Life of the Mind: Brookewood & Avalon Schools

Oct 21 2024 26 ep. 52 mins

Life of the Mind: Brookewood & Avalon Schools Podcast artwork

The Brookewood & Avalon Schools invite listeners to engage in a life of the mind.

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Ep. 26 The Extinction of Experience, with Fr. José Medina and Andrea Francois

Oct 21 2024 74 mins

In this new episode, I (host Cherie Walsh) talk with Andrea Francois and Fr. José Medina about Christine Rosen’s new book, The Extinction of Experience. Building from our previous work on Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, our conversation begins where Rosen’s book does: the degree to which our experiences are increasingly mediated by our technological choices and how,

Ep. 25 Anxious Generation, with Andrea Francois and Fr. José Medina

Sep 16 2024 73 mins

I am excited to talk with Andrea Francois and Fr. José Medina about Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation. Haidt's book was the faculty summer reading at Brookewood, and we like his thesis. We talk about the phone-free school day in terms of attention, embodiment, reflection, and reasonable physical risk. For us, going outside in what Haidt calls "Discovery Mode" has been p

Ep. 24 The Goldfinch, with Andrea Francois and Ann Vitz

Aug 15 2024 67 mins

Andrea Francois and Ann Vitz join me for a discussion of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. The novel uses its contemporary idiom (and some rough material) to discuss some of the great themes of literature: art vs. life, mortality, the role of tradition in modern life, and so on. We read the books behind the book (Keats, Dostoyevsky, Dickens, and so on). Finally, we appreciate the novel'

Ep. 23 Brief Loves that Live Forever by Andrei Makine, with David Booz and Andrea Francois

May 12 2024 59 mins

David Booz and Andrea Francois join me to discuss Brief Loves that Live Forever, Andrei Makine's 2013 novel exploring the end of the USSR. David was keen to talk about Makine, as Erik Varden mentions him in The Shattering of Loneliness, among the non-Christian writers whose works feature a longing for meaning beyond ideology or pleasure. The novel explores the childhood and later l

Ep. 22 Erik Varden's The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance, with David Booz

Mar 31 2024 57 mins

Podcast regular David Booz joins me to talk about Erik Varden's The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance. When a friend gave me this book as a present, I thought she felt sorry for me, but once I got past the title, I found a deeply insightful, rich, accessible treatment of God's commands regarding memory. David says this book changed his life. Our conversation includ

Ep. 21 The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, with Fr. José Medina

Mar 04 2024 52 mins

In this episode, Fr. José, Brookewood chaplain and teacher, and I talk about the diaries of Etty Hillesum. Hillesum was in her 20s in the Netherlands when she wrote her diary about her external experience during the Nazi occupation and more importantly about her internal experience of God.

Ep. 20 Yascha Mounk’s The Identity Trap, with David Booz and Andrea Francois

Jan 03 2024 64 mins

David Booz and Andrea Francois join me for a discussion of Professor Yascha Mounk's new book, The Identity Trap. We talk about what we learned from reading Mounk's history of identity politics from Foucault to Ibram X. Kendi, and we discuss Mounk's conclusions about the promotion of universal values. Mounk's book is significant in part because he comes to the discussion from the le

Ep. 19 Great Moral Stories, with Ann Vitz

Nov 04 2023 39 mins

In this episode, I talk with Mrs. Ann Vitz, longtime Brookewood parent and new Brookewood teacher, about her program, Great Moral Stories, which we're implementing in grades K-12 this year. Based on Core Virtues by Mary Beth Klee, and designed with Aristotle's virtues as its foundation, this curriculum is helping Brookewood girls to learn more about how to live a virtuous life. Her

Ep. 18 Camino of Maryland, with Rich McPherson

Sep 10 2023 35 mins

Today I talk with Rich McPherson, Head of Brookewood and President of Avalon and Brookewood, to learn how he spent his summer vacation. Having made a number of one-day pilgrimages and thought for a long time about multi-day routes, Rich has devised a two-week pilgrimage, a Camino of Maryland, he hopes to initiate this next summer, with the help of many pastors and other community m

Ep. 17: Pieper’s Leisure the Basis of Culture and ”Hope,” with David Booz and Andrea Francois

Jun 28 2023 64 mins

David, Andrea, and I (with improved audio) sit down to discuss two works by Josef Pieper. These two works are both important and accessible to non-philosophers. In Leisure, Pieper posits that real leisure relies on a capacity for contemplation and is anchored in divine worship. In "Hope," Pieper highlights our status as pilgrims "on the way" in our earthly lives and develops the im