The Auron MacIntyre Show - November 11, 2026


'Till We Have Faces'： CS Lewis' Hidden Masterpiece ｜ Guest： Nick Dixon ｜ 11⧸11⧸2026

Dave Chappelle Wants You Dead ｜ Guest： Peter Brimelow ｜ 11⧸9⧸26

Episode Stats


Length

53 minutes

Words per minute

204.24

Word count

10,942

Sentence count

120


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 hey everybody how's it going thanks for joining me this afternoon i've got a great stream with
00:00:12.380 a great guest that i think you're really going to enjoy before we get started today i just want to
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00:00:27.860 philosophers like nick land and curtis yarvin i've even read from some of their books like
00:00:33.100 xeno systems on the show while i'm discussing those uh those philosophies and of course they
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00:00:55.260 collection that's shopblazemedia.com all right guys well if you have been watching my show at
00:01:03.020 all you know that C.S. Lewis is one of my all-time favorite authors I love so many of his works
00:01:08.440 but I think his most underrated masterpiece is Till We Have Faces it's a retelling of the Greek
00:01:15.460 myth of Cupid and Psyche and I think it's really C.S. Lewis's most developed book one of has some
00:01:21.340 of his most developed characters and it's the last book that he wrote before he passed so i think it
00:01:26.680 has a very interesting interesting place and is deeply under read joining me today to talk about
00:01:32.120 that is uk commentator nick dixon who is himself a big fan of c.s lewis nick thank you so much for
00:01:38.600 coming on thanks for having me absolutely so we'll get into a rundown of the book and everything and
00:01:45.160 guys uh warning if you have not read this book there will be spoilers so if you're worried about
00:01:50.340 that, just we are going to go through the entirety of the book and its storyline. So just want to
00:01:55.340 give you a heads up at the beginning if you don't want that ruined for you. But before we go through
00:02:00.460 any of the events or the book or anything, I know you're a big C.S. Lewis fan. Can you talk to me
00:02:06.620 a little bit about why you love C.S. Lewis so much and where you think Till We Have Faces fits in his
00:02:12.960 wider bibliography? Yeah, absolutely. So I've become a kind of amateur C.S. Lewis scholar
00:02:18.240 by accident I don't know how like I'm not saying I'm up there with the scholars but
00:02:22.120 they're the only people that know more about C.S. Lewis than me are the professionals and then it's
00:02:25.880 me um and that's kind of it's kind of weird that that's happened when I was a kid I was reading
00:02:29.920 of course the Chronicles of Narnia which when I was growing up was as big as Harry Potter is
00:02:34.460 to subsequent generations you know they were massive when I was a kid we were mainly reading
00:02:38.420 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and it was on TV on the BBC and it was so magical and
00:02:42.600 I was growing up in the countryside essentially living in Narnia it sometimes felt like it was
00:02:46.720 really extraordinary experience to read lewis at that age then like many people probably i sort of
00:02:51.840 didn't really know much about his other work until i became an adult then somewhere along
00:02:56.240 the way i thought okay i'll reread c.s lewis or i'll read some of the works i haven't read
00:03:02.160 like the the abolition of man for example and all his uh apologetics mere christianity
00:03:08.960 and the problem of pain miracles one could go on there are so many and then i also read the
00:03:14.080 The Ransom trilogy, I'm not exactly sure why.
00:03:16.400 I decided, okay, I keep hearing about Lewis.
00:03:18.500 Somehow it was in the back of my mind to read him.
00:03:21.060 And then once I started, I just got obsessed with it
00:03:22.980 because he's so good
00:03:24.320 or because it was the right time for me or whatever.
00:03:26.720 And you find that books like Abolition of Man
00:03:28.860 are incredibly prophetic and that hideous strength,
00:03:32.320 which is in many ways the fictional exploration
00:03:34.420 of the themes of the Abolition of Man,
00:03:36.280 which Lewis says in the preface.
00:03:37.800 And you realize how politically prophetic he is.
00:03:39.700 And you realize what a sort of salient voice he is
00:03:42.200 for our times particularly our moral relativism and our materialism and our lack of belief in
00:03:47.900 universal moral values which is what he's addressing in abolition of man and mere christianity
00:03:52.820 particularly and so yes i just got hooked on lewis and my favorite is probably the ransom
00:03:57.900 trilogy but i then thought okay i haven't read this one this is one of the few till we have faces
00:04:03.340 that i haven't covered so i thought i better also read it where it fits it's tricky it's obviously
00:04:08.900 his last book as you said it's co-written almost by his wife joy davidman so it does feel quite
00:04:14.700 different he wanted to give her a credit on it and she said no because she said all i've done is help
00:04:19.400 you write more as yourself so she was being modest but he said to have a credit and then she didn't
00:04:24.440 get one but so in a way it reads almost like a portrait of her rather than although some have
00:04:30.320 argued it's really lewis's most subtly autobiographical work so you can go different
00:04:33.860 ways with that but it's very different from his other work i can see why people find it quite
00:04:37.700 difficult. It's a bit oblique. You might even say opaque at times. The ending very much justifies
00:04:43.240 it. The ending is extraordinary. But for some of the book, although the writing is extremely high
00:04:47.420 level, as you'd expect from Lewis, it is sort of a bit of a slog at times in a way, because it's
00:04:52.480 almost like a real life history. You could say it's almost imitating the gospels and it's history
00:04:57.120 and mythology. Not that I'm saying the gospels are not true because this is a fictional work, but
00:05:01.280 you could almost say it's like that. Or, you know, when you're reading like these real life
00:05:05.500 accounts like the life of allada equiano or something like that not that it's about slavery
00:05:10.240 or anything like that but it's so real at times that that it's sort of like oh this guy then died
00:05:15.240 and it's it's just fobbed off with a page it's almost like a diary so i can see why people find
00:05:19.480 it quite hard going but then at the end it's all made worthwhile but i do understand why a lot of
00:05:25.580 people say they struggle with it at first and then they find it in in the long term they realize it's
00:05:31.140 his best work but it's not as immediately fun as the ransom trilogy or certainly as the chronicles
00:05:36.100 of narnia where lewis tends to throw out lots of humorous asides and conversational quips this is
00:05:42.380 much more formalized and sort of it feels sort of more worked on in a way yeah there's a lot there
00:05:49.920 you're right of course that this is one of his uh works in which there isn't a lot of comedy or
00:05:55.500 levity there isn't a you know uh the big exciting action scenes i mean there's some but there it's
00:06:00.680 not there's no grand battles in the same way uh and ultimately it doesn't have uh it's a very
00:06:08.080 somber work uh and i think the thing that really throws people who are used to the lewis's style
00:06:14.160 is i i love css lewis's writing but in many ways his characters are usually kind of like
00:06:20.060 ideas draped in a character you know what i mean like they you know it's the representation
00:06:24.220 everything's very on the nose you know he's basically screaming the lion is jesus christ
00:06:29.040 you know the entire time you know it in a way it's almost ayn randian in like how uh the the
00:06:35.620 plot is kind of secondary to uh the message he's trying to portray or the the ideas he's trying to
00:06:42.460 explore in this work uh i think it's very different i think that you know the characters
00:06:47.560 are much more developed i think they're much more complex i don't think they come out and you know
00:06:52.420 obviously we'll get into the the story itself but as you're saying there that that third act
00:06:58.920 turn that he takes in this is just one of the best i've ever seen in literature and uh the
00:07:05.100 reason it's so so impactful is that he has uh written the character so convincingly in one
00:07:11.840 direction for two-thirds of the book that when it takes that turn it's it's it's very shocking you
00:07:18.180 get the whiplash and so uh that's just something that you never saw in any of his other works yeah
00:07:23.020 in his other works the good guys are the good guys the bad guys are the bad guys uh you know
00:07:27.180 you kind of see what you get the entire time.
00:07:29.920 There's not a lot of, you know, manipulation or hiding the ball.
00:07:35.100 And in this book, that is critical.
00:07:37.140 That is kind of the entire thing and what makes the work so beautiful.
00:07:41.700 So it is a very different and challenging book to people who are used to just kind of having that blunt,
00:07:49.340 obvious kind of characterization that you usually get from Lewis,
00:07:53.080 which is why a lot of people you know i know tolkien said this was his favorite of lewis's
00:07:57.540 books uh that you know many people said this has say this is his most mature novel so i think uh
00:08:02.840 that this is uh a really interesting uh book for people to approach who are familiar with his work
00:08:09.040 because it is so different as you say also co-written uh kind of by his wife there so
00:08:14.120 it definitely takes a very different turn uh so that said let's get to uh the book itself and kind
00:08:20.640 of set the table for people who may not be familiar with the story so like i said this
00:08:24.920 is a retelling of the cupid and psyche myth you have uh the main character is uh this this daughter
00:08:31.100 of the king uh her name i'm i think i pronounced it correctly hopefully oral uh and so she is uh
00:08:37.880 the old the oldest daughter and the king's wife dies her mother dies and he remarries and he has
00:08:45.700 a child a younger child so she now has a stepsister
00:08:49.760 named Psyche and instead of having like oh the
00:08:53.660 evil stepmother and the hated stepsister you actually have her
00:08:57.600 really embracing this younger sister
00:09:01.520 and the dichotomy set up here is that they are the king
00:09:05.580 is the king of kind of this old
00:09:08.940 style kind of city state it's not Greek but it's kind of adjacent
00:09:13.660 to the Greeks. It has a very similar kind of feel to it of that time. And her father's only having
00:09:21.580 daughters. And so she is very ugly. She's considered very ugly, very unseemly. And her
00:09:29.540 new stepsister is very, very beautiful. In fact, she's so beautiful that the people treat her
00:09:36.120 almost like a goddess. And they bring her gifts and that kind of thing. And so you would think
00:09:41.320 that you know the response again would be some kind of resentment but in in her telling she loves
00:09:46.520 her sister more than anyone else you know she's the only one who's really looking out for her
00:09:50.780 who really uh you know sees her and uh so you have this uh relationship that is uh unexpected
00:09:58.400 and they're kind of raised by this figure of the fox and uh the fox is this greek uh tutor who is
00:10:07.480 very, very cynical. In many ways, he's kind of like the writers of the Green Book from
00:10:15.920 Abolition of Man, where he's just kind of demystifying everything. Belief in the gods
00:10:21.460 is silly. Religion is silly. It's all about reason. What do you think about the character
00:10:27.180 of the fox and what he represents in the story? Okay, yeah, I would frame it slightly differently
00:10:32.600 in that the fox to me represents pure reason he represents greek reason and philosophy obviously
00:10:38.600 meaning the love of knowledge so the only reason i'd say slightly different from the the people
00:10:43.080 that lewis is critiquing in the abolition of man is that they are relativists and they are yeah
00:10:48.040 they're they're they're obviously obsessed with saying oh the the waterfall is not really sublime
00:10:53.320 as coleridge said it's it's your feelings that are sublime and lewis says well no your feelings would
00:10:57.880 then be humble and yes the waterfall can be objectively sublime and there is a correct
00:11:01.960 word for it which is sublime not pretty so the abolition of man is concerned with objective
00:11:06.200 beauty objective morality and so the fox is he represents pure reason which like you say he's
00:11:12.520 flippant and mocking of the pagan gods and so lewis will go a certain distance with the fox
00:11:17.480 because obviously lewis being a kind of neo-platonist with things like the abolition of man
00:11:22.360 and you know in in narnia the professor says it's all in plato bless me what are they teaching them
00:11:28.120 in these schools so lewis is very much a fan of plato but of course the greeks being not christian
00:11:33.720 obviously they don't go far enough for lewis so what i what i found throughout the book was
00:11:39.080 he respects the fox and the fox's reason and he's a beloved figure but he also respects the priest
00:11:44.920 of who worships unget the black stone which is this pagan god goddess so where um the fox
00:11:53.000 merely mocks the priest or well however i pronounce it at times says well there's something in the
00:11:58.680 priest as well and what lewis seems to be saying is there is something in it so there's something
00:12:03.000 in the fox and there's something in the priest even with his odd ways and his blood sacrifices
00:12:07.800 they were getting at something and the thing they're getting out of course is christ
00:12:11.560 but they don't know it and the closest we have to that is psyche who kind of reconciles them both
00:12:17.000 it's quite similar to how lewis famously had his imagination baptized as he put it by reading
00:12:21.960 george mcdonald's fantasities this was in 1916 i think in a at a train station and then he says the
00:12:28.120 rest of me not unnaturally took longer so lewis had this imagination but baptized by george mcdonald
00:12:33.400 but he he was still an atheist and so what psyche does is in a way draw together these two strands
00:12:38.920 the pagan gods which aren't quite right but they point to something and then the greek reason which
00:12:43.320 also points to something but even the fox spoiler alert at the end just to jump ahead sort of
00:12:48.120 of repents and goes, okay, I didn't have the full picture. So that's how I see it. I see him as pure
00:12:53.900 reason, which is good up to a point. It's very interesting because of course, you know, Lewis,
00:12:59.260 you know, struggled with Christianity so much. He was an atheist and was, you know, in his book,
00:13:06.840 Surprised by Joy, he talks about that journey and the effect that the Christians around him were
00:13:11.620 having. Increasingly, the smartest people around him were Christians. And, you know, that started
00:13:17.120 to uh wear down even though he he knew that it couldn't just be this stupid faith he still had
00:13:22.340 kind of this rejection uh because he was so married to this idea that he would you know
00:13:26.740 that reason would win the day uh but ultimately his his rejection was not actually logical it
00:13:31.860 was emotional and he kind of comes to that realization so i it is i i do wonder how much
00:13:38.720 of lewis lewis's old uh kind of atheism is is in the fox uh and represented there yeah i even heard
00:13:46.100 something sorry i even heard something and i can't confirm this i only heard it from one youtube
00:13:49.460 video but according to this and the guy seems smart so according to this guy lewis actually
00:13:54.480 tried to write this book when he was an atheist agreeing with orwell from her perspective and
00:13:59.140 failed to write it so that's wild so yeah well and and that's what makes it so beautiful is then
00:14:04.680 we we'll get to that transition but you could almost see the moment that the uh the the story
00:14:11.360 flips from kind of that atheism to that christianity uh you can see the moment where uh he
00:14:17.680 stops sympathizing with her uh but again we'll we'll get to that because that that'll be part
00:14:22.220 of the story so uh so the next you know the next big plot point that you know is important is that
00:14:27.940 uh there's this plague in the land uh and in order to uh stop the plague uh the priests tell
00:14:34.800 the father that his youngest daughter has to be sacrificed that psyche has to be sacrificed to
00:14:40.240 this god of the mountain uh who who is uh you know uh uh cupid uh you know the cupid uh allegorian
00:14:47.500 here and so uh they take her to the mountain and she's supposed to be uh like killed you know they
00:14:53.460 kind of abandon her uh and uh the the the older daughter the main character she tries to stop it
00:15:00.780 but she's not able to to stop the crowd from ultimately uh kind of uh uh uh sacrificing her
00:15:07.760 And so they take Psyche and they they sacrifice her. She goes and tries to look for Psyche. She thinks, OK, she's probably dead, but at least I can bury her remains. And when she shows up, she finds Psyche. But surprisingly, Psyche is not harmed. And ultimately, she seems very happy.
00:15:26.140 and uh you have oral being confused about what's going on there and psyche explains that she is
00:15:33.100 actually living in an invisible palace with this god and that she's very happy uh that they're
00:15:39.520 married uh that like all of her needs are fulfilled uh but she's not allowed to look at the
00:15:45.060 god she's not allowed to see him directly and that like those are the rules of uh kind of her living
00:15:50.700 there and of course oral you know she has this you know kind of more belief in the rationality
00:15:56.580 reason and she kind of looks at psyche as a younger sister who's kind of being silly and
00:16:01.200 delusional and so she gets very angry with psyche and says you know this you're you're imagining all
00:16:07.360 of this uh this isn't real you're being taken advantage of you know maybe there's some bandit
00:16:12.180 who's coming after you in the night uh and lying to you about this stuff and taking advantage of
00:16:17.040 you uh and so ultimately she uh even goes to the extent of threatening uh psyche and and threatening
00:16:24.580 her own uh suicide if psyche does not look at whoever is coming to her in night so that she
00:16:31.180 can actually see what's going on there she's so convinced of her own uh correctness and her own
00:16:37.160 logic and reason uh that she she is willing to threaten her own suicide to kind of snap psyche
00:16:42.740 out of it and bring her back to her senses well it turns out that that was all real that that
00:16:47.620 psyche really was living that existence and when she looks at the god she ruins everything and
00:16:52.340 she's like thrown into exile uh and so basically uh oral has uh through her uh insistence that
00:16:59.700 this can't be real that this is irrational that her her sister is foolish she ruins this beautiful
00:17:05.220 situation that psyche is in and you can see here that in many ways lewis is exploring uh this idea
00:17:13.340 of uh also this obsessive love but this is a theme that comes through over and over again that the
00:17:20.460 older sister the main character she is so obsessed with the objects of her love and that only she can
00:17:26.740 love them in the right way that that her love is exclusive that she is willing to destroy the lives
00:17:32.400 of those people even and but she sees herself as a victim yeah i should have mentioned this
00:17:36.760 beginning but the entire book begins as a letter uh against the gods like writing her case against
00:17:42.940 the gods and the cruelty of her life uh and so she is obsessed with this and she this brings her
00:17:48.160 to ruin her own sister's happiness yeah absolutely that's the crucial part of the book where
00:17:54.220 lewis changes it from the original tale of course for napoleus and the golden ass in 2 ad where he's
00:18:01.020 taken this from, although it wasn't written by Apollaeus, scholars agree he's interpreting it.
00:18:04.820 So in Lewis's interpretation, instead of the sisters seeing the palace and becoming jealous,
00:18:11.740 Oroel can't see it, and only Psyche can, although she does catch a glimpse, which we can talk about.
00:18:16.640 But yeah, she uses that overbearing love you talk about. I think she even cuts herself,
00:18:20.460 doesn't she? So totally manipulative cutter stuff. Yes, it's shocking stuff. And Lewis was
00:18:27.040 not obsessed but this was a big theme in lyrics the the over possessive love he talks about it in
00:18:31.380 the four loves it's called storge which is affectionate love for family and so on but he
00:18:36.780 talks about how storge can go wrong where it can become overbearing and for example it can become
00:18:42.200 resentful if a sibling starts to follow intellectual pursuits or becomes a christian the other one will
00:18:47.620 resent them if they don't go along with it and this is what we see here a clear case of storge
00:18:51.940 gone wrong. And she has to destroy Psyche's happiness rather than lose her and love her
00:18:59.920 truly and therefore allow her to be free in that way. And the crucial moment when she
00:19:03.320 actually catches a glimpse of the palace when she's at the river, but denies it to herself
00:19:09.540 and everyone else from then on never mentions it. And this again is very similar to, sorry to keep
00:19:14.360 mentioning other works, but I've read so much Lewis recently. It's in Prince Caspian when Susan
00:19:18.820 sees aslan and just pretends not to then admits later to lucy i did see him it was just too much
00:19:24.420 trouble to admit it and the dwarves in the last battle when they're in aslan's kingdom in aslan's
00:19:29.620 country literally in heaven but they won't see it and think they're still in a dirty stable because
00:19:33.460 they won't accept it so this denial of faith even though we kind of know it is there all the time
00:19:38.500 in lewis actually i even found this if you wouldn't mind me reading something out in um humphrey
00:19:44.340 carpenter's book on the inklings which i recommend he was discussing he was talking about joy davidman
00:19:49.700 and lewis of course wrote this with his wife and she had an experience where her husband had a
00:19:55.540 nervous breakdown and she could she realized then that her atheist atheism wasn't adequate or wasn't
00:20:01.620 correct and she says all my defenses the walls of arrogance and cockshawness and self-love behind
00:20:07.060 which i had hid from god went down momentarily and god came in there was a person with me in the room
00:20:12.740 directly present to my consciousness a person so real that all my previous life was by comparison
00:20:17.620 mere shadow play i understood that god had always been there and that since childhood i've been
00:20:21.860 pouring half my energy into the task of keeping him out my perception of god lasted perhaps half
00:20:26.340 a minute when it was over i found myself on my knees praying i think i must have been the world's
00:20:30.980 most astonished atheist and of course lewis called himself the most reluctant convert as well so
00:20:36.420 probably i could have left that for the end because that's really very similar to the ending
00:20:39.380 but it's so similar that joy daveman herself i just wonder if that influenced it that she also
00:20:44.820 sort of was denying faith all that all the time and spending half her energy on that so oral spends
00:20:51.540 an extraordinary amount of energy denying this experience of seeing the palace you know from
00:20:56.660 that moment on yeah i mean it also you know i think so much of this is paralleled in his other
00:21:02.900 works it reminds me a lot of the great divorce because of course all of the people who are
00:21:08.020 brought up from hell to heaven they can't admit it like they can't you know the the only thing
00:21:13.660 keeping them in hell is their own uh their own selfishness their own uh reluctance to see what's
00:21:19.100 really going on in heaven uh and also uh lewis is so good at uh kind of exploring this idea of our
00:21:26.820 own justifications for our sin uh and so you know the people in heaven uh will often uh you know
00:21:34.040 there's like a wife who uh does not want to let her husband go because she spent so much of her
00:21:39.360 life basically torturing the guy while saying that she loves him and that you know that she's doing
00:21:44.460 everything for him and she just had to nag him constantly so he would make something of himself
00:21:49.400 and she just had to you know tell him not to eat that thing and not to smoke that pipe and
00:21:54.220 not to read that because you know otherwise he couldn't live his life and so she's really being
00:21:58.180 a loving person the entire time uh you know that lewis is very good at uh kind of noticing uh this
00:22:04.620 uh this very human desire to ruin something that you love to domineer something that you love to
00:22:11.780 hold it so tightly and exclusively that it cannot thrive that it cannot go on and so i think that
00:22:17.440 idea is fully realized in this book in a really beautiful and deep way yeah you're right i should
00:22:22.480 have mentioned the great divorce because that's the other great example the example you cite of
00:22:25.940 overbearing wife who just wants to nag her husband for eternity and then the the other more painful
00:22:31.540 example of the woman well the ghost their theme their ghosts that have come up from hell the
00:22:36.500 female ghost who is missing her her son who died and her son's in heaven but she has such a
00:22:42.900 possessive love for him she's tortured her family with it and she hasn't moved on from it so actually
00:22:47.220 what she thinks is is the greatest love really the the angel tries to convince her is really a kind
00:22:51.700 kind of ersatz love that actually this is a possessive unhealthy love even though it was
00:22:56.120 born of that great love of the mother for the son you've actually kind of perverted it so yeah
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00:23:34.360 so after uh psyche has like been thrown out of the palace and lost everything and is in exile
00:23:42.000 oral becomes the ruler you know she was always kind of her her father did the thing where i've
00:23:47.800 never really had a son and so i guess i have to put up with you and you know she she was never
00:23:52.240 as beautiful as psyche but she was intelligent and wise and and capable and so uh she he handed
00:23:59.560 off many of the different aspects of the kingdom to her uh and when he dies she becomes a ruler
00:24:04.820 she she wears a mask if i remember correctly uh because you know to hide her ugliness you know
00:24:09.840 she doesn't want to uh be seen uh anymore but she is in charge of all these things and very
00:24:15.680 interestingly she's a very competent ruler like she's you know she she rules uh the city state
00:24:20.880 well or the gloom i believe is the the name uh and uh she's a competent ruler but she's still not
00:24:26.920 love she she still doesn't feel that love uh she's always felt separated she lost her mother
00:24:32.180 she was always a disappointment to her father even though he relied on uh him uh you know obviously
00:24:37.840 she was not as beautiful as psyche so she was always kind of uh in that shadow so she's always
00:24:42.760 looking for this love and she falls in love with the captain of the guard and the captain of the
00:24:48.220 guard is himself married and even though she is kind of has this obsessive love of him he will
00:24:55.560 not betray his wife for her he will not ultimately leave his wife for her but and so there's this
00:25:02.380 deep jealousy that she has over that and she she when she's telling her story she's always seeing
00:25:09.240 the wife as like evil and draining and you know taking away uh but then when uh ultimately the
00:25:15.800 the uh captain of the guard dies his wife comes to her or she goes to to the wife to kind of pay
00:25:22.860 respects and the wife has a very different viewpoint and she sees uh the queen as the
00:25:29.780 person who's stolen her husband from her that ultimately the the husband was always at work
00:25:35.240 he was always guarding he was always uh being demanded of even when you know he was with uh
00:25:41.640 the wife he was always thinking about the queen and what was going on there uh and so in in another
00:25:46.720 way uh it was one where she would you know ask him to stay around when he didn't need to just
00:25:52.320 because she wanted to be around him that kind of thing and the wife sees uh the queen as someone
00:25:56.380 who stole all this precious time that she could have had with her husband away and so again we see
00:26:01.760 this love where oral thinks that her love is pure her love is better that she would
00:26:07.000 love someone more and that her love is superior to everyone else's and tries to hold on so tightly
00:26:12.380 that she ends up ruining the actual relationship of the husband and wife in the eyes of the wife
00:26:17.600 uh and and once again a kind of her obsession is the thing that destroys other people's
00:26:23.000 relationship and other people's happiness yeah that is an extraordinary part of the book isn't
00:26:27.660 And in a way, this is the ultimate unreliable narrator
00:26:30.200 because we see it from her perspective all the time.
00:26:33.860 She loves Bardia, as you say,
00:26:35.840 and she's always going off into battle with him.
00:26:38.260 And what the wife eventually says is,
00:26:39.520 well, all those things you just said,
00:26:41.100 you took him away from me,
00:26:42.020 but also you had these moments in battle with him
00:26:43.780 that I could never have.
00:26:45.060 But Bardia sees her as, because she's a virgin,
00:26:47.300 and as you say, she wears a veil
00:26:48.520 and she's good with a sword.
00:26:50.460 So he sees her essentially as a man
00:26:51.800 and he relates to her as just another soldier
00:26:54.580 and and the queen but but not as really as a woman and yeah so she's jealous of the wife but
00:27:00.280 the wife's also jealous in return and it's about different types of possessive love and again you
00:27:05.080 you feel this is where um joy davidman's influence must have been useful because the sort of female
00:27:11.180 psychology is so well captured i would say of course i suppose i can't ultimately know if it
00:27:15.220 is not being a woman but i suspect it is better captured than in other lewis books and and that
00:27:20.900 was one pretty subtle i thought that must have been the influence of joy david some of these
00:27:26.400 things are influenced by lewis's own life one can go too far with autobiographical readings but
00:27:30.780 he lived with mrs moore his whole life because he agreed to look after her after his friend paddy
00:27:36.140 dies in war he says i'll look after your family whoever dies will look after the other's family
00:27:39.860 so he has to look after this quite obstreperous woman his whole life it starts with some kind
00:27:43.980 of relationship and then it becomes just a bit of a nightmare so i think a lot of it the stuff
00:27:48.280 about possessive love probably may have come from that i think it must have also come from his wife
00:27:52.960 for it to be so feel so accurate yeah absolutely it is it is very interesting how well uh you know
00:28:02.660 kind of that woman's perspective is written you're you're right that that is uh again something that
00:28:07.120 really stands out in this book and is uh very different um so uh the next thing that is important
00:28:14.020 is you you get to this turn so this is the big uh the big turn in the book and all of a sudden we
00:28:20.340 go from having this book that's entirely written uh you know as kind of this argument against the
00:28:26.140 gods you know they've ruined my life it's all been cruelty i've always been alone i've always
00:28:30.940 been denied you know i've always been cut off or you know the things that i love have always been
00:28:35.460 taken from me and so ultimately uh you you get this you know huge third act turn where all of a
00:28:42.740 sudden uh she starts writing again you know the book's like takes a break and she starts writing
00:28:46.600 again and it turns out she's like at the end of her life and she she needs to get this down she
00:28:51.120 doesn't have time to rewrite the whole story but she's going to try to tell you the truth now that
00:28:54.960 she's had this revelation and the revelation is she's been having these visions and basically
00:28:59.740 she's been interacting with the gods the gods have kind of revealed their cell themselves to her
00:29:05.560 and in that revelation uh she's been forced to look at her own life and her own feelings and her
00:29:12.460 own actions and as you say previously she's been a very unreliable narrator you know we've had
00:29:17.480 uh this this whole thing from her perspective and she's always the victim she's always the person
00:29:22.060 who's trying to do the right thing and other people are rejecting her or not listening to her
00:29:25.800 and ultimately you know they're delusional they don't see what's going on her love has been pure
00:29:30.840 she's the one who has been you know fighting uh for these people and they have always uh kind of
00:29:35.980 rejected her in some way and all of a sudden you see it from the other direction and all of a sudden
00:29:40.300 we see that actually she has been the one that has been possessive.
00:29:45.060 She has been the one that's been over-emotional.
00:29:47.460 She has been the one that has been too driven, too possessive, too obsessed.
00:29:52.660 And actually, it reminds me in many ways of Job.
00:29:57.300 You know, you kind of, she, her, the truth of her is laid bare.
00:30:02.300 And the gods kind of, okay, you don't understand yourself.
00:30:06.780 You don't understand the situation.
00:30:08.440 uh you don't understand who you really are uh and we you know and and you know you're kind of
00:30:14.680 facing your her entire life the beliefs that she had made it impossible for her to interact with
00:30:22.560 the thing in itself you know she could not see the the castle she could not see the god she could
00:30:28.300 not understand the loves that other people had she could never really access the the transcendent
00:30:34.260 and now all of a sudden it's it's just laid bare the noumenal itself is is laid bare to her
00:30:39.180 and she can no longer deny this she can no longer live in this self-deception and this is where
00:30:44.980 you know i think this is kind of where the the title is realized for the first time she has a
00:30:49.600 face for the first time you know she can see that the truth of who she is that the veil is ripped
00:30:54.360 away the you know the the the real veil she has and the figurative veil are removed and you can
00:31:00.460 ultimately now see the truth about who she is and those self revelations uh completely shift
00:31:06.520 her understanding of the world around her the gods her relationship with people like psyche or the
00:31:12.000 captain of the guard all these people all of a sudden uh the truth about you know kind of those
00:31:16.160 relationships is laid bare before her and it radically changes her relationship not just with
00:31:20.980 those individuals and with her own life but with the divine as well yeah and yeah so she starts
00:31:27.220 having these visions and lewis is always trying to work in the original myth so a lot of the things
00:31:31.840 that just happen in the original myth are sort of dealt with as visions here so as to retain a higher
00:31:37.220 level of realism i would say you know things to do with like ants helping out and things like that
00:31:41.500 which you know couldn't really just happen in this and so then as you say she then has these
00:31:45.460 revelations and i don't know if it's getting ahead but then then she comes before this judgment for
00:31:51.860 before the gods i mean it kind of gets into that part where she as you say she realizes how can we
00:31:57.700 we don't even know our own words and we don't even have faces as she but i'll just find it
00:32:03.580 because i'll butcher otherwise because um it's to do with we don't even know what what we think or
00:32:09.620 the truth so she says i saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly nor let us answer
00:32:15.880 till that word can be dug out of us why should they hear the babble that we think we mean
00:32:19.960 how can they meet us face to face till we have faces so there you go so we don't even know
00:32:25.060 what's going on and when she comes to the garden with her complaint it suddenly sounds this
00:32:29.880 ridiculous whining uh repetitive rant because she thinks she's going to give this impassioned sort
00:32:36.700 of eloquent defense of herself and that's going to be the book that we've just read and she thinks
00:32:41.860 she's going to read that out when it comes down to it it's just a kind of scrawl of mad notes
00:32:45.460 and she just sounds obsessive and insane and that's kind of how it would be if you suddenly
00:32:49.560 had to come before god or in this case gods and you're reading out your little complaint and she
00:32:55.180 i think she's naked at that point and it's like so pathetic and ridiculous she suddenly realizes
00:33:00.080 how flimsy all her complaints have been and how blind she has been she goes okay now i get why
00:33:05.560 the gods don't really want to mess with us when we're in this state because we don't know what
00:33:08.760 the hell we're talking about essentially yeah it really is uh that moment of uh of divine revelation
00:33:16.180 in the most direct sense that's also a self-revelation uh and so i think that's a
00:33:21.220 fascinating again we talked about uh how lewis you know thought about writing this book originally
00:33:27.100 as an atheist and siding with you know kind of the the the screed against the gods you know the
00:33:33.420 the the logic the reason uh how you're a victim and it's so funny because you know uh there's
00:33:39.820 that old saying uh you know atheists are people who don't believe in god and are very mad at him
00:33:44.620 You know, and that's so that's so well kind of displayed by Lewis here is that, you know, this person who is against the gods is so passionate about their own victimhood in the face of it.
00:33:58.420 But then it mirroring kind of Lewis's own revelation of Christianity, you come in and, you know, you see that actually I am the author of my own woes.
00:34:09.460 You know, ultimately, I am the one who has made the choices that have led me here.
00:34:13.380 I am not a victim. And in many ways, I am the victimizer and convicted of your own sin.
00:34:19.680 And I think that's very interesting because I've seen people say that this is C.S. Lewis's most pagan book.
00:34:24.900 But I think it's exactly the opposite. I think this is one of his most Christian books, because even though he's telling this pagan myth,
00:34:32.960 this turn, this kind of repentance, this touch of the divine is something that is so analogous to
00:34:42.540 his own kind of experience in life when encountering and converting to Christianity that it
00:34:48.680 redeems the character in a way that I don't think you'd see in a Greek myth, right? Like, I don't
00:34:54.580 think you'd see this kind of repentance and understanding and coming to reconciliation
00:35:00.100 with the gods uh you know i would i just got done rereading rereading the iliad here recently
00:35:05.300 and uh it's just so funny how the relationship with the gods is so different with the greeks
00:35:10.620 you know we don't think we just kind of turn everything christian you know we just because
00:35:15.100 we don't even think of ourselves as uh even if you're not christian like we've just grown up
00:35:20.080 around it so much and its values are so ingrained in us that we just kind of project it onto every
00:35:25.080 story uh but the you know the greeks had a very very very different understandings of what the
00:35:29.740 divine meant and how they relate to the gods and the character of the gods and these things.
00:35:33.680 But Lewis's telling here is so Christian that it almost has very little to do with the way that
00:35:40.240 the Greeks kind of interacted with the gods, I think. Yeah, I know what you mean. I mean,
00:35:45.060 in the middle of the story, when they're interacting with a weird stone and there's
00:35:48.420 like blood and stuff, it's like, yeah, that gets very pagan. But at the end, it's clear that it
00:35:53.400 really is, although it's not named as, Christ isn't named as such or anything like that,
00:35:58.380 it's clear that it is a Christian conversion story as you say and Lewis himself said that he
00:36:02.680 was angry with God for not existing during his atheist phase and in a way I mean I'm a bit
00:36:07.680 obsessed with these biographical readings but there was a moment that famous moment weirdly
00:36:12.000 I know the date is September 19th 1931 it's quite a famous date when Tolkien convinces him
00:36:17.800 that Christianity is the one true myth because Lewis says myths lies breathe through silver
00:36:24.760 and so he can't reconcile his love of myth and old norse and so on with christianity even though
00:36:31.060 he's got to theism by that point he believes in god but he doesn't believe in christ and then
00:36:34.860 talking convinces him along with hugo dyson and it's been a long process with owen barfield and
00:36:39.140 others and they eventually convince him that he reaches this synthesis of realizing that myth can
00:36:44.160 be true in the case of christ and then he drives i think it's nine days later to whip snade zoo
00:36:48.800 with his brother and lewis is in the sidecar of his motorcycle by the time he arrives at the zoo he
00:36:53.680 believes in christ and he didn't when they set off so it's this famous moment so yeah i think
00:36:58.020 that's kind of mirrored by the by the end of this book the way that they've been messing around with
00:37:04.400 paganism until there's this synthesis at the end and the fox realizes he was wrong and orwell
00:37:10.440 realizes she's been wrong and psyche i suppose has been vindicated really as the kind of christ-like
00:37:15.960 figure but yeah it is but because it's i can see why people might not get it because it's
00:37:20.720 somewhat oblique as i said earlier isn't it as you say compared to some of lewis's work i mean
00:37:24.560 things like that hideous strength it's all very clearly spelled out perilanda
00:37:28.820 that's all pretty clearly spelled out whereas in this you i suppose you could read it and think
00:37:33.660 there was no christianity in that whole book it is interesting because uh obviously uh like you say
00:37:42.480 chronicles of narnia far and away is the thing that most people think of when they think of c.s
00:37:47.100 lewis there's been multiple you know adaptations for movies and tv shows and uh you know god bless
00:37:53.400 us the netflix one is coming so you know uh in case for some reason you still have a netflix
00:37:58.700 subscription now's the time guys uh you know in case cuties and all this uh anti-white trash that
00:38:04.400 they're running all the time on uh on netflix hasn't been enough to to cancel it you know
00:38:08.900 at some point uh having a netflix uh subscription is uh you know a check your hard drives uh you
00:38:14.580 know type of uh indicator there uh but but yeah obviously like that's that's been the big thing
00:38:19.920 for c.s lewis has been the the narnia a lot of people didn't even know about his um you know
00:38:24.580 adult centered stuff maybe they've you know seen uh you know some of some of the uh apologetic work
00:38:30.320 like mere christianity but most people don't really get into the space trilogy now interestingly
00:38:35.760 enough i think that hideous strength has really had a revival especially for the online right
00:38:40.320 uh you know it's kind of become that oh you you need to read this book because it really
00:38:45.160 did predict our times in a way uh that things like 1984 brave new world didn't you know it
00:38:51.880 really uh is the defining uh kind of uh uh uh dystopian novel uh that kind of explains where
00:38:59.740 we're at uh but it's interesting that this book gets almost no traction despite being uh considered
00:39:05.460 one of his, if not his most challenging and interesting and well put together work, it
00:39:11.900 really has not entered the public consciousness, even in kind of the undercurrent way that
00:39:15.840 that hideous strength has.
00:39:17.880 I know we've talked about it being one of his more complex and least kind of on the
00:39:22.660 nose work, but do you think there's anything else about it that has kind of kept it off
00:39:26.040 the radar?
00:39:26.660 Well, why is this book, especially being his final book, one that ultimately has not kind
00:39:31.240 of broken through into the zeitgeist like so many others?
00:39:33.580 if i had to guess i'd say it's a more difficult read as i say the writing is incredibly high
00:39:39.480 level but it's sometimes a difficult read like moby dick or something when you're reading melby
00:39:43.300 like okay i'm aware this is very good but it's also tough at times so one for that simple reason
00:39:49.180 two would be that i think it is different because of joy davidman's influence it just reads
00:39:54.480 differently from all his other stuff so i think it's that if you're used to lewis you can pretty
00:39:58.560 much enjoy it as you say people didn't know about the ransom trilogy enough until lately they're
00:40:03.240 talking about that hideous strength it's insane how underrated this trilogy is everyone knows
00:40:07.260 about lord of the rings but people don't know about the ransom trilogy and it's it's so good
00:40:10.700 it's everyone must read it immediately but yes you can enjoy that it's highly enjoyable that as
00:40:15.880 soon as you read out of the silent planet it's immediately enjoyable you can finish it very
00:40:20.060 quickly screw tape letters immediately accessible very clear satirical premise this is much more
00:40:25.680 difficult even me having read basically all of lewis i mean i reread the great divorce the other
00:40:29.580 day you can read that very quickly it's incredibly entertaining yes it gets into quite dense theology
00:40:34.720 at the end about universalism and stuff which even is above my pay grade but you can certainly
00:40:40.220 enjoy the story anyone can this is difficult by any stretch i think if you're a lewis fan
00:40:45.780 if you're a novel reader whatever you are it's not going to be an easy work for anyone to it's
00:40:50.480 not that hard but it's but it's i mean even my friend simon evans who has an extremely high iq
00:40:56.700 which is he's done tests and he's done lots of book reviews with me and things extremely sharp
00:41:01.700 guy he's like yeah i'm a little bit baffled by this one so i think it's just the sheer difficulty
00:41:06.340 i think it's a different tone compared to some of lewis's other works and i think it's the
00:41:10.280 the subtlety this myth obviously meant a lot to lewis he was obviously a classical scholar
00:41:15.740 if you're not that that part might be less interesting to you if you don't care about
00:41:20.320 cuban and psyche in the first place and then he's not really spoon feeding you he as you say
00:41:24.260 he's more didactic and on the nose in other works it's like here's the bad guy and here's a long
00:41:29.220 debate about the garden of eden you know and it's all pretty clear whereas in this it's like yeah
00:41:33.560 you're gonna have to do some of it for yourself and also to just finish my train of thought the
00:41:38.840 last section being the greatest part you may not actually get there so a lot of people probably
00:41:43.340 don't get there they probably give up if we're honest yeah that's a good point yeah you could
00:41:47.680 see a lot of people you know kind of getting to the middle of the book and thinking oh this is
00:41:51.360 kind of slog and i don't understand it and this is so different because if you don't make it to
00:41:56.240 that turn then the whole book just doesn't you're like oh well okay i guess she's just right about
00:42:01.420 everything and miserable and the gods really hate you like it doesn't it doesn't you know
00:42:05.460 it really is one of those retro chronic works where when when you get to the end of the book
00:42:10.140 all of a sudden you understand everything uh it all comes into sharp view so if you never get there
00:42:15.320 then yeah it just it doesn't it doesn't have that payoff and so i can definitely see why people would
00:42:20.480 ultimately walk away and and be disillusioned by it but i think it's a great book and well worth
00:42:25.180 people's time you wouldn't you wouldn't rule out lewis deliberately doing that as a kind of metaphor
00:42:28.960 as well you know how he says in in the in the great divorce that if if you get to heaven everything
00:42:34.220 will have seemed like part of heaven or part of purgatory like earth and hell itself even if you
00:42:40.060 were in that gray town that's hell in that book that will have seemed part of the journey to
00:42:44.120 heaven or it might have seemed like purgatory meanwhile if you're damned it will have all
00:42:47.400 seemed like part of hell for this book lewis is such a genius that he probably would like i'll put
00:42:51.840 this at the end and that's what's a metaphor for like god making everything right in hindsight you
00:42:56.140 know he talks about the felix per cartum ardi in perilando meaning happy sin of adam meaning
00:43:01.080 once jesus arrived it made it even better that there was that sin because god then made it even
00:43:05.860 better than it would have been if that hadn't occurred so i mean maybe i'm getting a bit carried
00:43:09.180 away but remember lewis is a guy that built in a secret um sort of key to narnia with the seven
00:43:15.180 different planets which michael warders talks about in planet narnia so he is a tricky one he
00:43:19.420 will throw in these secret things so in a way maybe didn't mean it like that but it's certainly
00:43:23.260 kind of you could take as a metaphor for god retroactively making all things right no i think
00:43:28.860 that's a great point and i i wouldn't put it past him uh at all uh well i think we've gotten to the
00:43:34.540 main things i wanted to talk about is there anything we didn't explore any insights that
00:43:38.700 you had you know kind of rereading uh that you wanted to talk about before we go to the questions
00:43:42.620 people i don't think so i think the only thing i might have i sort of perhaps resonated perhaps
00:43:48.120 more with me than you just from speaking to you now i may be wrong was this battle between reason
00:43:53.220 represented by the fox and the pagan um priest and then orwell and then psyche kind of bringing
00:43:59.820 them two together but i don't know if you agree to me on that no i agree and i think it's very
00:44:04.280 interesting that you know once again uh you know and this is again a theme that i i obviously lewis
00:44:10.260 himself struggled with and you see in his book so often you know one of the lines that you know
00:44:14.780 there's the white lewis just has this way of writing lines that you know cut you like a knife
00:44:19.100 and uh in uh in the great divorce he has that line of did you really believe there were no sins
00:44:25.300 of intellect you know it's just like oh yeah of course you know that you know you and and you see
00:44:31.680 that again here with psyche where you know oral is so sure that her own intelligence and you know
00:44:37.880 the the wisdom of the the intelligence of the fox the reason of the fox these have to be so
00:44:42.740 overwhelming and so correct uh that there's no way that this uh beautiful and and kind but ultimately
00:44:49.080 you know not as bright not as intellectual not not not as sharply reasoned uh you know psyche
00:44:54.900 there's no way she could be correct there's no way that she could really be experiencing the
00:44:58.860 castle that she could really see things that her sister couldn't see that she could really be
00:45:03.260 living this great life uh and then and you know she just couldn't have understood it you know and
00:45:08.020 and her belief in her superiority of the reason ultimately uh drives her to ruin the happiness of
00:45:15.060 her of the person she loved the most or claimed to love the most uh and so i do think it's i think
00:45:20.340 you're right that you know lewis been right psyche to be the one who's ultimately correct at the end
00:45:26.620 and that that it's not about her superior intellect or her her incredible rationality
00:45:32.400 it's it's her ability to embrace the truth to see that that which is truly there even if she
00:45:38.140 does not completely understand it that's what makes her kind of the better person the person
00:45:42.620 who has a better understanding of what's going on yeah yeah because lewis is at pains throughout
00:45:46.780 his work to point out that christianity is not just the same as reason and as and as pagan
00:45:51.780 morality so in the abolition of man he's he's not talking about christianity he's just saying
00:45:56.060 all these pagan cultures seem to share some very similar universal moral values whether it's the
00:46:01.620 ancient Egyptians Babylonians Romans you know Vikings and even in the Old Testament as well
00:46:07.280 and then when he's in that hideous strength he talks about and this won't take too long on this
00:46:13.580 but the point is he the protagonist is they're trying to get him to stamp on a crucifix and he
00:46:17.900 won't but he realizes that he wants to be part of the normal the protagonist and that seems to mean
00:46:24.580 kind of conventional morality. But then he says, actually, this image of Christ is something quite
00:46:29.560 different. It's not part of the normal. This is something else. But I also have a certain
00:46:33.480 reverence for that. So where I'm going with this is that in this book, Till We Have Faces,
00:46:39.400 I think Lewis is at pains to say it's not that Christianity is super just normal and just reason,
00:46:44.260 and that's the whole game. It's actually got a bit of the weirdness of the pagan priest.
00:46:50.720 I'm kind of reiterating what I've said in a different way, but I think that's a theme
00:46:53.900 throughout lewis is that christianity is a personal religion it's it's it's and it's far
00:46:59.140 richer than just you know even than theism or even than universal morality doesn't get you the
00:47:05.020 whole way basically yeah i mean if you are someone and you know i was i was all i've been a christian
00:47:11.000 you know pretty much my whole life you know my parents were in the church all the time uh you
00:47:15.800 know was saved i was like seven uh and so uh you know i had real faith but i had understood
00:47:22.380 Christianity intellectually more than anything else. You know, it was a list of things that I
00:47:27.180 thought were correct. I was big into like, you know, apologetics and understanding all the logic
00:47:32.940 and the arguments and the reason and everything else. And it wasn't until, you know, I experienced
00:47:38.580 real tragedy and, you know, later on in life that I understood Christianity in a truly emotional,
00:47:46.800 truly spiritual sense like my faith became real because it was like the only thing that could
00:47:53.680 sustain me and so I think Lewis is very good at you know his original atheism was supposed to be
00:48:01.020 reason-based it was supposed to be the list of facts and so the only way to understand Christianity
00:48:06.440 was to go through the facts and go through the list of of truths and like all that's real but
00:48:11.480 ultimately, it was the embrace of the faith itself that made Lewis convert. It was the
00:48:17.680 understanding that it was not just a list of things that were true, but it was not just a
00:48:22.840 thing that you reasoned yourself to, but that it was that faith, it was that touch of the transcendent
00:48:27.640 and the divine that ultimately was necessary to make Christianity something more. And I think
00:48:33.680 that's, as you're saying, played out in his works over and over again, where he's saying, yes, there
00:48:38.380 is a truth yes there is this logic and reason to it but ultimately it is beyond those things and
00:48:44.540 if you don't understand it's beyond those things you're missing something about the faith about the
00:48:48.700 truth about the divine uh it's that interaction with that which you cannot completely understand
00:48:53.960 or explain that makes christianity and and true religion what it is and i think we see that
00:48:59.720 displayed you know throughout all of his different works time and again yeah very well put i'm not
00:49:05.020 going to try and top that well guys uh then let's head over to the uh the questions of people but
00:49:12.600 before we do nick uh where can people find your work what should people be looking for yeah we'll
00:49:17.120 definitely go to at nick dixon on uh twitter or x and nick dixon on youtube and my sub stack is
00:49:24.220 nickdixon.net but if you like books i've now started confusingly a whole separate channel
00:49:28.500 nick reads and a separate sub stack just to make things difficult nick reads.com but if you go to
00:49:33.660 nick reads i've got about 10 11 videos just about c.s lewis so if you like this kind of thing because
00:49:37.980 as you may notice um or and it gets a little bit depressing just talking about politics all the
00:49:41.940 time yeah so i was like i've got to do something else and i'm doing this literature channel
00:49:46.060 nick reads yeah there's a reason we're doing this episode today i'm done talking about the
00:49:50.520 midterms we needed we needed a break so we're going to talk about one of my favorite books
00:49:54.660 instead so yeah i totally get that so guys yeah if you enjoyed this uh nick talks a lot about c.s
00:49:59.720 lewis uh maybe one of the few people who loves c.s lewis as much as me so head over there and uh and
00:50:05.720 check out his work uh all right let's see here bobby bob the nabob says question for nick have
00:50:11.480 you read sometimes a great nation casey definitely has a claim of the great american novel all right
00:50:18.220 yeah ken casey no i actually um i actually haven't i never really heard about that so um i should
00:50:24.200 look up that people this is the thing when i do my book channel there's always like have you read
00:50:27.780 this and i was like oh i haven't read every book in the world it's quite i've read most of them but
00:50:31.880 all of them but i'll check it out it's increasingly clear to me that like the my stack of books just
00:50:38.520 gets taller and i'll never get through all of them because the worst part is of course for
00:50:43.100 really good books and really complex books you have to go back and reread you know and so it's
00:50:47.160 not only the new books i need to read it's all the old ones that i need to go back like i still
00:50:51.280 need to go back and reread the entire you know uh decline of the west from spangler because there's
00:50:56.240 so much that i've learned and so much more i could probably draw from that but it's just like
00:51:00.560 committing yourself to another thousand pages of a book you've already read and while you still
00:51:05.140 have this growing stack of books you you haven't read yet it's just it's so much yeah it's brutal
00:51:09.940 it's brutal um audio ads that connect display ads that stand out run them together on spotify
00:51:17.100 and unlock incremental reach for your campaign oh there we go let's see uh the belgians are evil
00:51:23.740 trust me says it's our nick from lotus eaters i'm beau's trusted advisor on the vital uh frisian
00:51:30.240 and belgians and female uh flatulence question oh breakfast inside joke yeah that must one that
00:51:36.560 must be really inside that's too inside for me because i don't get up that early as beau does
00:51:41.320 this breakfast show and i'll never see it because i can't get up early well it's kind of nice for
00:51:46.000 us in america because uh you know it comes on at like you know 11 or 12 here in the world yeah so
00:51:51.840 we're we're catching it you know uh you know in the middle of the day so i i've watched i've
00:51:57.240 watched it a few times but uh yeah i'm not familiar enough to know that one uh let's see
00:52:02.840 jacob zindell says tell sargon we said hello well team also harassed carl he's supposed he told me
00:52:09.600 he's going to come on and we were going to play blood bowl together like i did with dave the
00:52:13.500 distributist uh you know warhammer game uh so yeah we everybody go bother uh carl until he uh
00:52:20.260 he shows back up and does the that episode i think it'd be fun and then uh belgians also says
00:52:25.520 nick can you release a study guide reading list for my time pressed friends uh such richness in
00:52:31.800 our canon but overwhelmed for newbies please do it all right okay i mean i suppose my channel
00:52:38.560 nick reads is a bit like that but maybe they want actual they want actual handouts now printouts and
00:52:43.540 they want to be an actual lecturer going where is the nick curriculum okay yeah
00:52:49.380 Yeah. Well, you were a teacher and you'd be better. It's true. It's true. I have done that.
00:52:54.380 Yeah. In many ways, I still do. All right, guys. Well, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up,
00:52:59.800 but it's been an absolute pleasure talking with Nick. Please make sure that you're checking out
00:53:03.320 his channel and his sub stack for more on CS Lewis. And of course, if it's your first time
00:53:07.680 on this channel, you need to click subscribe, the bell notifications, like all that stuff,
00:53:12.600 leave the comments, everything that lets the YouTube algorithm know you want to see more
00:53:16.900 of this show. If you want to get these broadcasts as podcasts, you need to subscribe to The Oren
00:53:20.920 McIntyre Show on your favorite podcast platform. And if you want to get my book, The Total State,
00:53:25.660 it's out in hardback, paperback, audiobook, digital book. You can find all of those
00:53:29.540 over at Amazon. Thanks for watching. And as always, I'll talk to you next time.