Twitter: @eudaimoniapod • @jennfrey (@jennfrey followed by 297 philosophers)
Site: thevirtueblog.com
62 episodes
2019 to present
Average episode: 70 minutes
Open in Apple Podcasts • RSS
Categories: Interview-Style
Podcaster's summary: Podcast by Sacred and Profane Love
| Episodes |
| 2023-Mar-17 • 100 minutes Episode 61: St. Augustine's Confessions with Russell Hittinger, Part I In this episode, I speak with professor Russell Hittinger about one of the great masterworks of the Western literary tradition: St. Augustine's Confessions. We discuss the structure of the book as a whole, its intended audience, the reasons Augustine wrote it, and its first five books, detailing Augustine's birth, boyhood, and young adulthood. This is part one in a three part series on this book. As always, I hope you enjoy our conversation! Dr. Russell Hittinger is a leading scholar of Catholic political... |
| 2023-Feb-24 • 55 minutes Episode 60: Randy Boyagoda on Original Prin and Dante's Indiana In this episode, I speak with professor, novelist, and critic, Randy Boyagoda, about why people of faith should read contemporary novels, the role of literature generally in the spiritual, moral, and intellectual life, and the themes of his two latest novels, Original Prin and Dante's Indiana. As always, I hope you enjoy our conversation. Randy Boyagoda is the author of four novels, a SSHRC-supported critical biography, and a scholarly monograph. His fiction has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Pr... |
| 2023-Jan-16 • 98 minutes Episode 59: TS Eliot with Anthony Domestico In this episode, I speak to Anthony Domestico about the poetry of TS Eliot. We discuss Eliot the man, the critic, and the poet. We contrast the Wasteland and The Four Quartets, and discuss the reasons we prefer the latter to the former. As always, I hope you enjoy our conversation! Anthony Domestico is Chair of the Literature Department at Purchase College, State University of New York and the books columnist for Commonweal. His reviews and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The Baffler, Book Post, t... |
| 2022-Dec-30 • 92 minutes Episode 58: Justin E.H. Smith on Edgar Allan Poe In this episode, I speak with fellow philosopher (and substack writer) Justin E. H. Smith about the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. This is our final episode of 2022! As always, I hope you enjoy our conversation. Justin E. H. Smith is professor of philosophy in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Paris. In 2019-20, he was the John and Constance Birkelund Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library. He has written many books, ... |
| 2022-Dec-16 • 85 minutes Episode 57: JM Coetzee on Philosophy, Fiction, and the Academy In this episode, I am joined by Sam Filby, a graduate student in philosophy at Northwestern University. We discuss JM Coetzee's novel, Elizabeth Costello, which is a fictionalized account of a writer who gives a series of lectures on the ethics of eating animals. We simply try to figure out what is going on in this puzzling novel of bad ideas. Sam Filby is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Northwestern University. His dissertation concerns the relationship between history and ethical concepts, with particul... |
| 2022-Dec-02 • 72 minutes Episode 56: Dana Gioia on Charles Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil In this episode, I am joined by the poet and critic Dana Gioia to discuss Charles Baudelaire's famous book of poems, Les Fleurs du Mal, or The Flowers of Evil. We tackle some big questions in this episode, such as whether and how evil can be beautiful, the nature of Catholic art and poetry, original sin, and the poet as a damned figure. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Dana Gioia is an internationally acclaimed poet and writer. He received a B.A. and M.B.A. from Stanford and an M.A. from Harvard in Comp... |
| 2022-Nov-01 • 70 minutes Episode 55: Christopher Snyder on Tolkien and Virtue Ethics In this episode, I am joined by Christopher Snyder, professor of history and director of British Studies at Mississippi State University, to discuss J.R.R. Tolkien's fiction and virtue ethics. We discuss Tolkien's background , training, academic work and influences, how to think about his fiction and its enduring value, and what role virtue plays in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Drawing on arguments from his latest book, Hobbit Virtues, Chris and I discuss the role of imagination in the moral life... |
| 2022-Oct-14 • 76 minutes Episode 54: Karen Swallow Prior on The Scarlet Letter In this episode, I team up again with Karen Swallow Prior, this time to discuss what many people call "the great American novel" Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. We talk about sin, guilt, and repression, and how Hawthorne's story is more complicated and interesting than most people make it out to be. As always, I hope you enjoy our conversation. Karen Swallow Prior is Research Professor of English Literature and Christianity and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. She is the au... |
| 2022-Sep-30 • 60 minutes Episode 53: Paul Mariani on Robert Lowell In this episode, I speak with the poet, critic, and biographer Paul Mariani, professor emeritus at Boston College. We discuss his new book, All that Will be New and his biography of Robert Lowell, The Lost Puritan. We discuss Lowell's life, poetry, and his struggle with the permanent things: religion, marriage, art, family. Given the influence of Hopkins on his early poems, I think this episode pairs well with episode 38 with Nick Ripatrazone. As always, I hope you enjoy our conversation. Paul Mariani is... |
| 2022-Sep-16 • 52 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 52: The Hillbilly Thomists In this episode, I speak with my friends, Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP and Fr. Jonah Teller, OP about the relationship between art, truth, and beauty, sacred and profane music, how music might be integral to religious life, and whether the banjo is beautiful. Long time listeners will remember Thomas Joseph from our very first episode on Flannery O'Connor, where we discuss what she meant by calling herself a "Hillbilly Thomist;" and since I consider myself something of a Hillbilly Thomist myself, I thought i... |
| 2022-Jul-11 • 96 minutes Episode 51: A Canticle for Leibowitz with Christopher Frey In this episode, I speak to my husband (and fellow philosopher) Chris Frey about Walter M. Miller’s sci-fi novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz. We both agree that this is a novel about sin, and more specifically, how sin is connected to the myriad ways that our desire for knowledge becomes perverted and disordered. Along the way, we also talk about memory, Promethean fear, impiety, hope, the Immaculate Conception, and of course, monks. I think this episode pairs very well with episode 14, on Walker Percy, wh... |
| 2022-Jul-01 • 80 minutes Episode 50: "Are the Humanities in Crisis" with Zena Hitz and Chad Wellmon On April 26, 2022, The Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America hosted a launch event to reveal the new design and website of Sacred and Profane Love. I am pleased to share the audio of that event as episode 50, but you can also watch a video of it here. This event, with Zena Hitz and Chad Wellmon, was titled “Are the Humanities in Crisis” and the two starting points for the conversation were two books that we have already discussed separately on the podcast: Zena’s Lost in Thought... |
| 2022-May-20 • 102 minutes Episode 49: Christopher Beha on Lucky Per In this episode, I speak with the writer, editor, and critic, Christopher Beha, about the Danish bildungsroman by Henrik Pontoppidan, Lucky Per. We focus on Per’s struggle to escape from those aspects of his life that are not chosen—family, religion, place—his quest to understand himself, to love other people, and to live a life that is truly happy and free. Along the way, we discuss reviews of the novel by James Wood and Morten Hoi Jensen, and we give our own diagnosis of why Per fails to be either happy ... |
| 2022-Apr-27 • 76 minutes Episode 48: Crime and Punishment with Thomas Hibbs In this episode, I speak with philosopher Thomas Hibbs (Baylor) about Dostoyevsky's famous novel, Crime and Punishment. We discuss how Raskolnikov gets trapped in various philosophical theories he has embraced, and what might help him go from theory to authentic human life again. Along the way, we discuss the limitations of philosophy, the importance of literature as an antidote to modern moral theorizing, and the genre of confessions. And, of course, we talk about suffering, and why Raskolnikov needs to em... |
| 2022-Mar-18 • 81 minutes Episode 47: Justin E.H. Smith on Suttree In this episode, I speak with the philosopher, podcaster, and substacker extraordinaire, Justin E.H. Smith about Cormac McCarthy’s fourth novel, Suttree. We were both struck by how different this novel is from McCarthy’s later, more famous works—both in its style and in its literary ambitions. We resist the common temptation to read McCarthy as a nihilist; we puzzle over the beginning and the end of the novel, and how they relate to one another; and quite generally we just had a great time trying to figure... |
| 2022-Feb-04 • 64 minutes Episode 46: Katy Carl In this episode, I speak with Katy Carl, who is the editor in chief of Dappled Things and also the author of As Earth Without Water, to discuss Henry James's novella, Washington Square and R.R. Reno's essay, Duty, the Soul of Beauty. After a great deal of back and forth, we come to the conclusion that what the novella shows is that mere duty, in absence of well ordered loves and the habits of attention that come with it, can be a destructive force in family and social life. Katy Carl is the editor-in-chief ... |
| 2022-Jan-14 • 75 minutes Episode 45: Roosevelt Montas on Great Books and Intellectual Transformation In this episode, I am joined by Professor Roosevelt Montas to discuss his new book Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation. Montas, a Dominican born American academic, makes the compelling case that study of the Great Books is potentially transformative, especially for students from working class communities or who are members of historically marginalized communities. Montas further argues that the future of the Humanities in this country does not lay... |
| 2021-Dec-31 • 85 minutes Episode 44: The Tragic Abyss with Dr. Kevin Kambo In this episode, I speak with Dr. Kevin Kambo about Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, in light of an essay by Louise Cowan titled "The Tragic Abyss." Cowan argues that tragedy is "a liturgical confrontation of a deep seated dread which, when brought to light, can be borne only through the medium of poetic language." We discuss the nature of the tragic, which always involves a moment of "unmasking" and a peering into the dark abyss; we discuss what tragic wisdom is and how you could possibly gain it; and we try to gra... |
| 2021-Dec-07 • 66 minutes Episode 43: The Closing of the American Mind with Brad Carson In this episode, I speak with the president of the University of Tulsa, Brad Carson, about Allen Bloom's infamous book, The Closing of the American Mind. Brad and I ultimately decide that while we like some of Bloom's key ideas about what a university is for, we do not love the book itself, which has some serious flaws (though we may differ slightly about what we think those flaws are). As always, I hope you enjoy our conversation. Read more about Brad Carson and myself on The Virtue Blog by clicking th... |
| 2021-Nov-05 • 67 minutes Episode 42: Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter In this episode, I speak with professor of theology Fritz Bauerschmidt about Graham Greene's novel, The Heart of the Matter. We discuss the moral psychology of sin, and how it is that human beings are able to knowingly act against their own good (in this case: knowingly and deliberatively choose their own eternal damnation). How can someone find what is evil good? The answer in this case is a deft exploration of the interplay between pride and pity, self-deception and self-conceit. Read more about Fredrick... |
| 2021-Oct-21 • 67 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 41: James Baldwin is Bringing the Fire with Dr. Cornel West I am pleased to share a very special episode of Sacred and Profane, our first episode recorded in front of a live audience, and with the amazing Dr. Cornel West! The context for this episode is that the Classic Learning Test (which has sponsored several episodes this season, and on whose board of academic advisors I happily serve) held its third annual higher education summit in beautiful Annapolis, Maryland, and invited me to record an episode for the educators who had gathered for three wonderful days to ... |
| 2021-Oct-05 • 89 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 40: The Tragic Vision of Eugene O'Neill Sacred and Profane Love Episode 40: The Tragic Vision of Eugene O'Neill by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2021-Sep-20 • 60 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 39: Gabriel Marcel's Thirst Sacred and Profane Love Episode 39: Gabriel Marcel's Thirst by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2021-Aug-29 • 56 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 38: The Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins Sacred and Profane Love Episode 38: The Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2021-Aug-16 • 41 minutes Bonus Episode: Matthew Mehan on Children's Literature Bonus Episode: Matthew Mehan on Children's Literature by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2021-Aug-02 • 58 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 37: Boethius and John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces Sacred and Profane Love Episode 37: Boethius and John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2021-Jun-25 • 69 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 36: The Realist Poetry of Czeslaw Milosz Sacred and Profane Love Episode 36: The Realist Poetry of Czeslaw Milosz by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2021-Jun-01 • 83 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 35: Morten Hoi Jensen on Jens Peter Jacobsen Sacred and Profane Love Episode 35: Morten Hoi Jensen on Jens Peter Jacobsen by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2021-May-17 • 103 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 34: Dante's Paradiso Sacred and Profane Love Episode 34: Dante's Paradiso by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2021-Apr-12 • 84 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 33: Dante's Purgatorio Sacred and Profane Love Episode 33: Dante's Purgatorio by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2021-Mar-16 • 84 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 32: The Therapeutic Fiction of David Foster Wallace Sacred and Profane Love Episode 32: The Therapeutic Fiction of David Foster Wallace by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2021-Mar-01 • 93 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 31: The Hellish Desires of Dante's Inferno Sacred and Profane Love Episode 31: The Hellish Desires of Dante's Inferno by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2021-Feb-09 • 86 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 30: The Seducer, Self-Creation and The Aesthete Sacred and Profane Love Episode 30: The Seducer, Self-Creation and The Aesthete by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2020-Dec-31 • 74 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 29: Thomas Mann's Death in Venice with Agnes Mueller Sacred and Profane Love Episode 29: Thomas Mann's Death in Venice with Agnes Mueller by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2020-Dec-08 • 77 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 28: Agnes Callard on Antigone Sacred and Profane Love Episode 28: Agnes Callard on Antigone by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2020-Nov-20 • 63 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 27: Karen Swallow Prior on Reading Joseph Conrad Well Sacred and Profane Love Episode 27: Karen Swallow Prior on Reading Joseph Conrad Well by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2020-Nov-05 • 62 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 26: St. Augustine and the Index of Self-Destructive Acts Sacred and Profane Love Episode 26: St. Augustine and the Index of Self-Destructive Acts by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2020-Oct-15 • 72 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 25: On Solitude with Rilke and Merton Sacred and Profane Love Episode 25: On Solitude with Rilke and Merton by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2020-Jun-08 • 83 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 24: On Reading The Plague in a Plague Sacred and Profane Love Episode 24: On Reading The Plague in a Plague by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2020-May-07 • 98 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 23: Lost in Thought with Zena Hitz Sacred and Profane Love Episode 23: Lost in Thought with Zena Hitz by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2020-Apr-20 • 102 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 22: Huxley on Love and Longing in the Dystopia Sacred and Profane Love Episode 22: Huxley on Love and Longing in the Dystopia by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2020-Apr-04 • 79 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 21: Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim Sacred and Profane Love Episode 21: Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2020-Feb-27 • 70 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 20: Scruton's Wagner: Sex, Death, and the Sacred Sacred and Profane Love Episode 20: Scruton's Wagner: Sex, Death, and the Sacred by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2020-Jan-17 • 73 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 19: Love and Lust in Lolita Sacred and Profane Love Episode 19: Love and Lust in Lolita by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-Nov-20 • 55 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 18: Carrying the Flame Sacred and Profane Love Episode 18: Carrying the Flame by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-Oct-10 • 54 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 17: The Death of a Whisky Priest Sacred and Profane Love Episode 17: The Death of a Whisky Priest by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-Sep-20 • 56 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 16: King Lear's Vision Sacred and Profane Love Episode 16: King Lear's Vision by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-May-24 • 60 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 15: Goethe's Faust Sacred and Profane Love Episode 15: Goethe's Faust by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-May-17 • 55 minutes Sacred and Profane Episode 14: Walker Percy on Being Lost in the Cosmos Sacred and Profane Episode 14: Walker Percy on Being Lost in the Cosmos by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-Apr-22 • 42 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 5: Brewer on the Symposium Sacred and Profane Love Episode 5: Brewer on the Symposium by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-Apr-22 • 55 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 4: Madame Bovary Sacred and Profane Love Episode 4: Madame Bovary by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-Apr-22 • 44 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 3: Walt Whitman on Civic Hope Sacred and Profane Love Episode 3: Walt Whitman on Civic Hope by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-Apr-22 • 48 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 2: Doestoevsky and Transfiguring Love Sacred and Profane Love Episode 2: Doestoevsky and Transfiguring Love by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-Apr-22 • 52 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 1: Flannery O'Connor on Redemptive Love Sacred and Profane Love Episode 1: Flannery O'Connor on Redemptive Love by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-Apr-22 • 51 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 13: Jane Austen on the Virtues of Social Life Sacred and Profane Love Episode 13: Jane Austen on the Virtues of Social Life by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-Apr-22 • 50 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 12: Meaning, Murder, and Divine Madness Sacred and Profane Love Episode 12: Meaning, Murder, and Divine Madness by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-Apr-22 • 53 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 11: The Contemplative Realism of Marilynne Robinson Sacred and Profane Love Episode 11: The Contemplative Realism of Marilynne Robinson by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-Apr-22 • 53 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 10: A Twitch Upon The Thread Sacred and Profane Love Episode 10: A Twitch Upon The Thread by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-Apr-21 • 57 minutes Sacred and Profane Love, Episode 9: Podcast Revelations Of Love In John Sacred and Profane Love, Episode 9: Podcast Revelations Of Love In John by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-Apr-21 • 46 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 8: “Sophocles and Tragic Love" Sacred and Profane Love Episode 8: “Sophocles and Tragic Love" by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-Apr-21 • 57 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 7: “Boasts of Love in Troilus and Criseyde” Sacred and Profane Love Episode 7: “Boasts of Love in Troilus and Criseyde” by Sacred and Profane Love |
| 2019-Apr-21 • 54 minutes Sacred and Profane Love Episode 6: Elena Ferrante on Friendship and the Intellectual Life Sacred and Profane Love Episode 6: Elena Ferrante on Friendship and the Intellectual Life by Sacred and Profane Love |