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From the Relief Actor.com studios, this is America First with Sebastian Gorka.

Welcome to France, it's a very special edition of America First. We get to indulge ourselves, we get to do long form, we have a whole hour with our special guests and this hour it's with somebody who...

How should I put this? He deals with the important things. He is a man who understands why the West is best and understands the importance of stories and of classical civilizational values.

He is none other. Can I call you Professor Joe LeConte?

You can just call me Joe but you can keep the professor if you like.

Welcome back to America First. He is an expert on what should we call it? What should we call Tolkien and CS Lewis? For me they are the modern mythologists. Does that sound crazy?

No that's about right. Taking those ancient myths and reinterpreting for the modern mind. We have so much to discuss, we are going to talk about this new series that you have embarked upon the books you have written.

Let's start with this. We are going to talk about Western culture, the canon as it is called and I thought he had it all in his head. But no he has got in his backpack as he arrives in studio, sits down in front of the microphone and pulls that book after book after book. Let's start with what did you carry into the America First studio today Professor?

I could resist a little bit of Gilgamesh, the classic classic. The old story in the world. Only about 5,000 years old. We have got a preface to paradise law. CS Lewis wrote a fascinating essay we will perhaps get into. We have got a course of Virgil's The Ineid.

An incredible lecture also that Tolkien gave on bail wolf.

Wow you have like an original. It's an original copy of the address he gave the monsters and the critics 1936 correct. Yeah, yeah, it's terrific stuff. So these were people who are stories that are incredibly important to Tolkien into Lewis, the Ineid and bail wolf. These great epic heroic tales.

So we're going to go through all of these issues. I want to end up at a kind of Western civilization and popular culture, the importance of courage as a virtue. But let's start with with with the most human if I may.

This is something I return to every single day, not just as a function of having three hours to talk Monday to Friday, but also because of what I perceive is the building blocks of our civilization.

Let me start with a very simple question. Why do humans like stories Joseph LaConte?

Because we do, don't we? Yes, we do. We can't live without them. And I'm not just talking about nursery rhymes. Yes, you tell to your children. But it goes all the way up to Tom Clancy from from Gilgamesh to Tom Clancy.

I'm not trying to be prosaic, but humans need it as much as they need oxygen and food. Isn't there some need for stories? Yes. And I think part of the reason, Seb is that they communicate truths about the human condition, moral truth, spiritual truths in a way that no other medium is able to do.

I think on a religious end just for a moment, the favorite teaching tool of Jesus of Nazareth, of course, is the parable of the story. So he understood understands that about us. Something about the capacity of the story to lift us out of our moment and to put us into another world, a morally charged world that we're invited out to join, be part of.

That's interesting. So that's that's not where I would have started, but I think that has to be part of it that because it's it's not here and now because it's quote unquote fictional or mythological, it lifts you out by definition of the here and now.

Let me posit another aspect because it is not here and now and empirical in the in the original sense of the word, the communicative power of a story is working on our emotions more than our cold reason.

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