Mythic Mind
Mythic Mind pursues wisdom on the pathways between primary and secondary worlds. Tolkien, Lewis, and adjacent material tend to take a leading role.To support my work and gain access to exclusive and early content, voting...
Insights from recent episode analysis
On the show
- Josh Traylor3 eps
- Joshua Traylor3 eps
- Tyler Finders2 eps
Also: Jeremy Key, Jack Keoseyan, Stephen Kent, Josh Daws, Michael Kane
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Podcast Focus
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Insights are generated by CastFox AI using publicly available data, episode content, and proprietary models.
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Total monthly reach
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- 🇭🇺HU · Philosophy#12411K to 140K
- Per-Episode Audience
Est. listeners per new episode within ~30 days
11K to 140K🎙 ~2x weekly·190 episodes·Last published 3d ago - Monthly Reach
Unique listeners across all episodes (30 days)
23K to 280K🇺🇸71%🇭🇺29% - Active Followers
Loyal subscribers who consistently listen
13K to 154K
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* Data sourced directly from platform APIs and aggregated hourly across all major podcast directories.
| Date | Episode | Topics | Guests | Brands | Places | Keywords | Sponsor | Length | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10/19/26 |  195 - Eschatology in Arda: Did Middle-earth Know Its Ending? | Did the people of Middle-earth know how their story ends? Rev. Jeffrey Wade joins Andrew Snyder and Josh to discuss his master's thesis on eschatology in Arda. His question is not only what Tolkien believed, but whether the inhabitants of Arda themselves know their telos: the promise of resurrection, reunion, and the setting right of all things. Letting the text stand on its own rather than reading it through a scholar's agenda, he argues that this hope is woven into the story from the Ainulindalë onward.One striking thread is water. The music of Ilúvatar lingers in the waters of Arda, and Rev. Wade traces moments of grace and eucatastrophe that happen near water, from Bilbo's riddle game and Lake-town to the Ford of Bruinen, Nimrodel, and Mirrormere. He also shows how hope is handed down through song and story among Men, hobbits, Dwarves, and Ents, and points to the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth in Morgoth's Ring as one of its clearest statements.The conversation then asks how much of this hope survives in Peter Jackson's films and why Hollywood struggles with virtuous characters. It closes with Rev. Wade's story of how the films led him to the books, and why he calls The Lord of the Rings a love letter to creation. Rev. Jeffrey Wade is a Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod pastor in Iowa, with an MDiv from Concordia Seminary (2014) and an MA in Language and Literature from Signum University (2025).Chapters00:00 Introducing Rev. Jeffrey Wade01:12 The thesis: do the inhabitants of Arda know their eschatology?03:21 Reading theologically and letting the text stand05:24 Water and the music of Ilúvatar07:28 What is Arda?11:12 What makes this approach unique in Tolkien scholarship15:50 Best sources: the Ainulindalë and the Athrabeth19:57 The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: hope at the water's edge23:33 Why water? Baptismal echoes24:22 How the hope is handed down: lore, song, and catechesis27:51 Bombadil vs. the Barrow-wight: hope vs. despair29:20 Eschatology in the Peter Jackson films34:26 Can film viewers catch it? Hollywood and virtue37:00 Recommended reading on Tolkien and theology39:50 How the films led Rev. Wade to Tolkien43:36 ClosingGet the book: Morgoth's Ring (J.R.R. Tolkien): https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9780261103009Get the book: Tolkien's Theology of Beauty (Lisa Coutras): https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9781137553447Get the book: The Flame Imperishable (Jonathan S. McIntosh): https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9781621382942Get the book: Tolkien On Fairy-stories (J.R.R. Tolkien): https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9780007582914Join the Mythic Mind Fellowship:https://mythicmindfellowship.com/membershipListen to/watch the Mythic Mind podcasts:- Mythic Mind- Mythic Mind Games- Mythic Mind MoviesBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mythic-mind--5808321/support. | 44m 41s | ||||||
| 10/12/26 | 194 - The Death of Ivan Ilyich: Am I Guilty? | Watch the video: https://youtu.be/mIgiz_wQbXkWe all know we will die one day. It is another thing to consider that it is I who am going to die.In this Mythic Mind conversation, Dr. Andrew Snyder (professor of philosophy and theology) is joined by David and Jack to read Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich. We trace a man who did everything "properly," climbed the ladder, decorated the right house, and still ended up utterly alone, until suffering forces him to ask the one question he has always avoided: am I guilty?Topics include how ordinary people keep death at arm's length, why suffering can become a grace, and what it means to finally take responsibility for the life you've lived. Along the way we find Tolstoy reaching some of the same places as Lewis and Kierkegaard by a very different road.Related:• Kierkegaard on Man's Highest Perfection (Mythic Mind, ep. 193): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJXOC2PfR3M• Till We Have Faces, Part One: Orual Behind the Veil (Mythic Mind, ep. 114): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KhXO9V0PRwGet the book: The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9780140449617Join the Mythic Mind Fellowship:https://mythicmindfellowship.com/membershipListen to/watch the Mythic Mind podcasts:- Mythic Mind- Mythic Mind Games- Mythic Mind Movies#MythicMind #Tolstoy #DeathOfIvanIlyich #BookClub #Philosophy #Theology #CSLewisBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mythic-mind--5808321/support. | 38m 50s | ||||||
| 10/5/26 |  193 - Kierkegaard on Man's Highest Perfection | Watch the video:https://youtu.be/lJXOC2PfR3MWe are pressed to dissolve into the mass, to wear a demographic as a self, or to win identity from whatever community we most esteem. Kierkegaard’s answer cuts the other way: the glory of the human being is to recognize utter dependency on God.In Mythic Mind episode 193, Dr. Andrew Snyder is joined by Zach and David for an Exploring the Psyche conversation on Kierkegaard’s discourse “To Need God Is a Human Being’s Highest Perfection.” They push past the easy proverb that a person needs only a little, through Job and vanity that can even dress itself as renunciation, to the Christian claim that greatness is not pagan self-sufficiency but knowing how much we need God. Along the way: first self and deeper self, the moving wheel of fortune versus the eternal, inwardness against self-enclosure, Christendom versus contemporaneity with Christ, and why casting Kierkegaard as a secular existentialist misses the Christian (even Boethian) grain of the text.Topics include needing little versus needing God, praying for the powerful because they need God most, grace and being capable of nothing, the hard wine before the good wine, and how anchoring in God frees the temporal self for real community rather than atomism.Get the book: Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses by Søren Kierkegaard https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9780691020877Join the Mythic Mind Fellowship:https://mythicmindfellowship.comFellows and Companions can join The Psychology of Søren Kierkegaard: Life in Anxiety and Despair, beginning the week of October 4, plus Academy courses, Inkwell essays, and the fuller life of the community.Listen to and watch Mythic Mind podcasts:- Mythic Mind- Mythic Mind Games- Mythic Mind Movies & Shows#MythicMind #ExploringThePsyche #Kierkegaard #ToNeedGod #Philosophy #Theology #Psyche #ChristianExistentialismBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mythic-mind--5808321/support. | 54m 50s | ||||||
| 9/28/26 | 192 - Exploring the Psyche: Why Socialism Is Poison to the Soul | Watch the video:https://youtu.be/Juoxi8xM5eQSocialism is often sold as justice, necessity, or the only way to win. This Exploring the Psyche episode asks a harder question: what does that bargain do to the soul?In Mythic Mind episode 192, Dr. Andrew Snyder takes up a live Right-wing temptation around redistribution, democratic appetite politics, and seizing power "for our side." He grants the real injustice (vote-buying, short-sighted majorities, a disenfranchised base), steelmans the classical and Lewisian fears about democracy's degeneration and spiritual leveling, then refuses the conclusion that remakes persons into instruments. The court can sentence Socrates. Only Socrates can harm Socrates.Drawing on Plato and Aristotle, C. S. Lewis, Kierkegaard (and Gregory Beabout), Dostoevsky's Crystal Palace, and Tolkien on the Machine and coerced wills, the talk argues that envy baptized as entitlement, managed security without risk, and power that treats neighbors as tools all shrink the self before God. Freedom requires gratitude, courage, and faithful action. A managed win for any base is still a loss for the person.Topics include democracy and demagoguery, envy and false entitlement, facticity and possibility, despair and the spiritless crowd, welfare soft slavery, Tolkien's Machine versus sub-creation, and why refusing the smaller victory is the psyche's first win.Join the Mythic Mind Fellowship:https://mythicmindfellowship.comFellows receive Academy courses (including The Psychology of Søren Kierkegaard: Life in Anxiety and Despair, beginning the week of October 4), Inkwell essays, and the fuller life of the community. Since the fall season began, podcast downloads have nearly doubled. Membership is the deeper layer of the work you hear here.Listen to and watch Mythic Mind podcasts:- Mythic Mind- Mythic Mind Games- Mythic Mind Movies & Shows#MythicMind #ExploringThePsyche #Socialism #Kierkegaard #CSLewis #Tolkien #Philosophy #Theology #PsycheBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mythic-mind--5808321/support. | 43m 36s | ||||||
| 9/21/26 | 191 - Exploring the Psyche: Identity and Becoming a Self | Watch the video:https://youtu.be/iXr8KuutfW0When Boethius lost everything, Lady Philosophy told him the wound beneath the wound: you have forgotten who you are. That diagnosis still lands. Who are you when the roles, tests, and labels fall away?In this Mythic Mind Exploring the Psyche conversation, Dr. Andrew Snyder (professor of philosophy and theology) talks with licensed therapists Jeremy Key and Tyler Finders about identity: Myers-Briggs and Enneagram snapshots, the trap of "I am my diagnosis," agency that will not go away, and Kierkegaard's claim that the self is a relation in motion rather than a fixed type.Topics include authenticity versus persona, how suffering clarifies what is real, and why identity often arrives when you stop hunting for it and start seeking what is good.Related:• Exploring the Psyche: The Importance of Home (Mythic Mind, ep. 190): https://youtu.be/9__99dsKwiU• Anxiety Means You Can Choose (Mythic Mind, ep. 189): https://youtu.be/DwKDIRfQGQY• A Life Well Lived (Mythic Mind, ep. 188): https://youtu.be/2Dgj68PWXdQ• Fall Season: Exploring the Psyche (Mythic Mind, ep. 187): https://youtu.be/_Lbvd79c0d8Join the Mythic Mind Fellowship:https://mythicmindfellowship.comListen to/watch the Mythic Mind podcasts:- Mythic Mind- Mythic Mind Games- Mythic Mind Movies & Shows#MythicMind #ExploringThePsyche #Identity #Kierkegaard #Boethius #Psychology #Philosophy #TheologyBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mythic-mind--5808321/support. | 1h 15m 52s | ||||||
| 9/15/26 | 190 - Exploring the Psyche: The Importance of Home | In this Mythic Mind Exploring the Psyche conversation, Dr. Andrew Snyder talks with licensed therapists Jeremy Kee and Tyler Finders about the value of home: roots and responsibility, the fear of committing to the wrong thing, hobbits who leave the Shire in order to save it, and C.S. Lewis’s reminder that pleasant inns are not the final destination. Topics include belonging in a shifting world, establishing versus finding home, and why home still matters psychologically and spiritually.Join us for our season of "Exploring the Psyche" at https://mythicmindfellowship.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mythic-mind--5808321/support. | 1h 16m 15s | ||||||
| 9/10/26 | anxietymental health+4 | Tyler FindersJeremy Key | — | — | anxietymental health+4 | — | 1h 17m 57s | ||
| 8/31/26 | living wellpsychotherapy+3 | Tyler FindersJeremy Key | mythicmindfellowship.com | — | psychotherapyChristianity+3 | — | 1h 25m 21s | ||
| 8/27/26 | psychologyphilosophy+5 | — | mythicmindfellowship.comSpreaker+1 | — | psychologyphilosophy+5 | — | 6m 21s | ||
| 8/10/26 | C.S. Lewisaudio drama+3 | — | B.B.Cmythicmindfellowship.com+2 | — | C.S. LewisThat Hideous Strength+4 | — | 13m 01s | ||
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| 7/28/26 | podcast transitionfellowship+3 | — | Patreonmythicmindfellowship.com | August | Mythic Mind FellowshipPatreon+3 | — | 20m 11s | ||
| 7/25/26 | English Romanticism19th century literature+3 | Josh Traylor | Mythic Mindpatreon.com/mythicmind+3 | — | Romanticismliterature+3 | — | 16m 43s | ||
| 7/20/26 | RomanticismEuropean cultural movement+3 | Josh Traylor | Mythic Mindpatreon.com+2 | — | Romanticismcultural movement+3 | — | 34m 41s | ||
| 7/16/26 | literaturefantasy+4 | — | Mythic MindYouTube+4 | — | The Two TowersLord of the Rings+5 | — | 34m 39s | ||
| 7/13/26 | Tolkienphilosophy+4 | — | The Lord of the RingsThe Monsters and the Critics+1 | — | TolkienThe Long Defeat+5 | — | 10m 55s | ||
| 7/9/26 | AI storytellingtribalism+5 | Josh DawsMichael Kane | DisneyThe Blaze+4 | — | AIstorytelling+6 | — | 1h 38m 20s | ||
| 7/6/26 | American heritageDeclaration of Independence+3 | — | Mythic MindYouTube+2 | — | American heritageliberty+3 | — | 34m 10s | ||
| 7/3/26 | Lord of the RingsThe Two Towers+5 | — | Clamavi De ProfundisMythic Mind+5 | — | The Two TowersLord of the Rings+5 | — | 34m 39s | ||
| 6/29/26 | TolkienNorse legend+4 | — | Mythic MindYouTube+4 | — | EarendilTolkien+5 | — | 4m 10s | ||
| 6/25/26 | Lord of the Ringsliterature analysis+3 | — | YouTubepatreon.com/mythicmind+4 | — | Fellowship of the RingLord of the Rings+3 | — | 45m 36s | ||
| 6/22/26 | SauronThe Lord of the Rings+3 | — | Mythic MindYouTube+3 | — | SauronThe Lord of the Rings+5 | — | 10m 55s | ||
| 6/18/26 | Lord of the Ringsliterature analysis+3 | — | YouTubepatreon.com/mythicmind+4 | — | Fellowship of the RingLord of the Rings+4 | — | 1h 04m 09s | ||
| 6/15/26 | 173 - Tolkien, Plato and the Ring of Gyges | We continue our Lord of the Rings study with a detour to Plato and a different ring of power.Watch the video of this episode and subscribe to my YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/Z_OfCpjFgTkJoin the Mythic Mind Fellowship: https://mythicmindfellowship.com/membershipListen to all THREE Mythic Mind podcasts:- Mythic Mind- Mythic Mind Games- Mythic Mind Movies & ShowsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mythic-mind--5808321/support. | 8m 31s | ||||||
| 6/11/26 | Lord of the Ringsliterature analysis+4 | — | Mythic MindYouTube+5 | — | Lord of the RingsTolkien+6 | — | 1h 25m 48s | ||
| 6/8/26 | allegoryfiction+4 | — | Mythic MindLord of the Rings | — | Tolkienallegory+5 | — | 33m 00s | ||
| 6/4/26 | literatureanalysis+3 | — | YouTubepatreon.com/mythicmind+4 | — | The Fellowship of the RingLord of the Rings+3 | — | 1h 21m 44s | ||
| 6/1/26 | TolkienAinulindalë+4 | — | YouTubepatreon.com/mythicmind+2 | — | TolkienAinulindalë+5 | — | 19m 12s | ||
| 5/28/26 | Lord of the Ringsstudy+3 | — | YouTubepatreon.com/mythicmind+2 | — | Lord of the Ringsstudy+3 | — | 15m 46s | ||
| 5/25/26 | sciencereligion+4 | — | Mythic Mind | — | sciencereligion+5 | — | 34m 33s | ||
| 5/18/26 | conspiratorial thinkingC.S. Lewis+3 | Stephen Kent | How the Force can Fix the WorldC.S. Lewis and the News | — | C.S. Lewisconspiracies+3 | — | 48m 25s | ||
| 5/11/26 | extraterrestrial lifetheology+5 | — | Mythic Mindpatreon.com+2 | — | C.S. Lewisaliens+5 | — | 49m 15s | ||
| 5/4/26 | politicsdemocracy+4 | — | N.I.C.E.C.S. Lewis and the News | — | ICEN.I.C.E.+5 | — | 56m 26s | ||
| 4/30/26 | C.S. Lewisnews+3 | — | Mythic MindYouTube+2 | — | C.S. Lewisnews+3 | — | 15m 17s | ||
| 4/27/26 | philosophyfree will+4 | — | YouTubepatreon.com+2 | — | free willGod+5 | — | 42m 33s | ||
| 4/23/26 | literatureeducation+3 | Josh Traylor | Mythic MindYouTube+2 | — | literaturestudy+3 | — | 56m 30s | ||
| 4/20/26 | timeeternity+4 | — | Mythic MindYouTube+3 | — | Augustinetime+5 | — | 31m 13s | ||
| 4/16/26 | Paradise Lostliterature+3 | Joshua Traylor | Mythic MindYouTube+2 | — | Paradise LostJoshua Traylor+3 | — | 56m 19s | ||
| 4/13/26 | FateProvidence+4 | — | The Consolation of PhilosophyBeowulf | — | FateProvidence+5 | — | 42m 43s | ||
| 4/9/26 | literaturephilosophy+3 | Joshua Traylor | YouTubepatreon.com+2 | — | Paradise LostBook X+5 | — | 38m 19s | ||
| 4/6/26 | TolkienAthanasius+4 | Jack Keoseyan | Mythic MindSubstack+3 | fourth century A.D. | TolkienAthanasius+5 | — | 18m 38s | ||
| 4/2/26 | literaturephilosophy+3 | — | YouTubepatreon.com+2 | — | Paradise LostBook IX+5 | — | 41m 15s | ||
| 3/30/26 | EpicureanismStoicism+3 | — | Mythic MindYouTube+5 | — | EpicureanismStoicism+3 | — | 40m 04s | ||
| 3/26/26 | Paradise Lostliterature+3 | Joshua Traylor | Mythic MindYouTube+2 | — | Paradise LostJoshua Traylor+3 | — | 51m 51s | ||
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Chart history for Mythic Mind
Peaked at #124 in HU, currently #124 in HU.
| Market | Genre | Peak | Current | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HU | — | #124 | #124 | — |
Chart Positions
1 placement across 1 market.
Chart Positions
1 placement across 1 market.