Hello there. This is Mark Bauerline with another conversation. Before we get to it, a word about one of our sponsors.

Located in the foothills of Wyoming's spectacular wind river range, Wyoming Catholic College,

an accredited four-year Great Books Institution is built on the ancient Western tradition of

the liberal arts and the freedom of the American West.

The college offers its students an immersion in the primary sources of the classical tradition,

the grandeur of the mountain wilderness, and the spiritual heritage of the Catholic Church.

Students experience the illumination of imagination and intellect through the great books and traditional disciplines,

literature and philosophy, mathematics and theology, science and Latin, and an outdoor program second to none.

The college celebrated an in-person graduation with its seniors last year and welcomed

its largest freshman class ever this year. Learn more about the college's unique space in the world

of American higher education at Wyoming Catholic.edu.

Vegan Garoyan was a longtime professor in religious studies at University of Virginia,

and he's the author of several books, including The Melody of Faith, Theology in an Orthodox

Key, and The Fragrance of God, and also Tending the Heart of Virtue, How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's

Moral Imagination. That latter book came out many years ago, but a new edition has just been published by Oxford University Press. And I thought a little discussion of children's stories in this super political age might be a nice, refreshing break. And also tell us some things about the condition of youth

in the 21st century and exactly what they need and what these stories might provide for.

Welcome, Professor Geroian.

Good to be with you, Mark.

All right.

Well, in your new preface, you do have a new preface in the book.

You cite Charles Dickens way back when complaining about contemporary versions that had been just created in, what, the 1830s, 1840s, whenever Dickens is writing, about contemporary versions of old fairy tales, which involved a

degree of baddlerization, revision, outright, outright changing the nature of the stories in

...