Pints With Aquinas - Story Telling, Myths, and Fairy Tales w/ Sean Fitzpatrick

Episode Date: November 21, 2021

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Hey, Matt Fradd here, welcome to Pints with Aquinas. If this show has been a blessing to you, please consider supporting us directly at pintswithaquinas.com.com. Or at patreon.com. Matt Fradd, when you do that, even for a dollar or $2 or $10 a month, you help this show to continue and to expand. We're flying people out every week to Stupendale, Ohio, putting them up in hotels, paying for debaters, upgrading our equipment, not to mention trying to pay people who work here at Pines with Aquinas. So any dollar amount would be a blessing to us. Thank you so much for considering. Sean Fitzpatrick, how are you? Matt Fradd, I am well. Thank you. Lovely to have you on the show. Thank you for having me. Yeah, we had Luke Cully from Gregory the Grey Academy, and you also teach there. And thank you so much for making the trip down,

five hours or so. Yes, it was, I'm happy to be here. It's a lovely space, and yeah, looking forward to the conversation. Thank you, yeah, me too. And you live in Scranton, and so I just have to ask, what's it like when everybody says, the office?

The office, right. Yeah, you know, there's something about that show that does capture something of the quirkiness of Scranton. So, you know, we've enjoyed that program, but yeah, I guess I don't have like the response, although I've got that comment plenty of times. It's like, yeah, you're right, the office. I don't know if you ever watched it.

It's sort of like I have an office moment with them where it's like, I don't quite know what to say and the camera zooms in and it's like, yeah. That's right. Sure. Very cool. Very cool. So, yeah, it's great to have you.

We share a love, I think, of storytelling and myth and fairy tales. So I'm excited to kind of delve into that today. I just bought a book of Russian fairy tales. The Firebird. Yes. Look, look, there it is there on that plate. There it is. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good story. It's a strange story. Is this the one, if it's the one that eats the king's golden apples? That's right. Yeah, that's how it gets

started. Yeah, it follows sort of a, it's funny, it follows a pattern that's familiar with, you know, tasks that, you know, don't quite go right and you have to do another one and another one and getting the princess in the end. It's funny how there is this kind of rhythm in fairy tales that spans cultures. Yes, it is. That's getting at like certain things that I guess must just appeal to what we're looking to hear about in stories as human beings. Like I want to hear about somebody doing something that as human beings, like I want to hear about somebody doing something that is difficult or wondrous or fantastic or something. But yeah, it's interesting how there is like this common foundation of storytelling. It is. I was wondering if he, you know, the people who wrote these had read The Grimms, but maybe they predate them. I don't know. But I don't think

they did. It's just as you say, it's like, it's common. And I wonder how much of that has to do with the fact that these were stories that were sort of told rather than read right and so there's this kind of rhythm to them where this happens And then the next thing and then in a sort of sequence. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not too sure what what I Wonder if the oral tradition had Better legs if you will then what we're used to now with you know instantaneous communication whether the communication of oral tradition was stronger

And then then you know the the more flimsy although immediate communication that we're all used to now. Yeah Okay, here's a question. What is a fairy tale and what makes a fairy tale a fairy tale, right? That's a good question. Thank you The first thing that comes to my mind is one of my favorite authors, one of my favorite storytellers and illustrators actually, Howard Pyle. Yeah. In his book, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, which is a great book, that book needs to come back somehow. I don't know how to start that. Well, everyone should… We're doing it right now.

Right. Everyone really… The world would be a better place if people read The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. So I have this one at home. It's a beautiful illustrated one. Are you saying he both illustrated and wrote it? And wrote it, yes. Really? Well, okay. Yeah. And he wrote it… He collected the songs of Robin Hood. And there are many, many songs and ballads. More of those than there are actual books.

I mean, the books that you find about Robin Hood are based on those poems and those songs. There's actually another really good book. We're going to get to the fairy tales in a second, but there's another really great book that I discovered through one of my students Which I was so delighted to find I'm glad to tell people that it's out there It's a collection of songs about Robin Hood the songs of Robin Hood with you know lyrics and music that's illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton Who we we know we know her stuff Mike Mulligan and the steam shovel and

Maryann the snowplow she She's a great illustrator. I don't know any of those things, unfortunately. Okay, well, she's good. I look forward to learning them. Yeah, she's good. And she, I mean, I've seen a number of her things. Nothing comes close to what she did for this collection of Robin Hood ballads. In any case, Howard Pyle in his book makes an interesting distinction as he's launching

out into his retelling of all of these legends and these songs. He says, well, I'm going to take you to the land of fancy, but it's not fairyland. It's the land of fancy. And that always gave me some pause because there is a distinction there, the land of fancy being, you know, the land of romantic adventure, let's say, where there's a kind of pitch of perfection in action and the twists and turns that you're looking for in a book and the surprises and the intrigue and the jokes. You know, all of those things that make a novel, you know, maybe what we would call a romance novel, something that you just love, you know, that everyone loves.

It has a universal appeal to it. And I thought it was interesting that he makes a distinction between this sort of romantic literature and fairy literature. So not that... So fairy literature, obviously then, predate Howard Pyle Howard piles. Oh sure. Yeah. Oh sure. Yes Um, so what do we mean then by fairy? Yeah, and I guess what he means to say is well I'm not taking you to fairyland. This isn't a fairy tale that has Otherworldly elements except in so far as Robin Hood really does have a lot of heavenly elements to it

You know like this by the pitch of perfection? Yeah, or just like having just one adventure treading on the heels of another, you know, a real page turner, a thumping good read. But in all of that, in romance literature, in this particular book that compiled about the stories of Robin Hood, there is an otherworldly element that's heavenly, as in they are all participating in this unbreakable bliss. They are merry, and whether Will Stootley is gonna get hanged in Nottingham town, or whether the sheriff of Nottingham is gonna capture us by shaking all the trees of Sherwood forest,

we're gonna make it. Like, we have this optimism that's very reassuring. It's one of the reasons, I think, why it's a book that should be read, why romance novels and stories that are unsullied by the cynicism of the times, the skepticism. Just like, just let go and just say, yeah, it's okay to rejoice with Robin Hood and to have a silly adventure. It actually gets you ready for the serious adventures that you're going to have in your life. To have the effect of such optimism. So I think that Pyle makes that distinction to say that, well, this is going to be a good

story about happiness and about adventure, about the human condition, but it's not going to have fairies in it, it's not going to have dragons in it, it's not going to have giants, trolls, wizards, witches, talking trees, things like that. That's another genre, that's another world and it's an world, but it's one that I think he would say, well, it comes before that. Here's the merry adventures of Robin Hood, and that world of fairy is something that you've traveled through. And now here's something else. Here is sort of all of the delight of fairyland, but in a real place, in a place that you can recognize as Earth, you know, England, but merry England, you know. And so fairy stories, I think, are, they're stories that have these otherworldly elements

that are far more tangible, you know, they're not represented like in Robin Hood with a kind of sort of spiritual levity, a kind of happiness. They have creatures in them that have bones and blood and there's more danger I think in fairy stories even though I would say it's a category of literature that is for rhyme, which are our first stories where these little jingles, these little rhymes, these tiny stories are introduced to us as our imagination awakens as children. Yeah, I'm thinking of the cow jumping over the moon.

Yeah, that's a little story. That's a little story. Or Little Boy Blue. That's a little story that is giving us a vignette of something in the world, but it's also saying a few things. Like, what is Little Boy Blue? Can you recap it for me? I don't even know it. Oh, sure. Yeah, it goes like this. It's one of the best poems ever written. I'm ready. Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn. The sheep's in the meadow the cows in the corn where is the boy who looks after the sheep he's under a haycock fast asleep." Very good.

It's Mother Goose. Lovely. Who knows who wrote that it's older than the hills and it's a little story that is presenting a situation and asking some questions like well did he fall asleep by accident? Does he now presenting a situation and asking some questions like, well, did he fall asleep by accident? Is he now have a situation that he has to deal with because his animals are straight? Or is he hiding under that haycock or that haystack? Is he a naughty boy that needs to be punished? Is he getting away with something?

So it doesn't answer any of those questions. It leaves it to the child to sort of hear that tiny story and does the child hear a joke in that story or a crisis or but it's introducing the child to the world where stories happen to the stories of our lives which really is you know it's such an important thing to it seems to me that to start to look at our lives Let as stories. Well, what's what I love about fairy tales is there stories that you enjoy when you're young And then you become old too old for them and then you become older and then love them at least that's been my experience Exactly. Yeah. No, it's very true

And fairy tales are more developed or advanced stories. You're introduced to the world through the stories of the nursery rhyme. And now we're going to start playing with those pieces that have been introduced to you, introducing some other elements that you don't necessarily see when you walk down the street to give you some situations that you know they're they're more didactic they're more they're more te they're more uh intended to teach and to give a kind of uh a problem to you um yeah but uh what's your favorite fairy tale well that's a good question you know i i think i i think I really like the fairy tales from Grimm called The Cat and the Mouse in Partnership.

Remember that one? Yeah. Yeah. I love how it ends. It's just like a sinister. I know. Exactly. It's a hard lesson.

Recap it for those who want to read it. Sure. For sure. Yeah, and it's it because it is one of those fairy tales that kind of gives you a lesson sort of you know very Very intentionally, but it invites you to find similar lessons in the ones that are more subtle So in the cat and the mouse in partnership a cat and a mouse Strike a bargain that they're gonna help each other They have this pot of fat that they say we're gonna keep this and when food gets scarce we're gonna share this. So they hide it under the altar of a church. And then you know they're

living their lives and the cat tells the mouse one day well my cousin had a kitten and I'm the godfather so I'll be back. And so but he goes to the church because there is no kitten and no baptism and he eats a little bit of the fat without telling the mouse. He betrays their trust. And then when he comes back, the mouse says, well, what was the baby's name? He's like, hmm, Topoff. Oh, that's a strange name. It happens two more times until the cat secretly eats all the fat without telling the mouse. And then when they come on hard times and the winter is here and food is scarce,

the mouse says, this is what we've been waiting for. Let's go together and enjoy our pot of fat together. And it's empty. And the mouse accuses the cat of betraying him and the cat eats the mouse. And then there's this one little sense that says, and that's the way the world is. It's terrifying.

That is terrifying. And that's quite a thing for a kid to grapple with. You know, that there are some hard edges to the world. And that for all of the whimsy. There's no softening. No, that's the way the world is. However, not no however. Exactly. Yeah that for all the whimsy of fairy tales

You still have to deal with things that are a little perhaps even bothersome Well, you know what's the most terrifying? I mean the thing that gripped my imagination the most as a kid and still does is Hansel and Gretel Mm-hmm. That is one of the most terrifying stories I think that's ever been told Oh, yeah be some of the details in there where the witch is going to eat Hansel and is fattening him up and getting his sister to participate in this, to cook for her brother so that he can get fat and then she's blind, which is also kind of terrifying about that witch.

That she can't really see this eyeless creature. That she comes to the cage to see how Hansel is battening up by it. He has to put his finger through the bars, but he puts a bone through the bars and she feels the bone and he's not ready. And then of course, you know, the ultimate moment where Gretel pushes the witch into the oven. And I guess that oven has a latch on the outside, which is a pretty horrible thing for an oven to have And yeah, she burns alive Yeah, and and you know kids have to encounter that I mean and that's but even just like the fact that this

Wicked woman creates a gingerbread house. Yeah, I mean this it's like there are pedophiles and there are witches Yes, these things exist. Exactly. Women who wish to kill their children at the altar of sexual idolatry. Sure. Yeah. They exist. Exactly. They will kill children. And it's and it's you know there is a motion that's been a foot for some time to soften the fairy tale to make sure everything has a

happily ever after ending and not where the honest. Kids hate those anyway. They do. Yeah they do because they they know it's the fairy tale to make sure everything has a happily ever after ending and not where the honest... But kids hate those anyway. Isn't that funny? Yeah, they do because they know it's not true. That it's not always like this. And sometimes there are tragedies and there are wolves that are big and bad.

Yes, exactly. And they need to have their place there. They need to kill... And there's something just more authentic too like the story of Cinderella which has just been cast into the gutter really because it's just been softened and made so gentle and too much so. Where in the real story by Grimm where in the real story by Grimm you have when the ugly sep- well first of all you know the the stepsisters are more beautiful than Cinderella which is interesting like that's the way they're described they're described as being more beautiful than Cinderella but not on the inside which is where her beauty is and when the glass slipper is brought to them to try on, the first sister

takes a knife and cuts her toes off and puts the slipper on and then down she goes the down the aisle to marry the prince and people see the trail of blood down the nave and she's discovered the other sister cuts off her heel and the blood again to sort of to give their their scheme away. sort of to give their their scheme away. Cinderella's finally discovered, she marries the prince, and the wicked stepmother is executed in a really terrible way. I don't know. Now the way I remember is that, because there might be a couple of ways, I hope yours is more graphic than this one, but the one I read in my Grimms is they put these burning shoes on her and she dances until she dies. Yep, I've heard that one. The one that I've heard is more graphic than that where

Please tell it in full detail. They strip her naked and they put her in a barrel with nails driven on the inside and they hitch that up to two horses and they drag the barrel through the streets until she is dead. That's wonderful Well, you know the most horrific

Fairytale I remember I was halfway through it and as I'm halfway through I can feel my wife looking at me Like now is the time to stop Do you know what I'm referring to which one? Well, I don't know but I know that feeling Robbers bridegroom I was gonna say that with this with the talking thumb that feeling. Robber's bridegroom. I was gonna say that with this with the talking thumb. This one I don't believe had a talking thumb. Or where she picked up a thumb? Where they're cutting the fingers off of these corpses to take the rings off when she's hiding in the barrel. Go ahead. Let me share what it is for those at home and then you can tell me. So this father is destitute and he wants his daughter taken care of

And so he says to himself whatever suitor comes I'll just give her to him until this man shows up and he does gives her to him and she has this secret dread About him that she can't quite explain and she avoids him in the marketplace So she's not sure why and he says to her one day, you know If you're going to be my bride, you should at least come and visit me. And so she one day decides to do that and she strews ashes along a path to find her way into the deep wood. She comes across this house and she calls out and she can't no one seems to be home. She makes her way deep into the house.

It's funny. I've actually written a different version of this, so I wonder if I'm getting the two confused. But she ends up going to the basement, and there's a blind woman, not just blind, but I believe her eyelids are sewn shut, and she's boiling something, and she says something to the effect of, oh how sad that such a beautiful creature has come to a robbers den. And while she's there she hears a great commotion above her and it's this man, her fiancee, and a few other men who are dragging young girls down into the basement and they kill her, they kill them, I think they feed them with wine and things and then butcher the girls and then eat them.

And during one of these butchering, at this point my wife's like, you are not finishing this. I'm like, yes I am. I'd rather be wrong with brother Grims than right with you, my love. And they're butchering her and the hand and the ring comes down and she's hiding behind the barrels and I think she grabs the squishy finger or something. Anyway, it ends when she makes her way home, I think the blind woman helps her out and the father says, let's just go on with the marriage, trust me. And during the marriage, the girl stands up and says, I had a dream, a terrible dream about a man who butchered girls and the man starts going white because he knows he's been found out and she said oh dear please sit down why are you getting so troubled it's just a dream and I can't tell if this was my version or

that version but I think the father holds the man down and drives a steak through his head and through it yeah what so what version have you heard that ending is new to me. I'm sure that that robber came to a terrible end. But here's the other thing. They went searching for the robber and the robber's den and never found him. And I think it's said that every year girls get taken still. Wow. Yeah, I haven't heard that. He does come to, he gets his comeuppance in the version that I am familiar with and the girl, the one difference there is that, yeah, when they're chopping up that body, they're

doing it in the version that I have read to remove the rings from the fingers, that they're chopping the fingers off to easily remove the rings and as they're discarding pieces of the body, one of those rings falls in her lap where she's hiding. And she keeps the finger. That's right, she pulls it out at the end. Yeah, and the finger speaks, I think, even, and sort of corroborates her report. And that's wonderful.

The dead have spoken. But I mean, that is absolutely horrific. It is scary. Yeah, but what's the point of St. George if there's no dragon? I think Chesterton says that somewhere. that's the you shouldn't you shouldn't make efforts to eliminate these shadows because the children need to know that the shadows are out there and there are dragons and wolves and villains and witches so to speak out there

in the world waiting for them and they need to come in, they need to have some context for that, for that. And the fairy tales are a way that they can come into contact with that in a safe way. Right, that makes sense because if you tried to explain in a literal sense what threats they will soon face, it would perhaps be inappropriate and not even a way that they could connect with, right? Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Have you heard people try to argue against stories in general or fairy tales in general? I'm thinking of like an atheist materialist to the extreme who thinks... Well, I don't know

about stories in general but certainly I've encountered or read or heard of people who think that fairy tales ought not to have these more horrific or disturbing elements in them. That it's inappropriate for children, it's a scandal, but I just I disagree with that. Certainly, you know, judgment needs to be present when you're offering stories to your children. They're powerful. Especially if you're reading them to your child, you know, when they're about to go to bed, you know, to take this with them and the life that you're giving to the story, you know,

all of that is significant. And I don't think that we should be trying to intentionally frighten children, but to give them stories that engage a little bit with some of those rougher aspects of reality, and those aspects of reality that threaten, is building up the correct sense that children need to have in order to be able to distinguish good from evil and to give evil the right place in in in their their framework and their imagination That it is out there and it is serious and it's something that needs to be negotiated I would encourage everybody who's watching this to go out right now and buy a copy of the brother Grimm's fairy tales. Get the original ones, you can still get them. Just a very practical reason that parents should consider getting these is you can read them in a sitting. Sometimes we have the best of intentions, we're going to read the Lord of the Rings to the kids. But you get out of Hobbiton and you're done. You're kind of like, we can't manage this. You hit that Council of Elrond and it's like, whoa, you still with me here.

This kind of allows you to sit down and to read a whole completed story. Yeah, and the edition that I would strongly, strongly recommend is published by Dover. The title is Household Tales and it's illustrated by Walter Crane. He's going to put a link to it. Yeah, Walter Crane. Walter Crane edits it? Illustrates it link to it. Yeah, Walter Crane. It's Walter Crane. And it's it? Illustrates it. Yeah, that's the version. Now there's another, there's a good version out there too, illustrated by Arthur Rackham, who's my favorite illustrator. That one is good as well. Yeah, terrific. Yeah. Okay. What about, do you mind if we

get to horror? Sure. Well, I think we're already there in a way. We're kinda there, that's what I mean, yeah. Because horror is one of these things that, I like how Stephen Gray Donnas, who's a Deacon and movie reviewer put it, there may be no other genre that is so filled with garbage as horror. So granted, much of the horror out there is tasteless trash.

Even if you don't think that's true, for the sake of argument you could begin with a strong claim like that and then to say, and yet does horror have a place for the Christian? Is it even appropriate to wish to be scared? What's your thoughts on horror? Do you have a defense of it? Sure. I guess I do with the same caveat and grain of salt or grains of salt that it's a dangerous genre to get into because you don't always know what you're going to find.

But there is a theme there that's very ancient. There's always been stories about ghosts, about monsters, about death, about fear. From fairy tales to mythology, it's always been part of the the fabric of our imagination and the expressions of our imagination through storytelling and I think part of the the purpose of the horror story is to remind us that we're not we're not in control we're not absolutely in control for all of our learning for all of our technologies for all of our learning, for all of our technologies, for all of our discoveries, there are powers that are beyond our ken and our control. And I think a good horror story is wrestling with that, you know, to sort of put the right,

you know, it's like, I guess what you would say what the purpose of the gothic literary movement was. Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Even O'Connor, Flannery. Oh, Flannery O'Connor. Yeah, southern gothic. That's what they call her work. To say that for all of our science, there are things that are not accounted for in that. And we need to be aware of that and to stay well humble is one word, fearful is another. And so the Gothic movement is maybe in reaction to the scientism of the Victorian age or you know the periods of enlightenment. Or it may even be I think I'm thinking of Lovecraft. I mean when I read Lovecraft I read like an atheist, maybe he's not, but I interpret

him this way, who's coming to grips with a chaotic universe that cannot be ordered by God or faith or narrative. It's just nuts. Yes and it's funny how Lovecraft really is, he's very mystical like his monsters are they're well they're demons they're they're almost like these spiritual beings he can get physically I get I think Lovecraft was maybe wrote the first series of zombie stories the undead the reanimator series have you ever read that no they're they're quite funny. That's high-end zombie literature. Okay. Yeah, they are worth the read, but they are more amusing than anything. But yeah, Lovecraft

is tapped into that, you know. There's something about him that I don't quite trust because he seems, I don't know, I think that he struggled with mental health. I feel that way as well when you say that. I don't know what I mean by that, but I feel the same way. When I read Poe, I love Poe. He's just a brilliant author. Those first few lines of The House of Usher are just so well written. Absolutely. But yeah, I feel that way about Lovecraft as well. So you think he struggled with mental illness?

That's what I understand, or at least his stories strike me as someone who, that was struggling in this way. And his phantasms don't make as much sense to me. In a sense, I don't find him as frightening as Poe, because I don't relate to sort of the pitch of his anxieties in the same way as I can enter into Edgar Allan Poe's world. But you know, Poe certainly is someone who wants to show how fragile we are psychologically, physically, how we can misinterpret things, how our worlds, our realities, our houses

can suddenly come crashing down when you least expect it. When you think that you're on the right path, when you're trying to, you know, find completion and wholeness and then everything goes backwards, yeah, which is, that's just the the classical structure of a tragedy where a good man selects very inappropriate means to get an end that is good and then he turns out to be the author of his own undoing and he only discovers that when it's too late. Did you ever watch Breaking Bad? I did. What did you think? That was a rough one. Yeah, I was very impressed with how they adhered to that mode of tragedy. You know, almost to, you know, maybe this is full to grace. Yeah, almost to a Shakespearean pitch, which is maybe giving it too

high of a compliment. But it was a troublesome experience. My wife and I watched it and I think it was the only series that I felt like I couldn't walk away from. Oh, I got to that. I got to one point, I forget which season it was, where he is fine with the boy dying or somehow is instrumental in that young boy dying. I'm like, not done, not watching this again. Right. Which is exactly what they wanted you to do. So it was probably a point

to them. I ended up watching the whole thing and the thing I really enjoyed it. Yeah. It was so satisfying. The last episode was absolutely satisfying. I'm always expecting the final episode to be unsatisfying because it feels like they just drag these things out forever to keep making money. But when he said to Skylar, I'm doing all of this for and he so often said you and he finally admits me and the selfishness sort of comes out. The thing I found difficult with it is like our age is cynical enough so yeah congratulations here's another cynical frickin story but wouldn't it be nice if we had like a good guy who chose to do a good thing? Like just to change things up or a bad guy who chose to start doing good things

as life becomes beautiful. Such a down- all these stories that are coming out of these downward spirals. And I wonder, I don't know what I think about it, but I just feel like there's enough of those and I don't know if that's coming from a healthy place. Right, yeah, we're kind of beating a dead horse in a way. There's plenty of cynicism going around. There's plenty of despair-inducing situations in the world and lives that are collapsing, whether, you know, even by means of a kind of tragic trajectory, where we're just trying to do something right and then, but it doesn't turn out and then we realize that, well, maybe our motivations weren't wholesome to begin with and what are we left with?

Like this nothingness. And that series was very effective in doing that but you're right do we need yet another and and and an extraordinarily powerful story that just sort of manifests our plight the the the loss of hope because I think what you're saying is in reference to in in contrast to this you've got the Robin Hood. Yes. That's your point, right? Right. What if a story of a man who was noble and good.

Right. You know. Yeah, and I wonder if the world could handle it right now. You know, my, speaking of film, you know, one of my children's favorite movies is Singing in the Rain. And it's a great movie. But I don't think that movie could be made anymore. Yes. Like if someone made Singing in the Rain and that hit the theaters.

Yeah, like a modern adaptation of it. Yeah, or even or even or that that. Yes, like if there was a modern. Yeah because I think most most films made back then if you were to play them today wouldn't wouldn't make it. Right. But adaptation without ruining any of it. Sure yeah but there's. We just don't we can't swallow that anymore.

Like we don't believe in that sort of levity or that sort of joy anymore. And the thought the thought or the the the sight of someone like Gene Kelly dancing, tap dancing, and like to watch that in a movie, it's like that's gone. Now there was that film La La Land that I only started but it was trying to be singing in the rain, I think, but there was something missing. How did it fail? I never watched it and have no desire to it just didn't seem It didn't seem real. It didn't seem genuine or something that these these actors and these filmmakers

I think it wanted to do something that was genuinely Delightful and joyful and maybe it was for for some people who saw it But I guess I was comparing it to this more this golden age of film where maybe people were less burdened with everything that we are dealing with. There's a world with less shadows in it, less doubt, less cynicism. I wonder if we're kind of losing the ability to appreciate a story just because it's beautiful and that we have to quickly

Dissect it immediately to rob it of its mystery. Mm-hmm Because most of the movies that seem to come again seem to be coming out today Not not all of them do feel preachy like there's a woke ism that's being shoved down my throat Sure about LGBTQ stuff for yes, there's some kind of ulterior motive to teach me. It's like those bad Christian movies. And they're bad because they're preachy. It's like, oh, for goodness sake, just tell a story. Don't try to give me a sermon. But I get the sense as I watch television today that there's a sermon that I need to be told. Yeah. As our imaginations maybe grow more dull

because we're not engaging them, we're not exercising them with things that challenge them that are difficult, like fairy tales, like Shakespeare's plays, like excellent poetry, or even things like the Merry Adventures of Robin Hood that have at their heart a very challenging optimism, a merriment that is almost terrifying. As our imaginations dull with the lack of these things, our ability to tell stories will also become blunted. What you're getting at is like the inability to respect an audience.

To be able to tell a story that's good enough to have an audience react to it and to draw their own conclusions and to be moved by it and to have the imagination sparked by it. To be content even with something as simple but growing rarer and rarer as wonder. You know? We have such a desire to strip away, to sort of conclude. And it's born of a utilitarian attitude that infuses our culture. Like what is the point? Nature on the racks until it tells us her secrets. As it were, right? Nature on the racks until it tells us her secrets. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, or it's like, well, why do I have to study this?

Well, how will this help me in my life? It's like one of the things that as a teacher, sometimes I've got to encounter that in my students and say, no, this doesn't have to be for some work a day purpose. This poem, this song, this experience, this sunrise, this doesn't have to sort of. This isn't about you. Yeah.

You don't have to put this on your list of, this is going to help me become college ready and career oriented and ready to participate in the global economy or to compete. It's okay just to take it in and to introduce or reintroduce into your mind the idea of something being good for its own sake and not for some practical end. In fact, you know, the more we enrich our hearts and our minds with those things that are good in their own sake, the more eye and appetite that you have for things that are simply good, true, and beautiful and you can see them and identify them as such, you're, that's, there is a practical aspect to it but it's, it's accidental. A man who can do that, or a woman, is ready to do work well and to bring a spirit to whatever they're doing with their lives with an attitude that is

all in tuned with those things that really matter. The things that any job that you do is for the sake of, you know, because ultimately that's what as Catholics that we believe is that God is not just some practical end that we have to achieve. It's much larger than that. You know, we're entering into, you know, his reality and we have to just pick up, well, whether it's breadcrumbs or ashes, you know, through the dark wood of our world to enter into that fulfillment, which is not just the fulfillment of a job or a mission. It's something much larger. I wonder at it. I don't want to put any more words at it because it will only do it a disservice. What's your favorite horror movie?

Well, that's a good question. I do love the old universal classics you know the 1930s Frankenstein and Dracula those I think are great but I guess more from just like an amusing perspective but it's also interesting about how the world has changed like you know when Frankenstein came out in whatever it was, 1933, 1935 with Boris Karloff, that was a scandal to people. Like you know there were these disclaimers to say what you're going to see is really going to bother you and smelling salts for the ladies and... The fact that it doesn't bother us is probably bothersome. Yeah exactly and or the there was this famous censure that was applied to that film where in

the the famous of famous scenes where the monster you've never seen this well you've got to see it but you know this scene when the monster is brought to life and the hand moves and Dr. Frankenstein screams out, it's alive. There was a famous censure applied by the studio there where because the line that was delivered by the actor, Colin Clive, was, it's alive, it's alive, now I know what it feels like to be God. alive now I know what it feels like to be God and the studio was like you can't say that in a movie yeah and so they put a big clap of thunder on the on the soundtrack there so that his mouth is moving but you don't hear it but it's I can't wait to watch this yeah I'll probably be bored through the whole

thing I actually like the book he just he felt like a whiny little girl Frankenstein just it's the doctor of the monster. Sorry not Frankenstein the monster. It's so melancholic Yeah, it's it's far more of a work of kind of philosophy in a way than then Than a tale of horror. I mean there is there are elements of horror there or elements of that gothic movement to sort of question how much control do we really have over this universe of ours, over this reality of ours? Is science really the be all end all or is there a way that science can lead us astray to make bronsters instead of a men's but yeah it's it's not I think that that book suffers just

from its reputation in a way that people go to that book expecting a certain kind of story and it's and they weren't looking for this series of essays in a way I what's that there's another one is it is I have to I have to admit I'm always surprised when a woman writes good horror. I just don't expect it. There was a movie, something The Nail? The Turn of the Nail? Turn of the Screw? Turn of the Screw. Yeah, that is a novel, a novelette by Thomas Hardy.

Oh, okay, then that's the wrong one. Yeah. Neil, what was it? It was on Netflix recently. It was about this family who go into this new, this old house and the house is haunted, which is I know, oh, oh, House on Haunted Hill. Is that it? Yeah, I think a woman wrote that one. I haven't seen that. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Yeah. Yeah. But I tell you, I think Dracula, the first part before the epistolary back and forth, right, which always bored me. I could never get past it. But that initial, oh my gosh, I would read that to my wife at night and I would lay in bed. Right,

the whole thing of, is it Jonathan Harker? Yes. In the castle with the Count and yeah, that amazing scene where he looks down the sheer wall of the tower and he sees the Count like a head out. Like a big spider or like a lizard was it a lizard yeah crawling on the wall head down oh my gosh or when he when he sees him in the coffin and he says oh bloated like an insect that had drunken too much blood he puts it much better yes holy moly that was excellent yeah and you know that I think is sort of the ultimate gothic work as far as you know what it's trying to say and Stoker

brings in a lot of spiritual aspects to it. Now he wasn't a Catholic but he it's it is kind of a Catholic work even though there are things in it that Catholics would say well that's not really how that works. Like for instance, you know, Van Helsing carries around the Eucharist to around his neck, you know, to protect him from the Nosferatu. You know, it's very clear this is not simply an undead zombie monster, you know, it's the devil. The devil is animating this creature and we have to combat it with the powers of Christ and we are crusaders. You know, it's there's a... In the very beginning the man is given a crucifix by that old woman. Of course, yeah, that's like one of the

famous things that wards the vampire away but you know these moments where Bram Stoker is trying to, you know, he did a lot of research for this novel, he worked on it for ten years, traveled to all the places and picked up all this lore But you know these moments where Van Helsing says well to protect us from the vampire We're gonna take the Eucharist and we're gonna grind it up into this paste and then we're gonna apply it in the cracks of all the door and We'll be safe now. It's like please don't yeah, Yeah, that's more horrifying than anything else I've read. That's right. But the idea behind it, even though it's not motivated by... He treats Catholicism

really like just another aspect of folklore. Right. But it's as hopeful as Gallic. Exactly. But there is, there are some things in it when reading it from a Catholic perspective are interesting and edifying, I think. Even though it's, but, and it's, for me it's like, well, why, is that a serious work? Is that a serious thing that serious Catholics should read? And I would say yes. I would say yes, even though it's silly, it's wrong in some ways, or it's goofy in other ways. And the prime intention of the work is just to thrill you, not to give you a spiritual experience or awakening, but that's the... Okay, well here's a pushback question. Why should I concern myself with thrills when there's so much great literature from the Saints to be read? Why would I waste time on a little story when I

could be reading scripture, of course has stories within it, but the lives of the Saints? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't think that reading literature and reading light literature, which is that's what Dracula is, it's light reading. I don't think that that should be at the expense of reading the stories of the Saints or the legends of the Saints, you know, these great collections and the golden legend, which are just as wonderful and I think as important as the whole catalog of fairy stories or horror stories you know the this all the strange stories about st. Nicholas and st. Christopher and and you know they're they're wonderful and they're they're born out of the same place as

fairy tales are born from you know the imagination that wants to kind of enshrine things or the same place that mythology comes from, to take things that are essential, that are pointing to a certain ideal and giving it the right sort of flavor to stick in your mind, to spark your imagination, inspire wonder. But you know, I think that these good literature, which should always be distinguished from you know there are certain things that are just not worth your time. You know I don't know if I want to point at what those are. I think we kind of know it when we would encounter it. Well gosh you know it's hard because I don't want to

disparage or write off people's tastes. Like for instance I have dipped my toe in the Harry Potter pond and I was like... We actually had a super chat that is asking about Harry Potter. So you can go ahead and read it Liam. Can you put the microphone on for him? He said, could Matt and Mr. Fitzpatrick please cover Harry Potter? Is it actually the Ultra Catholics who do not read it and say he didn't talk big in my circle?

OK, let's do it. That's a $5 super chat from Bernadette Schmidt. Thank you, Bernadette. OK. Well, you know, I can only. She paid $5 to ask this question. This better be a good answer, huh? Might be a $5 answer.

Well, so you say you've dipped your toe into it. Yeah, I've only read like a, well, so you say you've dipped your toe into it. Yeah, I've only read like, well, so I have, I can only speak from my limited experience of it, which, you know, so take it for what it is. But it's Well, I've read all of them. Right. So maybe you can help me along. You know, I can speak to some of the overarching questions that Bernadette is asking about

perhaps. speak to some of the overarching questions that Bernadette is asking about perhaps, but when reading it I was just thinking, man, I kind of think that I could be reading something better. For sure. And you know, I don't want to say that I do not, I cannot give the last word on Harry Potter because I haven't read it all. So that's that. But I've read a chunk of it and it just didn't move me. And so that's the thing I was gonna say initially is like I don't, some people are very moved by it. I have good friends who are, who have excellent taste in literature, who think that those books are really good. To me it seemed kind of derivative of other genres that did it better.

There are certain stories that sort of got the job done. Like something like a poem like The Seven Ages of Man by Shakespeare. Nobody needs to write about the ages of man anymore. Like The Wheel, that got done by Shakespeare and there are certain stories like that. I thought that Harry Potter was sort of moving in sort of mythical realms that, you know, I thought had been done before that, you know, I would maybe get the same sort of, or the same sort of themes but more richly delivered by reading Greek or Nordic mythology than this. I guess the criticism of Harry Potter that you often hear is that these books are dangerous because they are bringing magic. And by magic I don't just mean, you know, I mean something different than the magic that you

read about in Grimm or the Chronicles of Narnia or the Lord of the Rings. There's something about the magic that J.K. Rowling has brought into her books that is referring to dark arts, these dangerous rituals that some people will enter into and that it's dangerous to give children a story of whimsical adventure with griffins and flying brooms and Quidditch with this element sort of infiltrating it. That this is magic in the real world. Harry Potter is not that is not in Narnia. It's not Middle Earth. It's England. It's magic in the real world. These are sort of presented as real witches

who have, you know, these undercover identities and who are working. And so it's like, is this letting children say, well, this is something that I'm now interested in like it what's the what's the the leap between Harry Potter and playing with a Ouija board I don't really know is that is that there I guess you know I don't I don't know I that I've never been very moved by that argument for some reason because literature is, good literature is a powerful thing. It's affecting the way you are looking at the world.

It's affecting the way you look at yourself. And is there such a huge difference between reading a story about magic in England being carried out by boys and girls that maybe are just like the boys and girls that live on your street and they have magic wands and spells. Is that really anything different than the boys and girls that go to Narnia through the wardrobe? I don't really... the idea that well that's Narnia and therefore it's safe because it's clear that that is not real. It's the land of fancy. It's fairyland and this is the real world and we ought not to mix those elements in. That just doesn't persuade me. I love the humility of that answer. There's like a wrestling

there. It's like yeah I see it but I'm not convinced but I like that. It depends on it depends on the individual I think. I mean some children will that the leap between Harry Potter and tarot cards or whatever I'm not familiar with what the exactly these dangers are. Maybe that is not an unrealistic leap for some. I'd recommend people check out an excellent video that was recorded by Brian Holdsworth. He talks about the difference in how magic is used in Middle Earth versus Harry Potter. And one of the things he points out,

if I can remember correctly, is that you'll notice when you read the Lord of the Rings, there's sometimes this frustration, like why isn't Gandalf just using magic more? Like why is it only when we're all about to die does he sort of pull it out, you know Whereas I think in Harry Potter you have kind of magic being used to I don't know do all sorts of mundane tasks So right don't have to so it's used more like technology. Yeah, that's interesting it to substitute for paps virtue, right? So I mean Brian puts this much better than I

could but I'd point people to that video. Yeah and our technology is kind of a magic. Yeah. It can be a dark magic. It can be it's a it's a like a dangerous magic. But so it's it's I think that parents need to exercise their judgment and if they can keep Harry Potter in the realm of the fairy story and this is this is an entertainment this is a lark it's good that it is good that Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings like the popularity spawned by the books or films you know got people turning pages of books again like that's that's that's a wonderful thing and a lot of children

read that series and had a positive experience Of reading which is something to take seriously. Here's a question back to horror What is a movie that you would consider just not worth your time because I did just say that you know Most of the horror out there is trash, but I'm not really sure How to say what is and what isn't. Right. I mean, there's the kind of general principle that if evil is being presented as good, that's not good. Right.

But that, you know, I think of things like Freddy Krueger. Did you ever watch those as a kid? Oh, sure. Yeah, I think I don't have too much patience for anything in that slasher category. Yes, now why? You know, like teenagers going patience for anything in the that slasher. Yeah. Yes Now, you know like teenagers going to a cabin in the woods, although I thought cabin in the woods was kind of funny Like there was something about that that was even the first even dead I don't know if you ever watched that which the first evil dead sure you've got these. Yeah

Yeah, anyway, so yeah. So what is it about the slasher film that's out of bounds for you? well, I think that they they horror and the horror genre and pornography or species of pornography if you will there there there they've become too closely like I'm with you like first of all like you know There's always that mandatory scene in these types of trashy horror movies where, you know, that's It's almost like the contrast of the of the feelings of both fear and arousal. Yes, it creates. Yeah, absolutely

It's very it's it's it's unhealthy and the the pornography of violence You know in the same way that pornography is showing you something that you ought not to see. This is something that's supposed to be covered up. There's a species of pornography, or maybe I'm using that word a little too loosely, applied to violence. They press it in your face. You shouldn't need to see this. Like, this is meant to be hidden, these entrails. Or this sort of or this sort of destruction or disregard, this violence to the human person is not something that... it's against our nature to see those sorts of things I think. And so all of that is... and yet you watch The Passion of the Christ. Yes, but I have some reservations about that movie. But you see the objection. If it's against our nature to see the destruction of human beings,

I get that argument, but we also hang up crucifixes. Yes. And tell people to look at them. And the crucifix that you typically see is a far cry from what Gibson put on. I mean, I definitely think that that film is a work of art and that Gibson approached that with a lot of artistic integrity and honesty and wanted to create scenes that were like their their own sort of a film version of a Caravaggio. You know he really tried to make a dance out of the

passion in a certain sense and like his pieta is beautiful in that movie with the hand of Mary open on her son's breast. It's very moving. But Mel Gibson is certainly somebody who is moved by the effect of violence in storytelling. His his his films are violent. Have you seen Apocalypto? Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's something about violence that fascinates him. But see, this is but it is interesting, though, that if we're going to draw the line with slasher films, because they're putting in your face what ought to be concealed. But people don't generally make that same argument for say, action what was that extra movie Mel Gibson did that you liked not well Braveheart's great that's an example but no recent one Hacksaw Ridge right was a

fabulous film I thought sure and yet you see a great deal of carnage in that I guess you know there's I'm agreeing with you understand I do yeah but I'm trying to figure out what it is well you, whether it's a story of heroism and war or the story of the passion of the Christ, there's something about those stories that violence has to have a place there. There's a role for violence, like, well, the story of the cross, violence is the whole point in a certain sense, right? It's this vehicle whereby this unthinkable mystical sacrifice and atonement was made. It's appropriate to meditate on the passion, the wounds, the scourging, the nailing, the crowning, that there's something appropriate to consider the

violence. But you know, meditating on those mysteries of the rosary is the crowning, that there's something appropriate to consider the violence, but you know, but meditating on those mysteries of the rosary is obviously different than like getting a close-up. Yeah. Now and so and so you know there's a couple different ideas on the table right now with this, but Mel Gibson is someone who is moved by violence, I think. It affects him in a way that I'm assuming, you know, is positive for him in a certain way. That because there is this violence in this war scene, whether Braveheart or Hacksaw Ridge or the Passion of the Christ, it's like this means something. This is meaningful. This pain, because pain

is something that's meaningful. It's something that we all have to work through as you know part of the our fallen nature. But there's something about Gibson that makes me suspicious that he has a kind of perhaps, I don't want to make any judgments but it's just from I can judge his art, that maybe a fascination with evil and that maybe the Passion of the Christ is a movie that for him it's like the most meaningful thing for him personally and he shows it. And the idea of artistic responsibility seems to come into play there where you have to be responsible and your art shouldn't cause a scandal. You know what I'm saying? Or at least there should be there should be a lot of caution

about that. Like for instance one of my favorite instances of this idea is the first, well what's considered the first artistic depiction of the crucifixion. Do you know about this? No. It's a piece of graffiti art in Rome. Ancient. I can't remember what year it comes around. But it's just a scrawl on a wall of a figure crucified with a man sort of dressed like a Roman centurion.

It's very crude with his hand in the air as though in salute and then written it says Alex Zeminos worships his god. It's a mockery and well I didn't get to the most important part. The figure crucified has the head of a donkey and it's quite a thing to see even in a scroll this depiction of Christ with the head of a donkey because it's quite a thing to see even in a scrawl this this depiction of Christ with the head of a donkey because it's meant to show like this is a fool this is a fool a crucifixion was a fool's death and you know it can't it's even it captures something that we have lost I think about the cross because thankfully we don't execute people like that anymore. But the ignominy

of the cross, the embarrassment, the shame, you know, where the pain is one thing but the shame of it is another that sometimes I feel maybe, you know, we stop, we meditate, we can imagine that being naked and nailed up for all to see would, you know, be terribly embarrassing. But I have a friend who is an artist. His name is Andrew Wilson Smith. He's a great, he's a sculptor and does a lot of sculpture work and architectural work for churches. Now he's an active sacred artist. He's talked to me in the past about a desire to make a sculpture of this. Of the donkey-headed Christ. Because to sort of say, look at this, remember the ignominy of the cross.

This was part of it. But, you know, he has said to me that I won't make that sculpture. You've got to be careful. Because yeah, because it will be seen as it'll it would make a scandal. Yeah, I wouldn't be wielding my artistic responsibility Well in that yeah And it would be seen as you know something that was Disparaging the cross like it's this artistic restraint, right? And so and the question is like is there any room for restraint or is all restraint merely?

Naivety, you know that seems to be the kind of idea that if's, if you're restraining or if you think there's cause for restraint, it's just because you're something bad about you. A coward? Yeah, a coward or, you know, I don't know, not adventurous. Yeah, maybe so. I mean, nothing worth doing is free of peril, certainly. But did Mel Gibson wield his, the power of his artistry responsibly when he shows us a scene of Christ's suffering that makes us sick to our stomach. I don't know is that... Yeah, no it's a good point. I don't know that that is that's necessarily, like

did you, it's one thing to show the scourging and you bring the blood but when that whip gets caught in the side dear lord it's like yeah that's right I get you is that is that necessary I know that you want to say you think he went he went to the bottom and it was extreme yeah but some things need to be covered part of part of the problem with that that movie is that it's difficult now to read the passion without seeing that in your own mind. That's probably the problem with any depiction on film. You read The Lord of the Rings, how do you read The Lord of the Rings without seeing

the Frodo as portrayed in that movie? Right, yeah and it's also interesting thinking about, we're talking about movies and what's appropriate and inappropriate perhaps to show in a story in a movie. Movies are a powerful medium. It's interesting to see what's become of the story in our day and age but certainly we've made plenty of allowance for the gritty and the frightening in things like fairy stories, mythology, what is it about horror stories that gives us perhaps a little bit more pause about showing the gritty, the violent. You know we were talking about the Robert Bridegroom chopping up this woman. I would read that story to my seven

year old and you know and he'd be like whoa and that's okay I would read that story to my seven-year-old and he'd be like, whoa. And that's okay. I would say that's a good experience. You've had a little bit of a chill there and you're here with me, but these sorts of things are out there and good conquers evil. But I would never show him that in a movie. And what's the difference? I mean I think part of the difference is the point of the violence. The

point of the violence in Hacksaw Ridge is to show the heroism of this character and the love he showed for his brothers who at first wrote him off and had no respect for him. There's something there that's a better thing to show than much of the horror seems to be, we wanna make you feel sick. Yes, right. And horror, and just disgusted. And so here it is.

Right. You know, that's a different kind of thing. I don't know how to meet that out necessarily, but that's. Yeah. So, and obviously that is the whole purpose of the slasher. Yeah there Exactly, that's all which is for me and the little Horror stories my sister and I write we have a little podcast called sibling horror I prefer the I prefer those movies and stories that are strange

Mm-hmm and just sort of make you Well, the closest I can get to it is the idea of some of the better X-Files episodes where there's just this strangeness. Right. Super supernatural suspense fiction. Yeah. There's more... well those are stories that are inviting us to bring our own imaginations into it. Though I gotta say one of the movies that that I love my favorite horror movie would probably be The Shining

Sure, that's an excellent movie. It is there's probably many criticism. Why do you why do you hate to say it? Well, because I guess I don't want to lead anybody into I don't know error since I'm cautious I write there's a lot of things that I think that I wouldn't necessarily say because I'm not sure if I should Think them sure There's the image of the naked woman in that scene, which I was problematic but the but I Mean, it's just a very creepy strange film. Yeah. No, it's it's it's a powerful film I'm not sure what the point of it is though. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. That's a good point. It's a story about a man's slow descent into madness under kind of curious circumstances.

Yeah, that's a good point. I should probably ask myself, okay, good that you like it. Why? Yeah, and certainly we have stories by Edgar Allan Poe which are great, which are simply stories of descending into madness Like the black cat. Yes. That's that's a great story or The blood and the floorboards remember he kills that man and puts him under the yeah, the telltale heart the telltale heart That's a good one to the man with the vulture eye Yeah, and that or even you know crime and punishment is a horror story. I mean it's a lot more than that. It's a psychological thriller in a way or exploration. But is the point of, it just

seems to me that the point of crime and Punishment or The Black Cat is more than just to show you this collapse. How crazy is this? Like breaking back like I'm just going to show you this collapse. There's something along the edges of that story that are maybe pointing up like sort of Flannery O'Connor does that where she'll drive her characters in a given story right to the bottom of the barrel and makes it clear that that's the bottom because now there's only one way up like she brings them to the threshold of the beginning of their salvation you know Parker's back is I don't know that one that's I would say that's a horror story it's good I should read it short story by her is it shorter it is short I the river I

love the river. I don't know that I've read that one actually. That's where the boy drowns himself in the end. Those same waters that he heard about the baptism. Right, the baptism. And he wished he was baptized. Yeah. And what's the one I used to read to you kids about?

I'm not holding his hand. He looks like a pig. The old woman. Revelation. That way the old woman gets shot in the chest. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. A good man is hard to find, yeah. Yeah, yeah, those are horror stories. No, but that's a good point. There's a pointing up, like so for example in Crime and Punishment you have the terrible story of a man who kills an old woman with an axe, but there's also, well, what's there to be shown?

Well, there's to be shown that in a godless universe what is right and what is wrong and who gets to say and wouldn't that be horrific and there's also the redemption that comes through the prostitute Sonya. You know there's a beauty to that. It's not just... Yeah it's almost like a watch me destroy this. Well there's a certain fascination. Like there's probably YouTube videos of people just destroying cars with sledgehammers and there's a sort of thrill we get from that. Yes. But there's no point to it other than that.

Yeah. And there's a wrestling tube for, I mean there might be something poignant in the lack of these elements in certain stories. Like to sort of get a handle on what the world is struggling with. You know, there's something just so ironic about... Well, about Halloween. You know, like the way that Halloween and the horror of Halloween is sort of devolved, I would say. Where it's all about gore and the physical torture, zombies.

But all of these things are still hungry for the right thing. Like we still do long for resurrection in a certain sense. Or the other thing too is like what's been taken out of some of these, whether it's Halloween gore and splatter or slasher films like that idea of the ghost of the spirit that The invisible is not there as much. Yeah, and then that's that's not true all in every case Right there certainly is more emphasis. That's like Jason You have the madman who just rips people apart, right? The end Yeah

And this and the horror of that is that well is this flesh all there is? Like if there is life after death is it just simply the walking dead where there is no life really it's just life after death is just the undead. It's you're the zombie. Um there's a real horror there that's pointing to a part in our soul that's or the in in the society's soul that's been torn out that we don't have the the comfort of the ghost of the spirit world that kind of gives something like the jack-o-lantern is like the fleshy outside that rots but you have the candle within you know like and that's where we're here to celebrate the salvation of souls. Is that what that is supposed to mean? That's one of the things, yeah. I mean there's sort of probably a hundred different sort of traditions or ideas behind the jack-o-lantern putting the flame in a

pumpkin or a turnip or whatever it was. I mean I guess it comes all the way back from Samhain Celtic traditions where they you know that that time of the year in the fall that was their new year like the light half of the year and the dark half of the year and they would light the great flame yeah and then you would take the flame home in the way you could most easily transport it was like in a turnip to bring the the flame of the new year the dark half of the year to your home. Um, slightly different topic, but who played, uh, breakfast at Tiffany's? What was that lady's name?

That actor? Audrey Hepburn. That's right. There's an excellent horror movie. I call it where she's blind New York city. And I'm forgetting the name of it. Yeah, shoot. Well, um, that is called, I've seen that.

Um, and yeah, then we'll look it up, but yeah, the title is the title is that was a beautiful kind of horror. Yeah, I would say. Mm-hmm Yeah, I'm kind of forgetting exactly what happened. Her husband goes on a business trip and then someone shows up knowing he's gone And they pretend to be well, they're trying to they're whether they're trying to steal something from the house, right? Wait until dark wait until dark. Yeah, and And she has the sense that someone is in the house. Yes. And she's trying to find him and it's like she's solving a mystery that's... That's right. Right in front of you that's very evident to the audience. It's kind of an interesting scheme, but she just can't physically see what's happening. And we have to watch her solve the mystery of what was that sound. I would really recommend people check that out. Yeah, it is good. I think that's a movie worth watching.

Yeah. Hitchcock is great. I mean, I guess people don't necessarily think of him in the horror genre, but. I would, yeah. What's your favorite Hitchcock movie? The Rope, or just Rope. Have you seen that one?

Jimmy Stewart. You know, I don't think I've watched any Hitchcock movie. Okay. Maybe I have a Psycho, but there's a, he wrote Psycho, didn't he? He did do Psycho. But I've seen some of the newer... Rear window, vertigo.

Rear window. Again, with Jimmy Stewart. Yeah, he's a good storyteller. He's a storyteller that respects his audience. He doesn't hit you over the head and show you what your eye must be looking at right now. Yeah. He's a good filmmaker.

What I want to do now is take a break and when we come back I want to argue with you about Santa Claus and whether or not it's moral to teach our kids about Santa Claus. Alright, so that sort of fits in with the idea of fairy stories. Sweet. Alright, I want to, before we get into our discussion on Santa Claus, I want to let people know about Exodus 90 who are sponsoring this show. They've just launched a new spiritual exercise for Advent 2021. So you know about Exodus 90, you take 90 days, you do a bunch of stuff you don't want to do, it becomes super miserable,

but holy, and then hopefully happy. But they've just started something for Advent. Advent is something we don't often think about. Lent, we kind of give up a bunch of stuff, we know it's going to be grueling, but Advent is a time of preparation, and so they've modified the rules of Exodus 94 Advent, so one giveaway is you don't actually have to do cold showers. Yay! So, you could do this right now, the Advent disciplines are uniquely tailored to this particular season. Go to, and can we put a link to the description Exodus90.com slash Matt hyphen advent that's Exodus90.com slash Matt hyphen advent to sign up to get started on November 28th. Yeah, there you go. So you got 10 days before this begins. This is pretty cool. So maybe you're like me, you're like, I don't know if I could do 90 days of misery. I'm only being kind of hyperbolic. But you might be able to do Advent.

And as I say, it sounds like they've tailored stuff, so it's going to be a little easier of a challenge, but it will prepare you for Christmas in a pretty cool way. Exodus90.com slash mat hyphen Advent, Exodus90.com slash mat hyphen Advent to sign up to get started on November 28th. And they've got an amazing app too, which they've developed, which I'm good for them for doing that. Right. That's interesting. What's interesting?

No cold shower, because I've already confessed to you that I'm part of the I Started Exodus 90 Club. And the cold showers were, I think that's what did it for me. I should be ashamed to say, I guess. But why did they take it out? Because it's cold outside? Well, I think,'s what did it for me. I should be ashamed to say I guess but why why they did they take it out? Because it's cold outside. Well, I think I don't know why that's a good point I mean, maybe they've also added some other things that was just one of the things they told me to say

But they may have added some other things. So I'm not the only one I doubt you'll read the book of Exodus throughout Advent All right, I haven't looked into it But I mean you'll probably maybe read it on a Christmas story or something like that. Sure Advent all right. I haven't looked into it, but I mean you'll probably maybe read a Christmas story or something like that sure So there's no way of getting around a pipe this large you can't just pull it out and smoke it without people being like whoa Yeah, where did that come from this I bought this from a dude in the Ukraine. It's a church wooden pipe made of Pear wood right Wow me and a guy here dr. Mike Welker who teaches economics at the University, read Lord of the Rings over the summer and so to kind of celebrate we both got ourselves some Gandalf pipes and yeah that was that man.

Now does it say is that just purely inspired by the Jackson films the whole long pipe or is that described as such in the text that the hobbits and Gandalf had long pipes I don't know I don't know that's a very good question yeah I'm sure some in the comments will educate us um Father Christmas right speaking of advent or as you call him, Santa Claus. Santa Claus. Your thoughts? Well. Would you like to hear my argument against it? Sure, yeah.

Now I hope I'm wrong. And I don't just say that to sort of seem intellectually, what do you say, responsible. I do, I do kind of hope I'm wrong. I think I've kind of lessened up on this. But the basic idea is if lying is telling a falsehood with the intention of deceiving, and it's always wrong to lie, then it's always wrong to talk children into believing that a mythical creature actually exists. So I think I worded that as carefully as I can. Yeah. Usually when I say this people will say

things like, well he is a historical figure, like shut up, that's you know that that's not what you're telling your kid about. You're telling your kid about a fat man who lives in the North Pole who exists now. So don't do that. Just say Nicholas thing. I'll keep going and then you can school me. Second thing they'll say is, I don't know what they'll say. This is good for their imaginations. Okay, but if lying is always wrong, then you shouldn't do it whether or not it has a good or a bad outcome. The outcome ought not to matter. Or they will say, I'm not sure. Oh, Pat Madrid said this once. He was critiquing an article I wrote on this on his radio show. He said, well, you watch a story and you don't jump out in front of the kid and say, this

isn't real. Just so you know, this isn't ever. That's different to actively talking your child into believing something false about the world. A child who looks to you to understand how the world works and you're intentionally lying to them about that. It just seems like a bad thing to do. I agree. Oh, okay. Next topic.

However, I think that we think about Father Christmas or Santa Claus differently. You and I? It seems to me. Yeah, I think we do. So as in, well, I'll start with a little bit of a story that was one of the things that really kind of inspired me to enter into the tradition of Santa Claus. I can't remember when this was, it was when my children were still, well yeah, I can't remember when it was. I went to this place in Scranton that was kind of famous, it's like an outdoor shop, I'm not sure how to describe it,

but they go all out at Christmas, like that's's their thing and I had never been there and I went there for the experience that you know people talk about and I was it was horrifying. It was like going into the though it was like Willy Wonka Christmas you know over the top you know ten-foot nutcrers, you know an animatronic elves It was it was sort of like the inferno gone Christmas Like the LED magic Christmas forest and here comes the train and and jingle bell Music and and glitz and glam and over the top. It was It was pretty indescribable I'm not

doing it justice how like this and I went through the whole thing was like a maze this labyrinth of infernal Christmas commercialism and at the very end there was this well see I noticed like through all the lights and the fake trees and the candy canes and the snow unicorns there was this little dark patch that people were kind of gathered around and I went back there and the the the sort of the fake snow was gone and it was concrete in the back corner of this place and there was a cage in the back of this store. A chain link box. A cage. Literally a cage. And inside the cage was Santa Claus. There was a man dressed as

Santa Claus in the cage sitting on a chair and there were live reindeer in the cage with him. But it was like seeing Santa in the zoo. And there were some older ladies there sort of dressed like elves and you could pay them a dollar and they would slip your kid in through a hatch. No. And they would fill his hand with pellets and he would sit on Santa's lap as he was just sitting there languidly and the deer would make a pass at the bait and you would snap a memory and There you go this Christmas in a cage and I was like Christmas Christmas needs to be uncaged There's something about Santa Claus That the world has deemed worthy of attack. Okay, that's that's the thing that he has been sort of taken over by commercial mentality, whatever, capitalism, Hallmark, instead of taking away, and I say it like

taking away from heaven and abducted by Hallmark. And I think that the way, here's a question for you in preparation for perhaps what will be my response, but if you are doing a difficult job with your kids and let's say you say, oh man, like St. Joseph the worker, you know, like I don't know if you ever had the doing the woodworking stuff and it's like, oh man, well, St. Joseph the Worker help us out here and then it all comes out okay, the cut fit or the glue held. Is it lying to your kids to say St. Joseph really came through for us? Or when, I don't know if your family does this, we have a little ritual when we can't find that other boot, St. Anthony, we have the little jingle, Tony, Tony turn around, something's lost and can't find that other boot. St. Anthony, you know, we have the little jingle, Tony

Tony turn around, something's lost and can't be found, and then we find it and and then we say to our kids, St. Anthony never lets us down. Or your guardian angel really had your back there. You almost got, you know, you almost fell out of that tree. Is that a lie? Let me think. Are those lies? Yeah, am I telling a falsehood? I suppose like with any prayer we can't tell whether or not it was our prayer that caused something. You know, like you asked me to say to pray for your sick child, say, if you had a sick child and I do, and your child recovers. You can't actually know whether it was because

of my prayers or not, but you wouldn't be wrong to thank me for them and to say your prayers helped because it's possible. Isn't that, I mean, it's faith. If you attribute it in that way or you think about it that way and say, St. Joseph did help me with that difficult cut or my guardian angel did save my life today, that I don't see, you don't know it's real, but you believe it. Okay. I don't see that.

And so when you as a parent, like on St. Nicholas's feast day on December 6th, and you say put your shoes out and because St. Nicholas is gonna put some candy in these shoes and You know just sort of help you along on our our Advent journey here we're getting ready for Christmas and the kids put their shoes out and then you sit down with your wife and you get out little note cards and you write in a spidery scrawl and with a prayer to St. Nicholas say, you know, be with me right now. You know, I'm getting, I want to have good Advent this year and I want to, I want my kids to know that you as the patron saint of children have a place here in this feast,

this festival that celebrates childhood, the Christ child, the family, the holy family. And you write something in his voice saying, now Leo, Christmas is coming make good preparation make straight the path I look forward to you know seeing you on Christmas Eve okay and you put that there and does my child know even even the youngest ones do they know that I wrote that I'm sure they do but they also know that I yeah I do consciously invite the St. Nicholas to be present with me, to put his hands on my hands. And the same thing with Christmas Eve, you know, we do a lot of reading aloud around Christmas time, and of course we read Clement C. Moore's great poem, which is not called The Night

Before Christmas, is called A Visit from St. Nicholas. That is the title. And I point out to the children, my children, that look at the way this works. The father is here. You know, the father, he hears St. Nicholas and he comes down and he presides over that ceremony of filling the stockings. There's a partnership here between this elf, this saint, St. Nicholas, and this parent.

They work together to help bring you these gifts that are symbolic of this ultimate gift of the Incarnation. I mean at the end of the day, you know, that word we need incarnational things. We're people with bodies and you know we need incarnations just as much as we need the Incarnation and to bring bits and pieces of heaven to earth in these moments that sort of cry out for it. We're getting ready to celebrate or actually celebrating a very mystical thing. Like we need some ways to talk about that or enliven it to our children. Now, not that the Christmas story, the story of Christ becoming man isn't good enough in and of itself.

Although there are things about it that, you know, there are angels that are singing in the sky. Can we have angels singing in the sky too in a certain sense? Like, can we point to that and say, well look, these invisible things are there and we need to remember that and we need to involve the Saints in our in our own little home liturgies. Yeah. And but but you have to do it consciously. I mean I don't think that you can just sort of say oh yeah Santa Claus came down the chimney and filled your stocking and that's the end of it. Like you have to, the kids should know that we're talking about a saint here who is a saint because he's a patron saint of children. Why? Well because once he was traveling in Asia Minor and

stopped at an inn where the innkeeper was a psychopath and he had just slaughtered three young boys and put their bodies in barrels of vinegar to pickle for some terrible reason and St. Nicholas figured this murder mystery out and rose those boys back to life out of the pickling jars and so now he's the patron saint of little boys and girls. But I think you need to be purposeful about that and to bring his mythos and his lore into your living rooms. Yeah, maybe tell me what that might look like because I see what you mean, I think, with you write the little note.

And this is a lovely little game between you and your child. Yeah. I think the problem I have isn't allowing my child to believe something. So I remember there was a time a few years back when my youngest son Peter said You know, I think I think Father Christmas is coming tonight and and I said, okay. Well, let me know if you hear his bells Like I'm not I'm not intentionally talking him into some story Right and I get that we're talking about something slightly different here Like yours is more of a Christian eyes spiritual eyes Santa out of the cage thing

the thing that I seem to be objecting to perhaps is more of the typical story. I think the problem I have is when we like actively talk our children into it, right? So if your child was to say to you, dad, did you write this letter or did it, where did it come from? And you said, well, actually what happened was St. Nicholas wrote it and he mailed it to our house

and I got it, in fact, here's the envelope. See, that feels a bit more sinister to me. Sure, I get that. Because you're not just allowing your child to be part of some game, you're actively deceiving them. Right. No, the point of it is to say that I, to tell my children that when I get, when they go to bed on Christmas Eve, and I say my little prayer to St. Nicholas, they know that part of it. They know that part of it.

And I believe and I share with my children, it's like, yeah, he was here. Did I see him? Nope. But I see. So it's a little more playful. Oh yeah, it's playful and it's teasing their imaginations. It's like, I don't know, maybe he was standing behind me and I just didn't see him. I see Yeah, maybe you know there maybe this is different right to saying like look on the webcam

See it's showing you right now where Santa is around the world on Santa webcam comm or whatever Oh, yeah, it's in a tracker, you know, this know. This is like bringing it into your own home with that spiritual flair that is playful, that is intended to spark the imagination and to say, yeah, there are things in this world that we can't see. In fact, the most important things in the world are things that we can't see. Taking your tactic, or this approach I should say, not tactic, it's probably less likely that your child will one day come to you and be like, Dad, is Santa Claus really real? That doesn't seem to sound like a question that would come up given how you've presented

it. Nope. Exactly. Okay, so this is where I think I can agree with you then. Yeah, at least not to my memory, or maybe some of my children when they got older, asked for some clarification. But if they asked you in a serious way, surely at that point, what would you say? And you know what you're asking them again. Like they're asking and maybe they wouldn't ask because of the way you raised them and the approach you took.

But if a child was to ask about a fat man who lives at the North Pole, who flies around the world delivering presents through chimneys, even though we don't have a chimney and whatever like that, at that point you wouldn't say no, that's absolutely what's going on. No, yeah, like we... no, no, no. Yeah, when they would ask me, you know, I would probably say, well, you know, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, son.

And who's to... just because we don't see Santa Claus or Saint Joseph or your guardian angels or you know fairies and elves does that mean that they don't exist not seeing them isn't a reason not to believe blessed are they who do not see and believe this that line absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Or yeah, that just because we can't understand something means that it's a fraud. Yeah, fair enough. And that is that's sort of the attitude that I take. And my wife and I are pretty conscious about that.

And we don't hide the fact that this is this is part of now we don't sort of sit everyone down and like I've got a three-year-old and say now I'd need to make this absolutely clear that's right you know I yes I of course you know I'll he'll experience it where did this come from yeah who put these and I'll let that happen and I'll let that happen I'll let his imagination sort of he wants, we don't have a chimney. It's like, well, we do have doors and windows, you know. And Santa Claus doesn't need those things. St. Nicholas, we do call him St. Nicholas. When we write the letters, they're always from St. Nicholas or St. Nick.

And whenever, and he addresses presents, and we have presents from St. Nicholas and presence from mom and dad and it's all sort of in the same Yeah, I can get on board with that. It's like we need a we need a Christianization of Santa Claus and of Christmas and of how we celebrate it. Yeah, because the things that the world has deemed worthy of Parading par parodying that word is hard to say. Yeah parading, that word is hard to say. I'm not sure that you can use that word as a verb, but the things that the world thinks are worthy of mockery or at least dragging through the mud of our secularism, those are the things that Christians, Catholics need to rescue and to enshrine, you know, Halloween is a mess. It's terrible. We need to take that back because really it's linked to a

liturgical progression. Because we have Christ the King, we have souls in heaven that we pray to for assistance, we have souls in heaven that we pray to for assistance, we have souls in purgatory that we need to pray for to get to heaven, but before that we have this evening where we remember that death is stripped of his sting and because death has been dethroned it is now the subject of our mockery as participants in the cross. Now we have things called saints and things like souls in purgatory. So that needs to be brought back in and you can still have your ghosts and you can still have your your chills and your your your fear of the unknown but it should be linked to that sort of that pageantry. Yeah. Whereas now it's becoming

linked increasingly to increasing paganism. Yes paganism and sort of a we were talking before with slashers this focus on the flesh. There's only the flesh and there's no spirit and which is the ultimate horror if that's true. And I think Santa Claus is one of those. We need to get him out of the cage in that terrible Christmas shop or out of whatever that Hallmark world is and bring him into our homes and that doesn't mean by telling our children lies but by telling our children something that is participating in the most true thing. That the most important things are the things that you

can't see and to start thinking about Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas in the same way or in using him in your language the same way that you say you know thank the Lord that this happened or thank you Saint Joseph has got our back or Saint and using him in your language the same way that you say, you know, thank the Lord that this happened or thank you Saint Joseph has got our back or Saint Anthony found the car keys. Gotcha. You know, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's a mindset that's in tune to that spiritual side of things and that should be part of the way we move through our days, the way we have meals, the way we have feasts. The literalism is sort of maybe a sign of a pathology, you know, where we have to be

absolutely clear. Right, yes, right. Where's that coming from? Yeah, where is that coming from? Just this, is it coming from like an attitude of scientism, skepticism? It's like, well no, we have equations and discoveries that show us the way these things are and to get too far into the realm of the land of fancy, as Howard Pyle said, or into this whimsy,

is just too detached from the world. But, detachment from the world, taken from another maybe point of view, is one of the points of our being here. We have to live in the world and not be of the world. And for children, and grown-ups too in a different way having your imagination open to things that are beyond our understanding. Yeah. Invisible influences that are working through the world. You know I like to... somewhere in maybe the Aeneid they talk about the world like a tapestry which is a

tapestry which is woven of series of threads that are running this way and that way. One of them is called the warp and the other one is called the woof or the weft. And the way it's talked about there but in with Virgil if I'm remembering right is that this the the upright threads is our existence, our world, it's human action, or maybe it's this one, but the other one is the divine, the invisible, and they can't subsist, well the invisible I guess could subsist without us, the supernatural would be there without the

natural, but the tapestry of our experience of the world is made up of these elements that are so interwoven. They're inseparable. It's not like, you know, that the spiritual side of the world is behind the door or just in that church or that it sort of pops up when I get on my knees to pray. I love that. It's, we're moving through it or just in that church, or that it sort of pops up when I get on my knees to pray. I love that. It's, we're moving through it all the time

and it's affecting us all the time in who knows what ways. And we need to, and how are we gonna talk about that except through signs and symbols, poetry, and stories that keep our minds and our hearts and our imaginations, our wonder, our sense of wonder on those invisible elements, whether through myth, fairy tales, scary stories. Yeah, that's good.

Anthony Esselstyn, I think, wrote a book called 10 Ways to Destroy Your Child's Imagination. Yes we did. Did you ever see that Fox interview he did? No. Did you ever see that Neil? It's hilarious. So he goes on Fox News and they interview him and he's just like well weary Anthony

Eslin sarcastic like oh yeah no you should totally get your children this and that would be great. No that way you could destroy their imagination and then this happened like Okay, they have no idea how to take it. It was remarkable I'll have to write to it below but I did not I've never heard of that What's a few ways if we wanted to destroy our children's imagination? What what could we do? If we wanted to destroy their imagination as opposed to build up their imagination. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's always a little discouraging to think of it in those terms because we see like, because we have to look around and see how we're doing it in a way,

you know, it's everywhere. Obviously, the screens in our lives are not helping. The constant presence of these things, which you have the best intentions in the world. I mean, these devices that dictate to you how to look at the world and how to think about things. What's important and what's not? They are, they're everywhere and they're really hard to keep at bay. Because it comes to the point, you know, my wife and I had a conversation the other day

about just shutting the internet off in our house, like just getting rid of our Wi-Fi. And just as an experiment, say, what would that do? Like how would we be, there was a time once when people didn't have that and it was, it was bothersome and kind of disappointing and maybe even alarming to think like, man, we, it would be difficult because this has just been bought into hook line and sinker even by like, how would we get homework assignments for our kids?

Because that's the way they're coming or how would we there were there were just a handful of ways and I'm sure we were all There it's like I don't know that we can do without this anymore because the world has chosen to do with it and it creeps in and into our children's lives and it creeps in into our children's lives and is showing them the way to look at the world as opposed to giving them something like Hansel and Gretel or the Robber Bridegroom and saying what are you gonna do with this? You know now that so that that that's one thing and that's an obvious thing like just the

infiltration of these media Entertainment devices that's even shut that makes it difficult even for kids to have and their own Yeah, right in bed alone in silence exactly or to be creative like if because that's always gonna give you something whether it's you know You know, there's a music or a game or entertainment Yeah, instead of like well if you don't have that the children will start drawing and they will start reading and and nailing boards onto trees. The analogy I use is when I was a kid I remember my parents would often talk about why don't you eat apples we're buying you these fruit and you're kidding we have Cheetos and CCs and

Coca-Cola in the fridge like I didn't say that but it's like well obviously why would I this is so much better right than your bruised apples but but you know I don't know how I don't mean to congratulate myself but I mean my my wife is pretty health conscious and and my kids do eat like apples and strawberries and bananas and but I never did as a kid because the fast food version of it was always available sure I think likewise screens provide fast food entertainment and yeah why would I read a book but as you say if these things aren't there then yeah and and not that children never read they do but we have

to be selective Twitter yeah they read yeah that's true they not that they have ceased to read books but we have to be careful about books that they read it because there really is just like the horror genre there's just so much trash or just yeah fluff in the world of children's literature. And you know like another point that you made about films and sort of how they're the loss of the art of storytelling where you just feel kind of preached at. There's always like a message, a political motivation. So many children's books are like that and children don't like that.

Yeah, I think it was the poet John Keats who said somewhere, we hate, we hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us. And I wonder if that's true for things besides poetry. If we hate stories that have a palpable design upon us or if we hate systems that have a palpable design upon us. And what does that mean, palpable design? Or a plan. That, well, it means a palpable means something that you sense. Yes. A recognized manipulation.

Yes. Yeah, you recognize an agenda, a manipulation. It's like this is what I want you to take from this and nothing else. It's sort of like those stories they used to play for us back in the 90s and then someone would come on and give you the moral. Right. Which is a poor attempt at Aesop's fables. Oh, yeah, and and yeah and and Aesop's fables actually originally Those the morals at the end of the story are a modern edition. They they did not right? Yes, they were they were put there. I think as early as the the 40s. Thank you for telling me that Yeah, like so I was steady mix then wins the race. Yeah. No, yeah

Yeah, if you can find it because there's just so much there. I didn't realize they predated Socrates. I was reading the Phaedo. Well I think it was the Phaedo Amino where Socrates references Aesop's. I think that there is some tradition that Aesop was a companion of Socrates. But I think those stories existed even before Aesop, you know, he just he just gave them Yeah, just like Homer has given us the Iliad but the story of Achilles wrath that's not his invention That's just part of the that's part of the tradition of that character that he sort of canonized. Okay in this way

So, yeah, we hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us. Yeah, it's like a parent who is trying to get you to do something, but in a way that they're making it, they're pretending that this is your choice. Wouldn't you like to do this? Don't you see this over here? It's like, just no, I don't want to be told what to do. Right. It feels like it's interfering in a manipulative sense. Yeah. And the- Tell me to do it, or don't want to be told what to do. It feels like it's interfering in a manipulative sense. Tell me to do it, or don't tell me to do it, but don't pretend that you... Correct. And the application of this to what we were talking about is that so many books have that

palpable design, whether it's Awoke Agenda or whatever you want to say. Any child's book about Kamala Harris. Right. That children will reject that and we have to give them stories that that respect them more and are presenting the world to them. Chesterton said somewhere that I feel like any quotation that I get from Chesterton is like that. He said somewhere in that mountain of work that he did, that mountain of a man, that and

I'm paraphrasing I'm sure that the whole point of education which you know this is me jumping in is the whole point of parenting or reading I mean insofar as education is for children it's it's everything that they do. Education should be a way of life. So the whole point of education is to give children, I think you said abstract and eternal standards to judge material and fugitive conditions. Now that's kind of a mouthful. I'll just say it again because I think I I like that that idea of education

That it's to get the whole point of education is to give children eternal and abstract standards or principles to judge Material and fugitive conditions. I think that's really true to give them the foundation To give them the foundation. The universal? Yeah, to give them the good, the true, and the beautiful. Like, you know what is good. You know what is beautiful. And you can identify it as such. You can judge things as such. And that should be the work of education. And that's a

large part through the cultivation of imagination. Though it's an act of the imagination to enter into the eternal or the abstract, obviously. And that's... Go ahead. I think it was maybe in the Republic where Socrates said, let educate children, like the education should Socrates said, educate children, like the education should be like play, and he said, whereas a child, you might impose upon him a physical exercise for him to grow in that physical ability, you put strain on the body and this benefits the body,

he says something like it's not good for the mind. But what do you think about that idea about let the education be like play? There's a way in that sounds fluffy. Well certainly I mean it's ironic. I think the the Latin word for school is ludus, which is also the word for play. That there's an etymological connection between school and play. Or in Greek the word for school is rooted to the word leisure. That's right, yeah. So yeah, is there something about play that should educate? I mean I think yes, but again with play children hate the

palpable design. I'm not gonna... you give a child a toy that's just designed to teach you your alphabet or your colors or your geography. No. But if you give a child a shovel and a dirty place there's no palpable... there's some ends involved you know it depends on the kid. I had this experience, I visited, this is the first year that my son Luke is attending a Montessori school where we live, and there was this event where you come and you visit the school and your child sort of shows you the things that he enjoys doing there, and he brought us out to their property. This is a wonderful school, you know, it was a good

sign, like when we signed him up we had to sign this waiver. It's like it's okay if he climbs trees. It's okay if he digs holes. Like I won't hold you responsible. Maybe he eats glue occasionally. Dirt. So he took us out to the woods on the the property of this school and it was incredible to see the excavations that these children are working on. I mean they're just digging huge holes. That's wonderful. But it is wonderful and and building kind of forts you know putting sticks over the top like we're talking holes that are as large around as this table and as deep. Wow. It was wild and so good to see and he was showing us these holes that was his thing he's like I want to show you the hole the holes that were digging in

The back and I was not expecting this. Yeah, I was like wow, these are serious And they have this whole system where they're digging in this dirt and finding Little bits of coal, you know, we live in Pennsylvania Yeah And they're the children have identified this as their currency. And there is a system that if you get so many things, then you can buy this and that, you know, they're building things. And I mean, this is the imagination at work. This is not how you destroy their imagination. They just need a dirty place with some trees, other children, or you know,

you know what I'm saying? And the possibility of danger yep some some shovels some sticks and and they'll they they there are ends that are being achieved there they're having a good time and maybe they're learning something they certainly are learning something about work and but nobody came and said oh you could use these bits of coal as currency this is an exercise in economics now the reason it's good to cooperate with your partner here is because in the world you need to learn to give and take. Right there's none of that but they they enter into

those situations if left to themselves and are learning something about work through their play. I mean it's funny how there's something about play in children that seems to mimic work. Boys playing with construction trucks or weapons. Like these are sort of imitations of higher colonists that are serious. Who wrote Wild at Heart? John Eldredge. As John Eldredge says, if you take their weapons away from them, they'll bite their crackers into guns and shoot each other with them. That's right, yes. It's very mysterious. So that's where we're thinking about ways that the imagination is hindered but and yeah I was talking about giving them books that allow the imagination to

that allow the imagination to exercise itself, rather than an invitation by a book or a game or a toy to say, well, put your imagination in this box. Like, this is the way this is, and now you put it on the shelf and it's over. Yeah. Like, just to give them something, whether in a toy, in their outdoor experience or in their books that allows them to make some, receive some hopefully eternal and abstract principles. I mean this is talking about it even now with Chesterton's quote, it's a little too mechanical. It should be a little bit more virtuosic than this, but certainly the pitfalls are out there that are getting in the way of a healthy imaginative development. Tell us about Gregg's, the school you teach at.

Sure, yes. I want people to know about it, why you think it's a great school, what it is you do differently. Yeah, well, we are a school that puts a great emphasis on the imagination. A school that wants to teach through all of the stories that are out there, whether it's the story of Robin Hood or the story of a geometry prop or the story of science, the story of trees, you know, to tell things, to tell the story of the world through these adventures, these experiences, these works that we engage. Just to back up real quickly, for those who have no idea, what is St. Greg's? Okay, right. Yeah. Just real briefly, but then we can move on. Yeah, sure. Gregory the Great Academy is a very small, just 60 boys. It's a boarding

school for boys in the Pocono Mountains in Elmhurst, Pennsylvania. And it's a classical school, but not necessarily in the way that you maybe automatically think about a classical school. Yes, we read certain works that are classical because they've passed the test of time, but like many schools that call themselves classical or that are identified as such, it's not so much what you do, but at Gregory the Great, it's more about how you do it. We think that there is a kind of, there is a way that is appropriate to learn to engage the mind and the heart with these works that have passed the test of time that a lot of emphasis is put on music on poetry experience hands-on conversation we

don't really teach to the test so so to speak. For instance, I teach literature. I don't go into a class with a plan. I read the chapter of Treasure Island that the boys have read and we talk about it and whatever comes up, comes up. I've read the book a thousand times and I've got... I just started reading it the through it. I'm like five chapters in that's all my actually really enjoying it. It is it's it's I'm glad to hear that I hope you love it you will love it and maybe maybe I'll do this book for a month maybe I'll do it for three months I mean I let the conversation happen so we do a lot of different things I one of different things.

One of the things that makes Gregory the Great unique is that it is a school where every boy does everything that we offer. And we offer a lot of things. We have an academic program, obviously. Every boy is singing songs, learning folk songs by heart, learning poetry by heart, learning to sing and serve and assist at the Latin Mass and the the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. We're blessed to work with a priest who's by ritual and offers both of these liturgies. I have to say they were marvelous. Yeah. Those boys do such a great job because they love it I mean they don't sound like it doesn't sound like Gregorian chant. That's good for boys Yeah, or Ruthenian whatever chant that's good for boys. It's like it's very masculine. Yeah, and just very good

It's like some of the best I've ever heard. Yeah. Yeah, they they are astounding and and it the the beauty and the facility that they bring to those liturgies through their music is just a sign that they recognize the importance of this because they bring their best selves to it. They put in that effort because there's something about the life that they live there

which is very full and education never stops at this school. It may be the butchering of animals. Yes, we are making steps into an agricultural component. We have pigs and we have chickens. The boys raise them, they slaughter them, and fill the freezer with them. And it's very formative. And for a lot of these, this is the first time that they've ever slaughtered a chicken or de-haired a pig. And it's... How do you de-hair a pig? Well, there's different ways that you can do it. The way we do it is... I didn't think this would be one of the questions I'd ask you today. Sure. Yeah, the it Or at least the way I've seen maybe we employ different methods where I know that our farm foreman is Experimenting different things, but I've seen the boys get a pig. We have a large Vat that's large enough to have a pig in and this is once it's it's been killed

And you fill it with scalding water at a certain temperature where, you know, the follicles start to release. And then the boys just kind of turn the animal in the water and they shave it with very sharp knives. They just run the blade over and they just work together and they de-hair it with knives, essentially shaving it. That's awesome. It is awesome. It is. Every time I go back there and see them doing something like that or you know plucking chickens and it's like man this is really good. I went to this school and I did. I attended there when it was pretty newly founded in the 90s and that wasn't going on but this sort of agricultural component but man I wish I had done that.

Yeah. I did a little bit of that you know actually when I one of the things this is actually a good instance of the sorts of opportunities that we look for at my school to give boys the right experience that they need you know Mr. Mr. Hicks was the headmaster when I was a student there. And I was a city kid and he knew that I needed to get, you know, I needed to have some experiences that I hadn't had as of yet. And so I was the kid, you know, he would get me on Saturday morning, because he had sheep in the barn, and he would say, hey, you know,

I had a sheep that was suffering from really bad hoof rot, and I was gonna bring him out to the dump and dispose of him, but he couldn't make it, and so I had to shoot him in the head in the middle of the driveway, and I think that it would do you a lot of good to get that sheep to the dump. He's heavy, wear boots, it's gonna be messy,

and it did mean a lot to me to get that sheep to the dump. He's heavy, wear boots, it's gonna be messy. And it did mean a lot to me to get out there and have this inconceivable task of dragging this 200 some pound dead sheep to the dump that had just been shot in the head. And I just never done a dirty job like that. And it was good for me. But you know, he didn't leave it at that. You know, the next week went and got me it was the middle of the night And he gave me a flashlight, and he said there is a sheep giving birth in the barn You go down there, and you stay with that sheep until the the lamb can stand wow and Help it along if you need to now I did I didn't know how to do that That's for sure

but I went down there and I witnessed the birth of that lamb and thankfully it no assistance was required from me but and waited until it could stand and that was a Circle that he created there. I don't know if he did that on purpose Hmm, but it was certainly he he had pegged me as someone that needed to spend some time in a barn Yeah, and we try to do that with our students to sort of identify Well, actually well we say all of you should do this This is good for all of you. You need to learn how to play rugby You know, we play a lot of rugby you need to you need to learn how to de-hair a pig

you need to learn how to de-hair a pig. You need to learn how to recite this poem in front of this class, like to have the the courage to do that, to step outside of yourself to do that, to participate in this community, to work, to pray, to juggle with sticks that are on fire. Yeah, we take our juggling troupe and the arts of our minstrelsy and in jugglery very seriously because incredible because it's I saw Christopher sorry Miller who's one of your freshmen he is a freshman I yeah I Liam was telling me that when he was juggling he was hopeless he wasn't good at all didn't seem didn't you sorry I shouldn't talk for you what did you say?

Right, so he was as good as anyone. Okay, you didn't say that I'm sorry what you say was he is as good as anyone might be who started but his dad took a film of him in A hotel room and I showed it to Liam. We were both like, oh my goodness, this is incredible. So he's very good. He has. It's not just over the fold, just over the last several, couple months. Yeah, we get, you know, it's, I think juggling, it's not spoken really, or it's not put in these terms, but it's a bit of a rite of passage. When you come to the school, you learn how to juggle. And once you can do that, then you're initiated into the tribe. You know? So we take the juggling very seriously because, well, not only is it a great activity,

I mean, we don't, our boys, they live at the school. It's a boarding school, but they're not allowed to have cell phones. They're not allowed to access the internet. They don't have, they have a screen free environment and education. They write their papers with pens and pencils on paper. They get books. They have to do research in things called encyclopedias. What? I know. They're like, can we Google this? No. No. The information may not be totally accurate, but you're dragging the sheep for them.

That's right. Yes. Open the book. So if you take these distractions, like for a teenager, yeah, maybe a teenager can use a cell phone in a useful way. Call a parent, look something up that's a recipe that he's helping out in the kitchen. But for the most part, we have to agree that there's a lot of distraction, that these things are just blasting at our young people. So the removal

of those distractions is wonderfully freeing. Sometimes people say, well, how do you do that? Don't you have a rebellion, a revolt on your hands if you take a phone away from a teenager? How do you do that? And I guess the response is, I'm usually surprised when I hear surprising where it's like, I think that children are relieved. To be relieved of those things. They appreciate it. They enter into a freedom. Because there are pressures that come with the devices and with the social media scene. And to leave all that behind and to enter into a very active life with a bunch of other guys that are all doing the same thing is the best thing in the world. And to get to know themselves and what they're good at, get some hopefully abstract and eternal standards to apply to these material and fugitive conditions that are waiting for them at the end. And we do our best to tell them,

like, once you get out of here, get yourself a dumb phone. Or I guess I'll say a wise phone. Yeah, Mr. That's one option. I'm intrigued by the wise. All you gotta do is smash it and send it to me and I'll buy you a wise phone.

That's it. That's all that's required. I see that. I see that in my future, in all honesty. I think most people are beginning to see it in the future. I mean, one of the things that's so interesting to me is how cheap phones are. I mean, this is a very high-powered computer. Well, this isn't. This is a dumb phone. But iPhones are very high-powered computers, and they're cheap, really, relatively.

And you think, well, why? And I think the answer is because you're the product hmm. You're being bought by Apple That's what's happening well, I don't I don't follow you exactly because The this the phone is essentially an advertising machine that also gets you into the world of Apple, right? They make it increasingly hard for Apple products to communicate with Google products Yes, you're tied in now to their calendar, their maps, their notes, whatever, their email. I've said that I think maybe.

So that's one thing, you're being brought into the Apple world and so you're getting charged constantly in one way or another. You're also having every app advert, you're buying apps, you're paying monthly to rent these apps. They can afford to make these incredibly complex things because you're buying apps you're paying monthly to rent they can they can afford to make these incredibly complex things because you're the product they're buying you yes yeah so that you'll then be connected to them yeah and I've seen these various documentaries that sort of talk about it

in those in those terms because because it's, but it's very bothersome to think the degree to which your activity is monitored. And so that they can get a calculation for you to make you spend money. They know how long you went on this site. And I just learned that Google scans your emails to advertise to you. I mean, I'm so naive to be surprised at that. Oh, yeah. No, I got to get off Gmail now. Yeah, it's it. I've had I've had experiences like that. But you know, I don't know if this is true. This might sound like a ghost story.

But once I was talking to my colleague about a friend of ours that we hadn't seen in a long time, hey, where's Nick? Have you seen Nick recently? How's he doing? And then, and my laptop was on the table and it was open, but it was asleep. But then after we had talked, I checked my email

and I had an email, but one of those spam type emails. You know when email gets infiltrated Yeah, and they send you something you get an email from someone but it's not them. Yeah, it's like I really thought you should see this picture, you know Yeah, and I had one from this guy from that he didn't send Wow, but that like I don't know I've had Neil I've you had that experience where you talk about something and then you see it being advertised on your phone because your phone's constantly recording you? People have told me this, that's never been my experience, but...

It's happened to me. There's a real thing that my friend showed me a while ago. It's specifically on Android, but it does just record snippets of your conversation. You can go into your privacy settings and listen to the random recordings of just you talking that it makes. You can turn it off, but it's very deep in the settings, and it's just on my default. Wow, that's terrifying.

It's like Instagram, Facebook, you've never paid to use them. Well, why? How do they make their money? Well, you're the product. Because advertisers are buying your attention. So they need you so that they can then make money by selling you stuff. I mean, it's obvious.

We live as if this isn't an issue. Yeah, it's so strange It's like we it's like the it's not the best movie in the world but you know the Matrix you know we're already plugged in feeding the machine. Yeah the battery. Yeah I don't want to be a battery anymore. Yeah so well the boys at uh Gregory the Great aren't batteries currently. Hopefully they they they well you, well, you know, it's, it's, I hate to say it, but it's just like, it's just a matter of time because we are living in a world where you can't really survive. I was going to say conveniently, but it goes beyond that. I just interviewed Mark Barnes the other day. You need to listen to this on the way home. Terrific fellow. It's a three and a half hour interview and he talked a lot about this about how very often what we do is we

Begin to distance ourselves from technology because we see the impact it's making on us Yeah, but we haven't yet thought of society like well We need to build something in place of this so that we can live And I think we can do that in like just the very fact that I moved from Atlanta Where you need a car to exist if you would like a grocery store or anything It's everything so spread out to here where if I didn't have a car I could walk to work actually You know and I have people on my street and we kind of all hang out with each other The idea of getting into a car to drive five streets away is almost unthinkable. It's it's yeah

So I think there is a way in which we can begin to kind of build these little civilizations. Civilizations is the wrong word, but these little communities. Here's another thing we do. There's a group called New Polity and they're working with local farmers and they've created this little website where you go on and you choose what you want. This amount of meat, this maple syrup, honey, coffee. And then every Saturday you show up and there's all these, you're buying from your local farmers.

So like your friends and your brothers and your... And how cool to be able to support them instead of having to go to that disgusting building called Kroger. Right. Yeah. And I think that we have to be satisfied with the little things that we can do. Like you went from a smartphone to a wise phone. Yes, that's right. Baby steps.

Like is it changing the whole culture? Well, yes, it is. My family. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I'm less distracted. Yeah, family is a unit of culture. And yeah, so we have to be encouraged by what little measures we can take because there is an effect that maybe we will never see or know, but we have to do what we can. I want to ask you this, and we would never encourage boys at Gregg's to play pranks,

but every time I talk to someone from Gregg's, the first story they tell me is about something they did. Mm-hmm like Well, I don't know what I should say, but like you know, David Hahn they he talked about him and his Group like tied sheets together and lowered themselves out of the window to find cereal to they bring back up and eat any stories like this Yeah, and divulge or are they all blots on the reputation that is St. Greg's? No, well certainly it is a boys school and boys and you know we the boys will at times get into mischief or they'll or activities

that are well they're playful but... Extracurricular. Extracurricular, yeah. I mean, you have to expect something like that. And you know, we have rules and we have a schedule and bedtime is bedtime. But no, certainly there are adventures that happen outside of the schedule. And things that happen that are very meaningful to boys because they're great fun.

I mean I remember I can say this that when I was a student, so you know that's maybe the safety, it's like before I worked there. Yes, it wasn't my fault. When I was a student and this sort of thing I think still happens at this school. And it's something that happens when you start introducing teenagers to beautiful things and steeping them in adventure stories. They start to look for that in their own experiences. So what happened with us is we all received this kind of dark message,

a little piece of paper that said we had to meet, like a certain group of people was invited by a certain powerful individual in the student body. We had to meet in the laundry room, which was right by an exterior door, at midnight and we had to bring some object and a poem that we had written. And we didn't know what the situation was. It was all very mysterious and cloak and dagger and we were entering into that. It was a game right away. We were like, this is cool. I'm 16 years old and this is a fun game. Although, it's hard to find a place and it's hard to find 16 year old boys who

are willing and able to enter into games like this in this day without because there's just so much self-consciousness, bread of cynicism. And our school is a school where boys 16, 17, they're able to truly play, to sing with one another. So anyway, we met there in the laundry room and that powerful personage was there and he said, I'm heading to the water tower. The water tower is this huge, obsolete brick tower that looks like it's out of the story of Rapunzel that's on our property. It's a very romantic structure that used to has a 60,000 gallon tank at the very top of it and an iron spiral staircase that goes to the top that used to supply water pressure to the building when it was an orphanage.

So he said, I'm going to the water tower and you're going to me in five-minute intervals two by two so we're not so we're not caught and so we were you know we were all we were all nervous because to be caught at midnight out of your bed was not allowed and so we did that and I remember I ran out there with my friend Joe Miller and it was a wonderful experience just the run because I remember I was terrified again a city kid Never done any there's so crazy. It was like I was in it like I was literally in a fairy tale with this inconceivable Task that I had to do I was carrying I had a sword. I don't know why I

Don't know where I got it But I did have a sword and I had a poem in my pocket that I wrote for the occasion and I don't know where I got it, but I did have a sword and I had a poem in my pocket that I wrote for the occasion. And we went out into the night and it was snowing. Like one of those like magnificent snows, large flakes, somehow like light reflecting from the snow. And we just ran through that snow all the way to the tower. We came two by two. Unfortunately,

my friend Michael, he didn't have a partner and was left alone in the water tower with a potted plant and he was discovered by the chaplain and he didn't make it. But we got to the tower and our leader had devised a system to unlock the tower because we weren't allowed to enter it and it's dangerous, but he had devised some system to unlock it and we went into that tower. It was the first time I had been into it from the cold outside to an even colder exterior in a way, you know, like this cavernous brick and stone thing. And he gave us all candles. I know this might sound like totally crazy but it was

formative. Yeah right. You get latched to get caught. I know the tricks. He gave us all candles. It's all very dramatic, melodramatic, but it's good because it was appealing to that desire that adolescents have to have drama. We need it. We're gonna find it somehow. And we processed up the spiral staircase to the top and it was very simple at the top where we just stood on the catwalk and scrawled our names on the railings like there were hundreds of names scrawled there and we just read our poems aloud to each other and It was a really beautiful moment And nothing bad happened. We were breaking the rules and that was bad, but you know, it's kind of funny that

Yeah, the the thrill or the meaningfulness of all of that wouldn't have been impactful without that risk of all of that wouldn't have been as impactful without that risk. It wasn't a deviant mischievousness, was it? No. No. That's the difference. There's a beauty and mystery and goodness to what you were doing. Exactly, and there was a real interest. That the teachers would have winked and nodded at, maybe not because it was dangerous, but there's a sense in which what you're doing is good. It's not like you're... Right. Well, I don't know. Yeah, it's... and anyway, it was a beautiful experience as over the top as it sounds, you know, it spoke to all of our hearts. And I remember hearing one person recite a poem, and I still know him to this day, and he's the last person in the world who would ever write a poem in a certain sense or that yeah or that you would think if you met this guy this is not the sort of guy who sort of sits down reads much less writes poetry but he's got it in him and he did it that one time and it was the best poem of the lot. Was this well well with a certain boys

who hadn't written a poem that had to in order to go on this adventure or had all of you had this experience of writing poems in class so that you knew that everyone had written their own poem? No, I mean we were certainly all memorizing poetry as part of the curriculum and memorizing songs which is, you know, a form of poetry and we wouldn't so much learn our own poems but we would learn our own songs. Like we would depart on our own from the musical repertoire and learn songs.

We wouldn't do that with poems so much. This one particular guy who led the expedition, he was someone who liked to write poetry. But I do think that that was the first poem that I had ever written. But it was something, not so much that that was what we did, but we were in that vein of where it was something not so much that that was what we did but we were in that that vein of Where it was conceivable that we could write our own poem and we had enough poems memorized that we would know

How to get around it. I mean, it's a very courageous thing It's the strength of choosing to be vulnerable in front of another man. Yes, what sharing a poem is That's what sharing your art is. Yeah, it most certainly is. Yeah, absolutely. And so our school is a place that has the opportunities for those risks. The risk of poetry, the risk of friendship, the risk of singing, the risk of experiencing liturgy in a way that you haven't before. Which gets into like this aspect of our school that is really at the heart of it is that we call our education a poetic education. Which has can mean a number of different things but when we talk about poetic education

or poetic knowledge we're meaning a couple things. First of we talk about poetic education or poetic knowledge, we're meaning a couple things. First of all, we mean the kind of knowledge that you get when you hear Little Boy Blue, that poem that I recited earlier, that there's something kind of pre-analytical about a poem like that. It's not inviting you to analyze, it's giving you the pieces of the world. It's something that you need to have, whether it's this poetry or the experience that there are things like cows and duties that can be shirked and responsibilities and these sorts of things like that you bring to the world, like your knowledge of these

things and analyze the things of this world. Again, sort of these eternal standards to judge a material condition. So a poetic education wants to, and a poetic education really should happen when you're young. Unfortunately, you know, there's a lot of remedial work that needs to be done these days, and I get boys in my classroom who have never heard of Little Boy Blue, literally. And sometimes I'll spend a class. I only knew of it from the song. What's that? Little boy blue and the man on the moon. Like how sad is that? I don't know that song. You are so much cooler than me.

But sometimes I have to, I read some other Goose to the boys. Cats in the Cradle by, who wrote that? Cats in the Cradle, Cats in the Cradle. You know that song, man, you are really cool. One day, I don't know. Yeah. But, so there's that aspect of poetic knowledge, that those fundamental things that you need to have experience of before you sort of begin to judge how you're going to live within these realities.

And then another aspect of poetic education, which is to make things new again. That yes, you know something about playing sports, but we're going to change that on you. We're going to make sports about virtue and change the way you think about it. Or you've read Treasure Island, well, now you're going to read it again from this crazy angle that you didn't know was there. And start talking about how this is sort of a wild study in, you know, the way human beings are motivated or the way they make decisions. And to sort of encounter something again for the first time. As we have, we have these experiences all the time,

but we have to be watchful of them. When we go to, when we like eat an apple and it's like, wow, I feel like this is the first apple I've ever eaten. You know, it's like, so this is just a really good apple. And you have that experience when you see your wife's face suddenly for the millionth time but yeah there's something about that. That's nice. Going to the seashore and feeling

like this is the first time you've ever because it hits you in a different way. It has something to do with age. You know there's a and you need to have poetry I think to help you have some context or some means of thinking about those things. You know, there's a great poem. Well, what happened was I would take the freshmen out to read Robin Hood under this ash tree in front of our school which very sadly just this past over this past year succumbed to the emerald ash borer beetle all the ash trees are dying they're going and so this this magnificent tree on our property which was really the it was the king of the trees on our 200 acre property I I believe and it died and it came down this summer But in any case I would take the boys out to that tree, we would sit underneath it in the fall and as they were sitting there and I was

getting ready to read Robin Hood out loud I remembered a poem that I had been taught in high school that I had memorized and I still knew it but I never understood it and in that, this poem came to me and I was like, oh my gosh. Wow. That's what this poem means. And I said, boys, I need to tell you this poem. And I recited it and they were, yes, yes, yes.

You know, I was pulling at their ties, you know, because they wanted to talk about little John and you know, they weren't, because they weren't ready. And like, I was like, you know, trying to keep the tears from coming because I couldn't explain them if they came. It took me 20 years. Twenty years of carrying that poem and I remember reciting it every now and then.

Just do I still know this poem? What the heck does that mean even? And then all of a sudden after 20 years, this was why I memorized it. As far as, you know, this is why God kept it in my heart all those years. For this moment, it was so wonderful. And we need to create those opportunity, work with grace and God to create those opportunities for ourselves where poems can come home to us. And it might take 20 years. But it was marvelous that after I recited that poem. What's the name of it? Oh, it was called Spring and Fall to a Young Child by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Oh wow, I love him. Yeah. But then I went inside after that

class and I went to tell Luke Cully about that experience that I had and he was in his office and he was listening to students reciting poetry for a test and the boy was reciting that poem. But he was struggling to. He couldn't, he didn't understand it. And he was like, and I sit down and then he said in frustration, the boy just sort of broke off and he's like, why should I memorize this poem when I don't even understand it? And you were like, I'm ready to tell you. Yeah, I have some very good words for you. I don't remember what I said but yeah, I don't think I gave him, I don't think I blasted him and just told him, but I think I just said something like, no no, you'll see, you'll

see, learn it. Because I don't know, maybe it won't mean anything to him over the course of time but... It's worth the gamble. It sure is. If someone is listening and they think, well, like myself, I just wish I had a better education, you know, that wasn't all about succeeding in the next test and whatever. What are three books you would recommend somebody read? Maybe they're in their 40s or 50s and they think, I've never really read any good books and the ones I

have picked up I've wanted to like. I believe it was Chesterton who said the classics are those books that everybody wishes to say they've read but nobody wants to read. I think it was Oscar Wilde. Oh was it? Okay. Well Chesterton is the repository for all quotes. We cannot find a source for it. Oh no, you know, maybe it's Mark Twain actually. It is Mark Twain. Okay. Yes, but in any case, three books. Well, I guess, you know, I tend towards fiction. You know, that's sort of my love and that's what

speaks to me. Okay, because there are certainly books like Tony Esslin has so many good books about culture and education that are out of the ashes was a cr- have you read that book? Only a couple chapters. It was like a very coherent rant. In the best possible way. Yeah, sometimes he's like that and it's powerful. It's very powerful. Yeah he's a marvelous writer. Well you know I guess three sort of books that should that that that have the power to change your life and change the way you look at your life the way you look at the world and that are hard to read

in a certain respect, as in if you don't have the discipline of reading, these are good books to struggle with and to get that discipline, to work your way through them and not let them conquer you in a certain sense. Well, let them conquer you in the best sense. Let's see, well, I'll say it this again. And I won't hold you to them, and you may change your mind tomorrow, so no pressure. Oh, sure. Oh, yeah, you know, this might be one of those things,

like what's your favorite author? It's like, well, I don't know, it depends on my mood, time of year, my age. But let's see, three books that I would say are, you know, well, I'll say this again, we started with the conversation, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle.

I think everybody should read that book. And if you have some difficulty perhaps reading that book just on your own, read it to your kids. Read it out loud. It is one of the best books to read aloud to your children. And the merriment in it, the optimism in it, the romance of it is towering. And you'll know that you are free of that poison of cynicism if you can read that and just enjoy it and just delight. It's a book that it's there to delight in and it's a good exercise in that sense. The second book I'll say

is David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Man, it's just that's just a story that is told by a master It's a it's a wonderful story told by a master storyteller and you feel it you just are that book is just like a symphony of beauty and And emotion David Cobb never read it it Now that the the tip for that one, you know, if the tip for Robin Hood is read it to your kids, you can read David Copperfield to your kids too. Actually, I'm in the midst of it right now with my sons and maybe that's why it comes to my mind right now. But um,

the trick for any Dickens book, because every Dickens book is daunting and it's a commitment because it's that big and but you have to you have to get into it. You'll find that spot. You'll always know it when you get there where maybe it's 100 pages, maybe it's 200 pages, but just like you're not going to feel any real commitment to a man that you chat with in line at the store. Oh, you have to great analogy. You have to sit with him for a while, as I'm doing with you, and get to know him before you feel connection or concern for that person. And a Dickens book is like that. It just introduces you to characters and says, well, it's going to take a little while to

get to know this person before you start caring for them. And I'm going to give you that experience over the course of hundreds of pages which is maybe a slog, it's a challenge to get through, it takes time and commitment but by the time things start happening you really feel for these characters in a way that you're not going to feel for a character in a page-turner. So the last one. The last one I'm going to include as a whole thing, but it's really 60 things, and that is the stories of Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes needs to come back. Now I say 60 things. There are only 60 Sherlock Holmes stories that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote. There are

thousands that everyone else has written, but the the canon of Sherlock Holmes, that is, that's just all about again the the the gorgeous pleasure of reading because it just sucks you into that world with the with the the hearth the the the shadows the cabs the women with the the black lace veils coming in with problems and Sherlock Holmes is great I and I I say do all 60 and if you really want to have a great experience you can do what I did which was I I said to myself like at some point I looked at myself and said, I haven't read all the Sherlock Holmes stories and I was kind of ashamed of myself and I said, I am gonna devote a whole year of

my life where I only read Sherlock Holmes. And I did. I read all the stories and I read all the essays and Sherlock Holmes is the only fictional character that has multiple biographies written about him. He's a true, like that are scholarly. He's a very mysterious character because he never existed. He's the most famous man that never existed but there's more arguably more written about Holmes than Hamlet. Why? Who is this guy? He's a mystery in and of himself and so I really threw myself into Sherlock Holmes and read the the writings of the writings by great authors like Ronald

Knox and GK Chesterton. And like there's so much that people have said about this character and about this body of work that is fascinating to enter into. You said you took the course of a year to read all 60? You told... Well, I read all 60 and then I read around the biographies. I read the essays. I read the pastiches. You know, I read in some essays, like, well, you haven't entered into the world of Sherlock

until you've written your own Sherlock Holmes story. So I wrote six or seven of my own Sherlock Holmes stories and just like gave myself to that world for a while and it was great. What would your advice be to Catholic authors in the sense of? Nonfiction because it doesn't seem to be a big market for that. Probably because we're not reading good beautiful books We're not writing beautiful books. That's a good question you know, I do a lot of writing myself and fiction

Only a little bit that I don't share with anybody Fiction? Only a little bit that I don't share with anybody yet. Good. But I know I do a lot of writings on short articles on education and culture, Crisis Magazine. I actually just started writing for the Epoch Times, which is a pretty interesting paper. Yeah, I've been on this show once. They have a YouTube channel too.

Okay. So advice for writers or people who are, who enjoy writing or are interested in writing, I would say don't get your feet wet with publication. It's not that it's not as hard as you might think to get published by an outfit like Crisis Magazine or Catholic Exchange, Crisis Magazine or Catholic Exchange, the imaginative conservative. There's a lot of, you know, sort of very positive cultural Catholic platforms out there that are looking for writers and you should see what it's like, right? Write a short article, talk to the editor and see if you can get published because it's an impetus.

I mean, for me that's what it was. Like I just had a random story actually about Sherlock Holmes published 10 years ago in Crisis magazine. I was like, this is good. I enjoy sharing this. I enjoy the audience. I think I can make a difference. I've got some ideas about books, about reading, about education. And I just got better through the generosity and charity of good editors who helped me hone my craft. So I think writers should just, people who are interested in writing should just go for it. Contact an editor, get something published, and learn how to find that voice that can start to open

conversations or open minds through writing. One thing I've done that I would encourage others to do who are writing fiction is to start a website that you tell nobody about and to start publishing your little stories if they're short stories is what I've done. You know, it's just a way to kind of document them almost, to get them up there, attach a little image to it that's sort of artistic, and that's what I've done. And nobody knows what it is, and I'll never tell anybody. And who does the illustrations for sibling horror?

Oh, sibling horror's different, yeah. So sibling horror is something, and that's another kind of, it was a good impetus to get stuff out, was my sister and I write the the stories and then we pay someone to narrate them and it was great to be able to do that it was like what if we just did something that we're not great at but that's okay right that was the kind of joy of it it was the freedom of a child doing something he enjoyed and he wasn't interested if it was the best thing that had happened lately you know yeah it's a

lovely thing absolutely it's a hobby so it was the best thing that had happened lately, you know? It's a lovely thing. It's a hobby. So it was, but making it a podcast kind of committed us to releasing maybe one a month for a while, you know? Whereas like, well, I got to get something. So just do it. I've heard that a book, perhaps the same is true of a story or an article is never completed, only abandoned. So you kind of do it and you go, there you go.

Right. That's interesting. There's go there you go and right that's interesting There's a beauty to that and and that's been the best teacher for me. It's just a put stuff out there and Yeah, yeah, that's that that was my experience and to read beautiful things and good things while you're doing it Oh, yeah, and and find an author that you love and imitate them a bit. Yeah, totally, totally. I do find that I sort of write in echoes of whoever I'm reading at the time, you know. But and it's good to sort of have that. It's like a child tracing her letters over something that's already been written or something.

Yeah. Absolutely. Good, good. How many books have you written? Well, I don't know, actually. But that doesn't mean there's a lot of them it just means I got a bad memory some of them were sort of editorials some of them I co-authored I wrote a book with the porn myth uh-huh that's probably like the most work I've put into something mm-hmm I just put it released a

book called on happiness which I have to say to those watching is now on audible Iudible. I got to read it. But that was good. Oh, funny, one of my funny stories is I wrote a little book on atheism for Catholic Answers. This is one of the first kind of books I put out. And I sent it to Peter Craift to endorse, desperately hoping that he would before he died. Of course, he's never going to die, he'll outlive me, but that was my thought 12 years ago or something, or 5, 10 years ago. And he wrote back and went, um, this isn't very good at all. Which surprised me, because I've heard you speak on other topics and thought you were rather good, but this is, this is, I can't endorse this.

Thanks. The end. You know? Which I just thought was wonderful. I loved it. Yeah. That is good, yeah. But, um, but now I just, I want to just sort of, there's enough beautiful books out there. Like I thought I would like to write a book called Kill Your Phone, but

people are much better at this than me and I'd rather just point to those books. But then that's not the reason to write. I mean the reason to write isn't because you've got something to say that's better than something that's already been said maybe. Yeah, you enjoy writing? I mean the reason to write isn't because you've got something to say that's better than something that's already been said maybe but Yeah, you enjoy writing. I enjoy the fiction. Yeah for sure. I really enjoy that. Yeah, it's just joyful it just and so here's here's some advice for anyone who's wanting to learn that I think I've learned and that is Write drunk edit sober. I don't mean get hammered right? It's a sin Write drunk, edit sober. I don't mean get hammered, it's a sin.

Inhibition's down. But I mean just like, what I do is I'll tell, I'll get an idea for a story, and then I'll tell myself the story over the course of a month or two. You know, just sort of tell it to myself. Right. And then I'll just crap it out for lack of a better phrase.

Yeah. Just get it out. Let it be terrible, just finish it now. Because you can write a terrible story. So do that. Just write a terrible story really quickly. And then when it's just out, there's something to work on. But trying to refine it as you're crapping it out would be like trying to varnish and paint a boat that you're constructing. It's like you can't do that yet. Now's not the time for that. And you wouldn't be able to do it anyway.

But if you do something really rough, then you've got something to now varnish and work on. How have you found it with fiction? Is it? How have I found with writing fiction? Do you agree with that? Do you have any other kind of suggestions on how to? No, I do a very, I follow a similar strategy

where just get it out there. I think of know I do a very, I follow a similar strategy where just get it out there. I think of it more like sculpting or just get all the material out there and then sort of start chiseling away. You need raw material to find it. So half the things that I might put on the paper, it's like well this doesn't have anything to do with it and like this is just dumb and that sounds wrong. And then I find the form in there. But you just, you have to take that plunge and yeah, turn off the internal editor and just sort of fearlessly put stuff down. For me, I'm thinking about it like material and there's a paper in here, an essay in here that I have to find. But I like your idea, your analogy of not varnishing the boat before it's built.

Yeah, I've got that from someone, I forgot who, but yeah, I definitely like it. This has been lovely. Yes, I enjoyed this very much. I want people to go check out St. Greg's Academy if we can get a link to that, Neil. People could follow the work you do, subscribe to your newsletter, follow your things. Absolutely, yeah. You can subscribe to our newsletter, which is free, and starting on the feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8th, we're going to be launching a subscription-based

platform for kind of exclusive content that people will find really exciting music performed by the boys interviews podcasts all sorts of the first offering is actually a Series of conversations about hamlet by our faculty. Wow. It's a it's a 40-hour course though. Wow. It's a long conversation So it's a course that's in the form of conversation. Yes, we just, we recorded. This is very John Senior. Yes, we put a microphone on table and we talked about Hamlet for 40 hours. That's wonderful. I mean, not all at once, but yeah. Yeah, gee, that's great.

And some of it is probably really good and maybe some of it isn't, but we enjoyed it. So if you're interested in, you could sign up for that it's called the St. Nicholas Guild so if you go to our website on December 8th the website www.gregorythegreatacademy.org and look for a St. Nicholas tab starting on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and yeah enjoy join the club. Terrific well thanks for being here. Thank you. This has been great. I had a great time.