The Cloud of Unknowing
Tom introduces the series, and the anonymous 14th-century monk who named it.
Getting Lost
Get lost—in the woods, a far-off desert, or in someone’s arms.
Philosophy of the Unknowable
George Santayana thought we can know only the way things appear, not the way things are.
Hitchhiking and Riding the Rails
To arrive somewhere new, let a stranger pick the destination.
Getting Lost in Books
A reflection on how stories mystify us with “that marvelous unknown.”
Heaven and Hell in Thailand
Take a dirt road through a small jungle to a monastery that’s off the guidebook.
Eyewitness
Memories acquit muggers, misrecognize childhood homes, and embellish travel stories.
Crossing the River
It’s harder to cross a bridge that’s not there than a language barrier that is.
Do We Ever Really Know a Person?
Good conversation comes from not knowing what the other person's going to say.
Sweeping the Floor
“What then—given the beauty and terror of the vast cloud of unknowing—do we do?”
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The Cloud of Unknowing
In The Cloud of Unknowing, Tom Lutz—a writer, literary critic, and founder of the Los Angeles Review of Books—invites us to consider “what it means to be lost, to be aimless,” and to recognize the “import and subtleties” of uncertainty.
In this series, Tom explores the nature of unknowing through travel stories, childhood anecdotes, and reflections on various authors, poets, and philosophers. His essays, he says, can be thought of as an “attitude toward experience, a way of walking through the world that maintains a useful humility about what we know and a corresponding openness to what we do not.”
to listen to all 10 sessions in this series.
Artwork by Goce Ilievski