This week, Jonathan Rogers talks with Laura Fabrycky, author of Keys to Bonhoeffer’s Haus: Exploring the World and Wisdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
They discuss the multiple competing narratives of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the centrality of place in the stories of our lives, and connections between writing and civic housekeeping.
In this episode, Jonathan and Nancy discuss the invaluable resource of deep focus, research as practicing the posture of learning, and the clarifying power of talking before writing.
Ned Bustard is a graphic designer, illustrator, author, and printmaker from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In this episode, Jonathan and Ned discuss the fraught topic of success in art, the clarifying effect of working for one’s community, and how he and his wife, Leslie, have planted seeds in their hometown.
Jeremy Casella is a singer-songwriter in Nashville. In this episode, Jonathan and Jeremy discuss songwriting as a means of processing life, the abiding value of failure, and the centrality of truth-telling.
Trillia Newbell is the author of several books including United: Captured by God’s Vision for Diversity, and, most recently, Sacred Endurance: Finding Grace and Strength for a Lasting Faith. She is a former journalist and currently the Director of Community Outreach for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention. Jonathan and Trillia discuss the role of endurance in a writer’s life, the importance of being realistic about what it means to do the work, and writing as bearing witness to reality rather than inventing it.
A man of many interests, Lee Camp is a theology professor, the host of the Tokens variety show, and the author of Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians. In this episode, Jonathan and Lee discuss Lee’s controversially orthodox assertions, the necessity for a hermeneutic of love, and the inextricability of true hope and the courage to encounter a new story.
Going all the way back to 2008, here’s an episode of the old Rabbit Room Podcast in which Jonathan reads aloud his release day review of On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness—with an introduction by Andrew Peterson impersonating Alfred Hitchcock. Yeah, we never were sure exactly what that was about.
Francis Su is the author of Mathematics for Human Flourishing. In this episode, Jonathan and Francis talk about revealing the unseen, the ability of math to teach virtue, and what it might mean to re-enchant the discipline of math.
In this episode, Jonathan and the Circe Institute’s David Kern reminisce about the work of the recently deceased Charles Portis. They discuss the connections between fiction and flim-flammery, the role of the ridiculous in comic storytelling, the importance of leaving some work for the reader to do, the world’s smallest perfect man, and one of the world’s most perfect opening sentences.
David Kern heads up the Circe Institute’s Podcast Network. He hosts the Close Reads podcast, The Daily Poem podcast, and the Libromania podcast. A shortened version of this conversation will be posted as an episode of Libromania.
Jen Pollock Michel is the author of three books, most recently Surprised By Paradox: The Promise of And in an Either-Or World. In this episode, Jonathan and Jen discuss the role of paradox in writing, the difference between either-or and both-and, and the difference between mystery and paradox.
