The Western Traditions Podcast

The final scene of Hamnet is a dense, powerfully-acted demonstration of story-telling and character development. The episode relates how Jessie Buckley accomplishes a memorable feat of acting primarily through facial expression and gestures rather than with the spoken word, the traditional medium of acting. The scene also meditates on that black door, and the undiscovered country in each of us.

In the early first century BC, after the death of Sulla, the Roman Republic's moved and shaken by the work and charisma of several powerful men: Pompey, Crassus, Sertorius, Metellus, Lucullus and others. These men shepherd the Roman state into and out of one conflict after the other: The Sertorian War, the Third Servile War, the Third Mithridatic War and others. By 63 BC, Pompey has conquered the Seleucid Empire and seized the city of Jerusalem, and now Roman power extends from Spain in the West to the Euphrates River in the East.

The Roman Republic enters the last century before Christ weakened not only by external warfare but also by internal struggles. Marcus Livius Drusus, after proposing some radical changes is assassinated. Yet Rome survives the Social War, the war with Mithridates and the First Civil War all in succession. Marius serves his last consulship. His former lieutenant, Sulla, seizes power and restores Roman solidity briefly before dying himself. We are introduced to names like Pompey, Crassus and Julius Caesar.

From outside the aristocracy, Marius comes to power in an endangered Roman Republic. As he rises through the ranks, the Gracchis are slain, the Numidians rebel, the Germans invade and the slaves revolt. We first hear of Lucius Cornelius Sulla and the Servile Wars.

Caius Gracchus works his way through the Roman ranks until, following in his older brother's footsteps, he is elected as a young tribune of the people. Immediately, he begins to propose legislation that will both avenge his brother's death and return land and prosperity to the common people. The Senate, fearing any strong man in public power, moves against him. In the end, his corpse follows his brother's into the Tiber river, and it will be the task of another man to rattle the Senate's Republican cage. 

Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus returns home from war to find his nation in decline. The rich have imported immigrants and slaves into Italy to displace the native citizens. The rise of plantations drives free Romans into urban zones to seek a living through labor and to live in property-less poverty. When elected tribune, he sets out on a martyr's road to right the wrongs of class warfare in Rome.

How the process of optimization ultimately ruins everything. Beginning with examples from Mexican politics and President Gustavo Diaz, the podcast goes on to consider business, sports, diet, religion, marriage and technology as well as the US health care system. Finally, the episode closes with Dr. Richard Feynman's elaboration on the theory of entropy. 

The speaker explores the dark theology of Cormac McCarthy. The sources of influence include William Faulkner, Herman Melville's Moby Dick, ancient gnosticism. Cited works include The Orchard Keeper, The Outer Dark, Suttree, Blood Meridian, The Border Trilogy, No Country for Old Men, The Road, The Passenger and Stella Maris.

A reflection on the post-apocalyptic trend in modern fiction, starting with an epiphany experienced while rereading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. The speaker explores technological trends in history, prehistory and the future, from Gobekli Tepe to the present and beyond. Archaeology, history, literature, mathematics and the Technological Singularity all find their way into the thread of the monologue. 

Jacob returns to the Promised Land, after surviving the reunion with his brother Esau. He meets a mysterious stranger and earns a new name at the river Yabbok. His daughter, Dinah, is violated near Shechem. His sons stir up trouble for him as they try to settle in the land.