Fighting for the Real: Jeanne Schindler on Presence, Technology, and the Life We Share
What does it take to remain fully human in an age of distraction? In this conversation, Christine Perrin speaks with Dr. Jeanne Schindler about attention, technology, homeschooling, civic life, and the quiet disciplines that help us fight for what is real. Together they consider how modern devices flatten experience, weaken our sense of place, and make presence harder to practice, while also pointing toward a better way, one rooted in community life, embodied friendship, serious thought, and shared public spaces. This is a conversation about recovering the habits that make a human life deep, relational, and truly lived.
Drawing from her own intellectual formation, Dr. Schindler reflects on childhood influences, her shift from history to political theory, her decision to leave tenure and devote herself more fully to home and family, and the rewards of lifelong learning through homeschooling. She and Christine also explore AI, the limits of technology, the strain placed on civic discourse, and why restlessness should not always be medicated by screens, but instead received as a summons to seek truth, communion, and a richer form of life.
Tilling Soil & Soul: Michael Lamb on the Craft of Character
What forms a life of character? In this episode of Forged, Brian Williams talks with Michael Lamb about the moral formation that happens through work, friendship, habit, and hope. From Lamb’s childhood on a Tennessee tobacco farm to his work helping universities cultivate virtue, this conversation explores how people learn discipline, responsibility, humility, and shared purpose. It is a rich reflection on education, moral ecology, political hope, and the slow work of becoming the sort of person who can love the good and pursue it with others.
Along the way, Brian and Michael consider what today’s families and schools can learn from agrarian life, why friendship and accountability matter for both adults and students, and why poetry can train us to pay attention. They close with Seamus Heaney’s “Digging,” a fitting meditation on inheritance, vocation, and the probing work of the pen.
Patterns That Make Us Alive: Timothy Patitsas on Beauty, Learning, and Home
What makes a place, a school, or a daily life feel truly human? In this conversation, Christine Perrin and Timothy Patitsas explore beauty first living, the “quality without a name” described by Christopher Alexander, and the patterns that help people feel at home, at ease, and fully alive. Together they consider paper routes, classrooms, liturgical seasons, friendship, motherhood, teaching, and the built world, asking how living patterns form the soul and why beauty is not an ornament to life but one of its deepest truths. This episode is an invitation to notice the forms of life that nourish wonder, awaken desire for the good, and help us belong more deeply to the world.
Their conversation moves from childhood memory to architecture, pedagogy, eros, ritual, and community. Along the way, Timothy reflects on the difference between potent information and quality information, the role of stories in shaping desire, and the kinds of educational practices that help students encounter truth not only analytically, but with their whole persons.
Podcast Series
Dive deeper into the ideas driving the renewal of classical education
In this podcast, author and poet Christine Perrin interviews women (and some men) to discover how they have composed a life of meaningful patterns and routines that give life to themselves and their families.
In this podcast, Dr. Brian Williams of the Templeton Honors College interviews men (and some women) to learn how they seek to forge meaningful lives of at work, home, and in the broader culture.
Fighting for the Real: Jeanne Schindler on Presence, Technology, and the Life We Share
What does it take to remain fully human in an age of distraction? In this conversation, Christine Perrin speaks with Dr. Jeanne Schindler about attention, technology, homeschooling, civic life, and the quiet disciplines that help us fight for what is real. Together they consider how modern devices flatten experience, weaken our sense of place, and make presence harder to practice, while also pointing toward a better way, one rooted in community life, embodied friendship, serious thought, and shared public spaces. This is a conversation about recovering the habits that make a human life deep, relational, and truly lived.
Drawing from her own intellectual formation, Dr. Schindler reflects on childhood influences, her shift from history to political theory, her decision to leave tenure and devote herself more fully to home and family, and the rewards of lifelong learning through homeschooling. She and Christine also explore AI, the limits of technology, the strain placed on civic discourse, and why restlessness should not always be medicated by screens, but instead received as a summons to seek truth, communion, and a richer form of life.
Tilling Soil & Soul: Michael Lamb on the Craft of Character
What forms a life of character? In this episode of Forged, Brian Williams talks with Michael Lamb about the moral formation that happens through work, friendship, habit, and hope. From Lamb’s childhood on a Tennessee tobacco farm to his work helping universities cultivate virtue, this conversation explores how people learn discipline, responsibility, humility, and shared purpose. It is a rich reflection on education, moral ecology, political hope, and the slow work of becoming the sort of person who can love the good and pursue it with others.
Along the way, Brian and Michael consider what today’s families and schools can learn from agrarian life, why friendship and accountability matter for both adults and students, and why poetry can train us to pay attention. They close with Seamus Heaney’s “Digging,” a fitting meditation on inheritance, vocation, and the probing work of the pen.
Patterns That Make Us Alive: Timothy Patitsas on Beauty, Learning, and Home
What makes a place, a school, or a daily life feel truly human? In this conversation, Christine Perrin and Timothy Patitsas explore beauty first living, the “quality without a name” described by Christopher Alexander, and the patterns that help people feel at home, at ease, and fully alive. Together they consider paper routes, classrooms, liturgical seasons, friendship, motherhood, teaching, and the built world, asking how living patterns form the soul and why beauty is not an ornament to life but one of its deepest truths. This episode is an invitation to notice the forms of life that nourish wonder, awaken desire for the good, and help us belong more deeply to the world.
Their conversation moves from childhood memory to architecture, pedagogy, eros, ritual, and community. Along the way, Timothy reflects on the difference between potent information and quality information, the role of stories in shaping desire, and the kinds of educational practices that help students encounter truth not only analytically, but with their whole persons.
The Reading Man: Shilo Brooks on Making a Life with Books
What do books do to a man? In this conversation, Shilo Brooks and Brian Williams discuss reading, ambition, teaching, and the making of a life. Brooks reflects on growing up in West Texas, discovering the great books almost by accident, and learning to read not merely for school or profession, but for wisdom, courage, and the ordering of desire. Together they consider why men stop reading, what is lost when they do, and why the best books are not simply objects of study or instruments of advancement, but companions in the long work of formation. They do more than convey information. They enlarge the soul, sharpen judgment, deepen wonder, and usher us into a richer and more serious way of being in the world.
Along the way, Brooks discusses the teachers who first put serious books in his hands and the books that shaped him, from Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise to Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus. The conversation ranges from landscape and longing to teaching and apprenticeship, and from the allure of ambition to the discipline of moderating it through wisdom. This is a conversation about books as guides for life, about the formation of men, and about the kind of education that moves from the classroom to the soul.
Dependence is not a defect, it is part of what it means to be human. In this episode, our Host, Christine Perrin speaks with Leah Libresco about The Dignity of Dependence and the modern illusion that freedom means self-sufficiency. Together they explore why equality does not require sameness, how women’s lives reveal truths our culture tries to ignore, and why asking for help may be one of the most human things we can do. From sourdough and ballroom dancing to caregiving, marriage, disability, and friendship, this conversation offers a richer vision of love, responsibility, and shared life. It is a thoughtful and hopeful episode for anyone seeking a more humane way to live.
Pursuing Embodied Wonder and Material Wisdom: Chris Hall on the Common Arts
In this episode of Forged, Chris Hall reflects on the formative power of the “common arts”—the ordinary skills and embodied practices that introduce us to the givenness of the world and manifest our humanity. Drawing on stories from the classroom and the farm, Hall argues that formation and education flourish when intellectual study is joined to hands-on craft, inviting students into apprenticeship, real responsibility, and attentiveness to the natural world. He also addresses the cultural divide between academic learning and vocational skill, urging a recovery of an older vision in which the liberal arts, practical arts, and fine arts enrich one another for the sake of a fully embodied, fully aware human life of discipline, delight, craft, and calling.
In this episode, Lynette Hull invites us into a conversation about art, faith, and the quiet transformation that can happen when the two meet. With warmth and wisdom, she reflects on creativity as a spiritual practice and on the ways beauty can draw us deeper into meaning and connection. It’s a thoughtful and inspiring exchange that will leave you curious to see the world, and perhaps your own creative life, a little differently.
Contemplate or Exploit: Andy Crouch on Technology, Formation, and the Innovation Bargain
In this Forged conversation, Andy Crouch argues that “we either contemplate or we exploit”—a bracing claim that frames his vision for stewarding our humanity in an age of technological convenience. Drawing on a biblical account of the human person as heart, soul, mind, and strength, he contends that genuine flourishing is found through the relational, embodied labors of home, church, and school. Crouch names the “innovation bargain” as a crucial lens for reckoning with technology’s costs, and he calls listeners back to shared household rhythms and focal practices as ordinary disciplines for becoming more fully human.
In this thoughtful episode, Christine sits down with writer and educator Agnes Howard for a rich conversation about motherhood, community, and what it means to share in the human experience. Together, they reflect on the deeper significance of pregnancy, the cultural pressures surrounding work and family life, and the beauty of living in meaningful connection with others. With warmth and insight, Howard invites listeners to reconsider familiar assumptions and to see everyday life as something both communal and deeply significant.
“Classical education introduces students into a tradition of inquiry that explores the enduring human questions in deep and beautiful ways.”
Dr. Brian Williams
Stay Oriented
Occasional stories, reflections, and resources to support your exploration of classical education.
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