Hey, it's Brian, and before we get started, just a quick note that this episode and the other

five in this special series discuss Santa Claus, but not in a way that younger listeners

could appreciate.

So if there are little ones within earshot, save this for later.

Thanks.

Aristotle introduced us to a word back in 335 BCE.

It's a word that's important to our story.

Hamartia.

It appeared in his work on dramatic theory titled Poetics.

And Hamartia describes a flaw in a character, like arrogance or anger.

And not just a flaw, but a tragic flaw. We tend to think of a tragic

story as one where someone dies or suffers a great, well, tragedy. But dramatically speaking,

a tragic story is one where those things can happen, but the key thing is that any misfortunes

the character suffers are because of that tragic flaw,

that Hamartia and the character's inability to overcome it. Think of the legend of

vicarist from Greek myth. Because he couldn't keep his own hubris in check, he flew too close to the

sun and died. Or Hamlet, whose indecisiveness ultimately led to his own demise and a lot of

other peoples too. In a tragic story, there's a feeling that all of the misfortune could have

been avoided if only the character could wise up. But we know that the character is destined to

carry out his own defeat. In the events leading up to the end of the 1917 Christmas season,

John Glock found himself caught up in the state district attorney's investigation of wartime charities.

His cozy relationship with the United States Boy Scout had set off alarm bells over conflicts of interest

...