PODCAST · religion
Mosaic Ark
by Rachel Fulton Brown
Join Professor Rachel Fulton Brown and her crew for a guided tour of the history, culture, and mythology of the medieval and postmodern West. Inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Mythopoeia,” our mission is to re-enchant the world by presenting a new perspective on the great mosaic of Creation. Livestreams weekly on YouTube, Telegram and at Unauthorized.tv. Visit our website at DragonCommonRoom.com for bios, video links, and more Tolkien-inspired stories and art.
Episodes
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179 To Grok or Not to Grok?
In the Disney classic Snow White, a queen looks at a flat, reflective surface, and asks it this question: “Magic mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” The magic mirror gives the queen an answer she did not want to hear, and so an evil plot is hatched against her poor, sweet...
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178 To Eternity and Beyond!
Elon Musk wants to save humanity by building a ship to take us to Mars and beyond; he wants to find a way to save the consciousness, the memory, of humanity so that it does not perish when Earth eventually does. He has spent a fair amount of time speaking about this over the past few years as his...
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177 Quest for Fantasyland
The Professor is prepping for a panel that she is going to participate in at BasedCon next week, and fellow poet Quinn Kimball is here to help! For the panel, she has been asked to think about why “so many fantasy worlds default to a vaguely medieval hereditary monarchy,” but before she can…
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176 Quest for the Chosen One
Based Con is coming up in a couple weeks, and the Professor wanted to brainstorm some ideas for one of the panels on which she is appearing, “The Case Against the Chosen One.” What’s all the fuss about “the chosen one” in fiction, and why do both authors and audiences find it so appealing? Is it...
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175 The Pursuit of Liberty
The Mosaic Ark was back this week to celebrate our 4th anniversary of streaming! On our last stream, we discussed the Declaration of Independence, and how its professed right of "the pursuit of happiness" was influenced by Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Man.” After that broadcast, KC asked the...
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174 Self-Evident Truths
On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies continued their discussion of Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Man,” and in particular its relationship to that part of the Declaration of Independence that lists one of man’s inalienable rights — the pursuit of happiness. We thought that, in its day, that phrase,...
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173 Lord of the Memes
Two hundred and fifty years ago this month on July 4th, the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed in the city of Philadelphia, in a rhetorical shot heard ‘round the world aimed at King George III, head of the most powerful empire in the world. By August 2nd of that same year, fifty-six men,...
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172 Pope's American Odyssey
Do you admire Homer’s “Odyssey”? Do you think that its telling is sacrosanct? Do you trust the good intentions of director Christopher Nolan’s current “accessible” retelling of this epic in film, or do you think it’s just rage bait? And why does it even matter? “Well, good stories always matter,”...
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171 Unlocking the Alchemy
On tonight’s episode, the ladies were joined by the mighty Quinn! Dragon Common Room member and fellow poet Quinn Kimball joined us for a discussion of Draco Alchemicus Act II —The Court. Quinn noted that the story is full of symbolism and references to important trends and events in history, and...
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170 Wyrd Poetry: Verses for the End of Time
In this episode, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown speaks with Kimberly Crilly about her newly-published book of verse, Wyrd Poetry. The book includes three short stories in poetic form, each themed for Halloween, a holiday which Kimberly will unabashedly tell you she loves! But there are larger...
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169 Kayfabe and the Death of Drake
The Professor's little dog Drake died on May 24, and the world feels like it is ending. But what is real, and what is kayfabe? Tucker Carlson tells us the American Empire has ended, but the world seems to be enjoying visiting America for the World Cup. Was JRR Tolkien really a white supremacist…
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168 No Kings? Two Kings!
Last week, the US Congress gave a standing ovation to King Charles III as he addressed them in the House Chamber as part of his and Queen Camilla’s official state visit to the White House. Some reading this scenario might be confused about why hundreds of politicians who, mere weeks ago, were...
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167 Watch the Waterways
An Estonian proverb says, “He who steers must watch the horizon.” There is probably no shortage of maritime proverbs around the world, but this one seemed most appropriate for the Mosaic Ark’s discussion for tonight, which was “Watch the waterways!” President Trump, captain of our particular…
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166 Draco Alchemicus Act 2
On this week’s Mosaic Ark, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown and Kimberly Crilly were very proud to announce the release of the second book in the Draco Alchemicus series, Act 2: The Court. Listen as they read excerpts of this second installment in the Dragon Common Room’s epic poem and talk about...
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165 Our Lady and the Dragons with Keith Berubé
“Hail Mary full of grace, punch the devil in the face.” So says the popular meme that goes alongside a medieval illustration of Mary, the mother of Christ, literally punching the devil in the face. Does this sound childish simply because it rhymes? Allow Professor Rachel Fulton Brown and KC to...
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164 Reading Great Catholic Poetry with Sally Read
On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies were joined by Catholic poet Sally Read, who discussed her journey as a writer. Though she started her career as a psychiatric nurse and atheist co-writing a book about women’s experiences with their physical bodies, she became a poet and a Christian through...
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163 Empire of the Aetherczar
Dr. Hans G. Schantz joins the Professor for a virtual roadtrip through the history of electromagnetism. Along the way, we remark on the importance of studying history for catching the errors in the science, review the significance of Harold Innis's insights into the media effects on space and…
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162 Beckett & Clive: The East India Company and the Empire of Greed
You might have heard about the humorous meme making its way around the internet over the past several years which states, “We revolted against the British because they taxed our breakfast beverage.” Well, yes and no. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t really about the tea, or the tiny tax on the tea. It…
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161 Alien Invasion
In the very entertaining 1996 summer blockbuster movie “Independence Day,” President Whitmore is told of the alien tech that has been hidden and studied in Area 51 for years, the cost of which was hidden through stories planted in the media about creative accounting. Hollywood has come out with...
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160 Empire of the Robots and the Bias of Communication
On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the Professor and KC talk about the McLuhan space we currently inhabit, where “the medium is the message.” The world is in the midst of a digital revolution with the introduction of very rapidly improving “artificial intelligence,” where the gathering and dissemination…
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159 Joseph the Carpenter
On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies were joined by Catholic artist Joseph Maki. Inspired by the great European craftsmen who built the churches of the Middle Ages, Joseph is a woodworker and sculptor who creates beautiful works of art that hold a sacred purpose within the Catholic Mass. We…
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158 How We Know Evolution is a Myth
Why do men hold on so tightly to myths that have been scientifically disproven, defending them with the religious fervor of a nineteenth-century high church Anglican? On this week’s Mosaic Ark, we discussed the tale of two such men. Both challenged their church’s teachings; one proved that humans...
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157 Tolkien's Magic Tree
Was the world of Middle Earth, created by JRR Tolkien, Christian? Would it help answering that question to know that Tolkien’s initials were actually JRPRT, and that the “P” was for Phillip, more specifically his patron saint, Philip Neri? Or that Tolkien studied under Father Morgan at the...
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156 Is Die Hard a Christmas Movie?
On this week’s Mosaic Ark, we spoke with Tyler Hummel about his new book, Is Die Hard a Christmas Movie? And Other Questions About The True Meaning of Christmas Films. What started out as an amusing observation that many people considered Die Hard to be their favorite Christmas film led Tyler to...
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155 Is Stranger Things for children? We ask Alice!
The debate has been raging over the past week. Does presenting evil or immoral material in literature or movies cause people to be desensitized to it, or even to seek it out? Did we say the past week? We’re sorry, we meant to say that this debate has been raging over the past 160 years, ever…
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154 Thanksgiving for Stranger Things
This week the ladies of the Mosaic Ark are back after a four-week break just in time to obsess over the first installment of the final season of Stranger Things. Along with other obsessive fans in the world, we’ve been engaging in conjectures about the direction of the story and how it will end....
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153 The Monsters of Stranger Things
What makes a monster a monster? In this episode, we continue our discussion of Stranger Things, focusing appropriately enough for Halloween night on the monsters. From the Demogorgon of season 1, to Henry Creel’s transformation into Vecna in season 4, we tried to determine exactly why each of the...
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152 The Lost Innocence of Stranger Things
On last week’s episode of The Mosaic Ark, the ladies were reveling in the nostalgia of the 1980s that Stranger Things presents; this week we wondered how to pinpoint the source of that strong nostalgic feeling. Though the show takes place during what were our high school years, the time period...
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151 Gaming the Nostalgic Horror of Stranger Things, Season 1
What story are we in? This is the question the ladies of the Mosaic Ark asked ourselves while watching Season 1 of the Duffer Brothers’ amazing series, Stranger Things. As everyone knows, it is a nostalgic trip back to the early 1980s with strong elements from the movies of Steven King, Steven...
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150 Tolkien and the Recovery of Fantasy with Robert J. Dobie
This week the ladies of the Mosaic Ark welcomed Professor Robert J. Dobie aboard to discuss his book The Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien, Mythopoeia and the Recovery of Creation. Dobie is a Professor and Chair of Philosophy at LaSalle University in Philadelphia. He specializes in the medieval...
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149 Scipio’s Cosmic Trip
On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies continued their discussion of “The Dream of Scipio,” that short, narrative work written by Cicero which served as an instructive parable about civic duty to the citizens of Rome. However mundane that purpose may have been, its descriptions of what Romans...
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148 Dreaming the Dream of Cicero's Scipio
In Acts, St. Paul talked of prophesy and visions and dreams, and so these are very Christian actions; yes? But in the Roman orator Cicero’s “Dream of Scipio,” Cicero writes of both a vision and a prophesy that was experienced by the pagan Scipio in his dream. This work presented a model of…
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147 Praying the Psalms in Times of Need with Robert Keim
This week the ladies of the Mosaic Ark welcomed medieval scholar Robert Keim, who discussed his translation of the psalms which uses some of the lost vocabulary of medieval England. Professor Keim is in love with the Lord; he is also in love with the English language. He believes that the power…
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147 Praying the Psalms in Times of Need with Robert Keim
This week the ladies of the Mosaic Ark welcomed medieval scholar Robert Keim, who discussed his translation of the psalms which uses some of the lost vocabulary of medieval England. Professor Keim is in love with the Lord; he is also in love with the English language. He believes that the power…
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146 Who is more spiritual—women or men?
This week the ladies of the Mosaic Ark took a break from talking about C.S. Lewis’s “The Discarded Image” so that we could tackle something a little easier, the war between the sexes! At the end of last week’s stream, KC said something she thought everyone knew — that women are more spiritual…
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145 Saving the Appearances
How do you re-enchant the world? We’ve asked that question in past streams, but this week the ladies of the Mosaic Ark asked it in a more direct way that goes back to the very point in history where the “enchantment” was lost, when Isaac Newton published his laws of motion in his book…
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144 Spot the Simulation
Do you ever feel like you’re in a simulation? Have you seen this show before? Heard this song before? Had this conversation before? Read this book before? We know what C.S. Lewis would say about the last question. The answer is yes, you have read this book before, because all books in our…
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143 The Discarded Image, or Why Nothing Seems Real
What is the “discarded image” that C.S. Lewis spoke about in his lectures at Oxford University, and why did he think it was necessary for his literature students to know what it was? This week the ladies discussed the first few chapters of the collections of Lewis’ lectures called The Discarded...
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Mosaic Ark 142 Secrets of the Spectrum with Hans G. Schantz
On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies were joined by theoretical physicist and author Hans G. Schantz. Hans is a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction. His fiction includes the alternate science techno-thrillers The Hidden Truth, A Rambling Wreck, and The Brave and the Bold. He also…
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Mosaic Ark 141 AI & the Catholic Artist with S. Kirk Pierzchala
On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies were joined by writer Sarah Pierzchala, author of the award winning Cyberpunk series of novels, “Beyond Cascadia,” which Sarah describes as “Blade Runner meets The Brothers Karamazov.” As a Catholic wife, mother and artist, from a family of artists, Sarah has…
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Mosaic Ark 140 Grimmer Arts Artist Reveal
On tonight’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies were joined by Aisha Fajardo of Grimmer Arts. Aisha has years of experience illustrating high fantasy, and her artwork in this area is captivating, but she was looking for an opportunity to create something with deeper meaning, something that wasn’t just more...
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Mosaic Ark 139 Rachel's Roman Holiday
Ciao! La professoressa Fulton Brown è tornata da Roma! And what did she see on her Roman Holiday? Maybe a better question would be, what did she feel? Fresh back from Italy and giving a talk on St. Francis as the great herald of the King, the Professor regales KC with the amazing feeling she got…
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Mosaic Ark 138 Kroese's Kickstarter
On tonight’s episode of the Mosaic Ark, the ladies welcomed BasedCon founder and author Rob Kroese to talk about his latest Kickstarter (his fifteenth!) for his new book series, Ransom’s Law, which he described as a space opera where Better Call Saul meets The Expanse. Rob is a prolific writer…
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Mosaic Ark 137 Writing Christian Poetry with Quinn T. Kimball
Quinn Kimball joined the ladies on tonight’s Mosaic Ark to discuss his epic fantasy poem, The Monster and the Foundling. Quinn joined Professor Rachel Fulton Brown’s Telegram chat, the Dragon Common Room, way back in the Covid days of 2020. He saw her challenge to learn to write poetry and...
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Mosaic Ark 136 Riot Season Reruns
“The madness of crowds.” I’m sure everyone has heard that phrase before. It is often used to describe the behavior of mobs, as if the individual participants, through some mass psychosis contagion, cease to be individuals and act as one mad, destructive being. But is it true? On this week’s…
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Mosaic Ark 135 Bleak House Challenge
We’re not going to sugar coat this. The state of education is bleak. There seems to be a dense fog clouding the minds of students, who are incapable of reading seven randomly chosen paragraphs from a work of nineteenth-century serial fiction without understanding more than the basic facts…
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Mosaic Ark 134 Habemus Papam—and he's an Augustinian!
Habemus papam! We have a Pope! And not just any pope, we have an American pope, and an Augustinian one at that. Robert Francis Prevost, a priest of the Augustinian order, born and raised on the south side of Chicago, was elected to the Papacy on May 8, 2025. He took the name Pope Leo XIV, and…
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Mosaic Ark 133 The Hunchback of Hollywood
A killer is stalking Hollywood, and it is up to the hunchback to hunt him down. But where in the Getty’s manuscripts can he find the clue to the killer's identity? In David Angsten’s The Medievalist, a noir style murder mystery set around Hollywood, a Catholic monk’s life has taken a long and...
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Mosaic Ark 132 What's in the jar of dirt?
“I’ve got a jar of dirt! And guess what’s inside it!” Captain Jack Sparrow seemed to think that he had the key to controlling his fate with the contents of a jar of dirt. He wasn’t entirely wrong! The jar was holding the heart of Davy Jones, and he who held it controlled the oceans; he who...
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Mosaic Ark 131 Easter Week
He is Risen! Alleluia! Alleluia! No matter what is going on in the world this week, nothing will be more important than this, that Jesus Christ is risen — Alleluia! Despite this most significant of Christian seasons, there were many other things going on in the world, too. There was the death of…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Join Professor Rachel Fulton Brown and her crew for a guided tour of the history, culture, and mythology of the medieval and postmodern West. Inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Mythopoeia,” our mission is to re-enchant the world by presenting a new perspective on the great mosaic of Creation. Livestreams weekly on YouTube, Telegram and at Unauthorized.tv. Visit our website at DragonCommonRoom.com for bios, video links, and more Tolkien-inspired stories and art.
HOSTED BY
Rachel Fulton Brown
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Mosaic Ark have?
Mosaic Ark currently has 180 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Mosaic Ark about?
Join Professor Rachel Fulton Brown and her crew for a guided tour of the history, culture, and mythology of the medieval and postmodern West. Inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Mythopoeia,” our mission is to re-enchant the world by presenting a new perspective on the great mosaic of Creation....
How often does Mosaic Ark release new episodes?
Mosaic Ark publishes regularly with 180 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Mosaic Ark?
You can listen to Mosaic Ark on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Mosaic Ark?
Mosaic Ark is created and hosted by Rachel Fulton Brown.
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