On today’s episode, our speakers discuss the topic of friendship: what it looks like on a practical level and why it’s so important in our culture today.
You’ll hear from John Hendrix, an author, illustrator, and art professor at Washington University in St. Louis. This forum focuses on John’s new graphic novel titled The Mythmakers, which tells the story of the friendship of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. In this conversation moderated by Pepperdine professor April Marshall, they explore how Lewis and Tolkien’s friendship fueled their greatest works and the importance of community in our daily lives.
This forum was held at Pepperdine in April 2025. Thank you to the student planning team for making this event possible. As a heads up, there are a few visual aids in today’s episode that rely on John’s illustrations from his novel. To see them, watch the YouTube video here.
Artists often get told when they're young that they need to be careful of other artists. They'll steal your ideas or they'll pollute your ideas so that they're not as good. That is a false liturgy. Our work always gets better in community. Not sometimes, always. So retreating from community makes you and your work less.
