Welcome to Magdalen College’s podcasts. Subscribe to engaging conversations with faculty and friends of Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts about culture, books, teaching, and the Catholic life. The college offers two series, described below. We hope you will listen and join the conversation by letting us know your thoughts on the matters we discuss. Feel free to e-mail us with questions and topics you would like us to take up in future conversations.
This comprehensive series includes all of our recorded conversations with members of the faculty, guests, and friends, including Anthony Esolen, Peter Sampo, Mary Mumbach, and others.
This series includes our conversations with Anthony Esolen, the college’s writer-in-residence and member of the faculty.
Anthony Esolen discusses a forthcoming book—Unreal City—and the stirrings of what might become a commentary on the Gospel of John. He also takes up four great novels that have been overlooked too often by too many: The Betrothed, Vipers’ Tangle, The Clown, and Barrabas. Finally, he introduces and reads the dramatic monologue “Pontius Pilate to Claudius” from his poem The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord.
The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord by Anthony Esolen
In this dialogue, Mary Mumbach, a senior member of the college’s faculty, considers what it means to experience “an education for heroism.” Ranging widely to include Shakespeare, and Benedict XVI, she takes up the question of how we educate students to live heroically, seeking a wisdom born of imagination and paradox. While reflecting on the wisdom of her teachers, she offers thoughts on the place of the poetic imagination in the arts and in her life of teaching and learning.
In this conversation, Anthony Esolen takes up that unique Biblical language known as “NAB-ish” and considers what vandals have wrought upon our classic hymns. He takes us through his teaching of “The Literature of Spiritual Crisis”—Cicero, Boethius, and Shakespeare—and renders his judgement on what he considers to be the greatest play ever written. Dr. Esolen also gives us an unforgettable reading of his dramatic monologue, “Saint Peter,” from his poem “The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord” (XIV).
The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord by Anthony Esolen
A conversation with Anthony Esolen about the vibrancy and life-giving power of the classroom and the hope that today’s Catholic students can give us for the future of the Church and society. Dr. Esolen also discusses and reads two lyrics from his poem, “The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord” (16 and 29), considers the diversity of blessedness, and suggests New Jersey’s role in inspiring Dante’s great poem.
The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord by Anthony Esolen
A conversation with Mary Mumbach, a senior member of the college’s faculty and Dean emerita, about the urgency of liberal education. Throughout the conversation she considers the nature of liberal education and teaching while reflecting on her own teachers. She also considers how the teacher, the curriculum, classic books, and the concept of paideia cohere and are ordered to a transcendent purpose within her vision of liberal education.
A conversation with Anthony Esolen about Sigrid Undset and how her life and work teach us not only about the past and ourselves but also how it indicates a way forward in our current moment. He also takes up the categories of Catholic literature and overlooked authors such as Henryk Sienkiewicz. Esolen concludes by discussing and reading a dramatic monologue from his poem, The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Bartimaeus) and reflects on the forgotten purpose of poetry and art.
The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord by Anthony Esolen
Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero by Henryk Sienkiewicz
“To heck with college professors,” he says halfway through. In this conversation, Anthony Esolen discusses reading and teaching Whitman and Eliot and considers the paradox of classically trained revolutionaries in the arts. Dr. Esolen also introduces and discusses his poem The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord and reads a hymn from that poem (17). Be sure not to miss his impersonation of Marlon Brando.
The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord by Anthony Esolen
T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland
“Theology After the Revolution” by R.R. Reno
With “Good afternoon, my fellow Americans,” Dr. Peter Sampo, the college’s founding president, begins this address on the occasion of the college’s forty-first commencement exercises at which he received an honorary degree. In this address Dr. Sampo considers the extraordinary education the college offers within the broader landscape of contemporary culture, concluding with a call to live lives of extraordinary courage.