What do we miss when we skip over the classics? In this episode of The Question Of, author and academic Louis Markos invites us to reconsider what we mean by “the classics” and why they still matter. Often seen as intimidating or distant, works by Thucydides, Aristotle, Cicero, and even the first five books of the Bible are too easily skimmed or set aside, but these texts offer far more than historical insight. Rather than simply answering questions, they expand our intellectual and moral imagination, equipping us to ask deeper, more enduring ones: Why am I here? What is the nature of goodness? What does a just society look like? In returning to the classics, we encounter not only the foundations of our civilization but also a richer understanding of our shared humanity, a history rooted in wisdom, virtue, and truths that have endured far beyond the passing currents of modern thought.

What if fantasy isn’t an escape from reality but a way to see it more clearly? In The Question of Fantasy, author Holly Ordway shares how fantasy renews our vision of the world. Drawing on the ideas of J.R.R. Tolkien, Ordway explores the three essential functions of fantasy: recovery, escape, and consolation. Recovery, which helps us see ordinary things as they truly are again; escape — far from escapism — reflects Tolkien’s belief (shaped by his experience in World War I) that a prisoner has a duty to escape and imagine possibilities beyond captivity; and consolation, which offers the unexpected joy of a happy ending that echoes the deeper hope of resurrection.Because fantasy is not tied to a particular time or place, it speaks across generations. Its very difference from the ordinary world invites audiences to see themselves in its characters — and to glimpse reality itself from a renewed and hopeful perspective.

How do we become real human beings? For storyteller Martin Shaw, the answer lies in recovering the ancient power of myth — those sacred, poetic stories carried across cultures for thousands of years that meet us most truly in times of suffering, where the timeless breaks into the everyday.Raised among books instead of modern distractions, Shaw discovered that myth is not childish fantasy but a kind of “ancient technology” meant to grow us up — stretching our imagination and deepening our reality. Far from being untrue, myth becomes most necessary when life is hardest, and that pinpricks of eternity are scattered through the world — if only we have eyes to see them.

What is it about this time in history that feels so oppressive and detached? How has the machine shaped our worldview? In the latest episode of The Question Of, the furiously gifted writer Paul Kingsnorth, unpacks the mechanisms of the machine by setting out to discover why there’s an ever present sense of a metastasizing, encroaching technology that’s entrapping humanity. What he calls “the machine” — the fusion of technology and power — has been growing since the Industrial Revolution, slowly overtaking nearly every aspect of human life. Kingsnorth argues that it represents a way of seeing the world through the pure lens of reason and science, and uses technology in an attempt to construct paradise. In response, he invites us to recover our humanity through prayer, people, place, and the past.