Elden Ring: Disordered Divinity in the Lands Between

Our Twin Peaks Watch panel dives into the original series’ divisive finale, complete with pine weasels, quirky pageants, demonically driven humans, unexpected attempts at goodness, and a troubling descent into the Black Lodge.

Or at least “better to reign” is what Clark thinks, as he descends into a hellish madness driven by his refusal to repent and change. Join host Cindy Collins Smith and our Baldur’s Gate 3 dungeon delvers - Jos Johnson, Sam Cook, and Fr. David Subu - as they unpack this unsettling psychological horror megahit. Happy Halloween!

Host Cindy Collins Smith goes solo in this examination of Elden Ring’s often opaque lore, asking: “What if Elden Ring were more than a game about overcoming tough challenges and dying a lot? What if it were a debate about political theology and the least unjust order for society and the cosmos?”

With the Laura Palmer murder mystery solved, our Twin Peaks Watch panel returns to confront the show’s loss of a narrative center—but also the reemergence of buried evil, suppressed pasts, and yes, BOB.

A Stormcloak, a vampire, and a magical weapons manufacturer walk into a podcast… only to discuss destiny, free will, political legitimacy, cosmological apocalypse, and house cats.

In its adaptation of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, Hadestown brings a variety of aesthetic choices to bear on this tale of Orpheus’ unsuccessful, and all-too-human, attempt at harrowing Hades. Guest Richard Strube and host Cindy Collins Smith discuss mythology, metaphysics, and Christ by exploring the play’s musical, visual, thematic, and philosophical choices in a conversation covering literary tragedy, the denial of death, repetition as a form of hope, the power of revision in art, and Hades’ expansion of the Realm of Death.

Join Dn. Nicholas Kotar, Amy Browning-Dill, and host Cindy Collins Smith for a wide-ranging conversation on reinterpretation and adaptation; linguistic and civilizational collapse; self-remembrance, confession, and repentance; and engaging with the pagan literature of our time—through a discussion of the year’s most controversial film: Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.

Father David Subu joins host Cindy Collins Smith to read and discuss Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.” The conversation, of course, makes side trips into Roger Corman’s cinematic fever-dream adaptation, Ingmar Bergman’s danse macabre, Bill and Ted’s Battleship game with Death, and George Romero’s zombies—with the reading culminating in Fr. David’s diabolical Vincent Price cackle. More seriously, they consider what memento mori asks of us: to live mindfully rather than recklessly, knowing that our lives can end in a moment. One note: Cindy thought Roger Corman may have gotten the second-hand sets from Hammer Studios. Uh, actually… he got them from the A-list, Oscar-winning production Becket.

Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day has become a lightning rod for Christian viewers, with some calling the aliens "demons" and others claiming the film subverts Christianity. Amy Browning-Dill and host Cindy Collins Smith take a different approach. Grounding their discussion in film history, literary typology, and St. Basil's advice to receive what is virtuous and true in pagan literature, Amy and Cindy explore the film's themes of faith, truth, secrecy, and human connection through an Orthodox Christian lens.

Our panel of Twin Peaks first-watchers joins host Cindy Collins Smith to react to the resolution of the Laura Palmer murder mystery—with its themes of innocence, the passions, demonic possession and resistance, and the unwavering search for truth.