Young Heretics

In this middle portion of his series on Dante, Spencer Klavan outlines the lay of the divine "land" in Dante's Commedia. Traveling from the lust of the damned up to the longings of the saved, Dante the pilgrim meets Beatrice the redeemed soul, seeking a way to purify and channel his fleshly desires. -- Rocket Money is the new app that helps you identify and stop paying for subscriptions you don’t need, want, or simply forgot about. Save thousands of dollars a year: https://rocketmoney.com/heretics. -- Indeed is the hiring partner where you can attract, interview, and hire all in one place. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post at https://Indeed.com/HERETICS. -- You’ll have more energy and feel healthier when you take Field of Greens. Get 15% off your first order and another 10% off when you subscribe for recurring orders. Use promo code HERETICS at https://fieldofgreens.com. -- Cozy Earth was created to enhance people’s lives by offering the softest, most luxurious, and responsibly sourced bedding in the world. Go to CozyEarth.com/HERETICS and save 35% off your order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this final series of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan charts a map of Dante's career and the structure of his greatest work, the Commedia. Walking through the politics, metaphysics, and artistic background of the poem, Spencer approaches the beginning of Dante's journey to discover the true nature of love. -- Public Goods is the one stop shop for sustainable, high quality everyday essentials made from clean ingredients. Receive $15 off your first Public Goods order at https://publicgoods.com/HERETICS. -- Cozy Earth was created to enhance people’s lives by offering the softest, most luxurious, and responsibly sourced bedding in the world. Go to CozyEarth.com/HERETICS and save 35% off your order. -- Indeed is the hiring partner where you can attract, interview, and hire all in one place. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post at https://Indeed.com/HERETICS. -- You’ll have more energy and feel healthier when you take Field of Greens. Get 15% off your first order and another 10% off when you subscribe for recurring orders. Use promo code HERETICS at https://fieldofgreens.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When the Devil visits Ivan in the Brothers Karamazov, he looks at first like a rather unimpressive gentleman. But lurking under his seemingly distracted conversation is a sinister depiction of the world broken down into infinite matter, formless and void. What answer can we possibly give to this satanic vision? Spencer Klavan explores Dostoevsky's alternative to modernist perdition. -- You’ll have more energy and feel healthier when you take Field of Greens. Get 15% off your first order and another 10% off when you subscribe for recurring orders. Use promo code HERETICS at https://fieldofgreens.com. -- Rocket Money is the new app that helps you identify and stop paying for subscriptions you don’t need, want, or simply forgot about. Save thousands of dollars a year: https://rocketmoney.com/heretics. -- Public Goods is the one stop shop for sustainable, high quality everyday essentials made from clean ingredients. Receive $15 off your first Public Goods order at https://publicgoods.com/HERETICS. -- Cozy Earth was created to enhance people’s lives by offering the softest, most luxurious, and responsibly sourced bedding in the world. Go to CozyEarth.com/HERETICS and save 35% off your order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Everyone is guilty for everything before everyone”: This week, through the mystery of Father Zosima's life and sermons, Spencer Klavan unfolds Dostoevsky's answer to Ivan, to Nietzsche, and to modern skepticism and scientism. The words of Zosima are at the heart of this sprawling novel, and their wisdom is, if anything, more relevant now than when they were written. -- Public Goods is the one stop shop for sustainable, high quality everyday essentials made from clean ingredients. Receive $15 off your first Public Goods order at https://publicgoods.com/HERETICS. -- Indeed is the hiring partner where you can attract, interview, and hire all in one place. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post at https://Indeed.com/HERETICS. -- Rocket Money is the new app that helps you identify and stop paying for subscriptions you don’t need, want, or simply forgot about. Save thousands of dollars a year: https://rocketmoney.com/heretics. -- Stop throwing your tea into the harbor, and start celebrating America’s tea heritage with Gold River Trading Co.’s specialty blends. Get 10% off your order with promo code HERETICS: https://goldriverco.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ivan, the most brilliant and also the most tormented of the brothers in Dotoevsky's "Brothers Karamazov," saw something that few others could see: if there is no immortal soul and no God, then everything is permitted. It's something that Nietzsche realized as well, and it drove him mad. How did Dotoevsky avoid the same fate—and how can we? Spencer Klavan picks up these questions in the second installment of this series. -- Stop throwing your tea into the harbor, and start celebrating America’s tea heritage with Gold River Trading Co.’s specialty blends. Get 10% off your order with promo code HERETICS: https://goldriverco.com. -- Public Goods is the one stop shop for sustainable, high quality everyday essentials made from clean ingredients. Receive $15 off your first Public Goods order at https://publicgoods.com/HERETICS. -- Rocket Money is the new app that helps you identify and stop paying for subscriptions you don’t need, want, or simply forgot about. Save thousands of dollars a year: https://rocketmoney.com/heretics. -- You’ll have more energy and feel healthier when you take Field of Greens. Get 15% off your first order and another 10% off when you subscribe for recurring orders. Use promo code HERETICS at https://fieldofgreens.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dostoevsky was the kind of artist who peers so deep into the heart of the present that he becomes a prophet of the future. His last and greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, can be difficult to get into—but if you manage to crack the spine, it will be well worth your while. Spencer Klavan offers a little Young Heretics-style help to get you started. -- Rocket Money is the new app that helps you identify and stop paying for subscriptions you don’t need, want, or simply forgot about. Save thousands of dollars a year: https://rocketmoney.com/heretics. -- Cozy Earth was created to enhance people’s lives by offering the softest, most luxurious, and responsibly sourced bedding in the world. Go to CozyEarth.com/HERETICS and save 35% off your order. -- Indeed is the hiring partner where you can attract, interview, and hire all in one place. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post at https://Indeed.com/HERETICS. -- You’ll have more energy and feel healthier when you take Field of Greens. Get 15% off your first order and another 10% off when you subscribe for recurring orders. Use promo code HERETICS at https://fieldofgreens.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do you want? In this final episode of his series on Thomas Traherne, Spencer Klavan explores Traherene's daring suggestion that you might not want enough. The 17th-century mystic argued that God gives us the world anew each time he creates a new human being—a thought that can radically change the way you look at basically everything. -- Public Goods is the one stop shop for sustainable, high quality everyday essentials made from clean ingredients. Receive $15 off your first Public Goods order at https://publicgoods.com/HERETICS. -- Rocket Money is the new app that helps you identify and stop paying for subscriptions you don’t need, want, or simply forgot about. Save thousands of dollars a year: https://rocketmoney.com/heretics. -- Indeed is the hiring partner where you can attract, interview, and hire all in one place. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post at https://Indeed.com/HERETICS. -- Stop throwing your tea into the harbor, and start celebrating America’s tea heritage with Gold River Trading Co.’s specialty blends. Get 10% off your order with promo code HERETICS: https://goldriverco.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How can we retain a sense of joy in the teeth of suffering? What does it mean to forgive? These hard and painful questions are the subject of the second installment in Spencer Klavan's series on Thomas Traherne and Matthew 6. Breaking down the Greek of the gospels and using Traherne as a guide, Spencer points the way to a joy that persists even when happiness doesn't. -- How can you learn Latin, Ancient Greek, or Biblical Hebrew in order to read the classics of the ancient western world, in their original language? Get 10% off of your Ancient Language Institute course with promo code HERETICS: https://ancientlanguage.com/heretics. -- Indeed is the hiring partner where you can attract, interview, and hire all in one place. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post at https://Indeed.com/HERETICS. -- Cozy Earth was created to enhance people’s lives by offering the softest, most luxurious, and responsibly sourced bedding in the world. Go to CozyEarth.com/HERETICS and save 35% off your order. -- Public Goods is the one stop shop for sustainable, high quality everyday essentials made from clean ingredients. Receive $15 off your first Public Goods order at https://publicgoods.com/HERETICS. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Take care that ye perform not your righteousness to be seen of men." These words, familiar to Christians around the world, have an urgent and profound meaning for our time that needs unlocking. Using the Greek of the gospels and the profound meditations of Thomas Traherne, Spencer Klavan explores what it means not to let the left hand know what the right hand is doing. -- Public Goods is the one stop shop for sustainable, high quality everyday essentials made from clean ingredients. Receive $15 off your first Public Goods order at https://publicgoods.com/HERETICS. -- Stop throwing your tea into the harbor, and start celebrating America’s tea heritage with Gold River Trading Co.’s specialty blends. Get 10% off your order with promo code HERETICS: https://goldriverco.com. -- Cozy Earth was created to enhance people’s lives by offering the softest, most luxurious, and responsibly sourced bedding in the world. Go to CozyEarth.com/HERETICS and save 35% off your order. -- You’ll have more energy and feel healthier when you take Field of Greens. Get 15% off your first order and another 10% off when you subscribe for recurring orders. Use promo code HERETICS at https://fieldofgreens.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this final episode of his series on Athenian democracy and citizenship, Spencer Klavan tells a few rip-roaring myths and true stories from the history of Athen—from the birth of King Erichthonius out of the ground to the fraught relationship between Cleisthenes of Athens and King Cleomenes of Sparta. Then as now, the question was: what does it mean to be equal before the law? -- Rocket Money is the new app that helps you identify and stop paying for subscriptions you don’t need, want, or simply forgot about. Save thousands of dollars a year: https://rocketmoney.com/heretics. -- Indeed is the hiring partner where you can attract, interview, and hire all in one place. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post at https://Indeed.com/HERETICS. -- Stop throwing your tea into the harbor, and start celebrating America’s tea heritage with Gold River Trading Co.’s specialty blends. Get 10% off your order with promo code HERETICS: https://goldriverco.com. -- You’ll have more energy and feel healthier when you take Field of Greens. Get 15% off your first order and another 10% off when you subscribe for recurring orders. Use promo code HERETICS at https://fieldofgreens.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices