Give and Take

My guest is Roland Merullo. He is the acclaimed author of twenty previous books, including the international favorite "Breaking with the Buddha", now in its twentieth printing. Against a landscape of good humor, intrigue, and spiritual fulfillment, The Delight of Being Ordinary showcases the uniquely charming sensibilities of author Roland Merullo. Part whimsical expedition, part love story, part spiritual search, this uplifting novel brings warmth and laughter to the universal concerns of family life, religious inspiration, and personal identity—all of which combine to transcend cultural and political barriers in the name of a once-in-a-lifetime adventure.

Roland Merullo’s playful, eloquent, and life-affirming novel finds the world’s two holiest men teaming up for an unsanctioned road trip through the Italian countryside--where they rediscover the everyday joys and challenges of ordinary life. During the Dalai Lama’s highly publicized official visit to the Vatican, the Pope suggests an adventure so unexpected and appealing that neither man can resist: they will shed their robes for several days and live as ordinary men. Before dawn, the two beloved religious leaders make a daring escape from Vatican City, slip into a waiting car, and are soon traveling the Italian roads in disguise. Along for the ride is the Pope’s neurotic cousin and personal assistant, Paolo, who--to his terror-- has been put in charge of arranging the details of their disappearance. Rounding out the group is Paolo’s estranged wife, Rosa, an eccentric entrepreneur with a lust for life, who orchestrates the sublime disguises of each man. Rosa is a woman who cannot resist the call to adventure--or the fun.

Special Guest: Roland Merullo.

My guest is Chaim Saiman. He's a Professor of Law at Villanova University Law School, and is an expert in Law and Religion and Jewish Legal theory. He wrote a fascinating piece for First Things a few years ago called The Halakhah of Jesus' Trial. In it he reflects on the only piece of Talmud that talks about the trial and death of Jesus.

Special Guest: Chaim Saiman .

My guest is Gail Straub. Gail is the Executive Director of the Empowerment Institute, which she co-founded in 1981. Her most recent book is The Ashokan Way: Landscape's Path into Consciousness. The natural world has the power to awaken, restore, and transform us, and nowhere are these capacities more evident than in the thirty-six luminous essays that make up The Ashokan Way. Written in the form of journal entries that take place over the course of a year, the essays explore both the outer landscapes of the awe-inspiring Ashokan Reservoir, a vast open space surrounded by the ancient bluestone peaks of the Catskill Mountain Watershed, and the equally awe-inspiring inner landscapes of our own most personal terrains.

Special Guest: Gail Straub.

My guest is Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. He is a celebrated spiritual writer and sought-after speaker. A native of North Carolina, he is a graduate of Eastern University and Duke Divinity School. His newest book is Reconstructing The Gospel: Finding Freedom From Slaveholder Religion. In it he argues that just as Reconstruction after the Civil War worked to repair a desperately broken society, our compromised Christianity requires a spiritual reconstruction that undoes the injustices of the past. Wilson-Hartgrove traces his journey from the religion of the slaveholder to the Christianity of Christ. Reconstructing the gospel requires facing the pain of the past and present, from racial blindness to systemic abuses of power. Grappling seriously with troubling history and theology, Wilson-Hartgrove recovers the subversiveness of the gospel that sustained the church through centuries of slavery and oppression, from the civil rights era to the Black Lives Matter movement and beyond.

Jonathan lives with his family at the Rutba House, a Christian community and house of hospitality, in Durham, North Carolina, where he directs School for Conversion.

Special Guest: Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.

My guest is Daniel Bessner. Daniel is the Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Assistant Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. His new book is Democracy In Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual.

Daniel works on intellectual and cultural history, U.S. foreign relations, the history of democratic thought, and the history of the social sciences.

Daniel’s next book is provisionally entitled The RAND Corporation: A History, and is under advance contract with Princeton University Press. Finally, he is co-editing a book with Nicolas Guilhot tentatively entitled The Decisionist Imagination: Sovereignty, Social Science, and Democracy in the Twentieth Century, which is under advance contract with Berghahn Books.

Daniel has published scholarly articles in several journals, including The Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences,_ International Security_, T_he Intellectual History Review_, and others. In 2014, the International Society for Intellectual History awarded him the Charles Schmitt Prize for Best Article written by a graduate student or scholar within two years of receiving the Ph.D. for an essay on Murray Rothbard and modern libertarianism.

Daniel has also published pieces in popular venues, including T_he Washington Post_, Foreign Affairs, and n+1, among others.

Special Guest: Daniel Bessner.

My guest is Kathryn Moeller. She is Assistant Professor of Educational Policy Studies and an affiliate of the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her newest book is The Gender Effect: Capitalism, Feminism and the Corporate Politics of Development. In it she examines how and why U.S. transnational corporations are investing in the lives, educations, and futures of poor, racialized girls and women in the Global South. Is it a solution to ending poverty? Or is it a pursuit of economic growth and corporate profit? Drawing on more than a decade of research in the United States and Brazil, this book focuses on how the philanthropic, social responsibility, and business practices of various corporations use a logic of development that positions girls and women as instruments of poverty alleviation and new frontiers for capitalist accumulation. Using the Girl Effect, the philanthropic brand of Nike, Inc., as a central case study, the book examines how these corporations seek to address the problems of gendered poverty and inequality, yet do so using an instrumental logic that shifts the burden of development onto girls and women without transforming the structural conditions that produce poverty. These practices, in turn, enable corporations to expand their legitimacy, authority, and reach while sidestepping contradictions in their business practices that often exacerbate conditions of vulnerability for girls and women. With a keen eye towards justice, author Kathryn Moeller concludes that these corporatized development practices de-politicize girls’ and women’s demands for fair labor practices and a just global economy.

Special Guest: Kathryn Moeller.

My guest is Stanley Hauerwas. He is Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law at Duke University. Professor Hauerwas has sought to recover the significance of the virtues for understanding the nature of the Christian life. This search has led him to emphasize the importance of the church, as well as narrative for understanding Christian existence. His work cuts across disciplinary lines as he is in conversation with systematic theology, philosophical theology and ethics, political theory, as well as the philosophy of social science and medical ethics. He was named "America’s Best Theologian" by Time magazine in 2001. Dr. Hauerwas, who holds a joint appointment in Duke Law School, delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectureship at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland in 2001. His most recent book is The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson.

Special Guest: Stanley Hauerwas.

My guest is Douglas Campbell. He's a professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School. His most recent book, Paul: An Apostle's Journey, invites the reader to relive the story of Paul's action-packed ministry, and follow the the development of Paul's thought throughout both his physical and spiritual travels.

Special Guest: Douglas A. Campbell .

Dr. Chris Kutarna is the co-author of Age of Discovery: Navigating the Storms of Our Second Renaissance, a best-selling, internationally acclaimed book published by Bloomsbury and St Martin’s Press. Among other predictions, Chris publicly foresaw the outcome of the United Kingdom’s 2016 referendum on EU membership (Brexit) and the 2016 election of Donald Trump as President of the United States.

His forthcoming books, How to Beat Trump (Fall/Winter 2018) and Blue: China’s Other Color (Summer 2019), continue to draw the maps we need to navigate the new world we’re already in._ The New World _(Fall/Winter 2019) will be an atlas to the future.

Special Guest: Chris Kutarna.

Tullian Tchividjian is the grandson of Billy Graham. He's written several award winning books. He's been a celebrated preacher and pastor. In recent years he's not just preached the message of grace, he's also confessed his deep need for it amidst his own struggles. In this episode he reflects on the memory of his recently deceased grandfather, Billy Graham.

You can connect with Tullian at https://www.tullian.net.

Special Guest: Tullian Tchividjian.