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Welcome back to the book club. I'm Michael Knowles, and I am so pleased this month

to be reading something that is not actually a book. It is Pascal's Ponce. I am joined by Lexi

Hudson, the author of The Soul of Civility.

You are looking very civilized, you sound very civilized, and we're discussing a book

that all really smart civilized people have read for a long time that I had been meaning

to read for 15 years, and I somehow did not get around to it until you made me read it.

You're welcome.

So yeah, thank you for being here.

Why did you pick this book?

This is one of my favorite books.

I was introduced to it in a class I took in college called Influential Christian Thinkers.

And Pascal is not just influential in Christian history.

He's relevant to society today. I think he's the thinker that we need in this current moment. He has a great story. He was this brilliant geometric mind. He invented a calculator at the age of 19. He invented the first omnibus, like public transit system in Paris. He was home

educated. His father prevented him from learning math until he was 15. So he independently discovered

the first 32 propositions of Euclidean geometry by the time he was like, you know, before the age of 15

because his father prohibited him from math. Didn't you? You didn't do that before?

...