This is going to be the most depressing episode of Young Heretics yet, or probably ever.

Hello, welcome to Young Heretics.

We are here today starting a study of T.S. Eliot.

And in particular, we are starting with T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland.

The poem you may have heard of because it is ridiculously famous.

It's in fact probably the most famous poem of its period, which is the modernist period,

something we are going to talk a lot about.

In fact, let's take a moment just right now to talk about why we would be doing the modernist

period right now on Young Heretics when we've been focusing actually a lot on sort of ancient

wisdom.

I did a whole series or rather a whole episode on the abolition of man, in which I basically

argued that Lewis is the greatest intellectual of the 20th century precisely because he gives

you the tools to reject modernity or rather to reject perhaps modernism.

And now here we are working on T.S. Eliot, thinking about T.S. Eliot, who is perhaps the great

modernist, at least in poetry and lyric poetry.

Why?

Why do we care about this modern poet, exceedingly depressing, exceedingly sad, and

in many ways sort of the departure from all of the kind of high noble classicism that we've

been talking about a lot on this show.

Why are we paying attention to him?

Well, I think that Eliot is, indisputably, one of the greats, as of course many people

do.

...