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The Optimistic Curmudgeon is an interview podcast where Josh Herring interviews expert guests whose credentials and experience help listeners understand truth in a confusing world. We discuss issues under seven areas: economics, politics, education, philosophy, business, virtue, and leadership! May the best ideas win.
Episodes
Monday Oct 28, 2024
Money and the Deep State - Tyler O'Neil (7x5)
Monday Oct 28, 2024
Monday Oct 28, 2024
Tyler O'Neil discusses his forthcoming book The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government. Covid policy, education, budget funding, the LGBTQ+ agenda, and teachers' unions that have broken American education - Tyler explains the many ways the deep state has corrupted the constitutional governance of America. Tracing the money forms quite the map, and is the key to seeing influence. #administrativeState #conservatism #DeepState #Education #LGBTQ+ #draintheswamp #Project2025
Pre-Order here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DFVK74TZ/ref=tsm_1_fb_lk
This episode is sponsored by America's Christian Credit Union - check them out here: https://americaschristiancu.com/every/
Tuesday Oct 22, 2024
Transhumanism, P**n, Loneliness, and Big Tech - With Emily Jashinsky (7x4)
Tuesday Oct 22, 2024
Tuesday Oct 22, 2024
Emily Jashinsky of Unherd discusses the unique challenges pornography and big tech pose to our culture; she suggests that the loneliness epidemic is directly connected to these problems. Transhumanism as a rejection of the natural goodness of the body fits directly into our cultural malaise. Join Emily and Josh for a great conversation about the problems facing the 21st century and the hope that remains!
Emily hosts Undercurrents, which can be found here: https://unherd.com/undercurrents/
Tuesday Oct 15, 2024
Forming the Moral Imagination - feat. Sean Hadley (7x3)
Tuesday Oct 15, 2024
Tuesday Oct 15, 2024
Dr. Sean Hadley discusses the effects the key texts of literature have on the moral imagination: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Vergil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Milton's Paradise Lose, Sophocles' Oedipus Cycle, The Song of Roland (Anon). Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, Shakespeare's The Tempest, and Lewis's Till We Have Faces. Enjoy this discussion of the formative power great books have on the imagination!
Sean's Substack - A Southern Knickerbocker - https://hadleyonfire.substack.com/
This episode is based on the following two Substack articles:
https://hadleyonfire.substack.com/p/10-books-for-the-classical-imagination
https://hadleyonfire.substack.com/p/10-books-for-the-classical-imagination-b4c
We are grateful for the sponsorship for this episode provided by the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. Check out their website here: https://www.jamesgmartin.center/
The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal educates citizens and decision-makers to improve higher education. The Martin Center is dedicated to promoting knowledge over credentials, restoring genuine liberal learning, and ensuring that public investment in higher education provides value to students, taxpayers, and society.
A recent report from the Martin Center explores Great Books programs across the country. This report is designed for students who desire a deep and broad understanding of the Great Works of Western civilization. It will direct them to almost 50 colleges and universities that offer a substantive education in “the best which has been thought and said.” These programs invite students to become participants in a centuries-long conversation that begins with Plato, Aristotle, and Homer and extends to Dante, Shakespeare, and Jane Austen.
The report can be downloaded from the Martin Center’s website at go.jamesgmartin.center/GREATBOOKS
Tuesday Oct 08, 2024
Ministry in a Hostile World - Urie Brito of the CREC (7x2)
Tuesday Oct 08, 2024
Tuesday Oct 08, 2024
Ministry in the negative world is often difficult. Pastor Urie Brito explains his story of getting into ministry, why he loves the CREC (Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches), and details the argument of his latest book, The War of the Priesthood: An Exposition of the Armor of God. Towards the end of the episode, Uri explains why he is willing to go into overtly political spaces, and what role he sees pastors playing in shepherding their flocks through political seasons. With shoutouts to Meg Basham's Shepherds for Sale, National Conservatism, and New Saint Andrews College, this is a conversation you don't want to miss! Links:
Monday Sep 30, 2024
Beauty and Aesthetics: Mike Young (7x1)
Monday Sep 30, 2024
Monday Sep 30, 2024
Dr. Michael Young discuss beauty, Roger Scruton, and aesthetics as a natural desire of the human soul. Our longing for beauty signifies our desire for something higher, something more meaningful to the human condition, than mere utility. We were made for more! This conversation was inspired by Roger Scruton's book Beauty: A Very Short Introduction. #beauty #aesthetics #philosophy #thegoodlife #moralimagination #rogerscruton #scruton
Monday Aug 05, 2024
Monday Aug 05, 2024
At this SECCE breakout talk, Kristen Rudd argues that classical schools do their students a disservice when they only teach The Inferno. To really grasp Dante, students need to ascend through Purgatorio into Paradiso.
Monday Aug 05, 2024
SECCE - Marc Fusco: Shakespeare is Still the One
Monday Aug 05, 2024
Monday Aug 05, 2024
At this SECCE breakout talk, Marc Fusco argues that Shakespeare is the best guide to understanding human nature. Classical schools ought to teach, read, and perform Shakespeare to help students understand the complexity of what it means to be human.
Monday Aug 05, 2024
SECCE - Jim Ranieri: Re-Enchant the World by Reading Tolkien
Monday Aug 05, 2024
Monday Aug 05, 2024
In this SECCE breakout session, Jim Ranieri argues that the world stands in need of re-enchantment after the ravages of modernity. Tolkien's The Lord the Rings, read as a distinctly Catholic novel by Catholic teachers, has the potential to rightly re-enchant our minds and help us perceive the sacramental nature of reality.
Monday Aug 05, 2024
Monday Aug 05, 2024
In this plenary address at the inaugural SE Consortium of Classical Educators conference at Thales College, Jason Jewell argues that our modern culture is marked by a rootlessness; the literary canon pushes against that rootlessness, encouraging us to find home through the pursuit of tradition, place, and things divine.
Monday Aug 05, 2024
SE Consortium: Sean Hadley - The Word for Heritage is Canon
Monday Aug 05, 2024
Monday Aug 05, 2024
In this plenary address at the inaugural SE Consortium of Classical Educators conference at Thales College, Sean Hadley builds a metaphorical view of the canon as a forest. The forest requires tending, and appreciation. Sean draws from Lewis's Experiment in Criticism to distinguish how classical educators bring their students into the forest to foster a certain kind of reading.