chat, the Dragon Common Room, way back in the Covid days of 2020. He saw her challenge to learn to write poetry and responded by writing an epic fantasy poem in 50 stanzas of perfect Spenserian verse! He talks about how his...

“The madness of crowds.” I’m sure everyone has heard that phrase before. It is often used to describe the behavior of mobs, as if the individual participants, through some mass psychosis contagion, cease to be individuals and act as one mad, destructive being. But is it true? On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies discuss the ongoing anti-ICE riots in LA, and take a walk down memory lane to remembe...

We’re not going to sugar coat this. The state of education is bleak. There seems to be a dense fog clouding the minds of students, who are incapable of reading seven randomly chosen paragraphs from a work of nineteenth-century serial fiction without understanding more than the basic facts presented in those paragraphs. Oh, sorry, my writing proficiency isn’t as good as my reading proficiency. I me...

Habemus papam! We have a Pope! And not just any pope, we have an American pope, and an Augustinian one at that. Robert Francis Prevost, a priest of the Augustinian order, born and raised on the south side of Chicago, was elected to the Papacy on May 8, 2025. He took the name Pope Leo XIV, and some have wondered whether he took this name because he was inspired by the work of the last Pope Leo (XII...

A killer is stalking Hollywood, and it is up to the hunchback to hunt him down. But where in the Getty’s manuscripts can he find the clue to the killer's identity? In David Angsten’s The Medievalist , a noir style murder mystery set around Hollywood, a Catholic monk’s life has taken a long and winding path to Los Angeles, from farm boy to university professor to Uber driver/ aspiring script writer...

“I’ve got a jar of dirt! And guess what’s inside it!” Captain Jack Sparrow seemed to think that he had the key to controlling his fate with the contents of a jar of dirt. He wasn’t entirely wrong! The jar was holding the heart of Davy Jones, and he who held it controlled the oceans; he who controlled the oceans controlled the whole earth. This week the ladies of the Mosaic Ark discuss the connecti...

He is Risen! Alleluia! Alleluia! No matter what is going on in the world this week, nothing will be more important than this, that Jesus Christ is risen — Alleluia! Despite this most significant of Christian seasons, there were many other things going on in the world, too. There was the death of a pope and preparations for the election of another, the potential end to a bloody war in Ukraine, but...

What do these things have in common: the American Revolution, Goofball Jim Carrey movies, 19th-century economic policy, and Penguins? Surprisingly more than you think! This week, the ladies of the Mosaic Ark discussed the current meme mockery of President Trump’s tariffs being applied to several islands south of Australia, the only residents of which are penguins, and whose only product would seem...