About this episode

The episode explores Chapter 2 of The Chronicle of Young Satan, focusing on the unsettling nature of the character Satan as he interacts with three boys in a medieval setting.

The Chapter Chapter two of The Chronicle of Young Satan is where we finally meet our narrator and his two friends — Theodore Fisher, Nikolaus Bauman, and Seppi Vohmeier, three boys with the run of a medieval Austrian castle town who spend their days swimming, boating, and smoking. They're sitting on their favorite hilltop in the woods when a handsome, pleasant stranger appears out of nowhere, lights their pipes without being asked, and within minutes has them completely and helplessly enchanted. His name, offered without drama, is Satan. His uncle is the one you're thinking of. The Conversation We dig into what makes this version of the devil so unsettling and so fresh. Young Satan — who asks to be called Philip Traum in public, Traum being the German word for dream — isn't scheming or tempting or brooding. He's just utterly, cosmically indifferent to human life, in a way that reads less like evil and more like a force of nature that happens to be chatting with you. He produces fruit in the boys' pockets without flourish, makes clay animals and then a whole tiny village, brings them to life, and then smashes them when they get noisy — wiping the clay off his fingers on his…

Topics covered

• Devil
• Mark Twain
• Young Satan
• medieval Austria
• indifference
• friendship
• cosmic horror

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: The Chronicle of Young Satan

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