Podcasts
As the language of humanity, art tells stories of inspiration, hope, and healing even as it acknowledges the hurt and despair that afflicts us all.
Episode 12: Poet and Activist, Words and Names, Marks and Meaning: Jim Lavilla-Havelin
Jim Lavilla-Havelin has written six collections of poetry, with several more in the works. His work has been anthologized widely, and he has been nominated for Poet Laureate of Texas, where he has lived for the last few decades. This episode of Studio Aesculapius is different. Jim reads three poems and has a wide-ranging discussion with co-host, Eddie Dupuy: about the poems, about poetry, about art and activism, about language and knowing and finding patterns, about the human desire to make marks and the attempt to make meaning.
Episode 8: Hard Won Pilgrimages: Paul Elie discusses Literature, Bach’s Music, and his Journey as a Catholic
Paul Elie (from the Berkley Center at Georgetown University) talks about his two books, The Life You Save May be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (2003) and Reinventing Bach (2012), especially the “hard won” pilgrimages of Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy. Elie goes on to speak of his own pilgrimage in and around the Catholic Church, his struggle to remain within its story while writing about some “awful things”—such as the sexual abuse crisis. He speaks of Bach’s unique place as religious artist and, finally, of his work on the American Pilgrimage Project, where he has discovered the healing power of a diversity of American religious experience beyond even his broadest expectations.
Episode 7: Fake News and Truth, Faith and Irony: Jay Tolson Discusses the Big Questions of our Culture
Jay Tolson is editor of the award-winning journal The Hedgehog Review, published out of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He’s also a journalist and scholar, who wrote Pilgrim in the Ruins, a biography of writer Walker Percy. Tolson discusses our current political climate, the war in Ukraine, and the deleterious impact of “PR politics.” Say something enough, true or not, and people will believe it. He also discusses the impact of Walker Percy on his thinking about art, and the way forward (the hope) Percy’s work opens, namely a connection with others through symbols.