When in 1937 the mythologist Joseph Campbell began dating his future wife, the dancer Jean Erdman, he gave her a copy of Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, an odd courtship gift indeed. While visiting Erdman’s family, they discussed the book. Later:

…At the end of a pleasant evening Joseph offered to walk Jean home; she tucked her copy of Spengler under one arm as they set out. Jean was staying with an aunt who lived on Gay Street, just around the corner from the Greenwich Village apartment the Campbells would occupy for so many years. “We got to Union Square Park on Fourteenth Street and it started to rain,” Jean remembered. “Neither of us had a raincoat. Joe took off his coat, and I thought, ‘how gallant.’ But he said urgently, ‘Give me the book,’ and he quickly tucked it under his jacket. I knew then what I was in for…”

– Stephen and Robin Larsen, A Fire in the Mind: The Life of Joseph Campbell, 244-245


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#225 – The invention of the wheel, and the power of storytelling Human Voices Wake Us

An episode from 4/13/26: Tonight, I read about the invention of the wheel and what it meant for the earliest communities of Europe and the Eurasian steppes, from David Anthony’s The Horse, the Wheel, and Language.After this, a few passages from Norman Longmate’s How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War tells the story of gasoline rationing in England during the war, and the sometimes-comical lengths people went to hoard the fuel they could get a hold of.Finally, passages from S. Y. Agnon’s Days of Awe: A Treasury of Jewish Wisdom for Reflection, Repentance, and Renewal on the High Holy Days and Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism illustrate the power of language and storytelling in the Jewish tradition.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
  1. #225 – The invention of the wheel, and the power of storytelling
  2. #224: Let's talk about William Blake
  3. #223 – How to write two novels at the same time, with Charles Dickens
  4. #222: Seamus Heaney – 10 Essential Poems
  5. #221: Volcanoes, Plagues & the Childhood of a Kabbalist
  6. #220: The working poor and a so-so murder show
  7. #219: When a paragraph changes your life
  8. #218: Poetry to Live By
  9. #217: Voices from 1900-1914
  10. #216: Poets, Prophets, Seeresses & Goddesses from Time & the River

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