Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Socrates in the city.

I have to say that this is a particularly wonderful Socrates in the city because I get to have a conversation

with a character named Christian Wyman.

Perhaps you've read about him.

Anybody here of Christian Wyman?

He'll be showing up any minute and I'm just going to,

I get to ask him anything I want.

Those are the ground rules.

I didn't tell him that, but those are the ground rules.

Couple of things before we start. Our format is a little bit different from what we normally have.

In fact, we're going to be doing more Socrates events that are conversations

between two people, and I often will be just one of those two people, just in case you're worried about that.

But we're going to be doing that, and tonight I've read Christian's book, My Bright Abyss Meditation of a Modern

Believer, and it is a prose poetry is what it is, which is a coincidence because he's a poet.

But it's what I would like to think of as lapidary prose.

It is just the kind of thing.

You could inscribe most of the sentences on granite and nobody would look at you funny.

Very impressive, very thoughtful.

I came upon the story of Christian Wyman in this book, I guess it was in the New Yorker magazine,

and then everywhere I turned,

it seemed, I found more stories on him. I even opened up the Yale Alumni Magazine,

which they keep sending to me, even though I've never sent them a dime, and by God's

...