Do you ever feel like you’re in a simulation? Have you seen this show before? Heard this song before? Had this conversation before? Read this book before? We know what C.S. Lewis would say about the last question. The answer is yes, you have read this book before, because all books in our tradition are just fan fiction of previous books, going all the way back to ancient Greece and Rome. On this week’s Mosaic Ark the ladies continued their discussion of the collection of C.S. Lewis’s lectures called The Discarded Image, and how every medieval author held the same view of creation. We also begin a very deep dive into one of Lewis’s contemporaries, Marshall McLuhan, and discuss how his work about the electronic medium of television predicted the retrieval of the medieval through the internet. We would love to hear your ideas about Lewis and McLuhan, so please leave a comment—which you can, since this is the Internet, not a book! —Streamed August 15, 2025

What is the “discarded image” that C.S. Lewis spoke about in his lectures at Oxford University, and why did he think it was necessary for his literature students to know what it was? This week the ladies discussed the first few chapters of the collections of Lewis’ lectures called The Discarded Image. Lewis taught that medieval peoples’ worldview was one where all knowledge was integrated into a unified whole, and that they were obsessed with collecting and cataloging all information previously known and newly discovered. We noted how this love of information collection greatly mirrors the modern world’s obsession with scrolling the Internet.

The ladies also discussed how both Lewis and Tolkien used this medieval view of creation as a “whole” to write their stories; rather than “world building,” they were merely presenting through fantasy, the world that was until recently, always believed. We believe that they had the secret to re-enchanting the world, the antidote to compulsive scrolling, by reclaiming the discarded image of creation as a whole, and enjoying reading “the old stories’ again.

This is the first in our series of discussions about Lewis’ The Discarded Image. Please join us again and give us your ideas or questions in the comments! —Streamed August 8, 2025

On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies were joined by theoretical physicist and author Hans G. Schantz. Hans is a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction. His fiction includes the alternate science techno-thrillers The Hidden Truth, A Rambling Wreck, and The Brave and the Bold. He also wrote a biting satire of modern day academia in his ode to the Scopes monkey trial called The Wise of Heart. That satire famously got him cancelled by Kickstarter. His two non-fiction works are called The Art and Science of Ultrawideband Antennas, and his just completed Fields & Energy, which also just got him cancelled by Kickstarter —we’re sensing a pattern! Professor Fulton Brown has some observations about the cancellation of knowledge and history from the Middle Ages, which Hans also mentioned in his latest book. Apparently there has been an epidemic of amnesia about the history of science that started in the 17th century and continued right through the late 20th century with NASA supposedly forgetting about technology that got the US to the moon. It was a very informative and lively discussion! Let us know in the comments what you thought of it! —Streamed August 1, 2025

Hans’s Substack: http://aetherczar.substack.com

Back the crowdfund for “Fields & Energy” and get cool SPQR merch! https://www.fundmycomic.com/campaign/825/fields-energy-book-i

Backstory with Hans on Francis Bacon: https://youtu.be/54ojYdAnxPQ