Callings

This episode is a re-release of our interview with Norman Wirzba from Season 4 of “Callings.” Norman works at the intersections of theology, philosophy, ecology, and agrarian and environmental studies. His recent book, Love's Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis, is also this year’s featured title in NetVUE’s “Big Read” program. While this episode was recorded prior to that book’s release, our conversation touches on many of the book’s themes. He talks about vocation in terms of our relationship to others and to the land, as an expression of love, and as a call to be agents of repair in the world.

You can learn more about NetVUE’s Big Read program at https://cic.edu/networks/netvue/professional-development/the-netvue-big-read/.

David Brooks is one of America’s most recognized public intellectuals. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic, a senior fellow at Yale University’s School of Global Affairs, and a longtime cultural and political commentator for PBS NewsHour. For many years, he was an opinion columnist at The New York Times and is the author of many best-selling books including The Road to Character, The Second Mountain, and How To Know a Person. These days, David gives much of his attention to the challenges and promises of higher education. In this episode, he shares key takeaways including how to be attentive to what he calls “moments of annunciation.”

This bonus episode features highlights from conversations that aired during the sixth season of Callings. In these clips, our guests offer advice for today's students and for anyone who teaches or mentors young adults. Listen to this compilation of insightful and interesting advice from Lee C. Camp, Michael Lamb, Willie James Jennings, Maria LaMonaca Wisdom, Barbara Brown Taylor, Angela Duckworth, Carlo Rotella, Anna Bonta Moreland, Jessica Riddell, and Almeda M. Wright.

This is a special episode of “Callings” for several reasons. First, it represents the podcast’s first experiment with recording an episode in front of a live audience; it was taped at the 2026 NetVUE Conference in Kansas City. Second, it features Almeda M. Wright, who is associate professor of religious education at Yale Divinity School and the author of Teaching to Live: Black Religion, Activist-Educators and Radical Social Change. In this conversation, Almeda talks about her academic and spiritual mentors, some educational exemplars from American history, and her deep passion for teaching, student formation, and activism. The conversation is followed by meaningful comments and reflections from audience members who were present when the episode was recorded.

Jessica Riddell is committed to cultivating hope in higher education. Her book, Hope Circuits: Rewiring Universities and Other Systems for Human Flourishing, offers innovative tools for educators that include stories of luminaries and a reconsideration of the assumptions with which we often operate. As such, Riddell helps us come to a clearer understanding of systems of governance, leadership, and institutional culture so that everyone in the university can flourish. In this episode, Riddell describes her own process of discovery and exploration that makes the book both a “love letter” to higher education and a challenge to reimagine our callings to support necessary change. Her goal is to move us from “nope” to “hope,” and encourage us to imagine renewal as a kind of rewiring rather than demolition.

Recently, Anna Moreland coauthored (with Thomas Smith) The Young Adult Playbook: Living Like it Matters. The book is specifically written for undergraduates and invites and guides them in vocational reflection and discernment. But for Anna, writing the book represented her own vocational shift. Anna is a professor of the humanities at Villanova University, where she also holds an endowed chair and directs the University Honors Program. While her academic expertise is in medieval theology and comparative theology, she has also become passionate about the character formation of her students. In this episode, we hear the story of this new passion and how it has led to different kinds of interactions with her students, the development of new courses, and the revamping of old courses. In it all, Anna shares her deep desire to help all young adults think about education, social engagements, and career aspirations in holistic and life-affirming ways.

Carlo Rotella, a writer and a professor at Boston College, is interested in the nuts and bolts of teaching. In particular, he is interested in the craft of teaching and the ways we can build classroom experiences that help people make meaning. His new book, What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics, follows the experience of a single cohort of students in a required introductory literature course, most of whom are not English majors. Rotella tells the story of what happens when students practice discussing ideas and readings with each other over a semester and then follows up with them a few years later, revealing that the course’s impact yielded an impactful return on investment in one’s education and life. This conversation captures the impact of classroom learning alongside the ways our callings within and outside of education can help us practice being better at what we do.

Angela Duckworth is known for her work on grit, the topic of her best-selling book and her famous TED-talk. In this wide-ranging conversation, Angela explores the wisdom of Howard Thurman and Viktor Frankl, the alignment between values and decision making, and the ways a constellation of mentors can benefit students as they explore their calling. Her research on the overlap between perseverance and passion offers new perspectives on vocation, especially relating to goal-setting and risk-taking. Flourishing and calling, Angela explains, is about uncovering a pathway that, over time, has become overgrown and buried. Grit might help us continue pursuing that path.

Barbara Brown Taylor has written award-winning books, received numerous accolades, and served as an Episcopal priest, teacher, and public theologian. And yet, in this conversation, she consistently circles back to the meaningfulness of what she refers to as “the small” – the local, the embodied, the immediately present. Barbara challenges us to listen to callings from within ourselves as well as from outside neighbors (including our non-human neighbors), to notice callings toward as well as away from certain actions or contexts, and to find vocational guidance even in missteps. In all this, she also shares her love for undergraduates and encourages vocational openness, flexibility, and attention.

Maria LaMonaca Wisdom is a leading voice on mentoring and coaching in higher education. Her recent book, How to Mentor Anyone in Academia, offers methods and approaches to understand the mentor role. In this conversation, she articulates the differences among mentoring, teaching, and coaching, and the ways these coalesce in our work with students. Mentoring helps us value growth in a relationship as we bring our “whole selves” to the role. Maria emphasizes how to embrace revision and change as necessary in our career paths and vocational arcs. Mentors can help mentees realize their potential, asking important questions that illuminate motivations, values, and goals.