Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Welcome to Episode 7 in our Animals in Literature series. This series aims to explore the origins, conventions, and meanings we find in stories featuring anthropomorphic animals.

Today's guest is David Bentley Hart, PhD. David and I share a lively conversation featuring iconic characters from Lewis Carroll's mind. Featured topics include Alice, the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, the resurgence of these stories in the 1960's-70's, and we even follow the trail to the friendship of Lewis Carroll with George MacDonald (can you blame me?).


David Bentley Hart, PhD, is a scholar and writer, currently a collaborating researcher at the University of Notre Dame. He has published volumes of philosophy, religious studies, theology, cultural criticism, occasional essays, and fiction (including children’s fiction). He has also published various volumes of translation. His most recent books are All Things Are Full of Gods: The Mysteries of Mind and Life (Yale), Prisms, Veils: A Book of Fables (Notre Dame), and The Light of Tabor: Toward a Monistic Christology (Notre Dame). His translations of the Tao Te Ching (Yale) will appear next month. He also writes the Substack newsletter Leaves in the Wind.

substack.com/@davidbentleyhart

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