The Habit

Russ Ramsey is a gifted storyteller and a trusted guide in the world of art. His new book is Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About The Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive. In this episode, Russ and Jonathan Rogers talk about sunflowers, the sublime, and the connection between suffering and wonder.

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Stephanie Duncan Smith is a senior editor for HarperOne. She has spent her career developing award-winning and bestselling authors. She is the creator of Slant Letter, a Substack email newsletter for writers who want to deepen their craft and do it in style. She is also the author of Even After Everything: The Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anyway.

In this episode, Stephanie Duncan Smith and Jonathan Rogers talk about creative risk as a way of "going first" for the reader—and giving the reader a little more courage.

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Steven James has written and published about twenty books in the last couple of decades. Most of his novels and been thrillers. But with his new novel, Rift, he’s doing something completely new: young adult Appalachian folktale horror. Steven has lived in the southern Appalachians since the 1990s.

The part of East Tennessee where Rift is set was hit really hard by Hurricane Helene a couple of weeks ago. Steven’s publisher, Rebecca Reynolds of Sky Turtle Books, also lives in the region. She is putting together a project to collect old stories from Appalachia, creating an anthology that can be used to raise funds for the area. 

She needs help finding the storytellers and their stories. Part 2 of this episode is a short conversation with Rebecca Reynholds about the Old Stories project.

Here's a video about The Old Stories: An Appalachian Anthology.

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Carolyn Leiloglou is the author of the middle grade fantasy series The Restorationists. Book Two of that series, Between Flowers and Bones, has been recently released. In this episode, Carolyn and I talk about writing about family, balancing motherhood with creative pursuits, and the ways that interacting with visual art enriches writing.

Here's a video of Carolyn in San Antonio's McNay Art Museum, referenced in the episode.

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John Hendrix is a New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of many books. His award-winning illustrations have also appeared on book jackets, newspapers, and magazines all over the world. The Society of Illustrators named John the Distinguished Educator in the Arts for 2024. He is the Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art and the founding Chair of the MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture program at Washington University in St. Louis. John’s new graphic novel is The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. 

In this episode, John and Jonathan Rogers talk about the nature of myth, the creative power of friendship, the beginning of the Inklings, and the sad end of the Inklings.

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Daniel Silliman is senior news editor for Christianity Today. He earned a doctorate in American studies from Heidelberg University in Germany and has taught US history and humanities at Heidelberg, the University of Notre Dame, Valparaiso University, and Milligan University. His new book is One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation. From the jacket copy: "Impious and amoral, petty and vindictive, Richard Nixon is not the typical protagonist of a religious biography. But spiritual drama is at the heart of this former president’s tragic story."

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In this back-to-school episode Jonathan Rogers speaks with Rachel Griffis and Rachel De Smith Roberts about their book, Deep Reading: Practices to Subvert the Vices of Our Distracted, Hostile, and Consumeristic Age. Dr. Griffis is a professor of English at Spring Arbor University in Michigan, and Dr. Roberts is an associate professor of English at North Greenville University in South Carolina. In this episode, they talk about “Deep Reading” as a corrective to the vices of Distraction, Hostility, and Consumerism. 

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Jared C. Wilson is an author of over twenty books and a popular speaker at churches and conferences around the world. He serves as Pastor for Preaching and the Director of the Pastoral Training Center at Liberty Baptist Church in Liberty, Missouri. He is also an Assistant Professor of Pastoral Ministry and Author in Residence at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. His new book is The Storied Life: Christian Writing as Art and Worship. In this episode, Jared and Jonathan Rogers talk about the multi-faceted calling of a writer, and the ways that writing a means of transformation for the writer as much as a means of communication to a reader. 

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As of last week, all three books of Jonathan Rogers's Wilderking Trilogy, 20th Anniversary Deluxe Hardback edition, have been released into the wild. The Bark of the Bog Owl released in June. And now The Secret of the Swamp King and The Way of the Wilderking are available wherever you buy books. These new editions have gorgeous new covers by Stephen Crotts and exceedingly swampy new interior illustrations by Joe Hox. Joe Hox is Jonathan's guest on this episode of The Habit Podcast.

Get the books here.

Get the audiobooks (read by the author) here.

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Besides being an award-winning teacher and professor of theology & ethics at Lipscomb University, Lee Camp hosts No Small Endeavor, a podcast that asks What does it mean to live a good life? What is true happiness? What are the habits, practices, and dispositions that facilitate human flourishing? Lee Camp explores these and similar questions with some of the most influential authors, scientists, artists, psychologists, philosophers, and theologians. In this episode, Dr. Camp and Jonathan Rogers talk about ethics, virtue theory, and writerly habits.

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