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Latest Episodes:

AI, Disruptive Technology, and the Future of Work Apr 17, 2024

Show notes

There is no question today that new technology is changing the way we think about and experience work. Speculation abounds about how the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence and other disruptive technologies will affect the workplace. Worries about machines replacing humans on the job are common. Others, however, are optimistic about the way AI is changing how we work—they see AI as an important tool to promote better efficiency and productivity in the workplace. How will AI change the way work is done? How will it affect the workforce? How will it affect the economy?

To answer some of these questions and more, we bring you a panel discussion from our February Business Matters Conference. Acton’s director of programs and education, Dan Churchwell, leads Brent Orrell, Mark Johnson, and Máté Csak in a conversation looking to the future of work and the role disruptive technology will play in it.

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Business Matters 2024: Hope for Work and Enterprise | Acton On-Demand

The Historian's Craft: Gertrude Himmelfarb Apr 10, 2024

Show notes

Gertrude Himmelfarb was one of the foremost historians of Victorian life. She produced page-turning biographies of some of the age’s most intriguing and influential figures, including Lord Acton, Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and George Eliot. She also produced social histories of the period and brought a Victorian sensibility to American politics as a leading conservative public intellectual.

In this episode, Acton librarian and research associate Dan Hugger speaks with Nicole Penn, author of an essay just published in National Affairs entitled “The Historian’s Craft,” which deftly explores the life and legacy of one of the conservative movement’s most accomplished women.

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The Historian's Craft | National Affairs

Middlemarch | George Eliot

The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments | Gertrude Himmelfarb

The Moral Imagination: From Adam Smith to Lionel Trilling: Gertrude Himmelfarb

Write like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals: Ronnie Grinberg

Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics | Gertrude Himmelfarb

The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age | Gertrude Himmelfarb

The New History and the Old: Critical Essays and Reappraisals, Rev. Ed. | Gertrude Himmelfarb

Glad to the Brink of Fear | Nicole Penn

A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870 | Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

The Forgotten Greatness of PV Narasimha Rao | The Seen and the Unseen

Historian of the Liberal Paradox | Gertrude Himmelfarb

Remembering Gertrude Himmelfarb with Yuval Levin | Acton Line

Learning from Victorian Virtues | Interview with Gertrude Himmelfarb

Understanding Hybrid Worship Apr 03, 2024

Show notes

Many Christian congregations now offer hybrid worship services: you can worship in person or online. While these options have become increasingly popular, our understanding of them has not kept pace. Furthermore, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence will only complicate matters further. The contemporary church needs a way to make sense of the dizzying influx of emerging technologies, practices, and possibilities.

In this episode, Acton director of programs and education Dan Churchwell talks to Rev. A Trevor Sutton, senior pastor of St. Luke Lutheran Church in Lansing, Michigan, and coauthor of “Redeeming Technology,” about hybrid worship, the effect AI will have on the church, and how to respond to concerns from laity and clergy alike.

AI and the Discipline of Human Flourishing | Religion & Liberty Online

Church in a Digital Age: Must We Worship Bodily to Worship at All?

‘Redeeming Technology’ | Concordia Publishing House

Acton Lecture Series

The Reformation, the Body, and a Murder Mar 27, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, Noah Gould, Acton’s alumni and student programs manager, speaks to Jane Clark Scharl about her verse play, Sonnez Les Matines, which asks, What if John Calvin, Ignatius of Loyola, and Francois Rabelais had their convictions put to the test while navigating their involvement in a brutal crime?

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Sonnez Les Matines | Wiseblood Books

Calvin, Loyola, Rabelais: A Murder Mystery | Religion & Liberty

The Violent Faith of Cormac McCarthy | Acton Unwind

The Failed Experiment of Over-Parenting Mar 20, 2024

Show notes

Our culture tells parents there’s one best way to raise kids: enroll them in a dozen activities, protect them from trauma, and get them into the most expensive college possible. If you can’t do all that, don’t even bother. How’s that strategy going? Record rates of anxiety, depression, medication, debts, loneliness, and more.

In his new book, Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be, bestselling author and father of six Timothy P. Carney says it’s time to end this failed experiment.

In this episode, Acton director of marketing and communications Eric Kohn speaks to Carney about why he wrote his new book, why we should have more kids, and how to give kids deeper meaning for their lives than material success.

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Family Unfriendly | HarperCollins

Closing the Gap Between Work and Life Mar 13, 2024

Show notes

In this episode, we bring you a conversation from our recent Business Matters virtual conference between Acton’s director of marketing and communications, Eric Kohn, and David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of the Bahnsen Group.

They discuss Bahnsen’s new book, Full Time: Work and the Meaning of Life, in which he makes the case that our understanding of work and its role in our lives is deeply flawed—we are unmoored from what he calls “created purpose.” He argues that the time has come to stop tiptoeing around the issues that matter, that separating our identity from what we do is deeply damaging, and that this era of alienation is for many a direct result of a low view of work. It is in work of every kind—effort, service, striving—that we discover our meaning and purpose, and a significant and successful life is one rooted in full-time productivity and the cultivation of God’s created world.

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Acton On-Demand

Business Matters 2024

“Full-Time: Working and the Meaning of Life” | David Bahnsen

Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative Mar 06, 2024

Show notes

In 1980, Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman released a 10-part documentary series on PBS called “Free to Choose,” with each hour-long episode giving his perspective on important public policy debates and social issues. The series was a hit and possessed a staying power far beyond the 1980s. Through this and much of his other work, Friedman became one of the leading public intellectuals of his time, and his ideas have influenced economics and public policy deeply.

In this episode, Acton director of marketing and communications Eric Kohn speaks to Jennifer Burns, author of a new biography, Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative. In this important contribution to understanding Friedman’s legacy, Burns explores the great economist’s life, ideas, and the important women with whom he worked.

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Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative | Jennifer Burns

Milton Friedman: The Conservative Institution Builder | James M. Patterson

Building a Strong Company Through Culture Feb 28, 2024

Show notes

Managing a business is a challenge no matter the context. Talent comes and goes, supplies change, and you can’t always achieve everything you want. Every day, new constraints create roadblocks to the next goal. There may not be one solution to these problems, but co-founder and managing partner of Michigan Software Labs Mark Johnson says strong company culture is the foundation of any successful company.

In this episode, Acton director of programs and education Dan Churchwell speaks to Mark about becoming an entrepreneur, managing the ever-changing challenges of managing a business, and why it’s important to be a good steward to both clients and colleagues.

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Mark Johnson | Michigan Software Labs

Serving Trough Technology | Cornerstone University

Growth and Development in Africa [Rebroadcast] Feb 21, 2024

Show notes

Anyone of a certain age will remember the massive hit that was “We Are The World,” the Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, and Quincy Jones produced charity single by USA for Africa. The considerable profits from the that hit song went to the USA for Africa Foundation, which used them for the relief of famine and disease in Africa and specifically to 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia.

Even though Africa is an enormous and diverse continent with 54 sovereign countries, many people in the United States, and the west more generally, were left with the impression of Africa as destitute and poverty-stricken.

What they may not realize is the enormous amount of growth and development Africa has been seeing. To help us better understand this growth and development, particularly in the country of Nigeria, today Eric Kohn talks with Wiebe Boer and Danladi Verheijen.

Wiebe Boer is the president of Calvin University, here in Grand Rapids, MI, and Danladi Verheijen is the co-founder and managing partner of Verod Capital Management, a leading West-African private equity investor. Eric talks to them about their experiences growing up in Nigeria, and what they are seeing with the booming growth that country is experiencing.

Education for a Free Society Feb 14, 2024

Show notes

On today’s episode, Acton librarian and research associate Dan Hugger sits down with Acton research fellow and Journal of Markets & Morality executive editor Dylan Pahman to talk about education. They begin with the 18th-century vision of education advanced by America’s Founders. Why did they believe education was necessary for a free society, and what kind of education did they have in mind?

The discussion then turns to attempts by St. John Henry Newman, F.D. Maurice, and Abraham Kuyper to build institutions of liberal learning in 19th-century Europe. What innovations did these men introduce to education? How did their approaches differ from what came before (and each other), and where were there continuities? What can we learn from these attempts in addressing the crisis in education today?

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Benjamin Rush Proposes a system of public schools for Pennsylvania | Monticello

Discourse 5: “Knowledge Its Own End” | John Henry Newman

Learning and Working | F. D. Maurice

Like Bright Stars: Abraham Kuyper on the Nature and Vocation of the Scholarly Sphere | Dylan Pahman

Pano Kanelos on the University of Austin | Acton Line

The Next Generation of Church Leaders | Acton Line