How Small Habits Fill a Life with Nadya Williams

Christine Perrin (00:00.76)
This is Christine Perrin, host of Composed, a timeless way of living, a podcast of the Humanitas Institute that explores living patterns of virtue, craft, community, and delight, and draws the classical tradition into contemporary times. Welcome, Nadia Williams, to Composed. I'm so glad you're here today. I'm going to just share with our audience a little bit about your bio.

Nadya Williams (00:23.906)
Thank you so much for having me.

Christine Perrin (00:30.006)
Nadia has a PhD in Classics. She's a homeschool mom, writer, and editor in Ashland, Ohio. And she's also currently the interim director of the MFA in Creative Writing at Ashland University. She's written Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic, Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity, and Christians Reading Classics.

which is the one that she published most recently. She's a books editor at Mirror Orthodoxy where she also hosts Christian's Reading Classics podcast. And she contributes to a host of magazines. She grew up in a secular Jewish home in Russia and Israel and converted to Christianity when she was 30 when a friend, her husband now, gave her a stack of books to read. And when she got

stuck in an airport, I think in Amsterdam. So many things for us to talk about. Could you start with that maybe stack of books and moment in the airport that you describe?

Nadya Williams (01:45.974)
Yes. so it actually all of it took over over the course of several months. So it all started the year I turned 30. I had this, I had a tenure track job, like the dream of academia, right? and all of my life I had been working toward that goal. I had very typical immigrant parents who wanted their children to succeed, which meant encouraging them academically. And so by age 30, I had

Yeah, I'd achieved a PhD. I had published some articles, I finally had a tenure-track job, but my personal life that year was just crisis after crisis. And so that brought me to a moment where I slowed down enough to start asking questions, like, what is the meaning of life? Right. We joke that this is the cliche question, like who cares? Like, this is what you do in philosophy classes. But the reality is that all of us probably do run into

Those moments in our lives when when our system, what we thought was working, is no longer working. And so in my case, I started asking questions. And then my friend and colleague, Dan, when he we just had a casual conversation and he said, like, you're asking these questions. Here's a stack of books. And that's how that conversation began. And then another several months later, I was at a conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

And coming back to the US, I was on an overnight layover in Amsterdam Airport. And it was the night bridging Saturday and Sunday. So here I am, too cheap to get a hotel room for just a few hours. Like, I mean, okay. and so here I was sitting reading the gospels one after the other. And it was this like delirious out-of-body experience. And by morning,

I knew like Christ is real. And the first thing I did after the airport landed and I got home was find a church.

Christine Perrin (03:50.232)
As I read through your articles, I read a precursor to that moment, which is that you had this old Greek, this book of Greek myths. I think it was Greek myths in your family's home growing up. And it was a beautiful, dusty, gold-embossed edition.

that drew you into the mystery of the classics. And I'm wondering if you could fill in some of the gaps for us from the wonder of that book and your purpose to, you know, as time went on to study the classics and your reading of the New Testament, the Gospels in Greek and how you talk so much about your desire to know these people and the way that these words hit your heart.

after all the study you had done. Can you connect some dots for us? Because I think that those are some of the dots that you're connecting for us in your new book.

Nadya Williams (04:57.582)
Absolutely. And I think these dots are behind the making of this book. Definitely. So as a child, my parents had a house filled with books. And the kids were allowed to basically read anything, which was just a delight. So I came upon this book. I don't think anybody showed it to me. It was just there. A collection of Greek and Roman myths. Some of them were translations of ancient authors.

Others were just kind of paraphrases of, say, like the Iliad and Odyssey. And it was a translation into Russian from Hungarian and also had beautiful plates. So it was just it was just incredible. This gorgeous book of mythology. And it was such a beautiful book. It was one of those things that stood out. I think that's what first attracted me to it because it didn't look like the other books on the shelf. It was just so beautifully made. It's one of those things, like as an adult.

Thinking back, I'm thinking all the fairy tales where you pick up a book and you open it and something magical happens. And in this case, you could say it did. So that was my first exposure to Greek and Roman myths and stories and art because of the plates in the book. and then eventually, and I kept reading, I was that kid who would rather hide in a corner with a book than do pretty much anything else.

And then we moved to Israel. I had to learn two new languages at once because I had to learn Hebrew right away, but also we moved in fourth grade when everybody in Israel begins the study of English as well. and then when I was in high school, we moved to the US and for some reason I thought it was a good idea to start a new language.

right after moving to a new country where I was functioning in a language where I was not quite fluent yet. Sure. and I was thinking like, you know, Spanish would be fun. But all the classes were filled and and the the guidance counselor said there are spots only in Latin one. And it's like, well. And that was really exciting. And I had the most amazing teacher who was just so encouraging and made everything come alive in her classroom.

Nadya Williams (07:24.29)
And I remember like all those stories I had read as a kid, kind of all coming back, flooding and filling the gaps of what we were studying. Because anytime you study a culture, a civilization, and a language, like all those things connect. You can't just study a language without all these other things, like the people. and that was just so exciting and beautiful to me. and towards the end of high school.

actually the summer after 11th grade. We were in Virginia at the time. And Virginia has this incredible program, Governor's Latin Academy. And Governor's Latin Academy is like governor sponsored Nerd Camp. So the summer after 11th grade, I joined, I think it was 20 of us total, NerdCamp for two weeks, and we got to learn more intensive Latin. We got a like super

crammed intro to Greek and a lot more topics like a class on the Etruscans from really great college professors and seasoned high school teachers. I left NerdCamp thinking I will get a PhD in classics and this will be my life.

Christine Perrin (08:42.765)
Take us from that time when you were 18 to the time when you were 30 and the Greek New Testament made you weep and wonder what was in the hearts of these people. How do we get this?

Nadya Williams (09:00.142)
There. Yes. I think it starts with understanding that academic study of topics is not quite all there is. Because sometimes, and and this is not to say that academic study is not good. It's just that it took me realizing when I was in the middle of my own crisis and exploring Christianity and picked up the New Testament for the first time with a personal eye to it, rather than as an academic subject of study, that

I realized like this is so powerful. This is real. because so often with academic study, we're focused on being very objective and very kind of we're not studying something because necessarily or for first and foremost, because it's beautiful. We're studying it because we think this is a worthy subject of study. Now, the two obviously are not mutually exclusive, but it was.

That moment that made me realize I am reading the words that the earliest Christians read about something that really happened, that witnesses talked to some of the earliest Christians about. And it was this connection of the past and present colliding suddenly in my own life, in my own heart.

Christine Perrin (10:22.84)
That's very beautiful. I'm wondering...

how the language and your love of that language and your knowledge of it, what role you think that played, and also wondering how this relates to Lewis's idea that the things that he read that were pre-Christian were sort of longing toward the fulfillment of Christ.

Nadya Williams (10:55.768)
I really connected to C.S. Lewis's conversion memoir later on, surprised by joy, because I thought his story was in many ways similar to my own. And he was ch he also converted in his early 30s. And so in his story, what he tells is all his childhood he read these old myths, not just Greek and Roman, but all sorts, and they terrified him. He had night terrors, nightmares.

And then eventually when he came to Christ, he realized like all of this was, these were stories. They were just not complete. There were echoes and longings. And his own desire to immerse himself in these myths was a longing ultimately for Christ. And in my case, reading Greek literature, and then it's precisely because I had studied Greek to read, you know, Greek tragedy and Homer and so on that I could read.

the New Testament and find it so powerful and moving and realize these people too had known their Homer. They had read tragedy and they too found Christ and just realizing like we're thinking on the same wavelength, 2,000 years apart.

Christine Perrin (12:13.934)
Can you explain to what extent those myths are true and to what extent Christianity is also a true myth?

Nadya Williams (12:24.238)
I don't know if I would describe Christianity a true myth, but I think all these myths, what they have is an echo of something really really powerful that is true at its heart. They are searching for something. And at the most obvious level, they recognize that the world is broken and is in need of a savior. So every time I read, for instance, it's especially clear in Greek tragedy where there is something.

really awful that the characters cannot overcome. And they wish there were a cure. And really, you see, the cure is the brokenness of the world around them, their own brokenness, and also the sin and brokenness of people around them. And what Christianity does is give an answer to something, to a question that so many of them ask like, what is there beyond this? Like, is there anything an answer to all this suffering?

Like what is the meaning of it? And can there be something better? And this is where Christ comes in and says, Yes, I am.

Christine Perrin (13:34.03)
Could you talk a little bit about the role that the tragedies played in ancient cultures and whether or not we have anything like that taking that place or even approaching that in our current American culture?

Nadya Williams (13:55.65)
You know, in a strange way, watching the news or scrolling the news is kind of like watching tragedy, at least in subject matter. Like we suffer, we weep with people we don't even know. which is right and true because like we f feel compassion for them. We are moved to tears by really awful news stories. Although also joyful news stories can make us delight. Of course, the setting is different from the communal setting.

So, what tragedies did in the ancient world was have this communal setting where citizens could gather together and process a story on stage together. And that togetherness is really something we have largely lost. There's nothing today that all of us, like every single member of society, would watch. there are no common books that we all read. historian Mark Knoll.

When he wrote about the Bible in American culture, he called it America's book because for a couple hundred years it was America's book. anybody, not even even people who might not describe themselves as devout Christians knew the Bible enough to refer to it. But this no longer is the case as b biblical literacy is on decline. So we don't have a common book, we don't have a common

experience except perhaps the news that all of us process. And that's a pity. We really could use a cultural artifact like that to bring everyone together. But that's where parents who are resorting to like these old tools like the classics or great literature, great books, education, it has the power at least to bring that sort of shared language for

certain segments of the population.

Christine Perrin (15:56.056)
wondering if you think Hamilton, even the musical, even approaches some of what it would have been like to see a tragedy together in the ancient world. And I'm wondering also if you could kind of explain what people did, you know, when this happened, how they did it together, and what role it played in their civic life.

Nadya Williams (16:22.572)
Yeah. So we have the sense that more people went to see the plays in classical Athens in the democracy than to do any other duty of democratic citizens like vote or show up to citizen assemblies. I hope more people vote in America than have seen Hamilton, but but it is perhaps a good example of

Something that did bring people together, at least to some extent. But with Hamilton, one prohibiting factor is that it's a production that you have to buy tickets for and all that. So economically, like certain families, for instance, would never go see it. Now, in Athens, the plays were free to all citizens. This was one of the perks. Like your taxes are doing well, not exactly people,

Athens didn't have taxes the way we do. But the point is the perks of being a citizen of Athens entitled you to going to see these plays. And the whole idea was that here you are side by side with all other citizens, rich, poor, farmers from the countryside who come in for the entertainment, and the rich city tradespeople who are always there, and so on. So like the great

equalizer kind of space where absolutely everyone of all like social classes could be together for an evening multiple times per year seeing these plays. And Aristotle in his art of poetry describes this catharsis of pity and fear that happens when people do this together. And I think of it, and perhaps it's a little oversimplifying, but group therapy.

When you all experience something together, you see something awful, and everybody feels the same emotions at the same time in real time as they see this unfold on stage. And it's so powerful. It is that group therapy, if you will, where you then keep dwelling on it for days to come. And ideally, the Athenians thought it made you a better citizen because you felt these emotions. Like

Nadya Williams (18:46.38)
The jokes, the meme today that men will do anything other than go to therapy. Well, in Athens, they went to see the tragedies.

Christine Perrin (18:54.51)
That is fantastic. It also suggests that certain emotions were meant to respond to things in certain ways. And even though the Greeks and the Romans had different ideas about what we ought to respond to, that was maybe an idea that has lost some traction. We live in a culture that sort of says, do you. Greek and Rome had more of a

We do us, not that there wasn't corruption and all kinds of problems. You make that so clear. I appreciate, I really appreciate in this book, the way that you balance all the forces. You're not idealizing, which can happen in the classical Christian education renewal. There can be an idealization of Roman Greece. You're not doing that in the least. You're loving it.

But you're also letting it tell us things about ourselves that we might miss. And I'm wondering what this setup of a culture that has common tragedies, common emotions, common conversation that's crafted and meant to work on us and make a comment about public morality.

What do you think we're missing by not having that and what would we have to give up in order to have it? I mean, it's not just a matter of somebody paying for Hamilton, right?

Nadya Williams (20:28.492)
No, I think I think you're right. It's it's a lot more, it's a cultural shift. I think we're missing joy like in each other, as neighbors, as people. it's as you mentioned, we're just very isolated. So the whole you do you mentality is very much a giving up on the civic body as a body. It's the whole idea that we can all be isolated units in this sort of like looser, larger body.

But that's all that there is. And it's a rejection of a possibility for conversation. I mean, the whole point is conversations take something from us. Like this conversation, which is so delightful, took you, Christine, doing all this reading, preparing thoughtful questions. And it took both of us blocking off time to think through issues, to gather together and to talk. It also requires being vulnerable because.

Like you might ask a question that could be difficult for me to answer. And the whole point is like I'm accepting like it's still going to be worthwhile to talk through these things together. And really, all conversations, even the ones we take for granted, take these things from us. We just don't think through the nuts and bolts of it because the ones that are easy are easy, but the ones that are hard, we're not putting the effort to make these conversations happen.

But the whole point, what we see with the Athenian democracy, which to be fair is a small city, like tiny by modern standards, where citizens were able to have these conversations. And it still wasn't the ideal democracy, but it was able to keep going on together for as long as it did, precisely because these conversations happened. And today, I think the closest we could get to that is by restoring functional neighborhoods and communities.

Whether locally or or locally with a combination of finding your people. Like I think about this with the mom friends that I ri regularly gather together. our kids play. Why are we friends? Well, we like each other, but also our kids like each other. So that's sort of like that's our community. But as part of this community, believe it or not, books come into play. We're having a book club this winter. We're actually reading Paul Kingsnorth's.

Nadya Williams (22:56.558)
trilogy as yeah apocalyptic mom's book club. It was the winter is dark nights, which call for good snacks and like depressing books. So sure. But the whole point is we do this together. And none of us had none of us felt like we wanted to read those books alone.

Christine Perrin (23:16.706)
That is an excellent recommendation for our listeners. I like, you know, sometimes I think even for myself, talking to you and thinking about the journey that you've taken through language and education and book writing and teaching, you know, full time for 15 years and running an MFA program, I could just say, well, that's you.

I haven't achieved that. What do you have to offer me? But I hear what you just offered, which is, first of all, find a few people who are doing what you do and get together with them. And secondly, find something in common that could enrich your conversation. A book, an article, you have many articles on many platforms. Dispatch was one that I was...

reading through as I was preparing for this. You have your own sub stack. So I mean, even people just reading an article and getting together to talk or getting together to have the kids play and talk and eat good snacks on a dark winter's day. It's a way of creating a common culture. And I think that's what I hear you praising in the Athenians and maybe regretting. And yet,

nobly or just like with your little, you use the image of seeds, planting a few seeds that could grow into something, even just an echo of that.

Nadya Williams (24:59.822)
Absolutely. And before we idealize Athenians too much, I will remind listeners who are women, you would not have been invited to these tragedies. Like that's the thing. The citizens were all men. Women were left out of the intellectual citizen life of the city.

Christine Perrin (25:16.792)
Okay, I'm so glad you turned our conversation to that point. And this is all in my head, even though I have pages and pages of notes of your words, but I love the fact that you essentially say, you know, if I were in that culture, you're nearsighted, you have Jewish ancestry, you're a woman, I can't remember what else you named, but you would not.

be a full participant. one thing that has come home to you in reading the classics and becoming a Christian is that Christianity is a humanizing vision, particularly for women and children. Could you say more about that?

Nadya Williams (26:03.53)
Yeah. So when we think of the ancient world, if we idealize just like the beautiful buildings, the incredible writers who are incredible, all of this, like this very lasting long lasting culture, we're leaving out the fact that this culture was based on a hierarchy. Every person in this well ordered world had a place. And the hierarchy meant that men, especially aristocratic men,

We're at the top of the pyramid. So if you envision a pyramid, the emperor, of course, is at the top. below that, you have really well-connected, wealthy, aristocratic men, and you keep going down the pyramid. And at the very bottom, you will have slaves and women. And women would be probably just above the slaves. So that's kind of as far as having a voice in this culture, that's that's what it was, this hierarchy. And when Christ

Came and we see we see the earliest stories of converts. What we see is this idea that everybody was welcome. The reason Paul is so upset with the Corinthians, so the first epistle to the Corinthians, where he talks about how they are not doing the Lord's Supper right, is because they're practicing the same hierarchy in the Lord's Supper that traditional Roman meals would have practiced. He's essentially saying, You're acting as Romans in church. Like,

So in the Roman banquet, people would be seated according to hierarchy, that hierarchy of status, which means the lowest ranked could be welcomed into the room, but you serve them the worst food and and or the least of it. In Christian gatherings, everybody is equal because we're all made in God's image and God loves all of us. And suddenly that throws out the whole basis of Roman society out the window. And I think this is something that

Some Romans at least understood, which is why they were so upset with Christianity, because it seems like, well, this is so pacifist, such a simple kind of gathering. Why not leave these people alone? But the whole point is they were entirely against the whole order of society on which Rome had been built so successfully.

Christine Perrin (28:19.458)
That is a profound difference. A lot of times I think we're used to, I don't know how old you are, I'm almost 58. And I grew up in a time where really cultures were considered very equal and we didn't judge their differences or even name them. And so you're saying like these are two very different value systems.

that don't let you say it's all basically the same. Thinking in particular of what kinds of feelings we were supposed to have in Greek and Roman culture towards those who had misfortune, widows, orphans, the poor, the disabled, what kind of compassion were we meant to cultivate towards those groups?

Nadya Williams (28:53.432)
They're not.

Nadya Williams (29:17.464)
That is a really poignant question that gets at the heart of that difference. Because the reason we feel compassion today, I will say up front, is because we've had 2,000 years of Jesus and his sayings teaching us that compassion. In the Roman world, the whole idea was the world is ordered. There's an there is a clear hierarchy that is divinely ordained. And so if someone is suffering, it is because.

It is divinely ordained or it's part of the natural order of things. If someone is starving, the Roman government had no like safety, safety nets the way we do today to make sure somebody did not die of hunger, for instance. It's a really it's a cruel world with a level of cruelty beyond anything we can even imagine.

Christine Perrin (30:07.776)
I'm told that the first social safety nets were created by Christians. In fact, one really simple one was in the Byzantine Empire, which some people call it Eastern and Western Rome, essentially. that after the liturgy, the bread that was left over the Prospera, which people would go get after they had the Eucharist.

was distributed to the poor and fed people every day. As one example of what you're talking about, could you talk about some of the particular implications for this for women and children? And also, I've read you say in certain places that you think some of those attitudes are kind of creeping back up into American culture.

Nadya Williams (31:05.704)
Yeah. So especially the devaluing of women and children. So I do see a devaluing. So a lot of language in secular publications, including as like pretty prominent ones, like the New York Times, essentially saying motherhood is selling women short or things like that, where your life is better. it's it's the you do you applied to women, like you're better off girl power if you remain unmarried, never have kids.

And just focus on your amazing career, you've got a girl. So that kind of attitude of devaluing motherhood and devaluing children is to me rings of having the same sort of like pagan attitude creeping into our world as we're losing the cultural sense of Christianity in some circles at least. And it's really awful and it's quite toxic. So

So the idea that some people are not worth it, because any declaration that your life is better without children is declaring some people are like worthless. They only take away resources. They don't give anything back to your life. And it's a very focused on you, and which is the one aspect of this hierarchy that is different from the ancient world, where the hierarchy was promulgated with the idea of

what is best for the Roman Empire, the Roman state. But it's yet another way of ranking people. And by that ranking, whenever you have a ranking, women and children will always rank lower. And in the ancient world, it was because citizenship and power was based on what could you contribute to your state in a time of war. So it was very much military connected. So wealthy people could afford their own armor.

And therefore they could serve in the military and protect their city and all that. Well, what do women and children do in a time of say siege of your city? They're just distraction. They're if they're going hysterical, and we have there's one tragedy, Aeschylus Seven against Thebes, where there are his there's a chorus of hysterical women who are terrified that their city is about to be destroyed.

Nadya Williams (33:29.972)
And they will all die. And the king is just really annoyed with them because they're disrupting his battle plans. But so like there's no compassion at all from the king. It's like they're think they're thinking they're about to die and their children will die. And the king is just like, stop being so loud. This is obnoxious. It's a very like that's a very that's the kind of attitude we see that women and children could be in the way. And what we see with Christ.

such simple declarations that we've all seen that we've kind of gloss sometimes we gloss past it when children says, when Christ says, let the children come to me. Like this is such a revolutionary statement. No one in the Roman Greek or Roman world would ever have said that.

Christine Perrin (34:14.548)
What a poignant reading of the text you have because of your knowledge of the ancient world, of that moment. I've heard that moment. I've seen it painted on walls. And yet the contrast is very bright as you describe it. I'm wondering too, I think this kind of leads into the conversation of how these attitudes create policies. And I'm thinking about

abortion and euthanasia, and then I think you even say AI in between and the kind of love of and focus on and hope in machines. Can you talk a little bit about that as a sort of, I don't want to call it neo-Pagan, but something like that, anti-image bearing commitments?

Nadya Williams (35:08.352)
Image bearers are messy. They're loud. Anyone who has spent much time with children would say that. and it's they require work. Relationships with image bearers require work, they require cultivation, whether it's the image bearers in your home or just like the people you have play dates with. all of these things require something from us. They're not big sacrifices, but they still take something out of us. They they're

at some level inconveniences. But the whole point with AI is it's this promise of you could have companionship that is as effectively like 100% on your terms. It is a companion who will never say something you don't like, who will never make a mess in your house and not clean up the toys, and who will never be loud at an inopportune time and whatever else.

And of course it's false, but that's but that's the promise. And I think it should just remind us to treasure those inconvenient moments, those noises and craziness. a good friend of mine who is a homeschool mom of four kids, she loves saying this it's a paraphrase of a proverb, but there are no oxen, the stable is clean.

And s and the her point is we have many oxen.

Christine Perrin (36:39.66)
That's fantastic. I've heard machine life and our interaction with it called frictionless. And that word friction, that I wonder if you would, for people who've kind of maybe gotten used to this frictionless life, even if they have, you know, their 1.5 children, how would you recommend sort of

dipping your toe into the messy stable or becoming a little bit more accustomed to friction.

Nadya Williams (37:18.414)
For us, the key is hospitality. Invite people into your home regularly. So we try to invite people for lunch after church on Sunday. we regularly host our play group with other moms and kids. There are several other hosts in the group. So it's not always just us, but the whole point is like every time you invite children into your home afterwards, you're going to find loose socks in various corners. It's like okay.

I don't know why people always leave my house and leave their socks behind, but anyway.

Christine Perrin (37:54.926)
How does this hospitality relate to your decision in these times of scarcity to leave a 15-year tenure-track job in history and to homeschool and do other things that you didn't think you were preparing for when you were 20?

Nadya Williams (38:21.634)
Yeah. I think life does this to all of us. Like we all have those moments and you could call it a midlife crisis of sorts, but really it and it's some in some ways it was. It was a realization that I'm I don't have that many more like years left. The it was it was this coming to realization, like coming to terms with my mortality that one of these days it will happen. I only have so many years left. Do I want to put those years

First and foremost, toward a career that at that point was starting to look increasingly depressing. All of the teaching, speaking of AI, all of the teaching was online. And it wasn't even like, it wasn't just dealing with AI, which at the time that I quit was only starting, but it was all online. I did not have interaction with human students in person. It was a really depressing job. It was a really well-paying, very depressing job. And I reached a point where I realized.

It was not worth it. I want to spend my life with real people. And we were already homeschooling our kids. So that part was not new, but choosing to step back also allowed me to do a lot more writing than I was doing before. And that's been just a blessing. And being able to be there for my kids, be there for emergencies for friends, and so on. It's really

there's something really valuable to having people who are around that you can depend on. We all have those people, hopefully, maybe not, but I hope everyone has people like that that they can depend on for emergencies. And a lot of times these are people who have a more flexible work from home schedule in that sense.

Christine Perrin (40:09.262)
I'm so helpful to hear you talk on such a range of issues. You mentioned that teaching, I mean, you just mentioned it now, that teaching online, but even when you're in person, you said, you you might be teaching the same class over and over again to first year students who are, have to take it. Or you said as well, you know, your students might be bored or

they might be using AI to write their papers or, and I'm wondering as a teacher, as you think about formation now, you're directing a writing program, an MFA. So you think a lot about craft and about the thought that a book is. As you encounter that and then you encounter the way in which the classroom and

student formation, particularly at the college level, is happening. How would you comment on that and what would you say about the machine presence in education?

Nadya Williams (41:20.462)
I think more than anything, this moment reminds us that all learning is relational. So for children who learn at home, like watching my youngest is finally like taking off in reading. She's she just turned seven and we're reading together. And what it looks like, and with each of my children, what reading, learning to read looks like is for hours over the course of years, we sit on the couch and we read books. I read aloud, but also they read aloud.

and you know, build up to that facility. So it's all about relationship. So one of the things the kids remember, my kids remember is like which books we've read together and which books a sibling read a chapter from, like every now and then, which ones I read entirely and so on. Like all of those relationships. Sometimes they remember particular snacks that we had with certain books. And so then if you reread, then it's like,

Well, we have to make hot cocoa because we always have hot cocoa with this book. So it's that relationship. And it all sounds sweet and silly and very domestic, but and it is. But also a lot of this element is applies to college learning. The reason when we think back to Socrates or Plato's Academy, it worked because it was a pretty small environment where everybody knew their teacher, had access to their teacher, had conversations with their teacher and with each other.

And so today, I think the small colleges with tiny classrooms that are still able to do this and I think stand the best chance of resisting AI are the places where students and their professors still have that conversational regular relationship where they can talk about questions, where students feel comfortable dropping by office hours later and asking something maybe very difficult that is only tangentially related to the class. It's

The places where formation, character formation, spiritual formation can happen in not quite one-on-one tutorial model, but something that is about as close to it as we can possibly get. And that's what it takes. It's very easy to use AI if you are part of a 500-person lecture class where you know that your professor is not even grading you. It's the TAs. And you probably don't really feel like you have access to the professor and so on.

Nadya Williams (43:42.114)
Learning is very relational and personal, and I would hope at its best AI could push us to recover that.

Christine Perrin (43:49.678)
That is a really helpful observation. I'm wondering if part of what's embedded in what you're saying is that there's an ethics and a morality to the way that we've scaled education and that parents and students thinking about, this worth it? know, is this $50,000, $80,000, whatever it is, a dollar a year price tag worthwhile?

It sounds to me like you're saying only if you have access to your professor, only if you can have a relationship. Otherwise, you know, it's a certificate that you can get in other ways. I mean, I know people who went to coding school or, you know, did other things to get the content they needed. Would you comment on scale and on maybe the factory mindset that's overtaken education?

Nadya Williams (44:46.71)
Yeah, I've thought a lot about that, especially in like our context of homeschooling for my family. But also I'll tell you another story that illustrates how this works. So the university where my husband and I used to teach, where I taught for 13 of my 15 years in higher ed before this, it has the same SAT SAT scores and high school GPA profile for freshmen as does Ashland University. But the graduation rate.

For students at Ashland University is significantly higher.

Christine Perrin (45:21.11)
interesting.

Nadya Williams (45:22.572)
And I think it's that precise thing where students who at a larger state university, I mean it's a large state university, at a large state university simply get overwhelmed and there aren't enough tools to help them, and they feel like a cog in a machine. Now, this is not to say large state universities are bad. They're not. They're wonderful for the right type of student. But a lot of students simply get lost as a cog in a machine. And that's the whole thing with the industrial.

like mindset applied to education, some students will always be fine, but some are not. And that's where like smaller colleges, so seeing the success here at a small university, a private university, that is very much like their emphasis on pulling those students to the f finish line without compromising educational integrity is very admirable.

Christine Perrin (45:56.824)
Yes.

Christine Perrin (46:21.684)
Seems like there's so many questions jumbling around in my head, but I'm going to go to this podcast focuses in particular on living patterns. And I've heard you say in this time that we've talked, but also in your writing about several patterns that you've established in your life. One is sitting on the couch reading aloud with snacks and having your children read aloud.

Another is writing a little bit every day, even if it's during bath time, with your husband doing bath time. Another is hospitality, inviting people into your home, even if it's not, well, particularly because it's not Martha Stewart ready. Another that you've mentioned is reading.

with the people that are your friends so that you have a common language and culture and thought life. Those are remarkable patterns already. We don't need you to say any more. You could maybe encourage people that don't have those patterns or maybe just talk a little bit about patterns because I think

One of your points about writing is you can do a lot over time with small deposits.

Nadya Williams (47:49.024)
Yeah, that's the one where I talk about buckets and spoon spoons that you can feel you can fill up a bucket with a spoon. And that's I think that's a great, perhaps the most encouraging image I can offer people who are trying to start a new habit. And start small, like start something. And one thing I see with my kids, like starting a habit means you do something two or three days in a row.

With small children, if you do something two or three days in a row, it becomes this thing that they expect. And it's a really wonderful like encouragement to all of us that we can start new habits. Pick one thing that would be helpful for you in this season and start it. And it requires it requires a little lift, like to begin with. You know, like if you've never, if you've never been in a habit of hosting

play groups or something. It does take texting a bunch of people and saying at such an on this day and time, anybody who can make it is welcome. And it feels a little scary at first. But these things are so worth it.

Christine Perrin (48:57.23)
Are you transparent about the help that you need from your friends? Like if you need them to bring something to eat or, I don't know, take over some aspect of what's happening during that time. Has it taken you a while to ask for that or name that?

Nadya Williams (49:15.576)
I actually have not had to ask because people usually bring something. Okay. So a lot of times. And if somebody is in a hurry and couldn't bring something that week, like which sometimes could be me, it's totally fine. Like it's always but it's it's what it's what is easiest, like a bag of chips or something. Like hospitality doesn't have to be fancy. I think maybe what's destroyed hospitality is the expectation that it needs to be really upscale and

Christine Perrin (49:19.758)
Hmm.

Nadya Williams (49:45.088)
lovely and your home has been cleaned by somebody other than the 10-year-old before the guests arrive. And no, like chances are your your friends with children will not notice the crumbs in the corner. And if they do, they will probably think, yes, I've got this. I've got this accoutrement too.

Christine Perrin (50:05.646)
I'm at home. I belong here. Well, it sounds to me that you have a lot of hope on the basis of your faith, but also on the basis of your long learning about habit, that you can do small things in a life and it will make a difference. And I'm wondering,

How do you transfer that hope to the civic realm where we're so fractured and in our echo chambers and fencing off so much of the time now, not ready to listen? How do you transfer that hope to that realm? And what would you say about that given the fact that you've written extensively about this? What does it look like in practice in your life?

Nadya Williams (51:02.062)
I think I keep coming back to the Wendell Berry solution that all big national questions start local. And so like I have zero influence over people who are hundreds of miles away and are making policy decisions right now. But I have some influence in my community, in my church and in my friendships. And this is where for a lot of us we could find hope. Like if you look for it.

you will find it right here. But also like big things are made of little things. And it's true not only for our habit of how we form habits, but also for citizenship. If we are good citizens here locally and if there are other people, more other people who are good citizens locally, that's how big change can happen without somebody really noticing it even at first.

Christine Perrin (51:56.59)
How did you learn to transfer your skills as a student, a scholar, a teacher to the small people entrusted to you, that very small scale? That seems like a very challenging transition. What did you do to make it and to learn how to serve these particular people in front of you?

despite your enormous resources.

Nadya Williams (52:30.432)
It's trial and error and it's a rememb it's remembering that like if something doesn't work, it's okay. You try something else. And it really helps also that because the kids see us reading all the time, they're very bookish kids. we don't have a television at home. we might show them a movie once in a blue moon, but we basically don't do screen entertainment. So

Really, if you're bored around here, pick a book, do a puzzle, play a board game, have a conversation.

Christine Perrin (53:06.146)
And how do you conceive of, you know, we think about what we want to give people that we love, whether it's our students or our children or our friends. And we think about the fact that there's only so much time. And so we have to choose, John Senior called them good books. Some people call them great books. You know, like he was distinguishing between good books and great books.

You know, we have to choose the cream to some extent, but you don't just go and drink cream. You know, there's a kind of building up to something or even a retro engineering of how would I get to the point where I could read that? And of course, no one knows this better than you. But how do you conceive of that, you and your husband, as you think about what you want to give your children and when as well?

Nadya Williams (54:04.342)
That's a good question. And recently somebody asked me, like, would you give at what age can you give Homer, for instance, to your kids? And the answer is, my kids really like the graphic novels version of the Iliad and the Odyssey. You know, like a 10-year-old could really appreciate a graphic novel of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and there's a really good one out there. So like things like that. It's okay to use training wheels.

And eventually by like high school or early college, they're ready for the really, really serious stuff. In the meanwhile, there's a wealth of beautiful children's classics that I don't think enough people are reading that are actually a lot more challenging than most children's fair on like bookstore shelves today. Like Wind in the Willows. We love the Wind in the Willows. The vocabulary in Wind in the Willows is quite advanced, but this is a children's book.

Christine Perrin (55:00.962)
not to mention fairy tales, are a nucleus of oral culture in every culture. It's so simple, seemingly, and yet not really.

Nadya Williams (55:03.49)
Yeah.

Nadya Williams (55:14.818)
Yes. We're actually reading through Swedish fairy tales right now with our s newly seven-year-old who is just delighted. And they're so they're so lovely. They're trolls, but the trolls are not too scary. And there's this sense of morals, like in one story, the laziest boy is also the ugliest. And like there's no politically correct language in Swedish fairy tales. He's also the dumbest. But then at the end of the story, he learns to read.

And suddenly everybody thinks he's a handsome, sweet little boy. Because it turns out only only lazy children who don't know how to read are like all those other attributes. It's like, okay, well, well played Swedish fairy table.

Christine Perrin (55:57.55)
It's easy to translate. Yes. I mean, not literally translate, but to translate into our life. I'm wondering, I think I read that you said that it was quite interesting to go back to some of the classics like Homer and read them after you had become a mother. And your focus and interest in some sense changed. Can you talk about that?

Nadya Williams (56:26.614)
Yeah. So as a mom, I really I notice them maternal characters, for instance. And I feel sorrow for even the heroes, people like Achilles. Like everybody wants to admire Achilles. Like here he is, unwavering in his pursuit of glory, like immortal glory, class. but as a mom, I also like sympathize with his mom, who is thinking, like, my my child will die. He has chosen to die. And for what? And

It's really a reminder, like the emptiness of this kind of earthly glory. Hmm.

Christine Perrin (57:02.252)
You do write about that, about the meaning problem, the meaning crisis. Would you elaborate on that a little bit in terms of, obviously we understand that for you, whatever of that you tasted at age 30, you found an answer in the gospel.

in Christ. How are you thinking about the meaning crisis as you kind of look at other people and look at our culture as post-Christian or quasi post-Christian?

Nadya Williams (57:45.152)
Yeah. there's definitely there's definitely a question there. All of us have this sense that we need a meaning in our lives. And so often, so for with both abortion and euthanasia, I think these are crises of meaninglessness where you think like there's no meaning in my life as a mother, or at the other extreme when people decide there's no meaning in my life, at a certain point, these things happen and it's really

Really sad and it is again a lie. Like we should not be afraid to say this is a lie. There is meaning in your life. Now the question is, what is that meaning and have you found it? And in some cases, people have not. But I guarantee Christ has meaning for every single life. Whatever the stage, whatever the crisis, there is a meaning in there. Just because somebody has not found it in that precise moment doesn't mean that it's not there.

Christine Perrin (58:45.006)
Can you tell us what was in that stack of books that Dan recommended for you? I understand that it's an esoteric stack, but I'm still interested.

Nadya Williams (58:55.102)
so Tim Keller, Reason for God, C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, a couple of Philip Yancey books, which I now feel kind of str strange, sad emotions about after the recent revelations. But I really I found his writing really moving at that time. Empty Rite, the resurrection of the Son of God. That was in there too.

Christine Perrin (59:17.688)
Yes.

Christine Perrin (59:22.926)
We touched on this earlier, but I wonder if we could circle back just in case that recording wasn't salvageable. And that is just this echoes of Christ in reading the myths, Louis reading the Aeneid. Could you say a little bit about what relationship there is between these passionate Greek and Roman gods?

and Christ, eventually.

Nadya Williams (59:59.182)
I think these writers could see that there was something more that they couldn't quite articulate. It is possible for anyone, and we talk about this, that like there's certain kind of grace that anyone can have limit limited access to, certain knowledge without fully understanding. So even people who are not Christians could have a longing for something without being able to articulate it.

And I think that's what we see in Homer, the tragedians, and other ancient writers, the idea that there's something like just beyond the horizon that they could almost touch it, but not quite, that is there. And so that longing for glory, like why why is this? Because it seems so irrational. Why would you have this longing for glory? What does it mean? Why would you be willing to sacrifice your life for it? And it's

This understanding, a very incomplete and limited understanding of God.

Christine Perrin (01:01:05.654)
And almost as I hear you framing it, almost of immortality, That longing for glory is a sense that there is something such as immortality, even though it's not, it's a very different conception of immortality, but it's still that same perception or intuition that we will live beyond the beating of our heart.

Nadya Williams (01:01:31.82)
Yeah, but it's not quite understanding that to live that immortality means living with someone, someone eternal.

Christine Perrin (01:01:43.31)
I just want to read you a quote. You know it very well, but I want to read it to our listening audience. Reading the Gospels in Greek, this is you writing, made me weep uncontrollably in a way that nothing else ever could. Phrases, ideas, Jesus's promises, all stuck in my heart and soul, much more than simply my mind. This was no research project. Reading the Bible could never be just that.

Coming from a lifetime of reading the Greco-Roman classics, here I was learning of a God whose answer to all the pagan gods and their worshippers was, as Augustine himself once discovered in knee-bending awe, come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. I love that beautiful description of homecoming. And I am thinking about

homecoming as a theme throughout all the classic texts, Homer and the Aeneid. I've recently even done a reading of Marilyn Robinson and her notion of home as being very much about nostos and kleos. And I'm wondering how your conception of home has

evolved over the years. I'm thinking in particular of you as a child growing up in Russia, leaving Russia, going to Israel, leaving Israel, coming to the US, becoming a Christian. Could you just talk a little bit about homecoming throughout all of those way stations?

Nadya Williams (01:03:30.87)
Yeah. And that's been kind of difficult because of course it doesn't feel like home in a lot of those places. But we can also delight in places where we are just for a brief while. And I think I've experienced joy in each one of the places where I've lived. we've we've only been in Ohio for two and a half years, but there's something very that has felt like home coming here, moving here, perhaps because.

We're back in the land of snow and I really missed snow. Although we're getting perhaps more than we bar bargained for this winter.

Christine Perrin (01:04:06.862)
Do you trace that to growing up in Russia? where were you in Russia? Where did you grow up while you were there for 10 years?

Nadya Williams (01:04:16.178)
Leningrad now, St. Petersburg. So every picture of me as a child is in a big snow suit where you can barely like see my nose, but nothing else.

Christine Perrin (01:04:25.24)
Are there other things that sort of cling to you, like tastes or sounds that you think you probably carried from those places with you?

Nadya Williams (01:04:37.656)
Birch trees. I just have this love of birch trees. And I hadn't seen one in decades. And then when I saw one, the first my my husband grew up in Maine. And so the first time he took me to Maine when we were dating to meet his parents and we saw birch trees and I just started crying because it was this so emotional. And then we moved into our house in Ohio and turns out there's a birch tree on the front lawn.

Christine Perrin (01:05:03.722)
what a kiss that is. And so you're telling me that despite this dramatically peripatetic childhood, because I had one too, but not so dislocating as yours of starting from ground zero again each time, that you have found a way to feel at home now.

Nadya Williams (01:05:30.55)
Yes. And I think your point about habits certainly helps. And that's where kind of making friends really anchors you in a place. And church, of course.

Christine Perrin (01:05:42.784)
Yes. I'm going to read you another quote about motherhood. You quote someone in one of your articles saying, didn't want to compartmentalize my life. I wanted to integrate my life. And then you also reference Sir Delonge, and I'll read that quote too. Intellectual motherhood is not a contradiction in terms

is just that the intellectual life of a homemaker mother will look drastically different from anything you might see described in productivity books, most of them written by men for men. Even one of my personal favorite, Sir Talanje's brilliant The Intellectual Life, Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, is sure to drive a mother of small children to tears and existential despair. I'm interested in hearing you comment on that.

The place that this came to me was through your article on Betty Friedan and the fact that you were saying, we don't have to compartmentalize these. And I'm wondering in general if you would say that that compartmentalization is something that's been imposed on women and that part of maybe a different wave of feminism is

decompartmentalizing and being willing to do this integration process.

Nadya Williams (01:07:15.938)
Think that's a beautiful way to phrase that, decompartmentalizing. And the quotation about Surtalange Surtillange and driving oneself crazy from reading him is actually from Laura Fabricki, who's a wonderful mother and writer as well. And what I appreciate is what I see in my life is that if I read with my kids, if I do things with my kids, it is very intellectually rewarding to me. And

What I think Fridan missed is that there is such beauty and potential for intellectual engagement if you actually interact with your children. There is this sense of like looking down on kids in some in some way in her writing that they're just not worth this time. That if you spend time with adults, it's going to be good. If you spend time with kids, not so much. And my whole point in like, don't comportmentalize your life this way is.

All the people in your life are precious. They're precious in God's eyes. They're also precious to you, chances are, which is why they're in your life. And so why would we not delight in the time we spend with our kids? And it's kind of an intellectual snobbery that, like, I mean, should should we only spend time with people who have read, you know, have a prerequisites list? Like, here's a list of books you have to have read to be my friend. No. Even that is actually no.

Absolutely not.

Christine Perrin (01:08:45.069)
That's a really insightful point. I want to give you a chance to say anything that we have not yet touched on, but that you're bursting to say, and then to give people a sense of where they can find you after they've listened to this and want to hear more.

Nadya Williams (01:09:04.216)
Do something every day. Just little things are just so powerful. And I've said this before, I think in this conversation, but little changes. Like if you want, if you're longing for something, like say a richer intellectual life, for instance, or start start writing, do a little bit every day. And it doesn't have to be much.

Christine Perrin (01:09:24.782)
Would you comment on people that are feeling tired of the factory model of education and kind of where they would start that do something every day in that realm?

Nadya Williams (01:09:36.568)
Think about what really delights you. And so, and like go from there, like what gives you joy? What kind of books, or if you've always dreamed of learning something? Like so often I have conversations and people say, I've always dreamed of learning like X or Y. It's like, well, you could start and it's just 15 minutes a day and it adds up.

Christine Perrin (01:10:00.366)
That's such an encouraging note to end on. You have a sub stack and it's your name, Nadia Williams. Tell us some of the places where people can find your writing. You also have a website. Tell us the name of that.

Nadya Williams (01:10:16.29)
website I is just NadiaWilliams.com, but I don't do a lot with the website. So the Substack is the most kind of up-to-date roundup usually. you can contact me through the website. I write regularly for Muir Orthodoxy, where I am book's editor. So this is an encouraging place. And I I think a lot of people would find like-minded voices there as well. And I write regularly for various other places. So

Like the dispatch or Christianity today and so on and so forth.

Christine Perrin (01:10:50.336)
a podcast called Christians Reading Classic.

Nadya Williams (01:10:54.112)
Yes. It's a mere orthodoxy as well.

Christine Perrin (01:10:57.774)
Okay, which podcast episode would you recommend people start with?

Nadya Williams (01:11:04.206)
There are so many good ones in the first season. I think moms would especially appreciate the Winnie the Pooh episode because it's a conversation with two homeschool moms, and we ended up going on a deep dive on child development and why Winnie the Pooh speaks to some children and perhaps not as much to others.

Christine Perrin (01:11:22.722)
Wonderful. And then your books. You have three books that are published. So people can also read your books. What book do you have in the making that's coming?

Nadya Williams (01:11:35.48)
So I just turned in at the end of 2025, I turned in the manuscript for Christian bibliophilia. How do we as people of God love books differently than other people who have loved books? Because books are lovable. Everybody wants to write. Everybody th knows that to pursue glory, you have to write things down. So from Gilgamesh on, so I I'm excited to be working on that and it will be coming.

In spring twenty twenty seven.

Christine Perrin (01:12:06.146)
And I can say as well, for those of you wanting to sort of dip your toes in to some of the books that you sort of feel embarrassed that you haven't read or maybe you don't even know what the list is, this really is such a helpful book. It has a timeline in the beginning. It has a table of contents that takes you through writers that have come from

the Greek-Roman, Greek-Greco-Roman world. And Nadia makes them so accessible. So she gives you the content, but she also gives you the humor and even the foibles of the various writers and the culture. It's in no way a kind of utopian idealistic book. It's very down to earth. There's bathroom humor.

everything you can imagine. I highly recommend this recent book. And Nadia, I'm so very grateful to you for opening your life to us and giving us so many places to begin. Thank you.

Nadya Williams (01:13:22.35)
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to do this.

Christine Perrin (01:13:28.354)
You've been listening to Composed with Christine Perrin, a podcast of the Humanitas Institute about composing well-lived lives of virtue, craft, community, and delight.