More Human

In this episode of More Human, (a noticeably jet-lagged) Dean Jordan sits down with Oxford scholar Dr. Michael Ward to discuss the significance of the twentieth-century author and thinker C. S. Lewis. The many topics discussed include the relevance of Lewis to those who don’t share his religious convictions, the key to understanding The Chronicles of Narnia, and Lewis’s insights into the costliness and necessity of love.

On this episode of More Human, Dean Jordan sits down with the executive director of Ohio Humanities, Rebecca Brown Asmo, to discuss the work her organization does to advance the humanities across the state, as well as the relevance of the humanities to career pathways and their significance for anyone who desires to live a life of consequence. She also shares Saeed Jones's poem "If You Had an Off Button, I’d Name You 'Off,'” from his anthology Alive at the End of the World (https://www.readsaeedjones.com/).

Chuck Dull is the dean of Tri-C’s Information Technology Center of Excellence. On this episode of More Human, he joins Dean Jordan to discuss his career, the kinds of programs he oversees at the College, and the importance of humanities education to students in career-oriented academic programs.

This episode of More Human is a recording of the Tri-C Philosophy Club event, “East Meets West: Taking Religious Diversity Seriously,” featuring Pranav Ambardekar and Steven Brown of The Ohio State University. You may notice that this is quite a long episode; it includes nearly an hour of Q&A that took place after the formal presentation ended. If you’d like to view the slides the presenters used, you can access them at https://tinyurl.com/yc6432c7

Following up on a March 2023 event at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Humanities Center featuring the Aspen Institute's Weave: The Social Fabric Project, Frederick J. Riley and Michael Skoler sat down with Dean Jordan for an inspiring conversation about the work they are doing to restore trust and support community-building efforts across the country. For more information, be sure to visit https://weareweavers.org/

In preparation for the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Scholars Academy’s annual Roots of Social Justice: Alabama Civil Rights Tour spring break trip, Dean Jordan conducted a remote interview with Reverend Alan Cross, a native Southerner, Baptist pastor, and expert on race and religion in the American South. For more about Cross’s work and the topics discussed in this episode, see this NPR story from July 2020: https://www.npr.org/2020/07/01/883115867/white-supremacist-ideas-have-historical-roots-in-u-s-christianity. Cross is a contributor to The Bulwark, and his writing there can be found at https://www.thebulwark.com/author/alan-cross/. In 2019, he published an essay in the New York Times on religious freedom and the death penalty (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/opinion/alabama-domineque-ray-death-row.html), and he has also written on the dangers of “Great Replacement Theory” (https://thedispatch.com/article/christians-too-must-oppose-great/) and the role of Black slave preachers in setting the stage for the Civil Rights movement (https://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/why-we-should-be-thankful-for-caesar-blackwell-the-alabama-baptist-slave-preacher/). His book When Heaven and Earth Collide: Racism, Southern Evangelicals, and the Better Way of Jesus, can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/When-Heaven-Earth-Collide-Evangelicals/dp/1603063501.  

This episode of More Human, the third of three recorded on the campus of The Ohio State University, features a conversation with Dr. Donald C. Hubin, emeritus professor of philosophy and the founding director of OSU’s Center for Ethics and Human Values, as well as a member of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Humanities Center’s National Advisory Board. Topics discussed include Dr. Hubin’s career and writing on ethical issues pertaining to fatherhood, the moral philosophy of David Hume, how to approach moral disputes, and challenges facing colleges and universities moving forward. For more information on Dr. Hubin’s professional work, visit his OSU faculty webpage at https://philosophy.osu.edu/people/hubin.1. And do be sure to check out Monty Python’s “The Argument Clinic” at https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hwqn9.

This episode is the second of three conversations Dean Jordan recorded while on a recent visit to The Ohio State University: it features Dr. Jennifer Frey of the University of South Carolina on the links between happiness, virtue, and wisdom; her own religious conversion and the experience of being a woman and a Catholic in an academic field dominated by atheists and men; and the value of a liberal arts education. For more about Dr. Frey’s writing and professional activities, see her faculty webpage at https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/philosophy/our_people/directory/frey_jennifer.php. Her Sacred & Profane Love podcast can be found at https://sacredandprofanelove.com/, and the essay mentioned in this interview (“The Universe and the University”) is available at https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/the-universe-and-the-university/.

Dr. Piers Turner is an associate professor of philosophy at The Ohio State University, where he directs OSU's Center for Ethics and Human Values. On this episode of More Human, he sits down with Dean Jordan for a wide-ranging discussion of an interdisciplinary major at OSU for students interested in becoming more civically engaged, the challenges of identifying shared values and promoting civil discourse in a divided society, and the work of the nineteenth-century philosopher John Stuart Mill.

One of the most unique aspects of Tri-C’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Scholars Academy is its capstone course, HUM 2020: Community Engagement. In this episode of the More Human podcast, Professor Matt Laferty and Mandel Scholars Hannah Fuller and Emily Penner join Dean Jordan to discuss the work they did in Fall 2022 with EDWINS Leadership and Restaurant Institute.