Episode 29: Worth Fighting For

We discuss The Two Towers, two big Pilgrim's Podcast Family revelations (one of which we reveal), the Progeny describes an identity crisis in Chinese, 1970s music, the true identity of Episode 12's Tacitus, and more in this episode of The Pilgrim's Podcast.

Episode 24: Life, Death, and All that Jazz

We get a bit pretentious and talk about how society justifies the value of human life apart from the imago Dei, human exceptionalism, joy, sehnsucht, the Patriarch's rap career, and how That Hideous Strength is coming true.

Episode 20: Life Finds a Way

We're back! Nosotros somos aquí! And we've finally seen Jurassic World, which means we'll be talking dinosaurs, genetic engineering, Bryce Dallas Howards' high heels, Guatemala, Trump, Chris Pratt, and more! Additionally, C.S. Lewis's thoughts on Donald Trump. This week we're joined by the Matriarch and - briefly - the Photographer.

Episode 17: Holy Pilgrim's Podcast, Batman!

We talk about the history of superheroes, American exceptionalism, why we should bring back dueling, the importance of Penny Dreadfuls, the disintegration of heroism, the title of the Patriarch's hypothetical biopic, Dr. Strange director Scott Derrickson, and human beings' desire for a righteous king.

Episode 5: A Christmas Carol - All that Glitters

We talk about two Scrooges: Sim and Scott. Also: South-West Virginia, The Muppets, putting the mass back in Christmas, favorite Dickens names, Mrs. Crachit’s divine pudding, and the cruelty of government charity.

Lawrence of Arabia - Movie Review

Lawrence of Arabia is about power, posturing, politics, pride, and pettiness. And spectacle. Big-screen epic spectacle. 

If there’s one thing that provides that spectacle, it’s the sweeping panorama of the barren desert. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film which so fully impressed on me the vastness of it, and the corresponding inconsequentiality of a man on a camel, with only a water-skin between him and death.

It’s quite ironic, isn’t it? And this film lives and breathes irony, placing characters in so many incongruous situations that it gets a little ridiculous.  

The first is a placard on a peaceful country road marked “DANGER.”

It’s not much of a spoiler that Lawrence dies an ignominious death—thrown from his motorcycle into a clump of bushes—in the first five minutes of the film. For a while, I was confused as to why the filmmakers chose to start us here. I recognized the heavy contrast of cutting from a motorcycle accident in verdant Dorset to conversation in the halls of a British colonial outpost to the barren, utterly foreign desert, but I felt it sucked the uncertainty from Lawrence’s story—we knew he lived, so what suspense was there?  (Spoilers below)