David Teems

@NatGeo National Geographics series ORIGINS: THE JOURNEY OF HUMANKIND is now available on Disney Plus channel. I am one of the presenters of William Tyndale on Episode 4: THE WRITING ON THE WALL, a segment called "The Death of a Heretic."

So, I am late for the party. Happy BIrthday, Will!! To our chief literary saint. davidteems.com/post/2018/04/2…

davidteems.com/post/2018/04/0… "The Christianity Tyndale knew at the nativity of reform was undiluted, untamed, naked, without the spoil of religion or the endless pretensions and legal restraints that strangle it, that drain it of life."

When I return to Shakespeare, which I do often, Milton, Shelley, even the King James bible, I become more convinced that in a ridiculous age, and being led by the tragically ridiculous, beauty has the power to ransom our time and what is left of sanity.

I have come late to the sonnets, but in an Augustine late-have-I-loved-thee kind of way. And I am glad for it. Age and seasoning has its advantages. “With this key," Wordsworth wrote, "he [Shakespeare] unlocked his heart.” I empathize. davidteems.com/post/2018/07/1…

Richard Feynman’s savage takedown of pseudo-science still burns in 2026: “Social science is an example of a science which is not a science. They follow the forms… but they don’t get any laws. They haven’t found out anything.” He goes harder: Experts who “sit at a typewriter and make up” claims — “organic food is better,” “this diet cures everything” — as if it’s settled science, when no rigorous experiments or checks have been done. Feynman: “I know what it means to really know something. How careful you have to be. How easy it is to fool yourself. I see how they get their information… and I can’t believe that they know.” The Nobel physicist calls it straight: most of what passes for “expert” opinion is noise dressed up as knowledge. In an age drowning in TikTok “science,” influencers, and clickbait studies — Feynman’s 1:52 rant feels more relevant than ever. Who’s the biggest pseudo-expert that grinds your gears right now? Clip is timeless fire — watch it and feel the clarity.

Wrestling Coach Bets on Tolstoy and Dante to Save the Classics—and Young Men, by @joeljmiller open.substack.com/pub/millersboo… A must-read interview. Though the professor doesn’t say it out loud, I hear Dostoevsky’s Prince Myshkin say that beauty will save the world. Thanks, Joel.

That seems like so long ago, so many memories, songs, now books. The child we had, the one who provided the lovely image for the song "Soon to be released" when Benita was pregnant, just turned 40 last week. Thank you, Tim, for the lovely memory.

This year is the 500th anniversary of William Tyndale's New Testament (1526 - 2026), the book that not only gave god an English voice, but that changed England and the English language forever. youtu.be/gfhcxqZNWDI?si… via @YouTube

davidteems.com/post/2017/11/2… This year is the 500th anniversary of Tyndale's New Testament (1526 - 2626), the squat little book that changed England and the English language forever. Translator-poet that he was,Tyndale gave new shapes to the English we speak to this day.

Watch this!

“And you, my father, there on the sad height . . .” Thanks for posting this.

". . .especially when power forgets how to see them."

I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active—not more happy—nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. —Edgar Allan Poe, to James Russell Lowell, July 1844

When All Your Stories Get Scrambled, by @joeljmiller open.substack.com/pub/millersboo… Miller has the delightful chore of keeping one's literacy white-hot and well-furnished.

He is not gloriously, or in any other way, ourselves. He is not our friend, our son, our brother. And he is not American! For, although he has a thousand familiar and convenient faces, his own true face is old as Hell. Look about you and see what he has done. —Thomas Wolfe (1936)

Would you destroy this glorious incarnation of your own heroic self? If you do, then,” says Enemy, “you destroy yourselves—you kill the thing that is most gloriously American, and in so killing, kill yourselves.” He lies! And now we know he lies!

“See, I am one of you—I am one of your children, your son, your brother, and your friend. Behold how sleek and fat I have become—and all because I am just one of you, and your friend. Behold how rich and powerful I am—and all because I am one of you— youtu.be/hS1zOt3zgoQ?si…