Subversive Orthodoxy
Subversive Orthodoxy
Podcast Description
Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in DisguiseThis is a podcast about philosophy and meaning. It is about how we as humans withstand the challenges of our cultures. It is about the general Judeo-Christian revelation of God in the world, and how the bloodiest century ever recorded couldn't kill that revelation nor the human soul. It is also about how that revelation, tossed aside as archaic, outdated, and obsolete may be the very life-giving power we need to resist this distracted techno state we are living in, full of anxiety, depression and teenage suicide. Hosted by: Travis Mullen and Robert "Larry" Inchausti, Professor Emeritus of English at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
Focuses on the intersection of Judeo-Christian values and contemporary issues, with episodes like 'Surviving the Gulag: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn' analyzing themes of resilience and truth from historical narratives while exploring how these lessons apply to modern societal challenges.
Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in Disguise
Subversive Orthodoxy is a podcast for people who sense that something vital has been lost in public life, moral imagination, and religious conversation. Many listeners carry fatigue with politics and ideological conflict, yet remain drawn to the depth and realism of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
This podcast often resonates with listeners who no longer fit comfortably within dominant religious or political categories, yet remain committed to truth, responsibility, and love of neighbor.
The conversations on this show are largely shaped by the book Subversive Orthodoxy and the wider body of literature it engages. Episodes draw from theological, philosophical, and literary voices that take faith seriously as a way of seeing and inhabiting the world.
The podcast explores how an ancient faith continues to form human dignity, responsibility, and hope within modern life. Attention is given to formation rather than commentary, and to meaning rather than alignment.
Through conversation, reflection, and creative engagement, the show seeks to recover humility, restore attention, and re-humanize our neighbors in a distracted age.
If this way of thinking resonates, you are welcome to listen and join the ongoing work.
Hosted by:
Travis Mullen and Robert “Larry” Inchausti, Professor Emeritus of English at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
WALKER PERCY: EPISODE SUMMARY
You can be comfortable, busy, and entertained and still be in despair. That’s the Kierkegaard line Walker Percy puts at the front of The Moviegoer, and it becomes our doorway into a bigger question: what if the real sickness of modern life is that we don’t even notice what’s missing?
We walk through Percy’s story, from a Southern upbringing marked by repeated suicide, to medical training and a tuberculosis collapse that pushes him toward reading, philosophy, and ultimately writing. Percy is never a simple “religious novelist.” His Roman Catholic faith works more like a diagnostic tool as he studies consumer identity, modern boredom, and the way scientific confidence can leave the inner life unnamed. Along the way we map his major books, from The Moviegoer to Love in the Ruins, and why his satire still lands in an age of anxiety, distraction, and behavioral control.
A big turning point is Percy’s fascination with semiotics, the study of signs. We unpack why language is not just communication but a doorway into selfhood, including the origin of the word “meme” and how imitation spreads meaning through a culture. Then we linger on one of the most moving illustrations Percy uses: Helen Keller at the water pump, where naming becomes something like a new birth. By the end, we return to Percy’s haunting claim that we are “lost in the cosmos” when myth, faith, and shared accounts of the person collapse into thin explanations.
If this conversation hits home, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a five-star review so more people can find it. What part of modern life feels most like hidden despair to you?
We dig into Walker Percy’s strange genius and why his novels diagnose modern life better than most social commentary. We use Kierkegaard’s definition of despair, semiotics, and the Helen Keller story to ask what it means to become a self in a world that keeps flattening people into consumers.
• Walker Percy’s biography, including family tragedy, tuberculosis, and conversion to Catholicism
• The core themes across Percy’s novels and nonfiction, including alienation, boredom, and modern misdiagnosis
• Percy as a bridge between existential Christianity and scientific modernity
• The difference between emotional despair and Kierkegaard’s existential despair
• Why the aesthetic life of comfort can still be a life of despair
• Semiotics as the study of signs and why language changes what a human is
• The origin of the word meme and how imitation spreads meaning
• Percy’s critique of psychology when it reduces the human person to pathology
• The Moviegoe
Contact: [email protected]
Instagram: @subversiveorthodoxy
Host: Travis Mullen Instagram: @manartnation
Co-Host: Robert L. Inchausti, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of English at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and is the author of numerous books, including Subversive Orthodoxy, Thomas Merton's American Prophecy, The Spitwad Sutras, and Breaking the Cultural Trance. He is, among other things, a Thomas Merton authority, and editor of the Merton books Echoing Silence, Seeds, and The Pocket Thomas Merton. He's a lover of the literature of those who challenge the status quo in various ways, thus, he has had a lifelong fascination with the Beats.
Book by Robert L. Inchausti ”Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in Disguise” Published 2005, authorization by the author.
Intro & Outro Music by Noah Johnson & Chavez the Fisherman, all rights reserved.
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