A Hollywood blockbuster can make “The Odyssey” feel like a parade of monsters and set pieces but Homer’s epic is stranger, quieter, and more demanding than that. We sit down with poets and scholars Jonathan Geltner, Eric Hutchinson, and Rob Wyllie to ask a deceptively basic question: what is an epic, really? The answer takes us from dactylic hexameter and oral performance to the way epic poetry can build a culture’s imagination of gods, duty, and the shape of reality itself.

Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Listen and read The Daily Liturgy by going to http://mereorthodoxy.com/daily-liturgy

A pastor asks Augustine for a short summary of the Christian life, and Augustine delivers a compact handbook that is so honest it practically stops mid-sprint when it reaches love. That tension, between real-life limits and real spiritual depth, is where our conversation lives today. We are joined by Joseph Lanier and Travis Montgomery, co-authors of *Every Perfect Gift: Classical Virtues for Christian Formation*, to explore why Augustine still trains our instincts for discipleship, moral theology, and spiritual formation.

Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Listen and read The Daily Liturgy by going to http://mereorthodoxy.com/daily-liturgy

A foggy train pulls into St Petersburg and two young men face each other across a third-class carriage. That opening scene from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot is our doorway into a novel that refuses to let anyone stay comfortable, especially when a pure-hearted man starts telling the truth in rooms built on performance.

Nadia Williams talks with writer and reporter Maria Baer to talk about why 21st-century American Christians should still read this translated Russian classic. We dig into what makes a “classic” more than a school requirement, how to pick a translation that actually keeps you turning pages, and why reading older books helps us notice the invisible norms shaping our own lives.

Christians Reading Classics is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Listen and read The Daily Liturgy by going to http://mereorthodoxy.com/daily-liturgy