What if the life you long for is formed one teaspoon at a time? In this episode of Composed, Christine Perrin speaks with classicist, writer, and homeschooling mother Nadya Williams about the small patterns that fill a life: reading aloud on the couch, gathering friends around books and snacks, welcoming children into imperfect homes, and writing in the margins of family life.
Together they explore motherhood, Christian human dignity, education, AI, and the hope of building a humane culture through local, faithful, ordinary practices. For mothers who feel stretched thin and are hungry for wisdom, this conversation offers a gentle invitation to begin with one small good thing.
Elliot Ackerman on Fatherhood, Friendship, and the Habits That Shape Men
How does a father help his son become a good man? In this episode of Forged, Brian Williams speaks with Marine veteran, novelist, and journalist Elliot Ackerman about the small habits and embodied patterns that shape a man’s life and form the next generation: wearing a suit with intention, writing a thank-you note, keeping a friend, caring for meaningful objects, reading deeply, and learning to live with purpose. Drawing from Ackerman’s series “A Man Should Know,” the conversation explores why fathers, coaches, mentors, and male friendships matter in a culture where many young men are left to make it up as they go. For fathers seeking to lead their homes with wisdom, steadiness, and hope, this conversation offers a clear reminder: formation often begins in the little things.
Ackerman also reflects on the Marine Corps, the influence of his own father, the meaning carried by inherited objects, the discipline of writing, and the quiet work of raising children with both acceptance and standards. Together, Brian and Elliot consider how fathers pass on more than advice. They pass on habits, stories, loves, friendships, and a way of seeing the world.
Jesse Hake on the Living Patterns of Reading, Naming, and Belonging
What if the books we read aloud, the walks we take, and the names we learn for the world around us are not small extras, but central ways of forming a life? In this episode of Composed, Christine Perrin speaks with Jesse Hake, Director of ClassicalU at Classical Academic Press, about reading as a family practice, literature as a companion in moral formation, and the quiet power of naming the places we inhabit. Their conversation moves from The Lord of the Rings and Dickens to creek stomping, wildflowers, classroom liturgies, and the simple discipline of calling one’s father. For parents and teachers seeking humane, practical ways to cultivate wisdom, attention, and delight, this episode offers a hopeful vision of education as shared life.
Jesse reminds us that classical education is not merely a curriculum or a set of ideas. It is a way of receiving the world with love and giving that love to others through conversation, memory, making, and place. Reading aloud, walking attentively, and creating beautiful things together become patterns that nourish families, classrooms, and communities.
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.
What if the life you long for is formed one teaspoon at a time? In this episode of Composed, Christine Perrin speaks with classicist, writer, and homeschooling mother Nadya Williams about the small patterns that fill a life: reading aloud on the couch, gathering friends around books and snacks, welcoming children into imperfect homes, and writing in the margins of family life.
Together they explore motherhood, Christian human dignity, education, AI, and the hope of building a humane culture through local, faithful, ordinary practices. For mothers who feel stretched thin and are hungry for wisdom, this conversation offers a gentle invitation to begin with one small good thing.
Elliot Ackerman on Fatherhood, Friendship, and the Habits That Shape Men
How does a father help his son become a good man? In this episode of Forged, Brian Williams speaks with Marine veteran, novelist, and journalist Elliot Ackerman about the small habits and embodied patterns that shape a man’s life and form the next generation: wearing a suit with intention, writing a thank-you note, keeping a friend, caring for meaningful objects, reading deeply, and learning to live with purpose. Drawing from Ackerman’s series “A Man Should Know,” the conversation explores why fathers, coaches, mentors, and male friendships matter in a culture where many young men are left to make it up as they go. For fathers seeking to lead their homes with wisdom, steadiness, and hope, this conversation offers a clear reminder: formation often begins in the little things.
Ackerman also reflects on the Marine Corps, the influence of his own father, the meaning carried by inherited objects, the discipline of writing, and the quiet work of raising children with both acceptance and standards. Together, Brian and Elliot consider how fathers pass on more than advice. They pass on habits, stories, loves, friendships, and a way of seeing the world.
Jesse Hake on the Living Patterns of Reading, Naming, and Belonging
What if the books we read aloud, the walks we take, and the names we learn for the world around us are not small extras, but central ways of forming a life? In this episode of Composed, Christine Perrin speaks with Jesse Hake, Director of ClassicalU at Classical Academic Press, about reading as a family practice, literature as a companion in moral formation, and the quiet power of naming the places we inhabit. Their conversation moves from The Lord of the Rings and Dickens to creek stomping, wildflowers, classroom liturgies, and the simple discipline of calling one’s father. For parents and teachers seeking humane, practical ways to cultivate wisdom, attention, and delight, this episode offers a hopeful vision of education as shared life.
Jesse reminds us that classical education is not merely a curriculum or a set of ideas. It is a way of receiving the world with love and giving that love to others through conversation, memory, making, and place. Reading aloud, walking attentively, and creating beautiful things together become patterns that nourish families, classrooms, and communities.
Why Making Things Matters: Andrew Peterson on Beauty, Discipline, and Hope
What kind of person is formed by songs, stories, gardens, books, and the patient work of making? This episode is a living picture of classical education beyond the classroom. In this conversation, Brian Williams speaks with singer-songwriter, author, and Rabbit Room founder Andrew Peterson about how truth, goodness, and beauty are carried through embodied practices: reading aloud, making music, gathering around tables, learning from creation, and practicing a craft over time. Andrew invites parents, educators, and ordinary makers to recover the courage to begin badly, the discipline to keep going, and the joy of telling the truth as beautifully as we can.
Together, Brian and Andrew explore the Rabbit Room as a “wayside inn” for artists and readers, the formative power of handmade work, the goodness of amateur creativity rooted in love, and the danger of bypassing craft. This conversation offers a hopeful vision for homes, schools, and communities where beauty is not an extra, but part of how children and adults become fully human.
What if learning to see another person clearly is one of the first steps toward wisdom? In this episode of Composed, Christine Perrin speaks with portrait painter Catherine Prescott about attention, beauty, vocation, and the dignity of the human person. Catherine’s life and work invite us into one of the central hopes of classical Christian education, to recover a way of seeing the world that is truthful, humane, and alive to goodness. Through stories of childhood, artistic formation, resistance to abstraction, conversion, motherhood, and the long labor of portrait painting, this conversation reminds parents, teachers, and students that education is not merely the transfer of information. It is the formation of vision, desire, patience, and love.
Catherine reflects on the mystery of interior life, the discipline of looking without reducing or invading, and the way darkness, honestly faced, can make us reach for the light. Her story offers a deeply human picture of what it means to compose a life around beauty, truth, family, work, and faith.
How Young Adults Can Recover Hope, Friendship, and Vocation with Anna Moreland
What happens when young adults have been taught how to achieve, but not how to work, love, and rest like whole persons? In this episode of Forged, Dr. Brian Williams speaks with Dr. Anna Bonta Moreland about The Young Adult Playbook and the ordinary habits that help men and women build lives of purpose. Their conversation moves from Argentine family dinners and a different relationship to time, to the loneliness and risk-aversion many young adults feel around dating, vocation, and leisure. Along the way, Dr. Moreland offers a hopeful vision for recovering agency through embodied friendship, honest conversation, good work, Sabbath-shaped leisure, prayer, and practical courage.
This is a conversation for young adults, parents, teachers, and anyone who senses that achievement alone cannot form a life. Dr. Moreland helps name the fear many students carry into adulthood, then points toward a better way: not escape from responsibility, but a deeper education in how to live.
Theology of the Body and the Shape of a Life with Alicia Coyle
What does the body reveal about vocation and our search for communion? In this episode of Composed, Christine Perrin speaks with Alicia Coyle about Theology of the Body, motherhood, feminine formation, chastity, education, and the slow work of composing a life around gift rather than competition. Their conversation moves from John Paul II and Edith Stein to Little Women, Aristotle, Mary at Cana, and the daily patterns of homeschooling, prayer, reading, and family life. For parents seeking a wiser way through cultural confusion, Alicia offers a thoughtful vision of embodiment as something neither limiting nor abstract, but deeply human, practical, and full of invitation.
Together, Christine and Alicia consider how ideas become incarnate through teachers, friendships, families, and habits. They ask what it means to see the body as meaningful, how women and men can offer distinct gifts without rivalry, and why formation begins not with rules alone, but with anthropology, wonder, and the truth of the person made in the image of God.
Rusty Reno on The Ordinary Practices that Shape the Soul
What does it take to form a life with roots, discipline, and courage in an age of distraction and drift? In this episode of Forged, Brian Williams talks with R. R. Reno about the ordinary practices that shape the soul: family dinners, church, books, marriage, friendship, cooking, architecture, and the demanding craft of rock climbing. Reno reflects on growing up in Baltimore, learning endurance in Yosemite, finding stability in marriage and worship, and pursuing excellence as a teacher, writer, and Christian. Along the way, he considers why beauty trains our affections, why embodied disciplines matter, and what it means to “do battle without hatred.”
The conversation moves from childhood rhythms and the gift of rootedness to the spiritual trial of physical risk, the public nature of architecture, and the vocation of First Things as a guide for readers seeking clarity in a fractured cultural moment.
Growing Up Classical: Literature, Wisdom, and the Questions We Carry
What does it mean to grow up classical, and how can the great books help form a young person’s moral imagination? In this episode of Composed, Christine Perrin speaks with Olivia Reardon, a graduating senior at Messiah University, about literature, ethical formation, and the classical Christian classroom. Drawing from Olivia’s senior honors thesis and her upcoming ClassicalU course, Journeying with the Great Books: Ethical Formation in the Classical Christian Classroom, the conversation explores how stories give students language for their deepest questions, offer “handholds” for living in a broken world, and invite readers to return again and again as they grow in wisdom.
Together, Christine and Olivia reflect on reading as a relational and formative act, one that happens best in a community of trust, conversation, and shared attention. Olivia offers the images of mirrors, windows, and doors as a way of understanding how books help students see themselves, encounter others, and enter experiences beyond their own. The conversation also considers the breadth of the Great Conversation, not as a narrow inheritance for a few, but as a living tradition shaped by many voices and offered for the formation of all.
“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.
