The Optimistic Curmudgeon

Oct 28 2024 78 ep. 53 mins 7
The Optimistic Curmudgeon Podcast artwork

The Optimistic Curmudgeon is an interview podcast where Josh Herring interviews expert guests whose credentials and experience help listeners understand truth in a confusing world. We discuss issues under seven areas: economics, politics, education, philosophy, business, virtue, and leadership! May the best ideas win.

  Education
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Money and the Deep State - Tyler O'Neil (7x5)

Oct 28 2024 53 mins  
Tyler O'Neil discusses his forthcoming book The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government. Covid policy, education, budget funding, the LGBTQ+ agenda, and teachers' unions that have broken American education - Tyler explains the many ways the deep state has corrupted the constitutional governance of America. Tracing the money forms quite the map, and is th

Transhumanism, P**n, Loneliness, and Big Tech - With Emily Jashinsky (7x4)

Oct 22 2024 51 mins  
Emily Jashinsky of Unherd discusses the unique challenges pornography and big tech pose to our culture; she suggests that the loneliness epidemic is directly connected to these problems. Transhumanism as a rejection of the natural goodness of the body fits directly into our cultural malaise. Join Emily and Josh for a great conversation about the problems facing the 21st century and

Forming the Moral Imagination - feat. Sean Hadley (7x3)

Oct 15 2024 88 mins  
Dr. Sean Hadley discusses the effects the key texts of literature have on the moral imagination: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Vergil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, Spenser's Faerie Queene, Milton's Paradise Lose, Sophocles' Oedipus Cycle, The Song of Roland (Anon). Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, Shakespeare's The Tempest, and Lewis's Till We Have Faces. Enjoy this discussion of the fo

Ministry in a Hostile World - Urie Brito of the CREC (7x2)

Oct 08 2024 57 mins  
Ministry in the negative world is often difficult. Pastor Urie Brito explains his story of getting into ministry, why he loves the CREC (Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches), and details the argument of his latest book, The War of the Priesthood: An Exposition of the Armor of God. Towards the end of the episode, Uri explains why he is willing to go into overtly political spa

Beauty and Aesthetics: Mike Young (7x1)

Sep 30 2024 65 mins  
Dr. Michael Young discuss beauty, Roger Scruton, and aesthetics as a natural desire of the human soul. Our longing for beauty signifies our desire for something higher, something more meaningful to the human condition, than mere utility. We were made for more! This conversation was inspired by Roger Scruton's book Beauty: A Very Short Introduction. #beauty #aesthetics #philosophy #

SECCE - Kristen Rudd: Stop Leaving your Students in Hell, or Read the Whole Comedia!

Aug 05 2024 47 mins  
At this SECCE breakout talk, Kristen Rudd argues that classical schools do their students a disservice when they only teach The Inferno. To really grasp Dante, students need to ascend through Purgatorio into Paradiso.

SECCE - Marc Fusco: Shakespeare is Still the One

Aug 05 2024 51 mins  
At this SECCE breakout talk, Marc Fusco argues that Shakespeare is the best guide to understanding human nature. Classical schools ought to teach, read, and perform Shakespeare to help students understand the complexity of what it means to be human.

SECCE - Jim Ranieri: Re-Enchant the World by Reading Tolkien

Aug 05 2024 34 mins  
In this SECCE breakout session, Jim Ranieri argues that the world stands in need of re-enchantment after the ravages of modernity. Tolkien's The Lord the Rings, read as a distinctly Catholic novel by Catholic teachers, has the potential to rightly re-enchant our minds and help us perceive the sacramental nature of reality.

SE Consortium: Jason Jewell - The Canon as an Antidote to Contemporary Rootlessness

Aug 05 2024 42 mins  
In this plenary address at the inaugural SE Consortium of Classical Educators conference at Thales College, Jason Jewell argues that our modern culture is marked by a rootlessness; the literary canon pushes against that rootlessness, encouraging us to find home through the pursuit of tradition, place, and things divine.

SE Consortium: Sean Hadley - The Word for Heritage is Canon

Aug 05 2024 25 mins  
In this plenary address at the inaugural SE Consortium of Classical Educators conference at Thales College, Sean Hadley builds a metaphorical view of the canon as a forest. The forest requires tending, and appreciation. Sean draws from Lewis's Experiment in Criticism to distinguish how classical educators bring their students into the forest to foster a certain kind of reading.