Great ideas after dark

Welcome to Vespers, where we take up the last hour of your day.

A late-night webcast for the great ideas — the last hour of your day, spent thinking. Mostly talk, with a little jazz to breathe between the movements.

Pour something warm, turn the lights low, and stay a while.

Vespers — a chair and a waveform in Blue Note blues
The programme
I · Scripture

The Scriptures

Slow, unhurried studies through the books and themes of the Bible.

Book by book
II · The Syntopicon

Great Ideas

Mortimer Adler's index to the great ideas of the West, taken in alphabetical order.

A→Z
III · The novels

Fiction's Most Famous Passages

The great passages of the great novels, read whole and weighed against Scripture.

Public domain
IV · The public square

Pastor Politics

The pastor and the public square — the mandate to speak, its manner, its cost, and its mission.

The two cities
V · Wildcard

The Surprise

Sermon scraps and other things of interest to the Architect of Vespers.

Wherever
Latest broadcast · Fiction's Most Famous Passages · September 4, 2026

You Can't Pray a Lie

The greatest scene of moral crisis in American fiction — Huck Finn alone in the wigwam, deciding whether to turn in Jim: the two attempts to pray, the letter to Miss Watson, the river memories, and “All right, then, I'll go to hell.” A boy's conscience working perfectly, aimed at exactly the wrong target — and what Scripture says about a witness that can be taught to lie.

Episode notes → Apple Podcasts · soon Spotify · soon
The archive