In this episode, Tom and Tim mostly talk about the kids these days with their Greek Mythology and altars and dice, and about Therians, and Furries, and other ventures into new and old religion. It ends with a reading by Tim from Dave Grohl’s biography, about a vision of Kurt Cobain on the road.
Thanks for listening!
00:16 Tom talks about middle-schoolers who, inspired by Percy Jackson books, have begun practicing their own form of Greek paganism.
3:12 Tom talks about middle-school Therians who have a better life than Tom, because they know what they believe.
4:35 Tim talks about a book on ancient religion that he came across that wants to be more rigorous about the subject than more popular works; Tim admires this impulse, but also admits that the DIY middle-schooler Greek paganism is valid too.
10:36 Tom wonders why journalists aren’t writing about Therians.
12:28 Tom and Tim talk about Furry Conventions; and on the wonderful profusion of merch and adornments and ways of belonging to these groups.
18:46 Tom talks about not having found his group, or a religious/ritual practice, leading to Tom and Tim talking about ritual, certainty, and doubt; Tom thinks his ritual is actually his art-making.
22:46 Tim brings up the novelist George Saunders and Buddhist meditation; as long as the impulses aren’t harming to himself or others, Tim doesn’t want to keep himself from being attached to messy/ephemeral emotions and reactions.
25:59 Tim admits that his idea meditation, first come upon in his early 20s, may have been too-idealized.
26:31 The perfect meditation is reading, or is underlining in books.
27:16 Almost anything can become a religious practice; but it can almost too-easily become a form of orthodoxy.
27:58 Tim talks about his own practice of Judaism, and the pull towards an idealized practice and discipline there, too; he also admits that becoming Rabbi Tim would take away from doing a podcast with Tom.
30:39 Tom talks about how we have so much fewer shared experiences anymore.
32:52 Tom realizes that he probably has found his group, beyond making art and music, since he is in charge of a school of artists; he talks about finding community there through publishing projects and reacting to the current horrors and joys in the world.
38:56 For Tim’s reading corner, he reads from Dave Grohl’s memoir, The Storyteller. In the aftermath of Kurt Cobain’s death, Grohl talks about mourning, worrying that he is losing touch with music, and the moment when he found it again.
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