27: Atheism, Dante, and the Music of the Spheres

Peter and Susannah speak with Esther Maria Magnis about her recent Plough release With or Without Me, a memoir of her father’s death from cancer and her own loss and gain of Christian faith. How can a shattered faith be rebuilt after tragedy? Then, they have a wide-ranging conversation with Sperello di Serego Alighieri, Dante’s descendant, about his book on his ancestor’s cosmology, The Sun and the Other Stars of Dante Alighieri: A Cosmographic Journey through the Divina Commedia. They also discuss the various dramas of Dr. Alighieri’s Dantean year, the 700th anniversary of his ancestor’s death, including a playful relitigation of his ancestor’s banishment trial. Then, they go full galaxy brain: How did Dante’s ideas look forward to contemporary post-Einsteinian concepts about the shape of the universe?