A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of chatting with Robert Zoltan of the Literary Wonder and Adventure Show. It was a fun conversation, often drifting into areas I know nothing about (such as flint knapping and football).
According to the show notes, we covered:
Why boxing is potentially safer without gloves, the earliest weapons, mesmerized by bees on a flower, why long sword fights in fiction are boring, iron versus steel, why swords are the most famous historical weapon, the transcendent word, stupid laws, classic fantasy literature as a spiritual doorway, why the 13th Warrior is both wonderful and rubbish, people who don’t deserve to be represented in art because they’ve ballsed up the whole point of being alive, let people love what they want to love, poetry, the lost art of responsibility, dueling, why the 21st Century is the lease violent era, why Harry Potter is both wonderful and rubbish, snobbery is just a form of fear, fencing swords are too thin, if you are reading a book you need to get a life according to football commentator, reality is not something that can be apprehended by concepts, a bad chair is a bad chair, the sound of silence, the horribly beautiful hand guards of rapiers, Leiber, Conan, Dashiell Hammett, things that work beautifully in competitions don’t work well when people are trying to murder you, going beyond concepts and words, from Excalibur to lightsabers, one-eyed toothless sword masters, the symbol of a warrior, a weapon is just a tool, the beauty of two-sentence fight scenes.
You can find the show on your favourite podcast app (just search for Literary Wonder and Adventure), or go find it on Robert's website here. (For future readers: it's episode 11).
Special tip of the hat to M. Harold Page who made the introduction.