On tonight’s episode of the Mosaic Ark, the ladies welcomed BasedCon founder and author Rob Kroese to talk about his latest Kickstarter (his fifteenth!) for his new book series, Ransom’s Law, which he described as a space opera where Better Call Saul meets The Expanse. Rob is a prolific writer who has authored thirty-six novels in a variety of genres, both humorous and dark. In addition to the Kickstarter, we also talked about Rob’s creative process, how everybody hates marketing his own work, and Rob’s spooky habit of writing somewhat prophetic story lines. This stream wound its way to 2 hours and 30 minutes, but be sure to catch the last hour, as for some reason the crackling noise that had plagued Rob’s audio mysteriously stopped and it became perfectly clear (we think the kind words spoken about AI may have placated our robot overlords). Please leave your thoughts in the comments, and if you can, help support Rob’s Kickstarter; he’s a great storyteller. —Streamed June 26, 2025

Back Rob’s Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/robkroese/ransoms-law

Read Rob’s other 36 books: https://badnovelist.com/

Register for BasedCon: https://basedcon.com/

Quinn Kimball joined the ladies on tonight’s Mosaic Ark to discuss his epic fantasy poem, The Monster and the Foundling. Quinn joined Professor Rachel Fulton Brown’s Telegram chat, the Dragon Common Room, way back in the Covid days of 2020. He saw her challenge to learn to write poetry and responded by writing an epic fantasy poem in 50 stanzas of perfect Spenserian verse! He talks about how his tale of monsters and magic and redemption combined his affection for Lovecraftian lore with his desire to create a more hopeful, Christian monster story. We also talk about how finding the Dragon Common Room and helping to create its reading list, helped him to focus his own reading efforts and writing goals. —Streamed June 20, 2025

• Quinn’s Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/agardenerinawar/p/the-monster-and-the-foundling
• DCR Onboarding Guide: https://www.dragoncommonroom.com/_files/ugd/096a8a_e0ecbe7b12404832a2f467daa6b58278.pdf

“The madness of crowds.” I’m sure everyone has heard that phrase before. It is often used to describe the behavior of mobs, as if the individual participants, through some mass psychosis contagion, cease to be individuals and act as one mad, destructive being. But is it true? On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies discuss the ongoing anti-ICE riots in LA, and take a walk down memory lane to remember some of the other riots in our country’s history, and how their similarities might point to a different explanation for the violence. —Streamed June 13, 2025

We’re not going to sugar coat this. The state of education is bleak. There seems to be a dense fog clouding the minds of students, who are incapable of reading seven randomly chosen paragraphs from a work of nineteenth-century serial fiction without understanding more than the basic facts presented in those paragraphs. Oh, sorry, my writing proficiency isn’t as good as my reading proficiency. I meant to say that there is a dense fog clouding the minds of certain college professors who don’t understand the irony of their own ambush. On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies discussed the newly-released study (of a ten-year-old test) given to 85 college English majors that was conducted by three college professors. The test was designed to code into an Excel spreadsheet the answers that students gave about their understanding of the text they were given to read, and the conclusion was that the students failed. Many tsk tsks were expressed and warnings given of how these failures’ future ability to make money was affected. In what can only be described as an exercise in irony, the text they tested the students on was from Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. Join us as we discuss how this may have been one of the biggest self-owns of the academic-industrial complex, and please add your thoughts to our discussion in the comments!—Streamed May 30, 2025

Take the test: https://fencingbearatprayer.substack.com/p/reading-comprehension-current-year

Habemus papam! We have a Pope! And not just any pope, we have an American pope, and an Augustinian one at that. Robert Francis Prevost, a priest of the Augustinian order, born and raised on the south side of Chicago, was elected to the Papacy on May 8, 2025. He took the name Pope Leo XIV, and some have wondered whether he took this name because he was inspired by the work of the last Pope Leo (XIII), who addressed modernism. And indeed, one of Pope Leo XIV’s first public comments introduced his thoughts on the dangers of AI. But the ladies of the Mosaic Ark were more interested in whether he would be influenced by the founder of his order, St. Augustine of Hippo, the most influential teacher of teachers in church history. Will Pope Leo XIV govern his church in an Augustinian way — a way that teaches how to be a Christian? And what does that mean? Watch as the ladies discuss on this week’s episode of the Mosaic Ark.—Streamed May 23, 2025

Augustine of Hippo, “On Catechizing the Uninstructed” https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1303.htm

A killer is stalking Hollywood, and it is up to the hunchback to hunt him down. But where in the Getty’s manuscripts can he find the clue to the killer's identity? In David Angsten’s The Medievalist, a noir style murder mystery set around Hollywood, a Catholic monk’s life has taken a long and winding path to Los Angeles, from farm boy to university professor to Uber driver/ aspiring script writer. While working on a script of Dante’s Divine Comedy, the monk finds himself caught in the middle of a murder investigation and is surrounded by suspects, detectives and bystanders. Everyone looks guilty, including the monk, in this city’s hedonistic atmosphere. In this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies welcome the author and speak with him about his inspirations for this story, including his own path to becoming a script writer and novelist. —Streamed May 16, 2025

“I’ve got a jar of dirt! And guess what’s inside it!” Captain Jack Sparrow seemed to think that he had the key to controlling his fate with the contents of a jar of dirt. He wasn’t entirely wrong! The jar was holding the heart of Davy Jones, and he who held it controlled the oceans; he who controlled the oceans controlled the whole earth. This week the ladies of the Mosaic Ark discuss the connections between ocean ports, a trade war with China, and control of the Earth’s trade in literal earth — lithium, cobalt, rare earth minerals and silicon — that may be fueling its current and future wars. They also discuss time and our perception of events that have surrounded us for the past decade. Does history repeatedly repeat itself or are we just noticing more? —Streamed May 2, 2025

He is Risen! Alleluia! Alleluia! No matter what is going on in the world this week, nothing will be more important than this, that Jesus Christ is risen — Alleluia! Despite this most significant of Christian seasons, there were many other things going on in the world, too. There was the death of a pope and preparations for the election of another, the potential end to a bloody war in Ukraine, but the sad continuation of another bloody war in Gaza. And the pro-Palestinian encampments are inching their way back towards university campuses, even as those universities are already feeling the effects of a rapidly changing political landscape. On this week’s Mosaic Ark, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown continues talking on some of these themes that she discussed with Evita Duffy-Alfonso on Bongino Report: Morning Edition on Monday, and the ladies report back from the empty tomb. —Streamed April 25, 2025