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The ancient Mariner kills his Albatross with a carelessness that stands in stark contrast to his impulse for confession. For several days he and his shipmates feed the albatross, play with it, and treat it as if it were inhabited by a “Christian soul.” The mariner never tells the wedding guest why it is that he kills the bird, but the casual and seemingly unmotivated act is followed by a psychedelic nightmare that gives us some clues. Why do we rebel against our position within the natural world, even to the point of self-destruction? What is required to restore us? Wes & Erin discuss Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classic poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

The ancient Mariner kills his Albatross with a carelessness that stands in stark contrast to his impulse for confession. For several days he and his shipmates feed the albatross, play with it, and treat it as if it were inhabited by a “Christian soul.” The mariner never tells the wedding guest why it is that he kills the bird, but the casual and seemingly unmotivated act is followed by a psychedelic nightmare that gives us some clues. Why do we rebel against our position within the natural world, even to the point of self-destruction? What is required to restore us? Wes & Erin discuss Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classic poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of "On the Waterfront."

Terry Malloy and his fellow longshoremen on the New York docks are witnesses to union corruption under labor boss Johnny Friendly, but won’t testify against him because of his violent intimidation tactics, which ensure that union members remain “D and D”—that is, deaf and dumb—to any illegal activity. When Terry’s collaboration with Friendly results in the death of his friend Joey Doyle, and when Terry subsequently falls in love with Joey’s sister, Edie, he’s forced to reckon with this D and D policy, as well as his own passivity, guilt, and naivete. Wes & Erin discuss Elia Kazan’s 1954 film On the Waterfront, which might be said to dramatize the so-called “sin of omission” while asserting that its opposite, truth-telling, can be a radical and perhaps even a strangely physical form of heroism.

In the medieval tradition of courtly love, the aubade inverts the serenade. Where one heralds an evening arrival, the other laments a morning departure. In John Dunne’s famous poetic contribution to the genre, he chastises the sun for waking and so separating lovers, but consoles us with the notion that the power of the sun is ultimately subordinate to the imperatives of love. More bleak, Philip Larkin’s poem “Aubade" seems to abandon this indictment on behalf of love for one on behalf of self-love, perhaps even on behalf of life itself. Morning awakens us to both workaday drudgery and an awareness of our own mortality. As a consequence, life is harder to live by the light of day, the consolations of philosophy and religion notwithstanding, and vitality is confined to the sorts of evening revelry that make waking all the harder. Wes & Erin discuss whether life (and love) can be reconciled with human self-consciousness and all that it entails.

In the medieval tradition of courtly love, the aubade inverts the serenade. Where one heralds an evening arrival, the other laments a morning departure. In John Dunne’s famous poetic contribution to the genre, he chastises the sun for waking and so separating lovers, but consoles us with the notion that the power of the sun is ultimately subordinate to the imperatives of love. More bleak, Philip Larkin’s poem “Aubade" seems to abandon this indictment on behalf of love for one on behalf of self-love, perhaps even on behalf of life itself. Morning awakens us to both workaday drudgery and an awareness of our own mortality. As a consequence, life is harder to live by the light of day, the consolations of philosophy and religion notwithstanding, and vitality is confined to the sorts of evening revelry that make waking all the harder. Wes & Erin discuss whether life (and love) can be reconciled with human self-consciousness and all that it entails.

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Orson Welles’s "Citizen Kane." Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, HelloFresh. Go to HelloFresh.com/subtextfree and use code subtextfree for free breakfast for life.

It’s a film bursting with objects—the treasure troves of Xanadu, a snowglobe, jigsaw puzzles, a winner’s cup, the famous sled. Even the conceptual elements of the film’s plot are expressed tangibly. Kane’s mind-boggling wealth isn’t an abstraction, but a list of concrete holdings—gold mines, oil wells, real estate. And the news Kane controls and manipulates, when yoked to another noun, is something one can hold in one’s hands: a newspaper. Kane, too, is described as the incarnation of several abstractions. As his obituary tells us, he himself was “news,” as well as the embodiment of whole years in a swath straddling the 19th and 20th centuries. One might call him the American idea personified. But what these terms really mean and how they’re made manifest in Kane is hard to pin down. At times, he seems to be no more than a vast, empty planet around which objects swirl. What’s at his core, then? What did his life mean? One reporter searching for the secret of Kane bets that just one fact—the identity of “Rosebud”—would explain his whole life. Another suggests that it’s in the sum total of his possessions. Yet another thinks, curiously, that even Kane’s actions won’t tell us who he really was. So what, then, determines his or any identity? What’s the measure of a person? The objects they possess? The abstract ideals they claim to stand for? Their actions? Or something still deeper? Wes & Erin discuss possibly the greatest film ever made: from 1941, Orson Welles’s "Citizen Kane."

Part 6 of Wes & Erin's discussion of Shakespeare’s "The Winter’s Tale." Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, St. John's College. Learn more about undergraduate--and graduate--Great Books programs at St. John's in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland at sjc.edu/subtext.

Part 5 of Wes & Erin's discussion of Shakespeare’s "The Winter’s Tale." Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, St. John's College. Learn more about undergraduate--and graduate--Great Books programs at St. John's in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland at sjc.edu/subtext.

Part 4 of Wes & Erin's discussion of Shakespeare’s "The Winter’s Tale." Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, HelloFresh. Go to HelloFresh.com/subtextfree and use code subtextfree for free breakfast for life.

Part 3 of Wes & Erin's discussion of Shakespeare’s "The Winter’s Tale." Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, St. John's College. Learn more about undergraduate--and graduate--Great Books programs at St. John's in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland at sjc.edu/subtext.

Part 2 of Wes & Erin's discussion of Shakespeare’s "The Winter’s Tale." Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, St. John's College. Learn more about undergraduate--and graduate--Great Books programs at St. John's in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland at sjc.edu/subtext.

When King Leontes accuses his pregnant wife of adultery, the nobleman Antigonus assumes that Leontes has been “abused and by some putter-on”—in other words, some Iago-like villain has been putting malevolent ideas into his head. In fact, Leontes is the father of his own misconceptions, just as he is the father of his wife’s children. But unlike his children, his ideas might be said to have no mother; they lack corroboration, which is to say, collaboration with a source outside himself. How, then, do we account for the seemingly spontaneous generation of his thoughts? How can false apprehensions arise out of nothing? And what price must one pay for bearing these misconceptions, these “nothings,” into the world? In this episode, the first part of a six part discussion, Wes & Erin discuss one of Shakespeare’s last plays, "The Winter’s Tale."

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters." For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes.

Hannah supports her sisters. She’s a source of money, encouragement, and advice, and seems to ask for nothing in return. In fact, she’s so giving and self-reliant that her husband Eliott begins to believe that she has no needs. This seems to be the spark that ignites his infatuation with Hannah’s sister Lee. It also leads her sister Holly to rebel against what might be called Hannah’s regime of care, only to marry another of her dissidents, her ex-husband Mickey. Today we discuss Woody Allen’s 1986 classic, and try to figure out why those closest to Hannah need to escape her goodness to find themselves, and whether a loved one can be too perfect for our own good.

Wes & Erin conclude their discussion of "The Odyssey," with a focus on Odysseus and Penelope getting re-acquainted with each other in Books 19 and 23. We discuss Penelope asking Odysseus-in-disguise whether she should marry a suitor, but tells him the dream of 20 geese, foretelling their ruin; the test involving the bed post tree trunk; and how we might think of the ending to this epic as a comedy of re-marriage.

Wes & Erin discuss the final 12 books of "The Odyssey." Having learned the lessons of the murder of Agamemnon, Odysseus does not rush straight home to his wife and children, once he arrives at Ithaca. Athena is impressed--but why, exactly? Why is it that Odysseus feels the need to hide his identity, and put friends and family to the test? And after 20 years apart, how do Odysseus and Penelope reacquaint themselves with each other?

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of the Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson. In this episode, part 2 of our 3-part series, they look closely at the heart of the poem, books 5-12, in which Odysseus arrives in Phaeacia and provides the tale-within-the-tale of his adventures after the Trojan War. They discuss the significance of Odysseus’s fantastical encounters and asking what they might reveal both about his character and about the nature of our own progress—through times of safety, complacency, excitement, danger, and loss—as we wend our way back home.

He was famously a man of many ways, whether we interpret these as abilities or norms; designs or deceptions; reasons or identities. Yet despite such resources, he was also famously stuck, making a 10-year odyssey of his attempt to return home from a 10-year war. What keeps the man of master plans from homecoming and domestic bliss? In the first of a three part discussion of Homer’s classic, Wes & Erin try to figure out what Odysseus really wants, and whether the “lord of lies” can master the trick of entrusting his mind to others.