PODCAST · arts
Paideia Today
by Wil Friesen
Paideia Today is a podcast in which Dr. Scott Masson and Dr. Bill Friesen, professors of English, discuss the great works of western literature. We do so from a now largely lost classical perspective, attempting to illustrate why 2800 years of the greatest thinkers valued these works above all others as keys to understanding the human condition.
Episodes
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Paideia Today, Season Four, Episode Twelve, William Faulkner
William Faulkner is acknowledge to be one of the greatest American authors of the 20th century. His scintillating writing, masterful plots, mesmerizing characters, and shocking perspective make him the other great pioneer of Southern Gothic (along with Flannery O'Connor) and one of the Southern...
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Paidiea Today, Season Four, Episode Eleven, Samuel Beckett
Today we discuss a flagship work of Post-Modernism, Waiting for Godot. This is one of the seminal works which signals the way forward for culture and its art in the Post-Modernist era (1945-2001). We explore the evolution of our current angst, nihilism and vast loneliness. It is easy to dismiss...
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Paideia Today, Season Four, Episode Ten, J.R.R. Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) is the greatest author of the the twentieth century. At least he is by popular acclaim. In the eyes of the critics and the literary establishment, he has been virtually ignored. In this episode we open what could be a lengthy discussion of this author, seeking to…
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Paideia Today, Season Four, Episode Nine, Kafka
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His reputation, however, only really advanced in the light of the atrocities of the Nazi regime. Kafka was Jewish. Like Orwell, Kafka's...
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Paideia Today, Season Four, Episode Eight, Flannery O'Connor
Today's episode focuses on Flannery O'Connor (1925–64), an American writer famed for her 'southern Gothic' style. We will read O'Connor as a Christian realist who portrays the depravity of the human condition with unusual acuity, set as it is in sharp relief against the backdrop of Southern...
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Paideia Today, Season Four, Episode Seven, George Orwell
In today's episode of Paideia Today, we look at the famed British novelist George Orwell (1903-50), whose work is so harrowing the adjective Orwellian has come to describe the peculiarly modern form of totalitarian technocracy.
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Paideia Today, Season Four, Episode Six, W.B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, prose writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. We spend the majority of the episode looking at Yeats' most famous poem and observe the way it reflects the worldview of his era.
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Paideia Today, Season Four, Episode Five, W.H. Auden
W.H. Auden (1907 –1973) is one of the great poets of the twentieth century. Some regard him as a lesser poet to Yeats and Eliot - we discuss that here - but he was also a prolific writer of prose essays and reviews on literary, political, psychological, and religious subjects. Unlike Eliot, who...
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Paideia Today, Season Four, Episode Four, T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot has been embraced as a great poet on both sides of the Atlantic. Born in the United States, Eliot emigrated to England and remained there. He became the key figure of the Modernist movement. We discuss Eliot's poetry as well as the movement itself in this week's episode.
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Paideia Today, Season Four, Episode Three, Conrad
Joseph Conrad is an extraordinary figure, not least because he wrote his novels in his second language. His novella Heart of Darkness is justly famous for its depiction of the evil of the human heart in the context of the 'scramble for Africa'. It has been variously described as a 'colonialist'…
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Paideia Today, Season Four, Episode Two, Thomas Hardy and A.E. Housman
Episode 2 of Season four again sets the foundation for the Modernist movement, looking at the two superb poetic craftsman, Thomas Hardy and A.E. Housman. What is noteworthy about the two, besides their aesthetic excellence, is the way they capture a fin-de-siecle cultural despair and express its...
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Paideia Today, Season Four, Episode One, Wilde
Season 4 of Paideia Today begins with the Irish writer Oscar Wilde. Wilde initiates literary modernism, which in turn sows the seeds of a sort of postmodernism rarely discussed by those tracing the history of ideas. It is vital, however, because it connects the pursuit of a rather ugly…
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Paideia Today, Season Three, Episdoe Fourteen, Tolstoy
For the conclusion of season 3 of Paideia Today we look at the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy, like Dostoevsky, engages with the modern alienation from life that progressive ideology and commitment to material advances. Rather than one of Tolstoy's magisterial novels like War and Peace or...
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Paideia Today, Season Three, Episode Thirteen, Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment catalogues the life of a young political idealist who commits two murders to fulfill his ambition. It is an exceptionally subtle and complex narrative, which not only leans on elements of Dostoevsky's own biography, but situates them within a Christian framework…
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Paideia Today, Season Three, Episode Twelve, Tennyson
Alfred, Lord Tennyson was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign and until recently was one of the most popular British poets. But he has been seriously neglected in recent years. In this episode of Paideia Today, we discuss his most important poem.
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Paideia Today, Season Three, Episode Eleven, Mary Shelly
Today's episode of Paideia Today looks at Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. This fascinating novel represents an amalgamation of various strands of the novel tradition, but arguably begins a new one, that of science fiction. In the process, Shelley also begins a prescient critique of the transhumanist...
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Paideia Today, Season Three, Episode Ten, Jane Austen
Jane Austen is without doubt one of the finest prose stylists and keenest observers of human nature. We discuss Austen as a novelist in the light of that eighteenth century genre, noting that her clear satire is what marks her as a great moral writer. The focus of our discussion is her splendid...
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Paideia Today, Season Three, Episode Nine, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge is credited with giving the definitive take on the imagination, the faculty all the Romantics claim marks their distinctive poetic experiment. But is Coleridge's definition actually more a critique of Romantic poetics than an expression of it? This episode begins by...
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Paideia Today, Season Three, Episode Eight, William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth is the poet most strongly identified with a literary movement we call Romantic. Today's episode discusses many of the complex features of that movement while also engaging with some of the work by the great poet.
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Paideia Today, Season Three, Episode Seven, Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is a colossal figure who bestrides the age lying between the age of Pope and the Romantics. In acknowledgement of his extraordinary erudition, he is often referred to as Dr. Johnson. Dr. Johnson made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, playwright,...
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Paideia Today, Season Three, Episode Six, Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal is the finest specimen of the age of satire and wit that succeeds that of Milton's age
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Paideia Today, Season Three, Episode Five, Milton
This final episode on Milton's Paradise Lost looks at the various ways in which Milton explores the area we now understand under the term psychology, seeing both paradise and hell respectively as the obedient or defiant relations of the character towards God. Milton in that sense 'internalizes'…
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Paideia Today, Season Three, Episode Four, Milton
The invocation at the outset of Milton's Paradise Lost announces that he will 'justify the ways of God to men." Yet most anthologies cut Book 3 of Paradise Lost, the Council of Heaven, in which the God explains the rationale for the lost paradise and all the events that ensue. This episode seeks…
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Paideia Today, Season Three, Episode Three, Milton
In our third episode on Milton's Paradise Lost, we look at Book 2. We emphasize Milton's theological commitments, rejecting the popular contemporary view that he is mixing our ideas of good and evil, as does the pantheist. Quite the contrary, Milton's depiction of Hell and the creatures banished...
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Paideia Today, Season Three, Episode Two, Milton
In today's episode of Paideia Today, we get into book one of Paradise Lost. We start by looking at his invocation of the Muse, and how he invokes the Classical epics of yore in order to acknowledge the vehicle of epic narrative while at the same time asserting that his is as much greater as his...
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Paideia Today, Season Three, Episode One, Milton
Season 3 of Paideia Today begins with the colossal figure of John Milton. Milton's Paradise Lost is arguably the greatest poem ever written, certainly the greatest in the English language. The church father Tertullian once famously asked, what does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? Milton's…
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Paidiea Today: Season Two, Episode Ten, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight III
In our final installment on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight we move on from discussing the symbolism of number to discussing the symbolism entailed in the 3 beasts that Gawain encounters. The author's artful use of parallelism leads to many interesting talking points throughout the episode
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Paideia Today: Season Two, Episode Eleven, Chaucer's "Pardoner's Tale"
Geoffrey Chaucer is often considered the 'father of English literature.' He is best known for his Canterbury Tales. He was also the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. But Chaucer was very much a Renaissance man, even before the...
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Paideia Today, Season Two, Episode Seventeen, George Herbert
George Herbert is arguably the foremost devotional lyric poet in the English language. Prodigiously gifted, his intention to serve as an Anglican priest was interrupted by the positions he was offered in public service. He functioned for seven years as Public Orator at Cambridge University before...
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Paidiea Today, Season Two, Episode Sixteen, John Donne
John Donne is an extraordinary literary figure. In addition to his fame as a poet, the foremost representative of the Metaphysical poets, he also served as a soldier. But it was his religious position that made him most famous in his day. Although he had been born into a Catholic family, after...
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Paidiea Today, Season Two, Episode Fifteen, The Cavalier Poets
Much of the once most famous renaissance poetry was written by the Cavalier Poets, though most of it is not read today. These were the poets whose motto was Carpe Diem and who epitomize the swashbuckling, devil may care attitude we tend to attribute to the renaissance to this day. What this...
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Paidiea Today, Season Two, Episode Fourteen, Shakespeare's Sonnets
Shakespeare's sonnets are comparatively neglected today but they are what Shakespeare himself thought would be his lasting legacy. We look at a few representative sonnets to discuss how they reflect upon Shakespeare's Elizabethan worldview while also playing with the conventions of the Italian...
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Paidiea Today, Season Two, Episode Thirteen, Shakespeare, Hamlet II
Dr. Masson and Dr. Friesen delve further into this fascinating play on the topics of evil, death and human agency.
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Paidiea Today, Season Two, Episode Twelve, Shakespeare's Hamlet
In this episode, Drs. Scott Masson and Bill Friesen explore one of the most iconic plays in western history: Hamlet. This Shakespearean tragedy has been considered by many famous authors to be the greatest play ever written.
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Paidiea Today: Season Two, Episode Nine - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
In our second of three podcasts on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, we explore a wide variety of issues ranging from the appearance of the Green Knight; to the significance of the pentangle on Gawain's shield; to the identity and nature of the two ladies that greet Sir Gawain when he appears in…
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Paideia Today: Season Two, Episode Eight - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight I
We return to our series after a lengthy COVID-induced hiatus looking at the medieval Romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In this first of two episodes we do a great deal of establishing the context of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
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Paideia Today: Season Two, Episode Seven - Dante II
In today's episode, we begin by looking at cosmology and the medieval synthesis of science with Christian truth in Dante's Divine Comedy. We do so by looking at some pictorial representations of Dante's cosmology in order to be able to visualize Dante's integration of small and, to the modern…
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Paideia Today: Season Two, Episode Six, Dante I
This week's episode begins a series of episodes on the extraordinary work composed at the outset of the fourteenth century by the great Italian poet Dante Alighieri. With his Christian understanding of the soul, Dante's epic poem is an imaginative and moral vision of this earthly life in the…
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Paideia Today: Season Two, Episode Five, Andreas
This episode looks at a little-read but fascinating Anglo-Saxon poem called Andreas, named after St. Andrew. Andreas is plainly patterned after Beowulf, but is more explicitly Christian in its literary features, particularly its symbolism. In the tale, Andreas is a missionary to a cannibalistic...
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Paideia Today: Season Two, Episode Four, Beowulf II
This week we discuss monsters and dragons! We begin by examining the qualities of Beowulf as an epic poem before going on to focus upon the three monsters that Beowulf faces. Each represents an aspect of evil more perilous than the last.
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Paideia Today: Season Two, Episode Three, Beowulf I
The great Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf is the subject of today's episode. We look at the strange history of the document, and its status as an epic. While it is very different than the Greco-Roman epics, we argue that it nonetheless deserves its status as an epic not only because of the...
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Paideia Today: Season Two, Episode Two, The Dark Ages
A common presentation of the period extending from the fall of Rome until the Renaissance is that of the 'dark ages'. But were the entire Middle Ages actually characterized by oppression, ignorance, and backwardness in areas like human rights, science, health, and the arts? We take issue with the...
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Paideia Today: Saints' Lives, Season Two, Episode One
In our first episode of Season 2 of Paideia Today, we look at the now-neglected genre of hagiography, and debunk the popular misconception that medieval hagiography was the product of weak artistry or even a form of propaganda, a type of embellished historical document recording superhuman...
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Paideia Today: Augustine, Episode Fourteen
Drs. Masson and Friesen discuss one of the most influential thinkers in western history: Augustine, whose thought undergirds great ranges of the western worldview.
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Paideia Today: The Aeneid, Episode Thirteen
Dr. Masson and Dr. Friesen discuss one of the most famous underworld scenes in western literature: Aeneas' journey to Dis.
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Paideia Today: The Aeneid, Episode Twelve
In this episode, Dr. Masson and Dr. Friesen discuss what is, beside the Bible, the most influential text in western history: The Aeneid.
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Paideia Today: Oedipus Rex, Episode Eleven
In this episode, Dr. Masson and Dr. Friesen discuss one of the most influential plays in western drama.
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Paideia Today: Greek Drama, Episode Ten
In this episode, Dr. Masson and Dr. Friesen discuss the origins, structure and aims of ancient Greek drama, and its overwhelming influence on the course of western culture.
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Paideia Today: The Odyssey, Episode Nine
Drs. Masson and Friesen discuss one of the earliest classical literary conceptions of death and the underworld as Odysseus journeys into Hades.
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Paideia Today: The Odyssey, Episode Eight
In this episode, Dr. Masson and Dr. Friesen discuss Telemachus, classical notions of coming of age and how this is bound up in the centrality of storytelling to the human experience.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Paideia Today is a podcast in which Dr. Scott Masson and Dr. Bill Friesen, professors of English, discuss the great works of western literature. We do so from a now largely lost classical perspective, attempting to illustrate why 2800 years of the greatest thinkers valued these works above all others as keys to understanding the human condition.
HOSTED BY
Wil Friesen
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Paideia Today have?
Paideia Today currently has 57 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Paideia Today about?
Paideia Today is a podcast in which Dr. Scott Masson and Dr. Bill Friesen, professors of English, discuss the great works of western literature. We do so from a now largely lost classical perspective, attempting to illustrate why 2800 years of the greatest thinkers valued these works above all...
How often does Paideia Today release new episodes?
Paideia Today has 57 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Paideia Today?
You can listen to Paideia Today 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 Paideia Today?
Paideia Today is created and hosted by Wil Friesen.
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