Cohosts Ryan McDermott and Elise Lonich Ryan have a conversation about the art that has accompanied them through 2020. They discuss the mysterious ending of Pulitzer-nominated Heroes of the Fourth Turning, a play that explores the political beliefs of four conservative Catholics and has had multiple runs on Zoom. Ryan and Elise share a love of Marilynne Robinson and critiques of Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life. Ryan explains how the Norwegian show Beforeigners ties into his project Genealogies of Modernity, and Elise recommends the best nature writing.

• Reading the signs of the times

• The relationship between affect and reason

• Can you make sense of the present?

• How sci-fi and dystopia help us find meaning in times of anxiety

• Affective responses and structures of feeling

• Franz Jäggerstätter and the intellectual life

• American transcendentalism and sentimentalism

Links:
Wilma Theater production of Heroes of the Fourth Turning
The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
“Unpacking My Library” by Walter Benjamin
Tenet
Inception
Flourishing in the Wake of COVID-19
Marilynne Robinson on The Ezra Klein Show
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Jack by Marilynne Robinson
Lila by Marilynne Robinson
Home by Marilynne Robinson
“A beginners guide to The Ezra Klein Show”
Heroes of the Fourth Turning by Will Arbery
A Hidden Life
The Thin Red Line
Andrei Tarkovsky
Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez
The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson
Beforeigners
Genealogies of Modernity