Did you hear about those weird secret symbols embedded into the layout of the 19th-century Bomberg Talmud? Or similar layouts, symbols and coded messages found throughout a medieval Christian book called the Glossa Ordinaria? Oh come now, everyone has read Dan Brown. Those monks and rabbis were up to something. There must be a conspiracy “they” don’t want us to know about. Well, no, not really. It was just the medium used to convey the messages of those times, similar to the typical layout of almost all newspapers of today. But why were they so similar? And how does the medium of print and the form of their layouts convey (or amplify) their message? On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies continued to discuss Marshall McLuhan’s The Mechanical Bride, and wondered how the medium of newsprint is affecting society, and whether the medium of the Internet was amplifying this affect. Join us! —Streamed July 12, 2024

In 1951, media guru and secret medievalist Marshall McLuhan published his first book, The Mechanical Bride. His purpose was to encourage his readers to contemplate the way that advertising and technology shape society, both for the advertisers and for their targets – the buying public. The ladies of the Mosaic Ark have been contemplating McLuhan’s writings for several years now and it has shaped the way we see the world and the way we write our own fictional stories. Join us as we discuss McLuhan’s early inspirations and his spookily prophetic observations. —Streamed July 6, 2024

This month the ladies of the Mosaic Ark talked about the sin of pride in its various forms. As Providence would have it, our last stream on this topic occurred one day after the first US presidential debate, where two men sought to convince a nation to give one of them power. Was that debate informative or merely a display of pride? This question got us thinking of two other persons who also sought out power – Prometheus and Satan. In this week’s conclusion of our own “pride month”, we discussed the character traits of Prometheus (from the Greek myths), and Satan, from an Old English poem that contains a speculative meditation on the fall of Adam and Eve (the Genesis of Bodleian MS Junius 11). Join us as we attempt to unravel the characteristics of pride and how we can identify it in ourselves and others. —Streamed June 28, 2024