Solomon & Smith

Solomon & Smith
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Solomon & Smith discuss literature, philosophy, history, film, and the meaning of the universe.

  1. 23 Jun

    Harry Potter Is Secretly About Class

    Harry Potter, the work of a 'socialist', is in love with the trappings of the upper-class. The wizarding world is based entirely on the aesthetics Britain's elite institutions. It is not the story of an outsider, but a fantasy about inheritance, privilege, and belonging to an ancient, racially pure elite. In this episode, we discuss Harry Potter as a British class allegory. We discuss - Hogwarts' resemblance to elite boarding schools and Oxford colleges - The contrast between the suburbian pleb Dursleys and the rustic pleb Weasleys - Harry Potter as an aristocrat trapped in suburbia - The relationship between magic, bloodlines, and social hierarchy - JK Rowling's internally conflicting attitudes toward modernity, tradition, and class - The influence of Charles Dickens and J.R.R. Tolkien on the Pottiverse - Hogwarts as an escape from modern, middle-class life and cultural rootlessness 00:00 Intro 01:21 The Hype 04:10 Rowling's main weaknesses 08:03 Rowling's main strengths 10:28 HP as Gay Allegory 12:26 HP as Class Allegory 16:01 The disdain for pleb mediocrity and modernity 22:25 British Class - Poshos magic, plebs muggles 25:50 British Elite Public Schools are the model of Hogwarts 28:35 Harry as member of master race aristocracy 32:32 Why isn't mudblood Hermione the main character? 35:55 Parallels with Star Wars and Superheroes 38:55 Harry as posh boy cannot fail 41:18 Malfoy as posh boy purist 44:57 Rowling as a socialist 47:00 Rowling as SJW

  2. 19 Jun

    How Ovid Rewrote Greek Mythology Forever | Stephanie McCarter

    Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membership In this episode of Solomon & Smith, Jack and Milo speak with classicist and translator Stephanie McCarter about her acclaimed translation of one of the most influential works in Western literature, Ovid's Metamorphoses. Ovid retold Greek myths of transformation, and in so doing transformed Greek mythology. We talk about why Roman writers saw translation as an act of cultural conquest, and about what is gained and lost when Latin poetry is brought across into modern English. McCarter discusses her approach to translating Ovid, her decision to render sexual violence explicitly rather than euphemistically, and why she believes no translation can ever be faithful. We discuss Roman attitudes toward Greece, the philosophy of transformation, the poetic differences between Ovid, Virgil, and Horace, the politics of translation, and why Ovid remains one of the most modern voices from the ancient world. Topics include: Ovid's Metamorphoses Ancient Greek mythology Roman literature Classical studies Translation theory "To translate is to conquer" Stephanie McCarter's Penguin translation The history of Rome and Greece Mythological retellings Poetry and meter Horace, Virgil, and Catullus The politics of storytelling Women in classical literature Sexual violence in ancient texts The philosophy of change and transformation 00:00:00 Translation as conquest 00:01:28 Introduction 00:05:00 Flux, Rome, and McCarter’s translation 00:10:07 Stephanie McCarter arrives 00:13:04 Poetic epigraph 00:14:34 English poetry, Dickinson, Byron, and Chaucer 00:16:45 Horace and the magic of Latin 00:21:51 Ovid in Latin: speed, play, and rhetoric 00:25:27 Virgil, allusion, and Ovidian style 00:30:30 Epic, epyllion, and the structure of the *Metamorphoses* 00:38:08 Greece, Rome, and translation as conquest 00:42:35 Translating Ovid: negotiation, constraint, and compensation 00:53:38 McCarter vs Mandelbaum: architecture and line 01:00:16 Apollo, Daphne, archaism, and poetic style 01:06:06 Puns, wordplay, Catullus, and the “fuckathon” 01:09:12 Sexual violence, legal language, and Roman readers 01:14:54 Arachne, power, Augustus, and exile 01:20:14 Ovid’s immortality and the final metamorphosis 01:21:27 Nature, flux, Lucretius, and the minded cosmos 01:29:58 Ovid, Shakespeare, and negative capability 01:36:30 First Encounters and Farewells

  3. 12 Jun

    The Novel That Predicted Europe’s Collapse? | Ritchie Robertson on The Magic Mountain

    Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membership In this conversation, Professor Ritchie Robertson joins Jack and Milo to discuss Thomas Mann’s *The Magic Mountain*: one of the great modern European novels, a thousand-page comic-philosophical epic about illness, love, death, time, politics, and the fate of humanism. Ritchie Robertson is one of the leading English-speaking scholars of German and European literature. He is the author of a major study of the Enlightenment, general editor of the current Oxford World’s Classics Thomas Mann translations, and translator of Mann’s *Death in Venice* and *Doctor Faustus*. Here, he helps us situate *The Magic Mountain* within Mann’s wider work, German intellectual history, and the political crises of the early twentieth century. The discussion begins with the Enlightenment, and with the novel’s two great intellectual antagonists: Settembrini, the liberal humanist and advocate of progress, and Naphta, the Jesuit-communist defender of terror, sacrifice, and revolutionary violence. Between them stands Hans Castorp, Mann’s magnificently ordinary hero: a young engineer who travels to a Swiss sanatorium for a short visit and accidentally remains there for seven years. Much of the conversation centres on Hans Castorp’s education. In the Berghof sanatorium, he is removed from ordinary life and exposed to fundamental experiences: illness, erotic fascination, biology, music, death, philosophical dispute, and visionary solitude. Robertson discusses the “Snow” chapter as the philosophical heart of the novel, in which Castorp sees both the possibility of a golden age and the permanent human possibility of blood, cruelty, and sacrifice. We also explore why *The Magic Mountain* remains so readable despite its reputation for difficulty. Mann’s novel is undoubtedly a book of ideas, but it is also comic, sensuous, characterful, musical, and full of memorable scenes: Behrens, Joachim, Clavdia Chauchat, Mynheer Peeperkorn, the sanatorium routines, the medical lectures, the erotic charge of biology, and the strange theatricality of life above the “flatland.” Expect reflections on: Thomas Mann, music, Wagner, and novelistic composition The Enlightenment as an unfinished project Settembrini, Naphta, liberalism, communism, and terror Hans Castorp’s development from passive mediocrity to individual consciousness Love, death, illness, and the sanatorium as a school of experience The “Snow” chapter and its vision of paradise and blood sacrifice Whether *The Magic Mountain* is really a difficult novel Rereading, Adorno, and the book’s strange addictive power Homosexuality, erotic indirection, and Clavdia Chauchat Russia, the East, Orientalism, Dostoevsky, and revolution The First World War and the novel’s battlefield ending Premonitions of catastrophe, and the danger of reading later history backwards Susan Sontag’s criticism of Mann as an “over-cooperative” novelist Whether you are already a devoted reader of *The Magic Mountain*, or have been meaning to climb it for years, this conversation offers a detailed, lively, and intellectually generous guide to Mann’s strange, comic, terrifying, and inexhaustible novel. If you enjoy long-form conversations on literature, philosophy, theology, politics, German thought, and the great novels of European modernism, subscribe to the channel and leave a comment below. Have you read *The Magic Mountain*? And if so: should one read it once, three times, or a thousand? 00:00:00 The Snow chapter: paradise and blood sacrifice 00:01:18 Introduction to Ritchie Robertson and *The Magic Mountain* 00:03:31 What is *The Magic Mountain* about? 00:05:56 Why do people still read *The Magic Mountain*? 00:13:33 Ritchie Robertson arrives 00:14:16 Poetic epigraph: Eichendorff and longing 00:16:19 Thomas Mann, music, and *Doctor Faustus* 00:19:38 The Enlightenment, Settembrini, and humanism 00:25:49 Clavdia Chauchat, love, and Hans Castorp’s education 00:30:07 Illness, death, Joachim, and transformation 00:34:04 The “Snow” chapter explained 00:38:24 Difficulty, rereading, Naphta, and Lukács 00:49:10 Erotic memory, homosexuality, Russia, and the East 00:58:38 Revolution, utopia, and the meaning of life 01:04:03 The ending: war, death, song, and love 01:07:28 Nazism, later history, Sontag, and Mann’s over-explanation 01:12:34 Conclusion

  4. 9 Jun

    Nietzsche: Christianity Is the Most Successful Form of Nihilism

    Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membership This discussion is largely a response to some of the reactions to our most recent DBH interview. We discuss Nietzsche, Chesterton, antisemitism, Christianity, nihilism, morality, Nazism, Darwinism, Schopenhauer, and On the Genealogy of Morals. We examine Nietzsche's critique of Christian morality, his relationship to Nazism, the influence of Darwin and Schopenhauer on his philosophy, and why Genealogy of Morals remains so provocative. 00:00 Introduction 02:28 Chesterton's claim that Hitlerism was "Jewish" 05:19 Conspiracy theory that Nazism was a Jewish plot 06:38 Nietzsche, Judaism, and Christianity 08:00 Christianity as the universalisation of ressentiment 10:48 Was Nietzsche a precursor to Nazism? 12:42 Nietzsche, Darwin, and evolutionary thought 13:13 Schopenhauer, the Will, and Darwinism 16:06 First impressions of Genealogy of Morals 18:16 Nietzsche's style 21:16 Reading Nietzsche for the first time 24:39 The power of Nietzsche's literary voice 27:11 The crisis of morality before Nietzsche 31:35 Nietzsche's wordplay and philosophy of affirmation 33:25 Compassion, suffering, and Christian morality 34:06 Christianity as "the most practical form of nihilism" 35:38 Socrates, asceticism, and the origins of morality 38:07 Determinism and the psychology of belief 40:53 Nietzsche's collapse and legacy 41:22 Nazi appropriation - Hitler, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche 43:23 Nietzsche's anti-nationalism and anti-anti-Semitism

  5. 5 Jun

    Beckett, Bernhard, and the Literature of Rage | Mark Bowles

    Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membership All My Precious Madness is available at bookshops, both good and evil. In this conversation, novelist Mark Bowles joins Jack and Milo to discuss his debut novel All My Precious Madness, a voice-driven, rage-filled, lyrical work about Henry Nash: an academic turned telesales worker whose inner life spills out through invective, memory, fantasy, grief, class resentment, and strange beauty. The discussion begins with Mark’s early reading life, from Treasure Island and Enid Blyton to the shock of discovering Samuel Beckett. We talk about Beckett’s stripped-down language, floating voices, physical detail, and the formative experience of encountering a literature that seemed to open onto an entirely different world. Much of the conversation centres on what it means to write a first novel. Mark reflects on the pressure and preciousness of the debut: the sense that a first book announces a voice, discloses something private, and gathers up material that may have been stored for years. We discuss how All My Precious Madness grew out of fragments, notebooks, and an insistent central voice rather than a conventional plot. We also explore the influence of Thomas Bernhard and Walter Benjamin: rage, repetition, digression, fragments, the “left-handed” approach to thought, and the idea that some truths can only be reached indirectly. Along the way, we talk about autodidacticism, class, Oxford, northernness, high culture, business jargon, academia, and the ways language can be degraded by institutions. Expect reflections on: Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, and the literature of voice Writing a first novel and the strange exposure of publication Rage, lyricism, grief, melancholy, and comic invective Autodidacticism, class, Oxford, and the labour of acquiring culture Telesales, corporate language, and soul-destroying work Academic jargon and the policing of intellectual tribes Digression as literary method Reading, audiobooks, and the reader’s role in creating a book English humour, irony, resignation, and satire Fantasy, inner life, and the “uncommitted crime” of art In the later part of the conversation, Mark discusses his next novel, How Do People Stay the Same?, written as a backwards-moving journal across thirty years, as well as a further book inspired by the mysterious case of Peter Bergmann. If you enjoy long-form conversations on literature, writing, style, philosophy, class, comedy, and the strange private life of fiction, subscribe to the channel and leave a comment below. 00:00:00 Fantasy, fiction, and inner life 00:01:19 Introduction to Mark B. and *All My Precious Madness* 00:04:31 Mark arrives 00:06:18 Poetic epigraph 00:09:24 Childhood reading, *Treasure Island*, and Beckett 00:13:44 Voice, physicality, and literary interiority 00:16:19 Becoming a writer 00:20:26 The pressure of the first novel 00:24:09 Voice, fragments, and Thomas Bernhard 00:30:16 Class, Oxford, and cultural self-invention 00:38:01 Silence, childhood, and imagination 00:40:10 Rage, lyricism, and catharsis 00:42:26 Telesales and soul-destroying work 00:46:24 Corporate language, academia, and jargon 00:54:50 Digression as method 01:01:18 Stream of consciousness and reading rhythm 01:05:55 Books, audiobooks, and the reader’s imagination 01:11:25 Humour, English irony, and resignation 01:18:00 Language, fantasy, and expression 01:22:23 Art as an uncommitted crime 01:24:27 Future novels and publication 01:29:24 Conclusion

  6. 2 Jun

    The Greatest Fiction of Every Decade (1800–2000) | Jack & Milo’s Picks

    *- Both out lists are pasted below -* Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membership In this video Jack and Milo discuss their favourite works of fiction decade by decade, starting in 1800 and going 200 years, decade by decade, until they reach the borders of our present century. If you would like to be interviewed by us about your favourite books, please send an email. 1800s Jack: Michael Kohlhaas - Heinrich Von Kleist Milo: Heinrich Von Ofterdingen - Novalis 1810s Jack: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley Milo: Persuasion - Jane Austen 1820s Jack: Don Juan - George Gordon Byron (If only prose allowed, The Red and the Black - Stendhal) Milo: The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr - ETA Hoffmann 1830s Jack: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym - Edgar Allan Poe Milo - Nevsky Prospect - Nikolai Gogol 1840s Jack: Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë Milo: Mr. Prokharchin - Fyodor Dostoevsky 1850s Jack: David Copperfield - Charles Dickens Milo: The Whale - Herman Melville 1860s Jack: War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy Milo: War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 1870s Jack: Middlemarch - George Eliot Milo: Middlemarch - George Eliot 1880s Jack: Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K Jerome Milo: Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche 1890s Jack: The Lady with the Dog - Anton Chekhov Milo: New Grub Street - George Gissing 1900s Jack: The Man Who Was Thursday - GK Chesterton Milo: The Man Who Was Thursday - GK Chesterton 1910s Jack: Of Human Bondage - W Somerset Maugham Milo: The Great Wall of China - Franz Kafka 1920s Jack: To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf Milo: The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner 1930s Jack: Die Blendung/ Auto de fe - Elias Canetti Milo: The Hobbit - J R R Tolkein 1940s Jack: The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint Exupery Milo: The Plague - Albert Camus 1950s Jack: The End of the Affair - Graham Greene Milo: The Last Temptation of Christ - Nikos Kazantzakis 1960s Jack: Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole Milo: The Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster 1970s Jack: The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch Milo: Suttree - Cormac McCarthy 1980s Jack: Extinction - Thomas Bernhard Milo: Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole 1990s Jack: Before and During - Vladimir Sharov Milo: Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace 00:00:00 Intro 00:04:45 1800s 00:12:52 1810s 00:24:20 1820s 00:30:24 1830s 00:37:38 1840s 00:48:35 1850s 00:55:22 1860s 00:59:29 1870s 01:05:25 1880s 01:10:41 1890s 01:17:42 1900s 01:22:07 1910s 01:28:50 1920s 01:37:22 1930s 01:47:48 1940s 01:53:51 1950s 02:05:49 1960s 02:12:44 1970s 02:19:49 1980s 02:27:15 1990s 02:36:12 Conclusion

  7. 29 May

    David Bentley Hart: Why Nietzsche Was Wrong About Love and Morality

    Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membership In this conversation, David Bentley Hart joins Jack and Milo to discuss among the most dangerous and controversial of all questions: where does morality come from? Is morality an evolutionary strategy for accruing power, or are love and compassion woven into the structure of being? In philosophical, theological, literary, and evolutionary terms, Hart discusses the origins of moral instincts in humans and animals, the role of altruism and compassion in nature, and why he believes reductive accounts of morality ultimately fail to explain human experience. We talk about Nietzsche, Darwin, Dawkins, cooperation in nature, and the limits of evolutionary psychology. Hart also reflects on Christianity’s moral revolution and argues that Christ represented a profound interruption in the moral imagination of the ancient world—placing the poor, the rejected, and the vulnerable at the center of ethical life. The discussion also touches on the Resurrection accounts, the Gospels, the Fall, late antiquity, slavery, philanthropy, and the relationship between love, truth, and spiritual transformation. In the second half of the discussion we discuss literature, and where we put to Hart various author duels: Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, Chesterton or Wilde, Eliot or Dickens, Mann or Hesse. Expect reflections on: The metaphysical origins of morality Whether animals and nature exhibit genuine moral behavior Nietzsche, power, and the “discourse of suspicion” Evolutionary psychology and The Selfish Gene Christ’s challenge to ancient morality Love, compassion, and the structure of reality Cooperation, altruism, and the natural world Otters, dolphins, crocodiles… and why philosophy should take them seriously Plus: in the second half of the interview, Hart turns to literature, The Simpsons, baseball as beauty, and debates some of history’s greatest writers. If you enjoy long-form conversations on philosophy, religion, literature, and metaphysics, subscribe and join the discussion below: Where do you think morality comes from? 00:00:00 Introduction 00:07:22 DBH arrives 00:08:55 Poetic epigraph 00:13:00 The metaphysical origins of morality 00:18:30 How Christ interrupted late-antique morality 00:32:00 Was Christ necessary to philanthropy 00:42:12 The Nietzschean view of moral origins 00:48:50 Is Ressentiment a Natural Condition, Co-operative Evolution 00:56:00 Otters! Darwinian Reductionaism. Dawkins Bashing 01:00:20 Did we mechanise nature to morally neautralise it? 01:05:12 Terrence Malick - The Tree of Life - Jonh Ford 01:13:30 Walt Disney - Tolkein on Disney 01:21:50 Tolstoy vs. Dostoevsky 01:28:18 Oscar Wilde vs. G.K. Chesterton 01:35:49 Charles Dickens vs. George Eliot 01:38:50 Coffee - Balzac - Rodin - England 01:44:00 Thomas Mann vs. Hermann Hesse 01:47:09 Graham Hancock - Atlantis 01:52:25 Decline in reading - Nostalgia 01:55:19 Ecclesiastes vs. The Song of Songs - Swift vs. Defore - Whitman vs. Wordsworth 01:59:09 The Simpsons 02:04:30 Base ball

  8. 22 May

    Translating The Magic Mountain (And Why Thomas Mann Is So Difficult) | Simon Pare

    Please help us to keep having these conversations by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/solomonsmith/membership In this long-form conversation, Milo and Jack speak with translator Simon Pare about the challenge of translating The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann for Oxford World’s Classics. This discussion explores the language, style, and enormous technical challenges behind bringing one of the greatest novels of the 20th century into English. Simon discusses his new 2026 translation of The Magic Mountain, the legacy of earlier translators, and the strange experience of living inside Mann’s vast novel while translating it. Topics include: • Why Thomas Mann is so difficult to translate • The challenge of translating The Magic Mountain’s long German sentences • Hans Castorp, time, and the atmosphere of Davos • Translation choices, compromises, and literary voice • Settembrini, Naphta, Behrens, and Peeperkorn’s speech styles • The legacy of H. T. Lowe-Porter and later English translations • Translation theory and literary translation in practice • Switzerland, Thomas Mann, and the culture surrounding the novel • The relationship between language, rhythm, and character The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) began as a short novella inspired by Thomas Mann’s visit to a Davos sanatorium and grew into a monumental meditation on time, illness, modernity, and European intellectual life before the First World War. This interview focuses primarily on translation and language. A separate discussion with Richie Robertson on the novel’s themes and content will follow. If you enjoy long-form literary conversations on literature, philosophy, translation, and European culture, please consider subscribing to Solomon & Smith.

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Solomon & Smith discuss literature, philosophy, history, film, and the meaning of the universe.

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    Solomon & Smith
  • Episodes
    27
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