“I have ever been prone to seek adventure and to investigate and experiment where wiser men would have left well enough alone.”

― Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars

What does it mean to say that the world was once enchanted, but now it is not? To answer that question, one must ask, “what is a myth, and how can it be both true and false?” On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies were joined by Substack author John Carter (a pseudonym taken from one of his favorite book series by Edgar Rice Burroughs.) John Carter’s imagination is boundless, and with that boundless imagination he asks a lot of fascinating questions about history, science, religion, stories, and myths. One of the big questions of our time is this – what happens to a society built with the imaginative force of myth, when imagination is relegated to secondary status (when acknowledged at all) in the public sphere? If the effect of that secondary status is a crumbling society, how can that society be fixed? In short, how does one reenchant the world? Join us as we wrestle with this concept, and please share your ideas in the comments. —Streamed October 12, 2024

Postcards from Barsoom: https://barsoom.substack.com

"The Re-enchantment of the World": https://barsoom.substack.com/p/the-reenchantment-of-the-world

Dr. John Carter, PhD, on X: @martianwyrdlord