Episoder

  • The universe just keeps getting weirder and weirder, man. New data from the James Webb Space Telescope might actually be the most important news story that no one's talking about. It invites us to consider whether we're going to freak out, like the Commies, or rejoice in the glory of God, like civilized people. It's possible Christopher Marlowe can help us tell the difference. But probably we'll just keep yelling at each other online!

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    Read the latest about James Webb:

    https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1037233

    https://www.astronomy.com/science/we-just-discovered-the-impossible-giant-young-galaxies-shake-up-our-understanding-of-the-early-universe/

  • Lying awake one night, I pulled out my Japanese grammar dictionary, as you do. And I suddenly realized some of the stuff in there--i.e., in Japanese, a language the Ancient Greeks had never heard of--could have been taken right out of Plato's Cratylus. What the heck is that about? And what does it have to do with the name of God? Answers to these and other questions, taken straight from my groggy 2am brain, on today's installment of Words, Words, Words.

    Pre-order my new book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: https://a.co/d/2QccOfM

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  • Will the real Merlin please stand up? Every major new development in scientific knowledge comes with a period of upheaval in what it means to do magic--or in what counts as magic, and what counts as science. This week, in providential synchronicity with a listener question, I wanted to talk about two twentieth-century depictions of Merlin in the age of industrial technology. Was he friend, foe, or fraud? Mark Twain and C.S. Lewis will help us decide. Also somebody, please, tell me what I'm supposed to think about the latest royal scandal.

    Pre-order my new book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: https://a.co/d/2QccOfM

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    Read Sabine Hossenfelder on Oppenheim's new theory of "post-quantum" gravity:

    https://nautil.us/the-end-of-the-dark-universe-531983/

    https://nautil.us/what-physicists-have-been-missing-506607/?_sp=9994ab18-0835-44f3-9a87-f15989a55825.1710844533125

  • Are the kids alright? Before you leap to respond "absolutely not," listen to content creator Isabel Brown argue that in fact there really is honest-to-goodness hope among members of--wait for it--Gen Z. As an ancient Millennial myself, I think this is great news. Isabel lays out the case for why Gen Z might actually be trending conservative culturally in her new book, The End of the Alphabet. Bored with the wokescolds and searching for meaning, the newest generation to come of age may have more going for it than its skeptics claim.

    Check out Isabel's Book, The End of the Alphabet: https://a.co/d/fO4QMWN

    Pre-order my new book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: https://a.co/d/2QccOfM

    Subscribe to my new joint Substack with Andrew Klavan (no relation): https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com

    Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/

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  • These days we tell a tidy little story: once there was magic, now there's reason. But there's another, older story that might be closer to the truth: once there was fake magic, now there's real magic. In fact, not only is that the story that many luminaries of the scientific revolution told--it's also a story that extends back before the scientific revolution, to the days of Merlin and King Arthur in the Medieval chronicles of English history. Scientists, meet Merlin: you guys have a lot in common.

    Pre-order my new book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: https://a.co/d/2QccOfM

    Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/

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    Read Scott Yenor's essay on the women of country music: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-first-ladies-of-country-music/

  • Oh, we're really in it now. On today's translation segment, I take a question that will lead us into the heart of magic, language, and human nature: what's in a name? Specifically, what's in God's name? Throughout the Bible, not just God but God's name is invoked as a stand-in for God himself. Figuring out why will take us through Greek philosophy, Medieval theology, Jewish wisdom literature, and magical thinking of the most intense kind. Let's dive in.

    Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/

    Pre-order my new book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: https://a.co/d/2QccOfM

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    Take a look at Ralston College's MA in the Humanities: https://www.ralston.ac/humanities-ma

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  • Are you a good magician, or a bad magician? This week, I start diving into the weird and complicated world of magic, from Disney to the Book of Acts. There's lots to say here, but let's start with what we want to avoid, namely: stealing people's voices and usurping the throne. In a deep cut from back when Disney wasn't awful, I hereby present: the Ursula-Jafar Theory of Bad Magic.

    Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/

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  • YOU ARE ENTIRELY A STAR CHILD! Maybe you've seen the internet meme where someone--or perhaps some program--translates the lyrics of Smash Mouth's "All Star" into Aramaic and then back into ornate, florid English. For '90s kids who grew up screaming those lyrics, this is hilarious. But it's also kind of revealing about our assumptions when it comes to register in translation. Why does the process of going into Aramaic, then back into English, end you up in a higher register than the original? Answers to these and other questions on a new installment of Words, Words, Words.

    Plus, here's a new essay on translation by yours truly in the Claremont Review of Books: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/homer-without-heroes/

    Pre-order my new book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: https://a.co/d/2QccOfM

    Subscribe to my new joint Substack with Andrew Klavan (no relation): https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com

    Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/

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  • They’re putting chips! In people’s brains! We have to talk about it. But this is Young Heretics—so let’s not talk about it from a panicked, world-is-ending catastrophe mindset, or from a naïve, tech-will-save us progressive mindset. With one eye on tradition and one eye on the future, I want to embark this week on an attempt to seriously argue that what we’re doing with tech is, and always has been, actual magic—with all the enticements and dangers that come along with that.

    Pre-order my new book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: https://a.co/d/2QccOfM

    Subscribe to my new joint Substack with Andrew Klavan (no relation): https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com

    Take a look at Ralston College's MA in the Humanities: https://www.ralston.ac/humanities-ma

    Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/

    Sign up to be in the mailbag: https://rejoiceevermore.substack.com/

  • I'm joined today by Johnny Burtka, whose new Gateway to Statesmanship is a collection of writings on one of our most neglected virtues. Statesmanship is the art of leading in complex and difficult times, especially when all of the options on the table involve painful trade-offs (sound familiar?). Johnny and I discuss the changing conditions of history, the fight over "Christian nationalism," and what it would mean for a modern politician to recover the ancient virtue of prudence.

    Pick up Johnny's book, Gateway to Statesmanship: https://a.co/d/5XJ3C0j

    Pre-order my new book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: https://a.co/d/2QccOfM

    Subscribe to my new joint Substack with Andrew Klavan (no relation): https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com

    Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/

    Sign up to be in the mailbag: https://rejoiceevermore.substack.com/

  • Since last we spoke, I have literally traveled around the world--and I can say with certainty there's nowhere I'd rather be than here. This week, a few reflections from my trip to Cambodia about what every culture has to grapple with when it comes to depicting God--and what's unique to the Bible. No one has ever seen God. So how can anyone know him? It's a question fundamental to both art and science, and absolutely everyone everywhere has to face it.

    Pre-order my new book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: https://a.co/d/2QccOfM

    Subscribe to my new joint Substack with Andrew Klavan (no relation): https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com

    Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/

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  • Why is the Gen Z Bible a joke and not a translation? In this installment of our series on register, I'm doing a close reading (yes, actually) of a passage from the Gen Z Bible. Bear with me, because there's actually a method to my madness, and it speaks to the strengths and weaknesses of another, much more widely used version of the bible--the Message.

    Pre-order my new book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: https://a.co/d/2QccOfM

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  • Is it spirit or flesh? Matter or form? Symbol or symbolized? On this episode I want to argue that these questions aren't only religious questions--or rather, they're religious questions that cut right to the heart of reality. They've become newly important as anti-humanists propose to leave our embodied life as human beings behind. Discard the spirit and you get senseless matter; discard the matter and you get heartless calculation. Only with the two combined can we be fully human.

    Pre-order my new book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: https://a.co/d/2QccOfM

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    Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/

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  • I've got a new book coming out! Light of the Mind, Light of the World: How New Science is Illuminating Ancient Truths about God will come out on August 13, and it's available now for pre-order. We are confronted today by a dark philosophy that views the world as a machine and humanity as a mistake. But as listeners of Young Heretics know, this philosophy is not only evil: it's also hopelessly out of date. Light of the Mind, Light of the World is a story of how God reveals himself through science and scripture alike. It's an ancient message, and an urgent one for our times.

    Pre-order now and be one of the first to get your copy!

    https://a.co/d/2QccOfM

    https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Light-of-the-Mind-Light-of-the-World/Spencer-Klavan/9781684515332

  • The veneration of icons is one of the longest-lasting and most intense controversies in the history of the church. But it's not just a matter of religious practice: it also happens to touch on even more ancient and profound issues in the nature of perception and reality. So, just exactly what Young Heretics has been all about this year! Thanks to encouragement from you guys, I'm going deeper on the subject of icons, art, and reality (though not much deeper on the whole Travis Kelce/Taylor Swift situation--but Tay does feature.)

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    Pick up my book, How to Save the West: https://a.co/d/9S57cfh

  • Is the Message a good translation of the Bible? Is it even a translation? This is one of the questions I get asked all the time, and with good reason: people like the vividness of a more plainspoken translation, but they worry about the accuracy of bringing the Bible so far down to earth. How can we tell the difference between a faithful but idiomatic translation, and one that goes off the reservation? How do translators think about these things, and how should we? It's such a profound issue that I'm going to do a few episodes about it, dipping into ancient Greek literary criticism, cockney slang, and the French translation of Harry Potter to explain how we ought to think about tone and register. Someone oughta stop me: I am having way too much fun.

    Subscribe to my new joint Substack with Andrew Klavan (no relation): https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com

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    Pick up my book, How to Save the West: https://a.co/d/9S57cfh

    Check out the Guardian's guide to Cockney slang:

    https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jun/09/guide-to-cockney-rhyming-slang

  • Today I'm tackling (no pun intended) a very important philosophical question of our age: why does anyone care what Taylor Swift thinks? No, seriously--that's a real question. It's basically the one that Plato deals with in his Ion. Trying to answer it can lead us to some pretty fascinating insights about the nature of celebrity and even reality itself. Who would have thought the Biden Administration's efforts at courting celebrity would take us into 9th-century Thessalonikē and the Eastern Church's battle over icons? But here we are. Only on Young Heretics, folks.

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    Pick up my book, How to Save the West: https://a.co/d/9S57cfh

  • "This sickness is not unto death, but..." what? On this episode of Words, Words, Words, I answer a listener question about how to understand what Jesus says about Lazarus' illness shortly before healing him. It's a juicy question that leads into all sorts of issues about ambiguity (good and bad) and how to understand the Bible.

    Subscribe to my new joint Substack with Andrew Klavan (no relation): https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com

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    Pick up my book, How to Save the West: https://a.co/d/9S57cfh

  • People are fighting online (shocking, I know) about whether therapy is a godsend, a scam, or something in between. Without delving too deep into the Twitter weeds, we can actually extract a pretty important insight from this debate: whatever the merits or drawback of any particular therapeutic practice, our understanding of spiritual matters--our actual psychology or "study of the soul"--is badly in need of a reboot. As part of my ongoing investigation into the relationship between the inner and outer life, I take a look at what T.S. Eliot and Freud have to say about the nature of spiritual life.

    Subscribe to my new joint Substack with Andrew Klavan (no relation): https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com

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    Pick up my book, How to Save the West: https://a.co/d/9S57cfh

    More on the "chemical theory" of depression: https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/articles/a-popular-theory-of-depression-wasnt-debunked-by-a-new-review-it-got-debunked-years-ago-363986

  • In this new occasional series, I want to try and help you guys answer some of the questions you often ask about translation--how it works, what challenges it presents, and how to pick a good edition of a work originally written in a foreign language you don't speak. Each time I'll pick a small sentence from a famous work--this time it's the first line of Homer's Iliad--and talk through some of the questions that it raises.

    Subscribe to my new joint Substack with Andrew Klavan (no relation): https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com

    Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/

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    Pick up my book, How to Save the West: https://a.co/d/9S57cfh