S9E2: “Matt says ‘Hello’…”

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After beginning the season without him, Matt joins Andrew and David to talk through the upcoming season…

Click here to download audio for S9E2: “Matt says hello…”, A belated welcome to Season 9!

Show Notes

Introduction

Quote-of-the-Week

I’m so pleased about the Abolition of Man, for it is almost my favourite among my books but in general has been almost totally ignored by the public.

C. S. Lewis

Welcome

–

Chit Chat

  • If you’ve been watching our Common Room episodes, you’ll know some of what has been happening since the end of Season 8. But in case you missed it, here are some of the highlights…
    • Matt has a BIG life update to share… he and his wife are expecting! Baby Bush is due in about 4 months. Matt offered thanks from him and his wife for all of the support and prayers.
    • Over break, Andrew started a new job at St. John’s in Tampa, Florida, and traveled to Belfast, Ireland with the C. S. Lewis Foundation to meet the poet Andrew Roycroft and Stuart Horner from the C. S. Lewis Institute. He saw the hotel room where Jack had his “holiday at sea”, along with his boyhood home.
    • Andrew is working on several book projects, including “Rediscovering Lewis: A Collection of Essays”, “Out Of Our Conference, Still Speaking”, and “Please God”. He’s also aiming to complete his dissertation by the end of the year. Soon, there will be two “Dr. Lazo’s”.
    • On April 24-25th, 2026, the Mere Christians Conference will be returning to Andrew’s old stomping grounds, the Church of the Messiah.
    • David and Andrew also went to the C. S. Lewis Festival in Petoskey, Michigan and performed our first ever live-audience podcast.
    • David and his wife welcomed their third child into the world in August, Henry Nicholas! He is very roly-poly, happy baby, and Alexander and Lucy love him.
    • David has also kept his Duolingo streak going with Latin, and has advanced beyond what the course has to offer, so he has now swapped over to Spanish, if for no other reason than to be able to have a secret language to speak with his wife that his children cannot understand. He’s also picking up American Sign Language. He’ll be a philologist in no time.

Toast

  • Matt has a small glass of Lagavulin 16, and some Athletic Brewing Co. in a beautiful Pints with Jack mug.
  • Andrew is recording at work, so he has to miss out on the fun. He has a glass of water.
  • David had a cup of Yorkshire Gold tea.
  • Today, we toast Matt, Mary Margaret, and their little shrub…cheers!

Discussion

01. “Narnia Month”

  • Next episode begins the start of Narnia Month. Last season, we focused on “Narnia in the Seventies”, so this time, we’ll be joined by the great Lazo Major to talk about “Narnia in the Eighties”, and the oh-so-wonderful BBC adaptation of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”.
  • Terry Lindvall will return to the show for the following episode to discuss “The Joy of Narnia”, and introducing Lewis’ fictional work to middle and high school students.
  • David is going through LLW with his son Alexander, at his own request. Raising them right.

02. “After Hours Month”

  • As we enter Advent, we’ll begin our After Hours month. Around Christmastime, we’ll go through Lewis’ “Christmas Sermon for Pagans”. It’ll also be time to celebrate our annual #CSLewisReadingDay, with a focus on Storge love. Finally, we’ll wrap up 2025 with a few interviews:

03. “The Abolition of Man”

  • Rolling into 2026, we’ll spend the next few months diving into the book of the season: “The Abolition of Man”.
  • Though the book is relatively short, TAOM is certainly one of Lewis’ denser books. For this reason, we’ve decided to break each chapter up into three discussion episodes, followed by a guest interview to summarize and review the chapter as a whole. Our guests for this season include the guys from Men With Chests, Dr. Alan Snyder, Dr. Joshua Herring, Joseph Weigel, and an unnamed special guest.
  • Matt tried questioning Lewis’ ability to accurately judge his own works, given that Lewis thought that TAOM and “Till We Have Faces” were his best works, and few others enjoy them. Andrew pointed out that though it was a personal favorite of Lewis, Jack understood that the public wasn’t as privy to his tastes.
  • Although the public didn’t like this manuscript much, Jack’s friends certainly seemed to.

It is a real triumph. There may be a piece of contemporary writing in which precision of thought, liveliness of expression and depth of meaning unite with the same felicity, but I have not come across it.

Owen Barfield, The Abolition of Man (back cover) (Fount paperback, 1986), Letter from January 22, 1944
  • Andrew pulled up a poll from NarniaWeb about “top three favorite Narnia books”, and each host gave their favorites.
    • Matt: “The Horse and His Boy”, “The Last Battle”, and “The Silver Chair”
    • Andrew: “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, “Voyage of the Dawn Treader”, “The Horse and His Boy”
    • David: “The Horse and His Boy”, “The Magician’s Nephew”, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”
    • What are your favorites? Go support our friends at NarniaWeb and enter your own three favorites.

Q. Historically, what’s been your relationship with this book? 

  • Matt has yet to read it. There’s curiosity and excitement for the wisdom that it has to offer, but it’s an intimidating read!
  • Even Andrew struggles with it, attempting multiple times but always getting bogged down.
  • As for David, it was among the first second-tier books of Lewis that he read. He’d expected it to be a short morning read, and it was anything but. Though he enjoyed it, he couldn’t quite figure out the book’s main argument, until he ran across the appendix, which Lewis and other editors failed to mention in advance. Once he read this and the text body in conjunction, things began to make sense.
  • There are many connections between this book and “That Hideous Strength”, be on the lookout for them!

04. “Charles Williams Month”

  • David’s birthday month (April) will be devoted to “the third Inkling” Charles Williams, since we ran out of time last season. It’ll be the perfect preparation for next season’s book, the conclusion to the Ransom series, “That Hideous Strength”. Here are some of our guests for this season:
  • As a special treat, at the end of this season, we’ll be giving away the books that we received from the interviewed authors.

05. “Jack’s Bookshelf Month”

  • We’ll cap off the season with Jack’s Bookshelf month, where we focus on the works that shaped Lewis. Here’s a sneak peek at the works and authors we’ll be going over this month:

06. “Wrap-Up”

  • Season nine will cap off with one final episode in June. We hope to have a 1-2 month break before launching into “That Hideous Strength”.

Wrap Up

Concluding Thoughts

  • Everyone is looking forward to diving into the book. Though “The Abolition of Man” might not be everyone’s first choice on their own, deconstructing it together will be very eye-opening.
  • Andrew is especially excited for this year’s #CSLewisReadingDay, and hopes to hold a C. S. Lewis mass at his church.

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David

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After working as a Software Engineer in England for several years, David moved to the United States in 2008, where he settled in San Diego. Then, in 2020 he married his wife, Marie, and moved to La Crosse, Wisconsin. Together they have a son, Alexander, who is adamant that Narnia should be read publication order.