The Classical Ideas Podcast

Robin Waterfield is an independent scholar and translator living in southern Greece. In addition to thirty volumes of translations of works of Greek literature, he is the author of numerous books, ranging from children's fiction to Greek history, most recently The Making of a King, also published by the University of Chicago Press

The complete surviving works of Epictetus, the most influential Stoic philosopher from antiquity. "Some things are up to us and some are not." Epictetus was born into slavery around the year 50 CE, and, upon being granted his freedom, he set himself up as a philosophy teacher. After being expelled from Rome, he spent the rest of his life living and teaching in Greece. He is now considered the most important exponent of Stoicism, and his surviving work comprises a series of impassioned discourses, delivered live and recorded by his student Arrian, and the Handbook, Arrian's own take on the heart of Epictetus's teaching. In Discourses, Epictetus argues that happiness depends on knowing what is in our power to affect and what is not. Our internal states and our responses to events are up to us, but the events themselves are assigned to us by the benevolent deity, and we should treat them—along with our bodies, possessions, and families—as matters of indifference, simply making the best use of them we can.

Together, the Discourses and Handbook constitute a practical guide to moral self-improvement, as Epictetus explains the work and exercises aspirants need to do to enrich and deepen their lives. Edited and translated by renowned scholar Robin Waterfield, this book collects the complete works of Epictetus, bringing to modern readers his insights on how to cope with death, exile, the people around us, the whims of the emperor, fear, illness, and much more.

If an eighteenth-century parson told you that the difference between "civilization and heathenism is sky-high and star-far," the words would hardly come as a shock. But that statement was written by an American missionary in 1971. In a sweeping historical narrative, Kathryn Gin Lum shows how the idea of the heathen has been maintained from the colonial era to the present in religious and secular discourses--discourses, specifically, of race.

Americans long viewed the world as a realm of suffering heathens whose lands and lives needed their intervention to flourish. The term "heathen" fell out of common use by the early 1900s, leading some to imagine that racial categories had replaced religious differences. But the ideas underlying the figure of the heathen did not disappear. Americans still treat large swaths of the world as "other" due to their assumed need for conversion to American ways. Purported heathens have also contributed to the ongoing significance of the concept, promoting solidarity through their opposition to white American Christianity. Gin Lum looks to figures like Chinese American activist Wong Chin Foo and Ihanktonwan Dakota writer Zitkála-Sá, who proudly claimed the label of "heathen" for themselves.

Race continues to operate as a heathen inheritance in the United States, animating Americans' sense of being a world apart from an undifferentiated mass of needy, suffering peoples. Heathen: Religion and Race in American History (Harvard UP, 2022) thus reveals a key source of American exceptionalism and a prism through which Americans have defined themselves as a progressive and humanitarian nation even as supposed heathens have drawn on the same to counter this national myth.

Dr. Lloyd Daniel Barba is Assistant Professor of Religion and core faculty in Latinx and Latin American Studies at Amherst College. He has published essays on the history of race and religion, Pentecostalism, Catholicism, the Sanctuary Movement, and material religion.

Dr. Arlene Sánchez-Walsh guest hosts and the topic of conversation is Barba's new book, Sowing the Seed: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California, out from Oxford University Press.

Dr. Elizabeth Bucar is the Director of Sacred Writes, Professor of Religion, and Dean's Leadership Fellow at Northeastern University. An expert in comparative religious ethics who has published on topics ranging from gender reassignment surgery to the global politics of modest clothing, Bucar's current book, Stealing My Religion: Not Just Any Cultural Appropriation, is on the ethics of religious appropriation. She is also the author of the award-winning trade book, Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress (Harvard University Press, 2017). Bucar's public scholarship includes bylines in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, Teen Vogue, and Zocalo Public Square as well as several podcasts. She has a PhD in religious ethics from the University of Chicago's Divinity School. Follow her on Twitter @BucarLiz. Link to her Pious Fashion episode on NBN: https://newbooksnetwork.com/141-on-pious-fashion-and-muslim-women

Related Links:

Book Links https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-42764-1 https://www.amazon.com/Single-Payer-Healthcare-Reform-Establishment/dp/3030427633/ref=nodl_?dplnkId=ff67f93f-80cf-47ed-99eb-12f0856c7435 Other Scholarship about the Movement for Single Payer https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/14998 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/johs.12247 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1936724415625306 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667321522000683 http://www.interfacejournal.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Issue-8-1-White-and-Finnegan4.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296484229_Vermont_and_Healthcare_Reform_Organizing_Human_Rights_Promise_and_Praxis Single Payer Organizations https://www.healthcare-now.org/ https://www.blhct.org/ https://www.mosp.us/ https://pnhp.org/ http://healthoverprofit.org/ https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/

Book Description

The recent rise of "Medicare for All" in American political discourse was many years in the making. Behind this rise is a movement composed of grassroots activists and organizations that have been working for more than three decades to achieve the goal of establishing a single-payer healthcare system in the United States. In the past decade, the Single Payer Movement has grown and garnered more public and political support than ever before. This relative success cannot be attributed to any one political figure or political era. The story of how this happened, and how it is tied to a turn against establishment politics on both the left and right, as well as the rise of outsider politicians such as Senator Bernie Sanders, takes place during the Clinton, G.W. Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations. During each of these eras, activists experienced shifting opportunities that they interpreted through the telling of stories. These narratives of opportunity encouraged participation in particular forms of grassroots mobilization, which then affected the outcome of each era. This has had lasting effects on the development of healthcare policy in the United States. In this book, Hern conducts a political ethnographic analysis in which she uses historical records, interviews, and participant observation to tell the story of the Single Payer Movement, establish the lessons that can be learned from this history, and develop a framework―the Environment of Opportunity Model―that involves a holistic understanding of social movement activity through the analysis of narrative practice.

Arson and vandalism at houses of worship. Bullying at schools and harassment at the grocery store. Political scapegoating and institutionalized discrimination. Muslims in the United States--and beyond--have faced Islamophobia in a range of forms. This ground-breaking book argues that Christians should be at the forefront of efforts to end the prejudice, discrimination, and violence, that Muslims face. Writing for Christians of all denominations, Jordan Denari Duffner offers an introduction to Islamophobia, discusses the unfortunate ways that Christians have contributed to it, and offers practical steps for standing in solidarity with Muslims. Viewing Islamophobia as both a social justice and a religious freedom issue, Duffner makes the case that Christian faith calls us to combat religious discrimination even when it is not directed toward our own faith community. She weaves together insights from Catholic social teaching, examples from Protestant leaders, and expertise from Muslim scholars and activists, resulting in a compelling book that will be of interest to academic and lay audiences alike.

Visit Jordan Denari Duffner online: https://jordandenari.com/about/

NOTES

Stacie Stukin is an arts and culture writer born and raised in Los Angeles. She has written about travel, design, women's health and food for publications like The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, Architectural Digest, W Magazine and Lucky Peach. She's also the West Coast Editor of Naturally, Danny Seo Magazine.

Philip DeSlippe is a historian of American religion with a background in American Studies and literature whose research focuses on Asian, metaphysical, and marginal religions in modern America. DeSlippe is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and writing a dissertation on the early history of yoga in the United States from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. His work includes a new and definitive edition of the metaphysical classic The Kybalion for Tarcher/Penguin in 2011, dozens of articles for popular audiences in such venues as Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Yoga Journal, Air & Space Smithsonian, the Indian news site Scroll.in, and Tides, the magazine of the South Asian American Digital Archive.

Relevant Reading:

https://www.baaznews.org/p/yogi-bhajan-siri-singh-sahib-expose https://twitter.com/StacieStukin https://twitter.com/PhilipDeslippe https://religionnews.com/2020/08/18/yogi-bhajan-yoga-guru-and-founder-of-3ho-more-likely-than-not-sexually-abused-followers-says-report/ https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/yogi-bhajan/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271568190_From_Maharaj_to_Mahan_Tantric_The_Construction_of_Yogi_Bhajan%27s_Kundalini_Yoga https://rishiknots.com/

Dr. Erin MacLeod's work situates itself in the perspectives of postcolonial studies, social movements, intercultural communication, migratory processes and globalization through its investigation into issues of identity, gender, culture, class, race and space/geography. She is the author of Visions of Zion: Ethiopians and Rastafari in the Search for the Promised Land (NYU Press, 2014). MacLeod holds a PhD in Communications from McGill University and a Master's in English Literature from the University of Toronto, and has taught and lectured at both the college and university levels in Ethiopia, Canada and Jamaica.

Visit the book: https://nyupress.org/9781479882243/visions-of-zion/

Dr. William "Chip" Gruen is professor of religious studies at Muhlenberg College and is Director of the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding.

The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries (2019)

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/reception-of-jesus-in-the-first-three-centuries-9780567000194/

Religionwise Podcast: https://www.muhlenberg.edu/religionandculture/religionwisepodcast/