The Classical Ideas Podcast

Latest Episodes:

EP 73: Ben Marcus on Religious Literacy in American Education Oct 07, 2018

Show notes

Benjamin P. Marcus is the religious literacy specialist with the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute, where he examines the intersection of education, religious literacy, and identity formation in the United States. He has developed religious literacy programs for public schools, universities, U.S. government organizations, and private foundations, and he has delivered presentations on religion at universities and nonprofits in the U.S. and abroad. He has worked closely with the U.S. State Department, Interfaith Youth Core, the Foundation for Religious Literacy, and the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme in the United Kingdom. In February 2018, Marcus was accepted as a Fulbright Specialist for a period of three years. As a Specialist, he will share his expertise on religion and education with select host institutions abroad. Marcus chaired the writing group for the Religious Studies Companion Document to the C3 Framework, a nationally recognized set of guidelines used by state and school district curriculum experts for social studies standards and curriculum development. He is a contributing author in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Religion and American Education, where he writes about the importance of religious literacy education. In 2015 he served as executive editor of the White Paper of the Sub-Working Group on Religion and Conflict Mitigation of the State Department's Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group. Marcus earned an MTS with a concentration in Religion, Ethics, and Politics as a Presidential Scholar at Harvard Divinity School. He studied religion at the University of Cambridge and Brown University, where he graduated magna cum laude.

Ep 72: Deborah Eden Tull on Relational Mindfulness Sep 28, 2018

Show notes

DEBORAH EDEN TULL, founder of Mindful Living Revolution, teaches the integration of compassionate awareness into every aspect of our lives. She is a Zen meditation and mindfulness teacher, public speaker, author, activist, and sustainability educator. She trained for seven years as a Buddhist monk at a silent Zen monastery in Northern California, and she has been traveling to, living in, or teaching about conscious, sustainable communities internationally for the last 25 years. She currently resides in the mountains western North Carolina and offers retreats, workshops, and consultations nationally.

You can find her online here: https://www.deborahedentull.com

Ep 71: Dr. Daniel Hummel on Evangelical Christian Nationalism in the Cold War Sep 20, 2018

Show notes

The topic of this episode focuses on Dr. Daniel Hummel's piece, "The Limits of Evangelical Christian Nationalism during the Cold War," which appears in the new book "North American Churches and the Cold War," out now on Eerdsman Publishing.

Dr. Daniel Hummel is a Scholar, writer, researcher, and teacher of religion, politics, and foreign policy in the United States and the modern Middle East. Dr. Hummel is a specialist in the concept of Christian Zionism and has a forthcoming book from the University of Pennsylvania Press entitled, "A Covenant of the Mind: Evangelicals, Israel, and the Construction of a Special Relationship." Dr. Hummel is also a contributor to the Washington Post in middle east current events.

Link to the book on Eerdsmans: North American Churches in the Cold War

Dr. Hummel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/danielghummel

Ep 70: "The Devil's Music" w/ Dr. Randall J. Stephens Sep 10, 2018

Show notes

Randall J. Stephens is an Associate Professor of British and American Studies at the University of Oslo. He previously taught at Northumbria University (Newcastle upon Tyne) and Eastern Nazarene College (Quincy, Massachusetts). He is a historian of religion, conservatism, the South, environmentalism, and popular culture. He is the author of The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South (Harvard University Press, 2008); The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age, co-authored with physicist Karl Giberson (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011); and editor of Recent Themes in American Religious History(University of South Carolina Press, 2009). His latest book is The Devil's Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock 'n' Roll (Harvard University Press, 2018). Stephens has written for the Atlantic, Salon, the Wilson Quarterly, Christian Century, the Independent, History Today, the Chronicle of Higher Ed, and the New York Times. He has been interviewed for news and culture programs on the BBC, Sky News, Al Jazeera, KBYU-FM 89.1, Austrian Youth Radio, and NPR. Stephens is one of the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturers.

Ep 69: Zenju Earthlyn Manuel on Sanctuary and San Francisco Zen Center Aug 30, 2018

Show notes

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel is an author, Zen priest, teacher, divine seer, artist, and Drum medicine woman. Her work has been featured in Essence Magazine, CNN, CBS NEWS, KPFA Radio, Buddhadharma, and Lion's Roar. She holds a M.A. from UCLA and a Ph.D. in Transformative Learning from California Institute of Integral Studies. She spoke to me from Green Gulch Farm, a Zen practice center within the San Francisco Zen Center. She is the author of "Sanctuary: A Meditation on Home, Homelessness, and Belonging," out now from Wisdom Publications. You can find her online at Zenju.org, where she has three episodes published of her own podcast, Teachings of the Hollow Bones.

Ep 68: High School Religious Studies w/ John Camardella Aug 16, 2018

Show notes

John Camardella teaches religion and social studies at Prospect High School in Mount Prospect, Illinois. This conversation touches on the organization, implementation, and day-to-day operations inside a high school course focused on world religions.

You can read more about Mr. Camardella here: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/07/viewing-religion-through-a-cultural-lens/

or on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/PHS_Religions

EP 67: Living With Pain w/ Sarah Anne Shockley Aug 08, 2018

Show notes

A native of Connecticut, Sarah Anne Shockley is a multiple award winning producer and director of educational films, includingDancing From the Inside Out, a highly acclaimed documentary on disabled dance. She holds an MBA in International Marketing and has worked in high-tech management, as a corporate trainer, and teaching undergraduate and graduate business administration. As the result of a work related injury in the Fall of 2007, Sarah contracted Thoracic Outlet Syndrome (TOS) and has lived with debilitating nerve pain since then. She has been a columnist forPain News Network, and is a regular contributor to The Mighty. Sarah is the author of a number of books on living with chronic pain, including The Pain Companion (New World Library, 2018). She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Gospel of Mark (BONUS EPISODE) Aug 05, 2018

Show notes

This bonus episode is a recording of me reading the Gospel of Mark in its entirety. This is meant to serve as a classroom or educational resource.

You can find the text I read here:

https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=Mark&qs_version=ESV

Ep 66: An Introduction to Shinto with Eric Lancaster Jul 28, 2018

Show notes

Eric Lancaster is an instructor of Japanese at the University of Missouri and an instructor of religious studies at Columbia College. He is a member of Bunraku Bay Puppet Theatre troupe, whose film, "Kaiju Bunraku," was screened at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

Ep 65: Sita's Ramayana with Samhita Arni Jul 18, 2018

Show notes

Samhita Arni is the author of the NYT Bestselling graphic novel, Sita's Ramayana, (collaboration with Patua artist Moyna Chitrakar) available from Tara Books. She is also the author of The Mahabharata-A Child's View and The Missing Queen.

You can find her online here:

https://www.samarni.com