General Introduction – Skeleton crew – Cold weather – No listener feedback Opera as Super-Art – 16th-century Italy – Its roots in humanism and classicism – Connections to tragedy –…

The art of liveblogging the death of Osama bin Laden The Twitter feed in question Stephen Prothero on the sea burial of Osama bin Laden Jeff Wright asks some questions…

RIP John Shawcross, Milton scholar. How Top Gun killed the American movie. Jerry Salyer warns against (and admits the inevitability of) a knee-jerk Europhobia. Leonard Davis demonstrates the painful insularity…

Teka Childress interviews four writers on distributionism as a follow-up to last week’s introduction. Christ the Center talks politics with civility and intelligence. CCEL offers a selection of historic Christian…

Israeli chess grandmaster Alik Gershon sets a world record by  beating 458 of 523 opponents simultaneously. Jenny Truax introduces distributism, an alternative to capitalism and socialism and communism. John Stackhouse…

Susan McWilliams laments that Modern Family has benefits that actual modern life has stripped away from most families. Patrick Deneen wonders whether 18th-century liberalism had inherent in its project the…

General Introduction – Football season begins – What’s on the blog? – An argument about Jaws Our History with Superheroes – Crib notes: Only Gilmour was way into comics –…

I’ve actually missed two opportunities to talk about Jaws on our podcast. I realized mere hours after recording our episode on epic movies that, in other contexts, I’d made the…

We’re a little rusty, but give us a break: It’s been a month. Also: No bibliography today. Also also: Our special guest is my wife, Victoria Reynolds Farmer. General Introduction…

Our theme song this week is Chagall Guevara’s “Murder in the Big House” from their self-titled 1991 album–a forgotten gem. General Introduction – The Christian Humanist Circus – Responses to…

Another Gilmour-less episode. It may be until tomorrow before it gets added to iTunes, etc. I’m sure you’ll recognize the theme music. General Introduction – No Nathan – What’s on…

This week’s music: The Wallflowers’ “6th Avenue Heartache,” from Bringing Down the Horse (1996). General Introduction – Stamps, pogs, and other collections – What’s on the blog this week? –…

This week’s music: “Her Right Hand Rules the World,” by They Sang As They Slew, from Get Well (Northern Records, 2004). Great band, great record, great Tolkien reference. General Introduction…

General Introduction – An apology for Nathan Gilmour’s absence – A plug for our website – A eulogy for J.D. Salinger What Is Comedy? – Comedy in a cosmic sense…