By The Heights School
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The podcast currently has 245 episodes available.
How do we justify reading? Do we justify reading?
Heights fifth grade teacher and published fiction author Joe Breslin chases away such questions. Though fiction can have utility, even moral impact—fiction at its best is an art created and received with wonder. In this fascinating conversation, Mr. Breslin reflects on writing, reading, and gets us to the heart of what it actually means to do something “for its own sake.”
Chapters:3:50 Do we read for utility?
7:49 Fiction: pursued for its own sake
11:43 Whether fiction has a moral purpose
18:57 Fiction writing is not essay writing
23:03 Good art ends up reflecting God
26:09 Defining “good for its own sake”
28:23 The tension between education and encounter
34:04 A parent’s role in sharing fiction
38:07 The human impulse for literature
Links:Hearts Uncanny: Tales of the Unquiet Spirit by Joe Breslin
Other Minds: 13 Tales of Wonder and Sorrow by Joe Breslin
joeybreslinwrites.com Joe Breslin’s author website
“Ethics of Elfland” by G. K. Chesterton
Leisure: The Basis of Culture Josef Pieper
“The Loss of the Creature” by Walker Percy
Men in the Making, Alvaro de Vicente’s substack featuring original articles
Featured Opportunities:What Should a Catholic University Be? at The Heights School (December 7, 2024)
Also on the Forum:The Forum Book Reviews, many written by Joe Breslin
A surprising number of Catholic conversions in the last hundred years begin with one man: G. K. Chesterton. A modern Catholic favorite, Chesterton looms large in subjects as diverse as theology, satire, marginalia, philosophy, politics, and mystery fiction.
Our guest today is Dale Ahlquist, founder and president of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton. His own journey of conversion started with Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man. In our conversation, we visit many of Chesterton’s ideas, concluding with the much misunderstood “distributism”—a Chestertonian practical philosophy and the subject of Ahlquist’s co-edited book of essays titled Localism: Coming Home to Catholic Social Teaching.
Chapters:1:53 Conversion by way of Chesterton
6:17 Chesterton: a “complete thinker”
8:16 Reading recommendations
12:05 The opening of Everlasting Man
13:56 The ending of Man Who Was Thursday
17:16 Fairy tales and fundamental truths
19:18 “The twitch upon the thread”
22:27 Defining distributism, or localism
30:13 Localism for D.C. (sub)urbanites
33:44 Founding schools: localism in action
39:11 Family enterprises
42:19 The contributors to Localism
45:31 Creating a life of localism where you are
Links:Localism: Coming Home to Catholic Social Teaching edited by Dale Ahlquist and Michael Warren Davis
The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense by Dale Ahlquist
Common Sense 101: Lessons from G. K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist
Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton
St. Thomas Aquinas by G. K. Chesterton
St. Francis of Assisi by G. K. Chesterton
Father Brown: The Essential Tales by G. K. Chesterton
“The Roots of the World” by G. K. Chesterton
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G. K. Chesterton
Men in the Making, Alvaro de Vicente’s substack featuring original articles
Featured Opportunities:What Should a Catholic University Be? at The Heights School (December 7, 2024)
Also on the Forum:Episode 1: The Homework Problem, newly launched Forum Faculty Podcast hosted by Tom Cox featuring round-table discussions with veteran teachers
The task of fatherhood is critical, dynamic—and daunting. How could one address hope to address it all? During the Fatherhood Conference at The Heights School this month, Headmaster Alvaro de Vicente boiled it down to this: God chose this for you. You are called. Accepting this simple starting point should give fathers the confidence to take on the role, and the humility to seek God’s grace while doing so.
Chapters:3:02 Fatherhood as vocation
9:20 Vocation as your position on the team
12:09 The mission: bring your family to heaven
13:29 Fatherhood is a partnership with God
16:07 A father’s example of piety and virtue
27:06 Offering our children direct guidance
30:37 Offering them our time
34:05 Witnessing to the world
36:54 Being open to God’s grace
40:41 Messy is fine
45:20 You’re the man for the job
Links:Men in the Making, Alvaro de Vicente’s substack featuring original articles
Pastoral Letter on New Evangelization, 2 October 2011 by Javier Echevarría, former prelate of Opus Dei
Christ Is Passing By by Josemaría Escrivá
“In Joseph’s Workshop” by Josemaría Escrivá
Featured Opportunities:The Art of Teaching Conference at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2024)
Also on the Forum:Episode 1: The Homework Problem, newly launched Forum Faculty Podcast hosted by Tom Cox featuring round-table discussions with veteran teachers
On Emotional Presence and Imperfect Parenting featuring Alvaro de Vicente
Paternal Presence featuring Alvaro de Vicente
The Father and His Family featuring Michael Moynihan
What is beauty? Is it definable? What is it for, how are we drawn to it—and why do we sometimes resist it?
This week we welcome Dr. George Harne, president of Christendom College and an accomplished medieval and music history scholar. Drawing on his perspective as head of a vibrant Catholic liberal arts college, he speaks to us about the liberal arts as a path of study driven by beauty and contemplation, in pursuit of a true vision of reality.
Chapters:2:02 Liberal arts: what free people study
5:51 Versus “humanities” or “classical education”
7:46 Why study them
9:43 Music as a liberal art, fine art, liturgical art
13:16 Teaching art and contemplation
18:24 Defining contemplation
21:21 Contemplating music
24:45 Music with our family
28:19 Receiving beauty objectively, subjectively
29:42 Beauty under suspicion today
34:24 A Catholic liberal arts education
Links:Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation by Josef Pieper
The Arts of the Beautiful by Etienne Gilson
Featured Opportunities:Fathers Conference at The Heights School (November 2, 2024)
The Art of Teaching Conference at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2024)
Also on the Forum:Episode 1: The Homework Problem, newly launched Forum Faculty Podcast hosted by Tom Cox featuring round-table discussions with veteran teachers
Defining the Liberal Arts featuring Dr. Matthew Mehan
Order and Surprise: On Beauty and the Western Tradition featuring Dr. Lionel Yaceczko
Why a Liberal Arts Education Today featuring Michael Moynihan
The Idea of the Liberal Arts University featuring Dr. Thomas Hibbs
Dr. Jeremy Beer’s study of American society over the last 200 years, overlaid with psychology research and statistics about American charitable giving, has brought about his recent book: The Quest for Belonging.
The book directly advises nonprofit and fundraising leaders, though it just as much informs the everyday giver. This week on HeightsCast, Beer helps us see that charitable giving at its best is not a distant act of beneficence but an intimate act of community. It allows those who participate to become more rooted in the reality of social belonging, making for a healthier society in more ways than one.
Chapters:It turns out that modern psychology, neuroscience research, “habit hacks,” and popular self-help literature can all be summed up in one very classical idea: the virtues.
So asserts Dr. Andrew Abela, founding dean of the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America. This week on HeightsCast, he helps us unpack his new book, Superhabits, in which he rebrands the virtues as “superhabits” to suit the contemporary discourse. Then, with the help of Thomas Aquinas and about a dozen gripping stories, Dr. Abela shows us how these superhabits of virtue are described, developed, and supported by modern research as the way to live a good life.
Chapters:The sentimentalism of our greater culture is a formidable—yet surmountable—challenge to young men. Our sons are relentlessly encouraged to follow their affections and feelings wherever they might lead, whatever their commitments. How can we, as parents and teachers, help our boys to become men who love the world without being pulled off course by the sentiments and affections that are a natural aspect of our God-given humanity?
As part of our parent lecture series at The Heights School, Headmaster Alvaro de Vicente offers his insights to navigating the cultural challenge of sentimentalism by using the virtue of loyalty as a ballast. For when the feelings fail, loyalty helps us to stay the virtuous course—where our yes is yes and our no is no.
Chapters:Last weekend, The Wall Street Journal published a front-page story on American young men and the crisis of masculinity. It featured hard stories of the “aimless and isolated”—but could ultimately offer no solutions.
This week on HeightsCast, we’re pleased to welcome Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim, Norway. Bishop Varden has authored several books exploring human personhood, including topics of masculinity and femininity. He helps us get the lay of the land both culturally and spiritually in this so-called moment of crisis. His Excellency then shares the vision of masculinity that he finds in scripture and tradition, so that we may bring these ideas into our homes and to our sons.
Chapters:It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.
So writes the fictional devil Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood in C. S. Lewis’s epistolary novel The Screwtape Letters.
But where devils may wish to keep the good out, Heights headmaster Alvaro de Vicente highlights the ways we as parents can keep the good in. By aligning our family culture with the good voices we hope our sons will hear—and leaving space to allow the Divine voice and the voice of one’s own conscience to be heard—we help our sons form a good vision of themselves and the world.
Chapters:Part of the Teaching Sovereign Knowers Collection
In recent years, a number of HeightsCast guests have touched on the same resounding theme: the modern creep of curiositas and acedia, both considered classical vices. But where there are two vices, Aristotle encourages us to look for a virtue at the Golden Mean.
Mr. Michael Moynihan, head of The Heights upper school, finds it in studiousness. Adding to his collection of work on Teaching Sovereign Knowers, this episode unpacks Michael’s essay “Intellectual Virtue and Personal Sovereignty,” available on the Heights Forum. In it, he speaks to the why and how of pursuing studiousness as an intellectual virtue. For this, as with all virtues, allows us to stand before reality in an intentional way.
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