The Troubadour Podcast
"It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind." William Wordsworth The Troubadour Podcast invites you into a world where art is conversation and conversation is art. The conversations on this show will be with some living people and some dead writers of our past. I aim to make both equally entertaining and educational.In 1798 William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, which Wordsworth called an experiment to discover how far the language of everyday conversation is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure. With this publication, he set in motion the formal movement called "Romanticism." 220 years later the experiment is continued on this podcast. This podcast seeks to reach those of us who wish to improve our inner world, increase our stores of happiness, and yet not succumb to the mystical or the subjective.Here, in this place of the imagination, you will find many conversation with those humans creating things that interest the human mind.
The Troubadour Podcast
PT 2: Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Birth of Sci-Fi
On this episode I'll be reading the short story "The Birthmark" by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
A scientists deepest desire and motivation is to master nature in the same way that the artist represents nature.
In this episode we will explore the deeper motivations of Hawthorne's character creation: The Mad Scientist.
We will explore the nature of art and science, literature as an artform, science fiction as a genre, and how all of these ideas converge within Hawthornes short story.
The four short stories we are covering are:
1) Dr. Heidegger's Experiment
2) The Birthmark
3) Rappaccini's Daughter
4) The Artist of the Beautiful
This is science fiction not as it is, but as it should be!