Virtue in the Wasteland Podcast
325 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 5 years ago - ★★★★★ - 230 ratingsCulture, religion and ideas that matter.
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Episodes
Missions to Hawaiians and Native Americans
June 16, 2015 00:00 - 1 hour - 114 MBAnother show in the Wrong Side of History series, we sit down with a native Hawaiian and a missionary to the Navaho Nation to discuss the ways in which Western Christians have made mistakes, but also some positive contributions, to first nations people around the world, especially in US states and territories. De Lude III (Native Hawaiian) serves the Native Hawaiian people on the island of O’ahu, the third largest and most densely populated island comprising the state. Having received his mas...
Sex Drugs and Country Music with Sam Outlaw
June 09, 2015 00:00 - 1 hour - 118 MBLA Country music, religion, hipsters, and making sincere music. samoutlaw.com virtueinthewasteland.com
Summer Reading
June 02, 2015 00:00 - 1 hour - 92.3 MBMusic and book suggestions to change things up for you this summer. Don't get into a rut. We created a playlist on spotify to sample some of the stuff we mention: https://play.spotify.com/user/virtueinthewasteland/playlist/6DfJ5Lp4JWdYQhCPDdjVkI You can find a full list of readings on our website: virtueinthewasteland.com
Climate Change
May 26, 2015 00:00 - 1 hour - 107 MBClimate change, desertification, ethics, ecology, fisheries, and caring for our neighbors around the world. Dr. Bignmami is a marine biologist, specializing in the relationship between fish and the acidity of our oceans. Another episode with the "wrong side of history" theme. virtueinthewasteland.com
Architecture of Your Life
May 19, 2015 00:00 - 1 hour - 99.1 MBIf we look at our landscapes, our cities, our churches, and our homes, we can tell what we value. Indeed, we can determine who our real gods are. From cathedrals to bank buildings, we have, as a race, shifted our allegiances (sometimes from God to mammon). Dan and Jeff banter about Mirecea Eliade, the layout of a home, and though we only use the term once: cultural Feng Shui.
Graduation Special 2
May 12, 2015 00:00 - 1 hour - 94.9 MBCommencement speaches tend to be salads of platitudes and cliches. But one great one was offered by David Foster Wallace ("This is Water"). We share our advice to students who graduate this year, but also to anyone who wants to reset, wake up, and live well.
The Crusades
May 05, 2015 00:00 - 1 hour - 92.9 MBFighting, our fights, and the Crusades. This is part of our recent theme: "The Wrong Side of History." Historian and scholar of Islam, Adam Francisco (a Faithful Mask Fellow) joins us to reset our understanding of the history and legacy of the crusades.
Taboos and Religious Identity
April 28, 2015 00:00 - 1 hour - 97 MBWe bring Rev. Dr. C. J. Armstrong back to help unpack the ways in which religious communities and other groups maintain their identity, struggle with welcoming outsiders and maintaining identity, and appear to the outside world. We go into the concept of taboos in Freud and Alasdair MacInytre, and spend some time giving a brief history of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod, as a case study for this topic.
Picking Your Battles
April 21, 2015 00:00 - 43 minutes - 64 MBThis is a brief show that we hope to elaborate on later. (Dan's edit: a show on which we wish to elaborate later). In some ways it was occasioned by a comment by Jesse Nigro, posted to a . How is it that two guys in a conservative and sometimes prickly denomination are simultaneously irenic. We ultimately argue that by being confident in our confession, we can be in dialog with people from radically different perspectives. It's not that we jump on the fad of the hour, but rather that becau...
The Stories We Tell
April 14, 2015 00:00 - 58 minutes - 87 MBNarrative, fiction, stories, and myth. Why do stories matter? What do they say about society and ideology. Come find out. We mention Casey Abrams, George Washington, Cato, Into the Woods, John Milbank, Radical Orthodoxy, postliberalism, Turretin, ACTC, Stephen Jay Gould, and Enlightenment.
Dating
April 07, 2015 00:00 - 1 hour - 99.5 MBHow should we talk to our children about dating? How should we date ourselves? Dr. C. J. Armstrong comes along for the mellow ride, as a chapperone. Courtship, love, romance, sex, adolescence, and flirtation.
The Sin of Onan
March 31, 2015 00:00 - 1 hour - 132 MBOnanism is an old word for masturbation. Why? What is the historical background to the ways in which the church has understood sexuality, the body, what is normal, and how to talk to young people about sexuality. We discuss the origins of the Graham cracker, grain based cereal, and 19th century health fads. This is the first in a series of shows dedicated to evaluating whether the church has been on the wrong side of history and learning how we can apply lessons from the past to our cultura...
Outside Ramblings
March 24, 2015 00:00 - 43 minutes - 68.3 MBDon't listen to this one first, if you've never heard the show before. We've been busy, so this show checks in and answers some mail that's been piling up. Is Dan really a Republican? What have we been reading? Why are we in LA?
Pilgrimage to Selma
March 17, 2015 00:00 - 1 hour - 130 MBHear what some sharp students and Faithful Masks Fellow Dr. Kristen Koenig have to say about hearing President Obama at the 50th anniversary of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Martin Luther King Jr., Al Sharpton, Barack Obama, Rosa Young, Concordia Alabama, and more. This is episode 114. virtueinthewasteland.com http://www.ccal.edu
Shibboleth
March 10, 2015 00:00 - 1 hour - 121 MBA discussion of political, cultural, or religious code words and signs that separate the in group from the out group. virtueinthewasteland.com
Overcoming the Absurd
March 03, 2015 00:00 - 1 hour - 88.4 MBDr. Uwe Siemon-Netto, author of Triumph of the Absurd, discusses ways in which we can apply lessons from Vietnam for today's crises.
Introvert Uprising
February 23, 2015 00:44 - 1 hour - 107 MBIntroverts, introversion, C. G. Jung, dreams, and how to live an optimal life as an introvert or someone who loves an introvert. What is the MBTI test and does it matter? Should it lock us in to patterns of life? Dr. Cosgrove is a Prof. of Psychology at Concordia University Irvine. virtueinthewasteland.com This is episode #111.
Giving Up
February 17, 2015 01:00 - 1 hour - 93.7 MBWe're not giving up on this show. But we are talking about ways in which giving something up for a time might be good for us. Just days after Valentine's Day, we ask what's up with Lent? Is it worth giving a shot? Even if we aren't Roman Catholic? Or even religous at all? Jeff explains why he has recently changed his favorite holiday from Ash Wednesday to an unlikely day on the calendar (for him). Dan goes deep into major artists in popular culture, like REM and the Pixies. Listen to f...
50 Shades of Love
February 14, 2015 01:44 - 1 hour - 95.2 MBA Valentine's day bonus. Sociologist Kristen Koenig joins us to deconstruct relationships in contemporary culture, the holiday called Valentine's day, the nature of passion, eros, love, commitment, and our era's dissolution. This is episode #109 virtueinthewasteland.com
Hope
February 10, 2015 01:00 - 1 hour - 90.2 MBWe try to move past the meaninglessness of some ideologies, past the cheap hope of the positive thinking movement, and on to a path to hope. We have an ethical obligation to hope until its last embers have been extinguished. Patience, friends. Things are going to be fine. There's a crack in everything, as Leonard Cohen says, but that's how the light gets through. This is episode 108. virtueinthewasteland.com faithfulmasks.org
Bindis at Coachella with Jenn Koiter
February 03, 2015 01:00 - 1 hour - 125 MBJenn Koiter shares her poetry with us as we discuss her nonprofit work in India, the value of poetry, the problems of poverty tourism and cultural appropriation, suffering, sex trafficking in Asia, Zen, and why one might stick with their Western spiritual heritage through it all. We did not censor this episode, though even grandma should find it tame overall. This is episode 106. virtueinthewasteland.com
Usury and Debt
January 26, 2015 23:00 - 1 hour - 136 MBLending with interest in European history, Adam Smith, social ethics, borrowing, debt, greed, and cash societies. The song we play at the break is "Gimme Some Money" by the spoof band Spinal Tap.
Silence
January 19, 2015 22:04 - 1 hour - 140 MBShūsaku Endō, his Tanizaki Prize winning novel Silence, when mentors disappoint you, Jesuits, the Catholic mission to Japan in the early modern era, Francis Xavier, Martin Scorsesse, Pure Land Buddhism, Jodo Shu, Jodo Shinshu, faith, doubt, martyrdom, and the silence of God in the midst of suffering and abandonment. We won't give any spoilers till after the music break. Check out other wasteland companions if you dig this sort of thing.
Antiwisdom
January 13, 2015 01:00 - 1 hour - 115 MBWhat is anti-wisdom? What is it's purpose? How does it inform our spirituality, emotions, ethics, and philosophy? Job and Ecclesiastes are examples in the Hebrew Bible. They deal with themes that assist us during times when conventional wisdom can't help us.
The Interview
January 06, 2015 01:00 - 1 hour - 102 MBWe discuss the recent film by James Franco and Seth Rogan, its cultural effects, and its international implications. We discuss the difficulty of liking things on facebook that have ideological baggage. We share our new year's resolutions for each other. Episode 102
Disobey
December 28, 2014 13:00 - 1 hour - 117 MBShelley, Thoreau, Ferguson, the police, the law, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ideology, Žižek, and our post-Christmas depression.
The Sociology of Kristmas
December 21, 2014 13:00 - 1 hour - 119 MBFor our hundredth episode, we discuss the sociology and cultural implications of Christmas traditions in the west. Joining us are Faithful Mask Fellows, Dr. Koenig (a sociologist) and Dr. Armstrong (a classics scholar and occasional pulpit jockey). This one gets a bit giddy and a tad out of hand, since we recorded at the end of a semester and were celebrating the fact that we hit 100.
ViW75 Optimize Yourself
December 14, 2014 13:00 - 1 hour - 114 MBThis isn't your normal self-help conversation. Dr. Lu is brutally honest. He is all about research and not so much of the fluff. But we can learn some things about parenting, continuous improvement, setting realistic and motivating goals, and letting go of our egos.
ViW74 Christmas Movies
December 07, 2014 13:00 - 1 hour - 106 MBWe run down the top 10 christmas films, what they say about our culture, and the message they have for us about life together, overcoming the grinches in our world and virtue. We definitely will hit on It's A Wonderful Life and Christmas Vacation. Will your favorite make the list? Will Charlie Brown?
ViW72 A Very Pagan Christmas
November 30, 2014 13:00 - 52 minutes - 78.7 MBThe pagan roots of Christmas and other reflections on the greatest holiday around.
ViW72b The Vocation of a Scientist with Dr. Angus Menuge
November 26, 2014 13:00 - 1 hour - 104 MBPhilosopher of science Dr. Angus Menuge joins us to talk about the vocation of a scientist, especially that of a scientist who is also religious. Prof. Dan Deen (Concordia University, Irvine), another philosopher of science is along for the expedition. We talk about new atheism, virtue, epistemology, science, biology, physics, paradigms, theories, and Motörhead (that's right). Dr. Menuge is professor of philosophy at Concordia University Wisconsin and is the president of the Evangelical Ph...
ViW71 I Wish I Knew How To Quit You
November 23, 2014 13:00 - 53 minutes - 80.2 MBWe talk NFL, explain why we've been wrestling with immigration, share some stories about our week, and end by applying philosopher of science, Ian Barbour's four transparadigmatic criteria to NFL viewing and other indulgences. Just Dan and Jeff between classes. Enjoy the expedition.
Immigration Amnesty and Child Refugees
November 16, 2014 13:00 - 1 hour - 83.2 MBIn anticipation of President Obama's executive action related to immigration and Central American Child Refugees, Joe Laughon of Café Con Leche Republicans returns to the show to discuss the controversial idea of opening the US borders. Is it possible that it is in our economic and moral interest to do so? What about communism and radical Islam? What about drugs? What about the burden of social service resources? Come with an open mind and feel free to disagree and remain friends with ou...
ViW70 Rwanda Two Decades Later
November 09, 2014 13:00 - 1 hour - 59.6 MBSurvivor of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Alex Nsengimana tells of his experiences during the bloodshed, from the vantage point of the capital city. He also shares his story of transformation and hope. He currently works with Operation Christmas Child, a project of Samaritan's Purse.
ViW69 Underworld Travel Guide
November 02, 2014 14:40 - 1 hour - 89.8 MBWhile Dan is out speaking at the Teigen Reformation Lectures, classicist and biblical scholar, Dr. C. J. Armstrong sits down with Jeff to trace the theme of the hero's journey to the underworld and back. What does it look like? Can we fight against death. Why does the Apostle's Creed say that Jesus descended into hell? Listen in and find out.
ViW68 Be Afraider
October 26, 2014 12:00 - 1 hour - 90.8 MBOur second spooktacular. This is a show about stuff you should be more afraid of than you are. Dan shares the biggest fears of friends and experts. Jeff shares his recipe for a mini-bug-out-bag, should the apocalypse arise. Dr. CJ Armstrong joins the wasteland gents at the end to bring a word of comfort in the face of fear and death. Jeff reads a moving passage from Peter Berger's book A Rumor of Angels.
ViW67 Mailing It In
October 19, 2014 12:00 - 1 hour - 55.1 MBWe mail it in. We were going to a basketball game, so why not? We talk about mailing it in. If you find the audio quality distracting, come back next week, when we'll be back in studio.
ViW66b Furniture Zen with Tucker Kaas
October 15, 2014 12:00 - 1 hour - 77.1 MBTucker Kaas, from Kaas Tailored (kaastailored.com) talks about quality, ethical business practices, beauty, reduction of waste, kai zen, continuous improvement, vocation, Design on Stock, and the good life.
ViW66 Left Behind with Dr. Amy Frykholm
October 12, 2014 12:00 - 1 hour - 76.5 MBRapture culture rapping with Dr. Amy Frykholm, writer for and associate editor with the Christian Century, and author of Rapture Culture, Julian of Norwich: A Contemplative Biography, and See Me Naked: Stories of Sexual Exile in American Christianity. We talk about Nicolas Cage, dispensationalism, the rapture, eschatology, the recent film adaption of the books, the way gender plays into the book series, American religion, popcorn, paper planes, and happiness. We had a lot of fun with this one.
ViW65b Regimes and Genocide
October 05, 2014 12:00 - 1 hour - 80.4 MBWe explore the nature and history of evil regimes, their ability to kill people on large scales, and how to oppose such things with Marc Thomas Voss, a historian and German language instructor, who is completing his doctoral work on this topic in Germany. Hitler, Stalin, Polpot, oh my. Bonus b-sides are shows where we go deep into content with a professor or a professional in some specialized field.
ViW65 Africa - The Good The Bad and The Beautiful
September 28, 2014 12:00 - 1 hour - 54.1 MBSouth Africa, Yoruba, Christianity, excommunication, Nelson Mandela, women in African society, racism in America and one superb woman: Nokukhanya Shabalala. We play a clip from Micah Bournes.
ViW64 The State of Nature
September 21, 2014 12:00 - 56 minutes - 45.8 MBThis one is a messy but relaxed discussion of the big question of human culture: are we basically violent and chaotic, or cooperative and caring? Should we embrace utopianism and primitivism? Scotland voted to stay in the UK. What does this mean? Jeff thought he saw a sea monster. Was it because of what Jeff failed to describe with the correct term, which is hyperactive agency detection device.
ViW63 Witch Hunts
September 14, 2014 12:00 - 1 hour - 68.1 MBAll about the phenomenon of witch hunts, contemporary and old timey. Salem, McCarthy, and Bewitched.
ViW62 Don't Touch the Anointed
September 07, 2014 12:00 - 1 hour - 69.9 MBWe discuss recent downfalls of evangelical Christian leaders, the vocation of the journalist, including the work of Janet Mefferd. We check to see if the hosts are dogmatists or authoritarians using an old psychology questionaire. We reflect on the structures that failed Mark Driscoll, Ted Haggard, and Bill Gothard.
ViW61 The Protestant Work Ethic
August 31, 2014 12:00 - 1 hour - 56.9 MBWe talk about the history of the Reformation as it affected the idea of vocation, the Max Weber thesis, the puritans, Theodore Beza, the practical syllogism, Slim Cessna's Auto Club, providence, Roger Williams, and Labor Day.
ViW60b The Vocation of Civil Engineering
August 27, 2014 12:00 - 1 hour - 72 MBCivil engineer and League of Faithful Masks chairman of the board talks about vocation, David's story of deciding to leave seminary for a different, public calling, and the ways in which he has contributed to landmarks throughout Southern California. It turns out, civil engineers save lives, quietly and behind the scenes.
ViW60 This is the Greatest Era in Human History...maybe.
August 24, 2014 12:00 - 1 hour - 71.3 MBYou'll have to excuse us this week for sounding a bit like the odd couple. Stemming from a conversation that began some time ago, Dan truly believes that we live in the greatest time period in human history (yeah, yeah, there are caveats of course) and Jeff is pretty sure that we aren't. Dan is very unfashionable in some circles for his love of the Enlightenment, and Jeff is sometimes cautious when he talks about why he can dig the postmodernists. Nevertheless, this show discusses just how...
ViW 59 The Hitler Show
August 17, 2014 12:00 - 1 hour - 114 MBToo often we get caught up using bad analogies. While there are many commonly used poor analogies, we find the hitler/holocaust and "fall of rome" parallels particularly confusing and unhelpful. What do these events have that cause constant modern analogies? How might we better understand certain landmark historical events without taking them out of time and making a modern "version"? In what ways are the present and future different? We tackle these and other related topics. Give it a li...
ViW58 The Overpromised Land- Israel, Hamas, and No End in Sight?
August 10, 2014 12:00 - 1 hour - 73 MBDr. Adam Francisco, a historian who specializes in Islam and Middle Eastern history, joins us as we discuss the current conflict in the between Israel and Hamas, and the possible future of Palestine.
ViW57 A Year in the Wasteland
August 03, 2014 12:00 - 58 minutes - 56.6 MBWe look back at the first full year+ of our podcast+. We ponder what we might have done differently, what we enjoyed most, and where we are heading in year two. We didn't miss a single week release and don't intend to in the next year. Thanks for listening and engaging with us through facebook, the website virtueinthewasteland.com, and through our Twitter and Instagram presence. Thanks especially for listening and spreading the word. Dan is in the mountains and Jeff is in Key Largo while ...