Old books, moral stakes, Christian learning.
Avalon Mentors treats old books as living arguments about the soul. Episodes move from Shakespeare, Tolkien, classical tragedy, scholastic debate, sacred geometry, and Flannery O'Connor into questions of mercy, education, failure, violence, and Christian hope.
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Avalon Mentors is an education show built around close reading, Christian reflection, and the conviction that literature still teaches serious things. Its center of gravity is not classroom technique in the narrow sense. It is the older idea that education forms judgment, memory, imagination, and the soul. Episodes may begin with Shakespeare, Tolkien, Flannery O'Connor, Greek tragedy, sacred geometry, or a medieval scholastic dispute, but they rarely stay confined to plot summary. A passage becomes a doorway. Prospero's farewell opens into art, mercy, and the danger of trapping another person inside a public role. Hamlet leads toward fathers and sons, grief, nominalism, realism, death, and the hope or dread of what comes after. The Hobbit becomes a shared journey through song, providence, ancient echoes, and the small comic pleasures of finishing a book together. The Oresteia and Medea become occasions to think about revenge, violence, self-control, and the limits of pagan moral effort. The scholastic episodes are especially dense, linking sacred geometry, the seven liberal arts, Aquinas, Anselm, Abelard, Paris, Wittenberg, and the long consequences of abstract disputes. The show is openly theological. It returns to Christ, grace, forgiveness, humility, and salvation without treating those subjects as decorative conclusions. Its style is roomy. Arguments are stated, revised, repeated, illustrated, and carried through several traditions before landing. The pacing rewards patience. Banter and weather-chat can sit beside metaphysics without apology. Readings are sometimes allowed to occupy real space, as with Flannery O'Connor, before the commentary draws out moral and spiritual questions. Avalon Mentors will appeal to educators, parents, students, and serious general readers who like literature discussed as something more consequential than taste. It is demanding without being cold. It feels like a table conversation with someone who has brought too many books, too much coffee, and a real concern for what wisdom is supposed to do.
Made for: For educators, parents, students, and literary-minded listeners who want Shakespeare, Tolkien, medieval thought, and Christian theology treated as living sources of formation.
What sets it apart: Avalon Mentors joins K-12 educational concern to unusually deep literary-theological interpretation, moving comfortably from classroom questions into sacred geometry, scholasticism, mercy, death, and grace.
Providing outstanding learning opportunities for students in middle school, high school, and beyond. "The righteous flourish like the palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon." - Psalm 91 "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her." - Proverbs 4:7-8 Helping educators through discussion, insight, reviews, and ideas. The Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=21129179
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
William J. Lasseter makes demanding books and philosophical disputes teachable through guided readings, sustained conversation, and clearly stated interpretive commitments.
Avalon Mentors turns literature, intellectual history, and Christian thought into sustained lessons led by William J. Lasseter. Its formats shift with the material: chapter-by-chapter Tolkien conversations, a complete reading of Flannery O'Connor framed by interpretive…
Bilbo shares a lectern with Aquinas, and somehow your reading list starts making eye contact.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A slow, ornate argument about Hamlet, number, and the medieval break that still lingers.
Avalon Mentors turns Hamlet's disgust with the world into a long argument about nominalism and the scholastic break of the 13th century, then widens into sacred geometry and the older idea that number, music, and astronomy once formed one cosmic pattern.
A dense but focused tour of sacred geometry, scholasticism, and the medieval debates the episode says still matter today.
The episode treats sacred geometry as a long-running line of esoteric mathematics, moving from the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and Neolithic times into the medieval effort to reach the divine creator through numbers, concepts, angels, and powers.
A conversational case for why a peaceful Messiah feels startlingly unlike the usual divine pattern.
The episode treats "peaceful Messiah" as the kind of phrase that immediately asks for more attention. It pauses over what Messiah meant in Jewish tradition and why that idea can seem out of step with a speaker who sees Christianity as uniquely defined by something else.
Avalon Mentors returns to sacred geometry.
Avalon Mentors opens by tying Hamlet’s disgust with the world and its ecclesiastical negativity to a critique of nominalism.
The episode concludes with a call to action and begins a conversation with Dr.
An educational podcast episode where the host interviews a guest about J.R.R.
Margaret and the host reopen a discussion about Christianity's claim to a peaceful Messiah.