The Troubadour Podcast
"It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind." William Wordsworth The Troubadour Podcast invites you into a world where art is conversation and conversation is art. The conversations on this show will be with some living people and some dead writers of our past. I aim to make both equally entertaining and educational.In 1798 William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, which Wordsworth called an experiment to discover how far the language of everyday conversation is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure. With this publication, he set in motion the formal movement called "Romanticism." 220 years later the experiment is continued on this podcast. This podcast seeks to reach those of us who wish to improve our inner world, increase our stores of happiness, and yet not succumb to the mystical or the subjective.Here, in this place of the imagination, you will find many conversation with those humans creating things that interest the human mind.
The Troubadour Podcast
PT 3: Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Birth of Sci-Fi
In part 3 of our 4 part series we explore "Rappaccini's Daughter," one of Hawthorne's most famous short stories.
Whether we understand it or not, our American culture is heavily shaped by Science Fiction. It is arguably the closest we get to a literary genre. It's power is so immense that our views of things like the lone-billionaire scientist (think Musk) and the doting old intellectual (think Bernie) still follow us around today.
When we look to scientists to solve all of our ecological, biological, earthly "problems" we are acknowledging the impact of sci-fi. Science today resembles a religion of old with its leaders and secretive language and gatekeepers.
This of course is most assuredly NOT science. It is, instead, the by-product of the evolution of science in a literary artform.
In this four part series we are exploring the original conception of this genre. How it was envisioned and some of the original solutions to this primary character: the scientist. What can a scientist know? When should we take scientists at their word? Should we relegate the entire realm of knowledge to the specialists of today?
Explore these ideas as well as the personal moral values in Hawthorne's romantic sci-fi stories in part 3 of our 4 part series.