Christians Reading Classics
Episodes
55 episodes
Billy Budd, with Christine Norvell
A beautiful story can still be brutal, and Billy Budd proves it. Christine Norvell, author of The Sycamore Fig Tree, joins to discuss Melville’s unforgettable portrait of a sailor who seems almost made for admiration—which makes his tr...
Aristotle, with Philip Freeman
Aristotle is everywhere in Western civilization, but most of us meet him as a difficult assignment instead of a real human being with a complicated story. We sit down with classicist and biographer Philip Freeman, author of Aristotle: The First...
Howard Thurman For Our Time with Myles Werntz
We’re joined by Miles Werntz, associate professor of theology at Abilene Christian University and editor of Nothing Can Separate Us: Healing for Souls and Nations, a reader of Thurman’s writings. Together we trace Thurman’s story from ...
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, with Daniel McInerny
The complicated struggle of faith is no new phenomenon. Philosopher and novelist Daniel McInerny joins today to revisit Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and ask why this Catholic classic still feels like it is describing our own age...
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, with Eric Hutchinson
Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor known for his philosophical insights, penned his thoughts in a private notebook that became one of the most enduring classics of Western literature. In this episode, Nadya Williams speaks with Eric Hutchinson,...
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, with Daniel K. Williams
In this episode, we explore the enduring power of C.S. Lewis's 'Mere Christianity' and its place in the broader history of Christian apologetics. Daniel K. Williams, a historian and expert in apologetics, shares insights into what makes a work ...
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner, with Matt Stewart
Wallace Stegner scholar Matt Stewart talks with Nadya Williams about why quiet novels can hit harder than flashy ones and how Crossing to Safety turns friendship, academia, and marriage into real drama. We also ask what makes a classic, how boo...
A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter Miller with Brad Birzer
A monastery in the desert preserves the shattered remnants of civilisation after nuclear fire, and the relics include something chilling: the technical knowledge that could destroy the world all over again. That is the dark engine driving Walte...
Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson, with Cara Rogers Stevens
Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia is one of those rare books that can feel like a museum archive, a political manifesto, and a personal notebook all at once, and it still shapes how Americans argue about freedom. We sit down with histo...
Nolan's Odyssey and Epics with Jonathan Geltner, Eric Hutchinson, and Rob Wyllie
A Hollywood blockbuster can make “The Odyssey” feel like a parade of monsters and set pieces but Homer’s epic is stranger, quieter, and more demanding than that. We sit down with poets and scholars Jonathan Geltner, Eric Hutchinson, and Rob Wyl...
Augustine - Enchiridion and Morals of the Catholic Church with Joseph Lanier and Travis Montgomery
A pastor asks Augustine for a short summary of the Christian life, and Augustine delivers a compact handbook that is so honest it practically stops mid-sprint when it reaches love. That tension, between real-life limits and real spiritual depth...
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky with Maria Baer
A foggy train pulls into St Petersburg and two young men face each other across a third-class carriage. That opening scene from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot is our doorway into a novel that refuses to let anyone stay comfortable, especially when a pu...
Jack London: An American Classic with Elizabeth Stice
Elizabeth Stice, professor of history at Palm Beach Atlantic University, joins to discuss Jack London as an American classic. They explore London's wild life — oyster pirate, hobo, Klondike adventurer — and how it shaped works like Call of ...
The Declaration of Independence and the Classics with Brad Birzer
A single sentence can reorder a civilization, and “we hold these truths to be self-evident” is one of those sentences. Nadya Williams sits down with historian Dr Brad Birzer to read the Declaration of Independence closely and ask why it still s...
The Declaration of Independence with Matthew Spalding and Jake Meador
The Declaration of Independence is only a few paragraphs long, but it tries to do something enormous: justify a political break while teaching a moral vision of human equality, liberty, and rightful government. Nadya Williams and Jake Meador si...
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis with Oliver Traldi
What does it mean to love someone well — and what does it cost when that love curls inward? Nadya Williams and Oliver Traldi discuss C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces, tracing how Lewis reframes the myth of Cupid and Psyche to expose the...
East of Eden with Philip Bunn & Matthew H. Young
Steinbeck's East of Eden returns the Cain and Abel story twice over, tracing original sin, mimetic desire, and the fragile hope encoded in timshel across the arc of early American history. Philip Bunn and Matthew H. Young join...
James Fenimore Cooper with Dr. Wayne Franklin
James Fenimore Cooper gets filed away as “important” long before many of us actually read him, and that gap is the problem we wanted to solve. I’m joined by Dr. Wayne Franklin, one of the leading Cooper scholars and the author of major biograph...
The Journals of Lewis and Clark with Craig Fehrman
We treat the Lewis and Clark journals as a true American classic, reading them for voice, humour, and human detail rather than just as a schoolbook summary. With historian Craig Furman, we follow the expedition through science, hardship, Native...
Augustine's Confessions with Joey Sherrard
We sit with Augustine’s Confessions and feel how a 1,600-year-old prayer still names our restlessness with uncomfortable accuracy. We talk with pastor and author Joey Sherrard about reading Confessions as praise and truth-telling, and about rem...
Cassiodorus and Classical Education with Joseph Griffith and Joshua Kinlaw
Cassiodorus is the kind of historical figure who should be famous and somehow isn’t: a high-level Roman statesman who walks away from power and spends his later life trying to save Christian learning from collapse. That turn gives us one of the...
Petrarch's Canzoniere with A. M. Juster
Petrarch's Canzoniere — 366 poems written over 40 years in pursuit of a woman named Laura — introduced the sonnet to European literature and helped move poetry from Latin into the vernacular. It is also, as A.M. Juster's new translatio...
The Great Gatsby with Katy Carl
A century after its publication, The Great Gatsby still demands more of readers than its first audience was prepared to give. This conversation explores wh...
Great American Sermons with John Wilsey and Daniel K. Williams [FULL EPISODE]
What does it mean for a nation to read its own sermons? This America 250 conversation takes up four of them — Winthrop's A Model of Christian Charity, Edwards's Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Lincoln's Second Inaugural, and Kin...