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The Sword&Spade podcast is about...
Jason Craig (00:00.106)
sort of the work hard, play hard attitude, which is, you know, we just kind of grind out the bad stuff and then we balance that out with indulgence on the other side, right? So there's drudgery and then there's indulgence. It's like, why are we doing it? You you see why people would, well, I'm just going to do indulgence. I mean, why not? But Catholicism filled all that out and it woke up my imagination.
Mark Adderley (00:21.614)
and
Jason Craig (00:29.742)
Welcome to the Sword and Spade Podcast. Yeah, nice to meet you. Although we've met quite a bit already because we walked around the neighborhood. We looked at a dead cow and you loaned me a pocket knife. I did. I feel very close to already.
Mark Adderley (00:32.024)
Good to meet you.
Mark Adderley (00:44.472)
feel dressed unless I've my night.
Jason Craig (00:46.626)
That's good. Yeah, I'm on a on a farm and people think I'm a really good farmer, that's why we gave you a tour because I'm not. And one is I never know what the weather is going to be. Everyone's supposed to. I always forget my pocket. So you look the part more than me. You got suspenders in a pocket knife.
Mark Adderley (01:03.509)
These are the style now.
Jason Craig (01:06.146)
Well, I like them. do you wear them because they're the sound like, they keep their pants up, especially if you have a little extra. Like me. OK, Mark, you're an author, but we're going to talk about your books, which you brought me a new copy, but I had this this one that I did not rough up to make it look. Read my children. Look at that. This is real. You see that in the front? That's just negligence, though. That's a lack of care.
Mark Adderley (01:12.724)
Yeah, that's what I felt.
Jason Craig (01:36.008)
There's some dirt here. No underlines. Sorry. But I would like to talk about that series. But because you're a Catholic author, you teach at a Catholic high school. Drexel High School in Gastonia. Belmont. OK. But first, I just scanned. I didn't want to read too much about you. you're a Catholic convert and you're married and you have children.
Mark Adderley (01:45.998)
Yeah, Directorial High School. That's it? Okay. Well, Belmont.
Mark Adderley (02:00.75)
Correct?
That's right. And grandchildren.
Jason Craig (02:07.65)
The order of those things. Tell me about, in your accent, you're from Arkansas? England. England.
Mark Adderley (02:10.338)
Yeah.
Mark Adderley (02:17.762)
So Joseph, close.
Jason Craig (02:19.17)
Joseph Pierce, another Englishman, is a friend of mine and his wife is also from the United States. And I went up to her one time, I said, where is he from? Arkansas? Kind of a joke I have. And she looked at me like I was, no, he's from England. just joking. Okay. How did you get to the States and how'd you get in the church?
Mark Adderley (02:40.034)
Okay, well, how did I get to the States? Well, I went to graduate school at the University of Wales after my bachelor's degree and I wanted to study the legend of King Arthur. It's all I wanted to do. So I was there for about a year and on the second year of the program, I was technically done, should have gone home. But the second year I had some international students, one of whom was
young American lady who decided rather foolishly that marrying me would be a good idea so why
Jason Craig (03:17.132)
You skipped a lot of the story that you went through. Then she was there and then she decided to marry me. guys. It was that.
Mark Adderley (03:21.912)
was that fast. It was that fast. We didn't we didn't hold around in the in the 80s. You know, just look. So so this is before I'm Catholic. I'm not really anything at this point because
Jason Craig (03:29.334)
That's, let's do what we're doing.
Jason Craig (03:35.261)
This is before you're Catholic.
Jason Craig (03:41.39)
But that's why you got to get married so fast, with all these Catholics getting the land of perpetual discernment. I don't know if it's the right one.
Mark Adderley (03:47.958)
That's pretty much it. But in England, I was baptized in the Church of England. the Church of England is not a very effective organization for engendering faith. And so I didn't have any faith. I grew up not going to church. My parents were scandalized once when a teacher at a parent night
Hold them that I had said in the essay that we never go to church except for weddings and funerals. I don't know what I was talking about. I'd never been to a funeral at that point, but,
Jason Craig (04:26.242)
Wait, your parents are upset that they were found?
Mark Adderley (04:28.366)
I'm upset that they were found out.
Jason Craig (04:31.33)
Like, but we don't go to-
Mark Adderley (04:33.01)
We don't. So, so I drifted away from any kind of, I remember when I was growing up, I used to pray the our father every night. And eventually I got to a point where I was thinking, I'm not hearing anything in, in reply here. So obviously there's nobody there.
Jason Craig (04:51.694)
That's a hold on them. That's interesting. So your parents had enough Christian culture or habits to get you baptized and to teach you to pray every night.
Mark Adderley (05:02.67)
They didn't
Jason Craig (05:03.886)
You just did it. What you didn't just spontaneously come up with the course.
Mark Adderley (05:07.63)
no, no, no. mean, this was, was, there was still prayer in the public schools in England at that time. You know, so we, we prayed in the morning. So I had those words. In fact, I've memorized them. I remember her getting into a fight once and my punishment, Martin Harvey got a bad punishment, but I was a good boy. So all I had to do was write out the Lord's prayer. We called it the Lord's prayer in the church of England.
20 seconds and I'm done. It was great. don't know what his punishment was, but but Martin Harvey was a bad, bad kid. he was awful. Yeah. It was almost as awful as I was, but in a different way. But, so I had the words memorized and I loved the sound of the words. I mean, it just like sounded really nice to me. so I, I prayed it every night.
Jason Craig (05:39.097)
So the other guy got punished worse?
Jason Craig (05:46.091)
Sounds like a bad
Mark Adderley (06:05.87)
And like you say, eventually I thought, I'm not hearing anything. So obviously there's nobody there. I'm knocking on a door, nobody's home. And so I drifted away from that and became a militant atheist. I took the, is no God side on all the school debates and things like that.
Jason Craig (06:29.798)
English thing it seems like the English atheist more militant or more
Mark Adderley (06:36.332)
It's because of the Church of England. I think they discourage belief in God.
Jason Craig (06:42.862)
Why me I'm almost thinking of. But now it's I mean, it seems to be the effect, I mean, it's the. Almost the inoculation against the faith, but it seems like English atheists become they don't just drift away like, oh yeah, I'm not a this. They become very anti.
Mark Adderley (06:44.174)
I'm being sarcastic, but...
Mark Adderley (07:00.558)
Yeah, you think about Stephen Fry, for example, whom I admire as an actor, know, great Jeeves. But I listen to stuff that it's so easy to demolish the arguments that he puts forward, but he doesn't stop.
Jason Craig (07:15.917)
Right.
Jason Craig (07:19.608)
Yeah. argument is we had to read Richard Dawkins, a theology class. It was really easy to refuse. But keep saying it. All right. So but you became in what way were you militant? What do you mean? Or was that my word?
Mark Adderley (07:26.904)
Yeah.
Mark Adderley (07:37.058)
That was my word. And I wouldn't, I didn't take part in any kind of like anti-Christian campaigns or anything like that, but, I would always disparage religious belief, discourage people from having religious ideas. but then freshman year in college, so can see this is happening relatively quickly. Right. Freshman year in college, somebody gave me the once and future King to read.
by T.H. White. Well, actually I went out and got it, but he recommended The Once and Future King. He actually recommended The Sword and the Stone. I looked all over the city of Chester, which was close to where we were at college, for a copy of The Sword and the Stone. Couldn't find it, but I could find The Once and Future King, which is four books all bound together, and the first one is The Sword and the Stone. And it just, I can't describe it. It was like discovering a whole new world.
And, And so I thought, well, all the way through this book is about King Arthur and P.H. White keeps referring to the book by Mallory. The book by Mallory, Mallory says this and Mallory does this and Mallory liked this. And so I thought I'd read Mallory. So I read Mallory and wow, that one was pretty good too. And then I just want, every time I read one of these books, there was something missing.
right? TH white doesn't tell you about the battle at the end. And, and so, so Mallory tells you about the battle at the end, but there's something missing in the story of Tristan, you know? And so I wanted to find that out and I bought the book of Tristan and I, you know, I read
Jason Craig (09:21.119)
So you're telling me this in connection, I was asking about your faith and you're bringing up these books. do they have to do with
Mark Adderley (09:26.902)
Right. These books, what they have to do with it is that every one of these books, not THY, but all the other books were the product of Catholics. And slowly, bit by bit, it's building up this picture of Catholicism as being a kind of a vital force in something that I love passionately.
Jason Craig (09:51.167)
To tell our listeners though, this is all revolving around, you didn't mention the K-ARP.
Mark Adderley (09:56.226)
Yes, the King Arthur story. The King Arthur story is the thing that's really caught my imagination here. And I wanted more than anything else to write the definitive set of novels about King Arthur. It couldn't be one book. It had to be multiples. I came up with a plan for 12.
Jason Craig (10:15.63)
Wait, you having a written up?
Mark Adderley (10:18.488)
First three are right and published. They're for adults, they're not for children. so anyway, this builds up a kind of a respect for a particular religious point of view. This is the way I'm thinking right now. I didn't realize that it is the truth and everything else is a point of view about it. So I'm gaining a little bit of respect for Catholics. And when I find out that this girl that I
very interested in in graduate school and who's an American is also a Catholic. That makes me a little bit more interested in the Catholic faith. So eventually we get married. I'm still not Catholic. She told me she wanted me to be interested in a faith, to take a faith seriously. She said she didn't really care which faith. Not quite true. It was not quite true because she knew
what deep down I think I knew as well, is if you get interested in religion at all and you do an honest search, you always end up in the Catholic Church.
Jason Craig (11:27.608)
think it was someone asked Walker Percy, why did you become Catholic? And he said, what else is there? What else is there? Yeah. All right. So.
Mark Adderley (11:35.992)
So after about a year of being married and we've got one, actually, but I hadn't converted yet. Right. So, and we married, and within the first year I said, okay, well, we're to have a baby now. So we ought to present a United front on the, on the religion thing. And, and so, and so that's when I answered the rather inadequate.
our CIA program that we had in the early 90s.
Jason Craig (12:08.142)
I went through one, I started calling it repelling converts inadvertently.
Mark Adderley (12:13.902)
No, I haven't, now I'm never going to forget it. They don't call it that anymore. It's something else. Ordeal, maybe. But so I came into the church on the 30th of March, 1991, same day that my first son was baptized.
Jason Craig (12:21.634)
OCIN.
Jason Craig (12:40.398)
Really? So initiated to get. Did you? I'm hearing this, you know, United Front, the parenting. Motivation, which is not uncommon, and it's not a bad. But you said your your RCA was inadequate. Well, where did I'm going? All right. Now you're now you're a teacher. Yeah. At a Catholic high school, your faith seems more important than just, I guess we'll have a United Front.
Mark Adderley (12:43.128)
Yeah, we will.
Jason Craig (13:10.286)
was it? You're actually hey, did you did you have supplemented material? I mean, what was
Mark Adderley (13:14.426)
Okay. So yeah, I did have supplementary material. In fact, the thing that made me change my mind and actually take the step of entering our CIA had nothing to do with United Front or anything like that. What it, what it was was the screw tape letters. right. And I remember when I was very small, one of my teachers introduced us to the Narnia books and I thought they were the best things ever.
I mean, I was telling Trey on the way here, you know, if I go to a hotel nowadays, I still check in the back of the wardrobe, just in case, you never know. Right. And so these are the most wonderful things I've ever read. And I remember growing up and thinking, C.S. Lewis is such a great writer, but he's a Christian, so he must have been kind of a moron.
Jason Craig (14:08.813)
Why you actually reminding me of him because you know, they're surprised by joy. You know, he talks about the place of finding these books like, know, George.
Mark Adderley (14:18.476)
George McDonald yeah it was big for him I can't read George McDonald it's very he leaves me cold
Jason Craig (14:25.422)
I think George McDonald threw my wife. She tells me about it. I can say I've read it
Mark Adderley (14:32.334)
Yeah, exactly.
Jason Craig (14:34.24)
account. But you okay, so you read you read surprised by joy during our CA or
Mark Adderley (14:41.646)
No, well, under under my wife's direction, I read a few of the other books that Lewis had written, mainly essays. But then it culminated with my reading the screw tape letters. I don't know if you remember that first letter, which is like magnificent. And he's talking about, you know, you're in a library and you're
Jason Craig (14:44.577)
not surprised.
Mark Adderley (15:10.766)
Approaching truth and you and you think to yourself I'm hungry. I want to go eat lunch and The response to that is but this is too important to stay here and finish this but then the devil says Yes far too important to consider when you're hungry to go home and Screwtape says and then the patient leaves the library and goes outside and he sees the newsboy crying the news and
the number one bus goes past and then he says to himself, those ideas that you get in the library are so wonderful, but this is the real world. And when he says that, and of course I just come from a graduate school in a British university where the number one bus did not go past the library, but
You definitely saw ordinary people doing ordinary things as soon as you stepped out into the quad outside and, and the real world was, was the real world was ever present. and so that's an experience that I could definitely identify with. And from that moment, CS Lewis had me. so,
Jason Craig (16:25.774)
It's interesting that it started in the Narnia. You keep mentioning how much your imagination matters, which I want to you about because we're as fathers a lot of times. What's the data I need to give my children? Sure that they're whatever, but how important successful? Sorry, let's finish this sentence. Let's give them the right data information so that they will be successful and we want them to be good virtues Catholic. But your imagination is so much more important. I think especially.
Formed in public education, I had to learn how important the imagination was for me. was John Senior that woke me up to that because I so often, you know, I had the attitude of someone that this happened to me the other day in a cell phone store. I was reading a book and this lady, oh, I like to read books. What are you reading? And it was, don't remember. Oh, I only like to read things that are true. Was what she told me. What an interesting way to put it. But you, what was interesting that you just said is that it started in Narnia.
And think was, I think CS Lewis said, you know, he quit writing essays, apologetics altogether. He knew it was only going to, and that's when he read, wrote Narnia. I'm remembering this correctly. or started writing his stories because he thought this will last and this will communicate the truth better than all my reasoning, my apologetics and it, everyone knows Narnia. It's true. My, first homestead was I.
purchased it in the previous owner was CS Lewis's grandson, Gresham, James Gresham. And we would email back and forth. And you know who he would quote all the time? Homer Simpson. Seemed completely uninterested in literature and all these things. But I think he still lives in Australia and we would just email and he would, because he was a meticulous, this has nothing to do with our podcast, but he was a meticulous home renovator. So he would take pictures of everything.
that he did turn that phone off since we're a professional podcast right now. He would he he renovated this old hundred year old farmhouse I lived in and he would take pictures of everything he did, like the wiring and the wall so we would email all the time. And his father, Doug Gresham, had was friends with this old farmer who lived behind me and he would bring his RV there and park it. I never met him. But anyway, there's my CS Lewis connection, middle of nowhere in North Carolina, turns out because I saw his name like, are you OK? Sorry.
Jason Craig (18:54.594)
So CS Lewis has got you in the imagination, then is the narrative and the reasoning and the screw tape letters really.
Mark Adderley (19:01.518)
stuck with. That's right. And the fact that, mean, like, it really felt like Lewis had kind of opened up my head and reached in seeing what was there. You know, that was such a real anecdote about being in the library because I'd spent so much of my time in the library as a graduate student at the University of Wales. mean, this kind of library that he would have been in, there's a room in the library at the University of Wales Banker.
which has a vaulted ceiling and stained glass windows and old, old wooden bookshelves. And some of the best of the collection of Arthurian books are right there in that library. So I knew exactly. I could see that scene. And, and, and so that was when I said, okay, this is, I, I, I can't.
be of a different faith from the mother of my child. And moreover, there might be something in this.
Jason Craig (20:09.902)
has a benefit of being true. I'd like to keep the story going, but it sounds like that's it culminates. You become Catholic, but not just you're a convicted Catholic. Yeah, you make it through the purgatory of RCA, which actually does knock off. I think it's 10 years of purgatory. If you make it through.
Mark Adderley (20:11.384)
Yeah.
Mark Adderley (20:28.302)
That's a lot better now. I've actually taught it now. The materials that we have now are so much better than they
Jason Craig (20:34.07)
I didn't even know what the materials were. For me, was just, I went in a room and there was a lady, she lit a candle and we just talked for a while and then we left. it was, that was about it. Now, there was some downright heretical things that I had to say. Yeah, but that's what I had. And one time they made me make clay models of my feelings. And this happened while we were listening to some new age chant thing. And the guy, just...
wrap up the story really quick. guy next to me, he just flattened it out and kind of rolled it up. And was like, what are you going to do? And they got to him and they said, what'd you make? And he said, taco. Because I'm all wrapped up inside. And I knew that he was just making this up. they're like, that was my archaic.
Mark Adderley (21:20.87)
It's like Conan the Barbarian, isn't it? What do you see? infinity.
Jason Craig (21:26.126)
So you you you are converted in your imagination, also, you know, CS Lewis seeing, as you said, opening up. hmm. So tell me about how you understood again what I was saying about fathers. want to give our kids the right data, the right discipline so that they are successful. And it's what you mean by we're but. Yeah.
Mark Adderley (21:52.673)
Autistic is weird.
Jason Craig (21:55.502)
How did that affect how you were forming your children when it came to now you're not just a student? How did you go about understanding the importance of, or did you understand the importance of
Mark Adderley (22:07.178)
Yeah, I think I, mean, I had an inkling at any rate. I, I, I don't know if I could have articulated it, but I, but I definitely had some kind of appreciation for the imagination and what it could do for them. was a deeper and more important than the data they need to earn more money so that they can have children who they sent to college to earn money. So you have children.
You know, before they get into that cycle, you know, there's something, there's something more important there. And so I tried to give them what I'd had. mean, my parents had given me, now I used to love watching movies with my, with my dad. He liked watching soccer. We called it football because you kick the ball with your foot. I can't
Jason Craig (23:04.78)
Don't preach to me, Englishman.
Mark Adderley (23:06.638)
Anyone watching football? I did not. I've never been a fan of soccer. When they found out I'm English, everybody asked me, who's your team? I don't have one. Don't have one. Arsenal?
Jason Craig (23:22.542)
You know, just so you know, I'm the same way. My dad loved to watch football. I just didn't care. Yeah. To this day, we're like, well, who's your team?
Mark Adderley (23:29.922)
Yeah. Don't care. Yeah. guess that ball. Yeah. So, so, so, so anyway, I, you know, I'm watching all these movies with my dad and so I thought, well, you know, we, should, we should do that as a, as a family. So when there was only two of the boys, I've got four boys all together, right? The older two of them, we'd go to the university library. was in graduate school for a PhD at the time. And we'd go to the top floor where they had an extensive.
Jason Craig (23:31.324)
American football.
Capital F. All right.
Mark Adderley (23:59.662)
collection of movies on VHS. This is back in the days of DVDs had just been kind of invented and most people watch movies on VHS and so.
Jason Craig (24:12.007)
HS was superior by the way because you didn't scratch them. You know, they were like protect
Mark Adderley (24:16.888)
There's a lot of reasons why that, but yeah. So we got, we got these, we used to have what we call the Saturday morning movie and Saturday morning movie. And we would always sit down and watch a movie together. My wife was usually doing something else, but it was, it was, it was a boy thing to do. Right. And, and we'd watch, we'd watch things like, the damn busters, which is my favorite movie growing up or.
Jason Craig (24:21.664)
Anyway, so you gotta be.
Jason Craig (24:27.395)
Warning!
Mark Adderley (24:43.852)
King Kong the 1933 King Kong or the Crimson Pirate with Burt Lancaster if you've never seen that it's such a lot of fun. We didn't watch any of the franchise movies particularly. Maybe you can count Jason and the Argonauts as being a franchise but.
Jason Craig (25:04.524)
There wasn't a lot of franchise. mean, when was this? is. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of pre endless franchise that now.
Mark Adderley (25:06.913)
This is the 90s,
Mark Adderley (25:12.558)
Yeah, we're inundated with that stuff now. So anyway, we watch those those movies. I read to them in the night. Of course, think any parent who doesn't missing something really, really valuable. we read we read Alice in Wonderland. It is still my fourth son, It's still his favorite book, Alice in Wonderland. We read the. Red wall book. Red wall books are.
Jason Craig (25:24.279)
Amen.
Mark Adderley (25:42.112)
A great, very formulaic
Jason Craig (25:45.326)
I think I'm just going to repeat what you said because.
lot of fun. You know, I contend that you can talk to a man about everyone's the universal call to holiness. Everyone's called a holiness and got an average guy. Maybe. But every every man wants to be a good dad. They just they just want to be a good dad in the simplest way. mean, one of the first things that they can do that they don't understand is within their power is to read to them, to read to your children. Then not only are you forming their imagination with those with the story, but your voice is forming.
So when they sort of equate the virtues, the truth that they're picking up, even with your voice, which is I think a lot of mothers, especially homeschooling moms, they get it, right? They become Charlotte Mason walks or something and reading all these living history books and dad just pays for them. This is actually convicting to me right now. thinking I haven't read to this.
Mark Adderley (26:41.516)
We have, we have this, we have this anthology of poetry and the poetry really made an impression on them. there was a poem by Walter Scott called Lachanvar. I used to read it with a Scottish accent and, and they loved it. and, and, Kipling, there was a poem by Kipling about smugglers and, and, it was great. It was very evocative.
Jason Craig (27:13.102)
I like, I've read the Kipling poem to them. The female of the species is more deadly than the-
Mark Adderley (27:18.796)
like the Worcester thing. The F of the S is more D than the Yeah. The female of the species is more deadly than the male is. It's a great, great poem, but I mean, you've got your pick with Kipling. There's a lot of Kipling that's.
Mark Adderley (27:38.41)
If it's a great poem, but there's so much more to Kipling than that. There's the Centurion song, which not many people know about, but I can't read it because I get choked up. There's Gunga Din. There's, I forget what it's called, but it's about the way that soldiers are treated when they get home from the wars and there's no pension for them or anything and they become homeless. And then there's the
the poem that he wrote about the light brigade, which says Tennyson's all very good for, you know, they come to see Tennyson and, and, and say, you know, you wrote about as well, but now we're starving. great stuff.
Jason Craig (28:21.57)
To your fatherhood though, would you say you were just passing on a tradition that you inherited or you consciously aware that
Mark Adderley (28:30.89)
Absolutely. Not that I read a of Kipling when I was a kid. In fact, I think I didn't read Kipling at all until I was an adult. He wasn't assigned in schools because of course he's racist and he is a colonialist, which is a total lie.
Jason Craig (28:51.368)
This was already in England in 80s. They were calling Kipling races.
Mark Adderley (28:55.254)
Yeah, I really don't remember. just remember that I didn't read them in high school. I didn't read them in college. I got to America and everybody was like, Kipling. Racist. And like, yeah. Ganga din is a, it's a tribute to, to a non white person. Anyway, lies. so
Some of it was things that I encountered for the first time as a father reading these to the kids and some of it was things that I'd loved from the time I was very, very small. So there's a mix of it. I mean, it's either the Western tradition or else it's my personal tradition.
Jason Craig (29:42.638)
All right, so then give me the reason if I'm a father that doesn't think.
Mark Adderley (29:46.83)
Why is it important? Because, and actually the best advocates of this point of view are my sons, who three of them have children of their own now. Three of them have families with a minimum of two and a maximum of seven children in them. fourth, well, number three in a birth order won't have a family because he's going into the seminary next month.
Jason Craig (30:16.59)
All four of them are adults. yeah, there may be.
Mark Adderley (30:19.512)
Yeah, yeah, they're in at least in their 20s. So, so what, what, what will has said, and number three, son, is that, that actually what he read and what he watched and what he listened to as a kid informed almost every decision that he made as an adult, which is when he was in college, he
took two gap years between finishing high school and going to college. And he's got one year of working experience after graduating from college now. And he says, you know, what I learned in those years was, has been so important in the way that I respond to people and, uh, and situations. Um, so I think what happens with, with, with literature in particular, and there is just the
My thing, right. It's, what my PhD is in. what I've always loved. in, literature, you, you meet the situation and you can make your way ethically and morally through that situation. You can navigate that situation and it gives you the ability to navigate those situations in real life. So it does have a pragmatic, use, but more than more than those things. mean,
So for example, I think you mentioned Dostoevsky. didn't. Who was it that mentioned Dostoevsky?
Jason Craig (31:54.414)
But that makes me seem intelligent.
Mark Adderley (31:56.302)
somebody I was talking to last night. Dostoevsky has the crime and punishment, um, which, uh, is a story about a guy who Russ Colnick off who says, I don't know what it's like to kill somebody. You know, I mean, could I switch off the moral, um, imperative that exists in human beings and rise to greatness because I can do things that the moral.
code forbids me to do. And he finds out, no, you can't switch it off. Actually, it will ruin your life if you do something like that. So, so much for Nietzsche. But it's thought experiment and he's like, Konecalfe is like, I wonder what it's like to kill a person. You don't have to wonder that. You can read Crime and Punishment or you can read Macbeth or watch Macbeth, which would be even better than reading Macbeth.
You you don't have to do it. You can just learn from the great commentators of the past. However, that's a pragmatic use for the imagination, which I don't think captures quite all it is. The fact is that your life is more enjoyable and more thoughtful if
you've read a lot of relatively good stuff. And it doesn't have to be fantastically good stuff.
Jason Craig (33:32.11)
I'm sorry, what was it you said? Your life is more thoughtful? Your life is
Mark Adderley (33:35.884)
Yeah, mean, like, as the Socrates said, the unreflective life is not worth living. Right. And it's not. It really isn't because earning so that you can have a family, so that your family can be educated and then get a job and earn money and get a family. This cycle that we've talked about earlier. Right. It's an enclosed circle. It's going around the same activities.
But it's not saying why it's not asking why. Well, mean, like that's it. I suppose that's a great noble goal from somebody else's perspective. you know, you are keeping something alive, but is this something that's worth keeping alive? the reflective life is worth living. Yeah. And it's very.
Jason Craig (34:08.098)
to get into debt.
Jason Craig (34:26.07)
You said I just, my own convert, like what Catholicism did to wake up my mind and my imagination. Because when I was in school, in public school, always, had like a revulsion of the whole project. you know, like a boy, mean, you know, a lot of school boys don't.
Jason Craig (34:46.638)
And I, yeah, somebody said that one. And I, school was a big joke and I learned how to navigate it by bribing teachers with biscuits. You know, I could be late for class and, oh, here's a biscuit. Oh, thank you, Jason. And I just made my way through with just, it was fine. But I rejected the, I didn't want to go to college at all. And now I have a master's degree, but I originally just went to school for horticultural.
The reason I would say is like, it seemed to me that I had to work hard, get good grades, get into a good college, to get a good job, get into a good neighborhood, be miserable like everyone. And it just didn't look, it wasn't attractive to me at all. Nothing was, it wasn't attractive. I didn't care about my grades. The reason I say this now is because being an editor of magazine, written books, think friends I would have had myself.
totally different person. And what woke up for me was Catholicism giving me that my mind wasn't just that I could actually boy, say for true. was like, I didn't, and before, you know, when you have that attitude, it's, it's sort of the work, work hard, play hard attitude, which is, you know, we just kind of grind out the bad stuff and then we balance that out with indulgence on the other side. Right. So there's, there's drudgery and then there's indulgence. It's like, why are we doing it? You know, you see why people would, well,
I'm just going to do indulgence. mean, why not? But Catholicism filled all that out and it woke up my imagination. started enjoying. I mean, I didn't I did not read as a boy. I mean, the only book I remember reading before my conversion where I just on my own read it was the only the only book was Captain Courageous. It's great.
Mark Adderley (36:32.846)
That's a good one.
Jason Craig (36:36.606)
And, but when I became a Catholic, actually in my, no, the, the, the second book I picked up on my own was a Dan Brown. That was my first introduction to like Catholicism. I picked him like, you know, became a sucker for these cheap novels. but then Catholicism gave me a reason to enjoy these things. So anyway, I'm just, that cycle was something that was very apparent to me. Why are we doing it? Well, you need to get into a good college. Why? Cause everyone seemed miserable in my perspective. So.
Your children then. No, wouldn't know. I want to go back. You're you're making a good defense of your you're articulating something that I think we fathers can really miss in the forming of the imagination is is the necessary part. It's not like an add on. What does it look like if we. Starvar. It's not like you know what that looks like, but you've got a pretty active.
Mark Adderley (37:25.111)
That's good.
No, I know what it looks like. But you don't have to look very far to see it. I mean, that's that's that's the world that we that we live in right now. That's the world of abortion and assisted suicide. This bad. Right. I you know. It wasn't really Catholicism that gave me that that love.
There was something there before it, but it's like, CS Lewis describes in surprised by joy, what he calls a stab of joy, right? It's a stab of joy that is supposed to lead you to God, right? It's God showing himself through something in the world. And we don't have to be Catholic to have these stamps of joy. I mean, I can remember not only was one of those stamps of joy, I think.
as corny as it sounds 50 years on, but Star Wars, A New Hope was another one of those for me. And the third one would be The Legend of King Arthur, particularly T.H. White's version of it. So we get these stanzas, there's something in the world and God is calling us through it. Right. So, so then we come to Catholicism and what Catholicism does is said, it says to us, well, he thought that was meaningful.
strap yourself in boys because it gets better. Right. And, and, and, and it's.
Jason Craig (38:56.59)
You're right.
Also affirms that it would affirm that this wasn't yet that you actually tasted something that is that good. And there's more, right? There's more.
Mark Adderley (39:07.682)
There's more because God is inexhaustible. We, you know, God is infinite and think about that for a few moments. You actually think about it for a lifetime, right? If he's infinite and we're finite, we can't fit him inside of us. And yet somehow he gets into us. Anyway, very Augustinian that.
Jason Craig (39:27.256)
That's right. You have to stay closer to them. Because you're saying good things. And why is our appeal to the imagination? Again, that late, know, God is true. Everything is true. Look at you backing up,
Mark Adderley (39:38.784)
Yeah. Okay. So, but yeah, I know. yeah, I remember where we were. So just a quick recap. think that, the thoughtfulness that the imagination you get from a, well-fed imagination, it's not necessarily from Catholicism, but Catholicism takes what has been given to you and then explodes it. mean, like,
magnifies it increases it it becomes incredibly fertile and
Jason Craig (40:14.156)
So would say then there's a poverty even to your faith then if your imagination is poorly formed. I mean, what's part of humanity then?
Mark Adderley (40:18.584)
I'm yes.
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's one thing to appreciate and I do, and I did Shakespeare as a secular person. Right. I learned how to read Shakespeare. I came to even love Shakespeare. Right. And it's a process. It's one that not everybody bothers to learn, but anybody can. And you can get a lot out of it.
But when you look at those 38 plays and 150.
Mark Adderley (41:01.262)
those narrative poems. From a Catholic perspective, they're so much greater. There's so much more to them. Because those plays, I think, were touched by God right at the beginning. I think that God was working through Shakespeare and that those plays are inspired
in something that's at least analogous to the way that the Holy Scriptures were inspired. And being a Catholic unlocks that and it becomes what was already great becomes even greater. There is more and more and more. I have a Protestant friend and he says, why do you, you know, why do you have to pray to Mary?
Why do you have to pray to the saints? My response, and I haven't articulated this to him yet, so here's a bit of a, if he's watching this podcast, this is a little bit of a preview. But the real reply to that is, we don't pray to Mary because we have to, we pray because we want to. We've got 15 different ways of praying. And in any Protestant denomination, they've got one.
Jason Craig (42:13.816)
minute
Mark Adderley (42:29.302)
and deviate from that one is, you know, taking them away from their salvation because it's a kind of a materialist or pragmatic approach to the faith, right? This is what I have to do to achieve salvation, but God is saying to us, no, salvation will come, but I want you to have a good time here.
Jason Craig (42:53.07)
Right. When they ask that question, because I'm a convert, it's also related to the imagination. It's kind of reducing salvation to getting the equation, getting the formula, and forgetting that the way you're saved is by becoming a part of a family. And families have mothers. It's just, well, why do you pray to Mary? Why don't you? It's the fact of the
She is my mother. mean, we like all these prayers are gonna be wrapped up in her heart. Just like if a child is making an appeal to his parents, mean, the mother's wrapped up in this. I don't know what heaven you think you're getting into. She is your
Mark Adderley (43:35.648)
at least your, I think the Hebrew word is gibira. She is the King's mother. He's the Queen's mother. He's the Queen who is a mother as well. you know, but my point here is that the Catholic faith takes what is already wonderful and multiplies it like Christ multiplying the loaves and the fish.
Jason Craig (44:00.812)
Which is why it's important for our children to have wonderful moments, right? I mean, as a father, I want to provide, it's not just experiences, information. It's their imagination. It's that, because my son, even talking about your books, he lit up and it's like, because I don't know if you know the story that I have not read your book.
Mark Adderley (44:18.798)
There's a way of fixing that yeah
Jason Craig (44:21.39)
We can do it right here. But I just want to talk about movement. know, people ask how we pick topics on the magazine or we just sent one of your books out to a lot of the subscribers that subscribe to get the books. yours was sitting out and I thought, I really like that cover. Oh, and I took note of it. And then Trey, our content editor, emailed me and said, I think we should send out this book. think that's a good. There's some good reasoning.
But my son loved it. My daughter, they were in this morning asked, well, what should I ask the author? And my son had a really, they had this back and forth. He said, well, I love it because it's on the edge of believability. And my daughter said, no, it's not.
Mark Adderley (45:06.478)
That's the edge of believability.
Jason Craig (45:15.45)
Margaret Mary. No, it's not. she was the one playing the fiddle. So, actually, before I ask about that, I wanted to finish because it's related. were talking about your children. Mm hmm. All do they all are taking one? hope this isn't embarrassing to ask. Are they all still practicing Catholicism?
Mark Adderley (45:35.84)
absolutely. Yeah. In fact, most of my grandchildren have been baptized in Latin.
Jason Craig (45:45.75)
All right.
Mark Adderley (45:47.566)
So we have, have, we have my wife and I have 13 grandchildren from three marriages and, and, the oldest one is 10 and the youngest one was born. June, beginning of June.
Jason Craig (46:05.798)
I'd like to ask a follow up question. Yeah, sounds like you know what's going on in your kid's life. Have you as a father, you maintain a close relationship?
Mark Adderley (46:14.52)
That's what is the, here's the thing. I remember once, you know, I told, was telling you how students would come over to the house and eat with us. Well, one of them, I had occasion to chew my son out at the, at the dinner table. this was, Jack and Jack, if you're watching, you know, you were a bad kid.
Jason Craig (46:38.446)
I thought you were gonna I'm sorry, I was like, no, yeah, I was still-
Mark Adderley (46:40.878)
So, so I had occasion to discipline and my student got kind of embarrassed and he couldn't drive. He was legally blind, so he couldn't drive. And I was driving him home and I said, are you okay? And he said, well, I'm just a little bit bothered by the way you discipline. So I said, tell me about that. He said, well, you know, and this is the shade that I love now.
He said, there are only children once, you know, and I said, I said to him, I'm not raising children. I'm raising adults because he's going to be a child until he's about 16. Right. And then he's going to live to be about 80 something as an adult. Right. If I don't take care to raise him as an adult now, he's never going to be an adult.
And that's the thing. We're not raising children. We're raising adults. And so my goal was to raise four children who would become the kind of adults that I wanted to hang out with, drink beers with.
Jason Craig (47:53.806)
You were raising, well, I'd say you're raising men, is, we know that there's a crisis of fatherhood right now. And one of them is not, think if we're going to kind of separate the roles of which gets, is an exotic, we shouldn't do that. But if we're going to simplify, let's not say, if we're going to simplify things, it actually belongs to the mother to care more about childhood, sort of nurture the childhood where the father does have that, that sort of the vision of adults, right? He holds that he's eager for them.
Mark Adderley (48:24.226)
I would say my wife had that vision as well though. So I don't think it's exclusive. I think there's a Venn diagram there and there's a big overlap.
Jason Craig (48:34.674)
As we talk about it in Fraternus, well, especially with young men, that the mother has this nurturing gathering, know, the church is the mother. And that the father has this wonderful, he affirms and loves that, but there's also the moments that come out of those moments.
Mark Adderley (48:52.15)
And there is a moment when a child, a boy in particular needs to leave the house and become the disciple in some measure of another man. Yeah. I mean, they medieval practice was among rich families was to foster. Once the boy hit about age 14, he would go to his uncle's house.
to become a man at his uncle's house. And I've observed that in my boys as well.
Jason Craig (49:27.214)
I'm gonna ask about that but I'm gonna try for more. I think I have an idea. I think it's all the weight.
Mark Adderley (49:33.71)
yes, you know, you're probably right.
Jason Craig (49:36.382)
I'm going to put some of that because now mine keeps falling forward. You're good. Don't touch it. And look, now we're matching. Well, I'm glad we haven't read each other's books because I wrote a book on rites of passage. was about, I was fascinated and speaking of the imagination and the sort, once I read an anthropologist, know, Arnold von Gendep, who described the stages of rite of passage and one of them is to leave his mother, right? And then
Mark Adderley (49:38.956)
This one's pretty firmly fixed now.
Jason Craig (50:06.858)
Now every all these the myths and the stories and the novels you recognize. this pattern of the story of, of course, telemica.
Mark Adderley (50:16.0)
Best one of those? The Lion King.
Jason Craig (50:18.544)
absolutely. No, the Lion King. Well, I was going to say, because you know, your literature teacher, I was going to say, well, Odysseus, Telemachus had to leave his mother, the island. But there is the Lion King one can never be made again, but it is the quintessential. That's right. They keep trying. We're not watching that. But yeah, it is beautiful because not only do you get an image of him becoming.
Mark Adderley (50:31.67)
It has been, but it shouldn't be.
Jason Craig (50:42.222)
But you get to see what happens if you don't, which is you're this little boy running around with a gang, know, the Kuna Matata and all that. It looks great, but it is so empty, you know? Even Simone and Pumbaa are... that Pumbaa? Even they're excited to be liberated from their mediocrity and to go follow him in the battle. Great. All right. So your sons, then you answered it with a very long answer, which is, yes, you are still close to your sons. Yes, absolutely. men you enjoy to be with.
Mark Adderley (50:54.751)
own timber.
Mark Adderley (51:11.192)
They are, and they seem to want to be with me as well. They, do stop by three of them are local. one of them lives in, Littleton. Right. no, no, it's, just outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina. Yeah. He's, he was in the army until a year ago and now he.
Jason Craig (51:24.045)
Colorado.
Jason Craig (51:31.177)
that's near where grew
Mark Adderley (51:39.744)
It's a civilian contractor at Fort Bragg. And it is Fort Bragg again.
Jason Craig (51:44.494)
It's back. Fort Bragg is back. Yeah, I up north of Fort Bragg.
Mark Adderley (51:52.078)
Fort Liberty.
Jason Craig (51:54.688)
everything is liberty. The reason I'm just going to connect some things, I don't know if you will commend you that one, I'm discovering more and more that it's actually not as common as we would hope for serious loving Catholic fathers to maintain close relationships to their children, especially their sons into adulthood. That's an important, we're raising men actually our job of sort of finishing that in adulthood means that we care for them.
know them and that we have that relationship. A lot of them get severed, right? The whole, I'm just going to be hard on you until you're 18 and then you go figure it out after that. You got to go make your own mistakes. your own. And there's a, that's a strange philosophy. That's I think not human, not normal, not natural and not good. Um, that fathers when they're 18, I want to be able to, that's when I want to be spending more time with you. Cause now I've handed over the reins of discipline. I don't have to dis.
You now own the reins of self-discipline, right? Because that's part of the maturity is the job of discipline goes from me, the father, to you, the child, which is great. Because then I get to just enjoy the fruit of your character.
Mark Adderley (53:04.748)
You left home just when you were getting interesting.
Jason Craig (53:08.341)
That's the second time you've done a Sean Connery voice. The other one was making fun of our friend that we were walking with and he was saying, shwaill. But I think I'm just going to guess that there is a connection. The fact that they note the stories that you read to them, the stories you say, the sound of your voice, the stabs story that can come through your voice, that that is something I think a lot of fathers, again, back to the reading to your children, you'll miss that because they will
not only remember in their imagination the feeling of that heroic thing, the thing that the story gave them, they'll remember it from your voice. And that is going, so that thing that's a part of who they are is going to be associated with the voice of the Father.
Mark Adderley (53:53.934)
Also, they're never too young for that. I read Shakespeare plays to the newborns.
Jason Craig (54:00.43)
You're above me, above my league.
Mark Adderley (54:01.902)
Well, mean, Kit was born and I thought, well, was about the time when Mel Gibson's Hamlet was in the movie theaters. And I still love that version of Hamlet better than any other, right? But as brief as it is. And I thought, he doesn't speak English yet. He doesn't care what the words mean. But my voice and
a nice sounding language with rhythm, you know, we'll probably be on. So every time he went to sleep, I read him a bit of Hamlet, Jack. read the history place seven out of eight of them. I think I read, will the taming of the shrew and symboline and Nick.
Jason Craig (54:53.282)
You mentioned the rhythm in the lyrics. Ian McGilchrist, who's a neuroscientist, I if you've read, he wrote the Master and his Emissary. He actually thinks that language, that music developed before words, and that words were just a way to help communicate some of the music. maybe they're learning something, they don't have to understand the words, they're still being formed. But I would just commend, I think, the stabs of joy, understanding, the importance of the imagination, because wait,
The way John Senior puts it in one of his essays is, your imagination is actually the first thing that is, you sort of have this experience of reality, right, through your senses, and then you have, then your imagination is formed. And then from, you basically extrapolate truth from those moments, these things that correspond, that sort of, this world inside my head, in my heart, this world that I'm experiencing and encounter.
I'm sort of comparing and contra and all of sudden I realized, there's an inner truth in like both of them. And they, we have that aha, right. Of, of wisdom, right. Not just knowing things, knowing facts. And he, that's why he would propose that before you can even talk about reading great books, have to some good books, right? I think his list was called the thousand good books. Yeah. But when somebody says to a man, you need to be a better father. Think, what do want me to do? You know, that's a lot of times.
just take them places or like in the movies, just usually means like work less and play with them more. But I think the forming their mind in the evening, forming their imagination, the simplest thing. So at what point when you're parenting, weren't these born from telling these stories to, well, tell me a little bit about the stories and then where were they born? Because it doesn't have something to do with your children.
Mark Adderley (56:40.686)
Yeah, very much. I mean, I never thought of myself as a children's until 2030, about 2012. We had this game, a board game called Forbidden Island, which is a great game. And it's a cooperative game rather than a competitive game. And what you're doing, you're on an island and the island is sinking and you've to these four treasures off the island and to your helicopter and take off.
And there's a different, there are different characters you can play and they have different skills. One is a diver. Another one is an engineer. Another one is an archeologist who can scoop things up in his with his shovel. And so working as a team, you get these treasures and you get off the Island before it sinks. If the Island sinks, you're dead and you've lost the game, but you've all lost the game, which
caused a lot of problems because we had a rule in our house, a household rule that whoever won the board game we were playing had to pack it up. It sort of takes the sting out of losing and it means that you can't really crow about it if you win. So if you're playing a cooperative game, who packs up? Yeah, right. It's an empath, but it was a great game and we played it for a year and we
Jason Craig (58:02.158)
Bread and Empaths.
Mark Adderley (58:08.672)
We got so we could solve it pretty easily. And my wife said, what we should do is we should write down all the moves that we make in this game and write a story of it. And, know, and, so all four of us, because we're only two kids at home at the time. all four of us had this project to write the story. We played the game. We wrote the, the moves down and, and, and, I read the first chapter, first four pages.
And they were gobsmacked. Now, sorry, gobsmacked. They were like astounded. they, they, they, this is actually good. And, know, McCracken's first name is not given in the first novel. I won't tell you when it's being revealed or what, if it has been revealed, but they would
Jason Craig (58:46.412)
Meaning,
Jason Craig (58:52.713)
Like wait a minute this might be good
Mark Adderley (59:09.036)
Walk around the house chanting, what is my crack? It's night. What is my crack? It's night. They liked it a lot. Right. So, so I would write four pages of it. And that was a chapter and I'd read it to them and another four pages and read it to them. And I had a vague idea of where it was going. Cause I had the moves of the game to complete it. And, and, my wife said at one point, you know, you should try and sell this story to the people who made the game.
And I thought, that's really, really, really unlikely. But I'm, you know, but nevermind. But just to back up a little bit, when we'll go into sixth grade, he was a very reluctant reader. he, you know, I mean, the, the, were homeschooling and, and, the choices were basically Harry Potter, Captain Underpants or, G G a Hentie.
You familiar with those books, the historical books, but they're written by a Victoria, the Victorian and the style is very stodgy and you know, good books, good solid books, but we'll just couldn't deal with the style. We didn't want him to have the captain underpants stuff, Harry Potter.
Not that great. You know, it's what it is, but the, but what I've noticed with Harry Potter is kids who read Harry Potter. Yeah, they become readers. They become readers of Harry Potter. not, you know, objective, not really achieved there. So we had a real, impulse. was, he wasn't reading anything and we couldn't figure out what, but he would read these things. He would read McCracken or he would listen to McCracken anyway, is, yeah.
Jason Craig (01:00:43.744)
Again. Again, yeah.
Mark Adderley (01:01:02.688)
We had a rule you could never watch a movie until you'd read the book. and he actually, the only lie ever told me to my knowledge was, I finished the Lord of the Rings.
Jason Craig (01:01:14.862)
We have that rule in our home too. problem is, you know, we have eight children. So you get, and you get tired also. And then the older kids, and then they were halfway through the movie and then they're like, wait, he hasn't read it. And then they want him because the boys are just as like, he has to leave the room. I'm not making him the leader, but you made me read the book. So that's how that's played out.
Mark Adderley (01:01:19.192)
Getting trapped here then.
Mark Adderley (01:01:35.038)
Yeah, it's not, it's not the, it's not the best. It's not most ideal, but it does. Anyway, so, so, so, so anyway, they liked it. So what I did is I, I changed the title, I changed the names of the places so that it didn't match the game. I initially tried to get a Catholic publisher to go for it, but one most Catholic publishers don't publish fiction.
And two, the ones that do have these rules for children's fiction that are kind of a straight jacket. Like the protagonist must be the same age as the readers. Well, McCracken was 35 because he was kind of an Indiana Jones figure.
Jason Craig (01:02:28.31)
Is that decision from some sort of marketing perspective?
Mark Adderley (01:02:31.182)
I presume so. I presume so. mean, like I think about it and I think I can think of some young adult fiction, like Rosemary Sutcliffe's novels are often the protagonist as an adult. Most of them though, that does describe them, so it must work. Anyway, I thought, I'm never going to get a publisher to go for these books. Anyway, I'm looking at Catholic boys.
about sixth to 10th grade. That's a real sh nobody's going to go for that. So I thought, what I'll do is I'll publish a few of them, self publish. And then when they're wildly successful, which they're, which they inevitably will be, then Ignatius or somebody like that will jump on the opportunity to publish them.
Still waiting.
Jason Craig (01:03:27.726)
So are these self-published? Yeah. All right. Yeah. Well great job. They look good. That's why you perked up when I said a cool cut
Mark Adderley (01:03:29.58)
Yeah, that's off public. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, because like, this is kind of a placeholder until I can get a real artist to do the covers in the manner of a kind of a pulp novel of the 1930s.
Jason Craig (01:03:46.21)
So Sword and Spade became a publishing house. We could publish your series. We'd be our first.
Mark Adderley (01:03:51.262)
Yeah, I'd be open to that. I would definitely be open to that. Because the last time I tried this, they just, too many of them. We can't.
Jason Craig (01:04:01.548)
Yeah, I had the first publisher I went to with my manuscript on rites of passage. They said, well, men don't read books. Well, men don't read books. And I'm speaking as one. not going to read your book. Anyway, thank you to the publisher that did publish them. OK, so you have now been self-publishing these for
Mark Adderley (01:04:27.63)
12 years, there's 10 of them all together.
Jason Craig (01:04:32.358)
I have to start now that I know well now that I have in my imagination the story that these are getting born out of a a game wonderful even to hear that. What kind of works for this young man?
Mark Adderley (01:04:43.854)
It meant that Will and Nick had a lot of input into the creation of these stories. Nick was always a storyteller. We didn't teach him to read until he was six or something, seven maybe.
Jason Craig (01:05:06.702)
Wait, you're making that sound like that's late. like, the other ones that learned earlier? Well-
Mark Adderley (01:05:11.502)
At least they started, but, but, um, but Nick, said, all right, we're not going to, we're not going to teach him to read until he's ready. Because if he's ready, he'll learn quickly. And it's true. Actually, if you wait until a kid says, I want to learn to read. Then they learn in like a fortnight. So, um, so he, and he, and he was like seven, I think when we finally, finally mastered, uh, you know, did learn in two weeks. And the first book that he read was a Hobbit.
Jason Craig (01:05:42.648)
Okay, unless there, we have some dyslexic sons. There are some exceptions.
Mark Adderley (01:05:45.71)
Yes, so let me me finish that thought though. His job now is 22 is he writes dialogue and backstory for a video game company. Really? Yeah. He's the dream job. He is living the life.
Jason Craig (01:06:01.262)
Was that an interest that he had in video games? that something you guys know? Okay. then he got, but the narrative in his imagination was.
Mark Adderley (01:06:08.844)
the he sees video games, based video games as having the potential for storytelling that he can provide.
Jason Craig (01:06:22.522)
I've heard this argument because we're relatively anti. Well, we're not anti. We just don't do it. We don't have video games. And that's because. Well, I mean, for me, it's hard to imagine them being valuable because I had Mortal Kombat, you know, and like these other it was just just trash that I have now. It was still a lot of fun, but I've heard the argument from people that this is actually the place where a lot of people are encountering.
narrative and art and imagination and story and it's fine as they don't get completely addicted and locked up and neglecting rest of their life I suppose.
Mark Adderley (01:06:59.406)
There's a potential for that there. mean, I, you know, I've not played many of these games, but I did notice that the ones that I did play, there sort of is an addictive element to them.
Jason Craig (01:07:13.102)
They know what they're doing. It's the story. They're drawing you into it.
Mark Adderley (01:07:16.206)
Yeah, there's apparently a science to it, which I haven't followed up on and I don't want to get Nick to explain it to me, but in any case, mean, he's currently working for two video game companies. of them, one of is a big deal. It's the same people who made a game called Bioshock, which was pretty successful.
I'm the only one is a polish company and then making a game about somebody who wants down which is in months this for the Vatican. So it's a Catholic video which.
Jason Craig (01:08:02.616)
man, should, he should find I was at a, I went to a gun show and I have a son who was really into, makes muzzle loaders. Like the old school, like the Patriot in the movie. And so we go to these gun shows and he's looking at them. And there was a, you know, an actual vampire hunting kit, like a very serious one, you know, like a little gun and maybe some other one in a crucifix in the holy water. it's like, somebody made this to do this as a profession. I was like, okay, wow.
Mark Adderley (01:08:32.154)
Well, they they give him a picture of a weapon and he comes up with a history for the weapon That's the one of the things that he's doing right now. It's this there's more to it than that, but you know
Jason Craig (01:08:42.926)
All right, well, quit bragging about yourself. Let me get back to your work here. this is, now I have to begin this, like tonight. And you're, you've been doing this for 12 years. There's 10 books. And is that gonna keep going?
Mark Adderley (01:08:56.439)
yeah. Okay. Yeah, there's a few more. I'm not done.
Jason Craig (01:08:58.976)
And you have in mind you said that is that that niche is very serious you have in mind you know young men informing them so what is. What sort of the where I mean you you're you're you're using the narrative the imagination like.
Mark Adderley (01:09:12.503)
You
Jason Craig (01:09:14.234)
I hate to make this, I don't want to beat it with a hose and try to get to the point here. But what is it like when you picture your own sons? What is the thing that they're getting from this book that you're glad they're getting?
Mark Adderley (01:09:28.462)
Well, I'll give you an example, not from my sons, but from a friend's sons. Now his, his, he was my department chair, one of the places I'm teaching prior to Drexel and, and he has a lot of children and because he's a good Catholic, right. And, and he moved away. I went up to Ohio and, and I sent him the, this one, but the one before it number nine, the Kraken and the lost sword. And he said, he said,
He texted me not too long ago and he said, we're watching a movie. It must have been like national treasure. If you ever seen that Nicholas cage movie. And he said, he said, was getting worried because it's all about the free masons. And so I said to the kids, you know, anything about the free masons? And one of them said, yeah, they're an organization that they seem to be doing good things, but they're really.
against the Catholic church and they're trying to destroy the Catholic church. And he said, he said, know, the lost sword, because the villain in that book is a, is a, is Freemason. So, identifying the bad guys is, is one of the big things to, to, the series.
Jason Craig (01:10:30.446)
How did you know?
Jason Craig (01:10:52.236)
that's a great summary. Why is this good for Catholic boys to read? Because it identifies the bad guy. That's an important skill. That's excellent. Well, thank you so much for writing that, because that's again, when you know, that story I told with the postural, they're not reading your books. A lot of times we're reading a lot of the books and I'm like, I don't want my boys reading, you know, many things. But the ones that are trying to think, I can picture the cover, the ones that really form a Catholic identity are
Identifying the bad guy have a strong sense of belonging actually to the truth that you belong to. what I like about books like this is that they're not just nerdy catechisms with saccharine pictures. now there's a place for nerdy catechism. But what they're getting from these books, they remember the stories. My son, one of my sons who's pretty serious about his faith.
When I asked him, you know, what is the what's the thing that really sparked ready for him to describe deep conversation? That no, you know, reading this book, I think it's about peers. Story, so I think it's a, know, within fraternists, we study a lot of virtues and you want to like get the objective truth across, you know, communicate it persuasively. But we're going to miss it. It is they're going to remember the story.
Mark Adderley (01:12:03.565)
Hmm.
Jason Craig (01:12:19.194)
You know, when a captain, when fraternists call the men captain, when they stand up, it's called the kings. They're like, well, I'm not a good teacher. Like you're probably not, but they know you and they, you're now part of their story. You articulating that, that truth because your stories are wrapped up. That's what makes it effective. So anyway, I'm thanking you for kind of taking that formative approach with young men. Cause there's not, people aren't describing that. Well, one, they're not identifying that young men are formed.
differently than girls. Co-education is impossible. they're also not speaking.
Mark Adderley (01:12:56.546)
Joel for eight hours and listening to somebody else talk is not a way the boys learn.
Jason Craig (01:13:02.094)
That's one of our boys when they're young, we have this little arch. It's like a board. It's just a board that has an arch because they can just move while they're learning. The key to keeping them sitting still and learning is to not make them sit still while they're learning. They will just move. And there's actually there's truth in this. are there. They're learning and remembering by using their body at the same time.
Mark Adderley (01:13:25.026)
I had a, my wife had a student when we were living in Montana, who she, she allowed him to use his lasso all the way through class. and he could only learn if he was using his body at the same time.
Jason Craig (01:13:40.622)
You should have read that story, Farmer Boy, Laura Engel's, one of her books where the teacher whips the kid out of the, remember that? There's a bully, he probably has the same name as the bully you described in England. And he's gonna kill the teacher, he's gonna beat him to death. And the teacher had secretly learned how to use a bull whip and chased him out of the schoolhouse with a whip. Well, anyway, thank you for being on the Swordless Bay Podcast.
I'd like to have you back. I'm gonna read some of them and then we can have you back.
Mark Adderley (01:14:14.19)
anytime. I'm always willing to talk.
Jason Craig (01:14:16.824)
Alright, thanks Mark.