The Bearskin and Vulnerability (Clip)

This ancient Greek concept was a big part of their culture as well as Homer’s “Odyssey,” and according to translator Emily Wilson, the poem can be treated as a study in xenia.  It facilitated travel i...

24 Aug 10min

Humans participate both in the animal and the divine nature, and I think this is behind much of the culture wars.  We veer between overemphasizing the divine or, especially, our immanent nature.  This...

18 Aug 4min

Homer’s second epic starts with an incantation of a man, a man who rejected godhood with alluring Calypso, a man who pined for years to be at home and hearth with his family.  This is in contrast to t...

10 Aug 6min

In Homer’s “Odyssey,” Book 7, Odysseus, who has at this point lost all his men and washes up alone on the Scherian beach, has through his wit and bearing, and with the goddess Athena’s help, been acce...

30 Juli 1h 35min

Modern German philosophers like Marx, Nietzsche and Freud have spread the "hermeneutics of suspicion" in our culture.  We have a deep suspicion of appearances and, therefore, beautiful things (the bea...

28 Juli 10min

Pornography participates in beauty, but also is consumptive, and especially, unappreciative.  This is contrasted to Odysseus' paise of Nausicaa in his speech to her, without the ritual supplication at...

20 Juli 5min

Odysseus, when he sees nubile and beautiful Nausicaa when he washes up on shore at the beginning of Book 6, does not try to capture her in any way.  This in a time with raiding parties and the famous ...

13 Juli 8min

Man is he who suffers, and Odysseus is the man “of twists and turns,” the builder and destroyer, the journeyer trying to reach his beloved homeland.  Here Ian and I discuss what draws this man forward...

4 Juli 1h 29min