The Great & Main Podcast

In this episode, Read discusses how the realm of virtual reality is starting to impinge on true reality in ways that could spell spiritual death for our minds and our souls. With the Metaverse on the rise, gaming at an all-time high, and isolated lifestyles becoming the norm, have we reached a tipping point, a point of no return?

Today's episode talks about how we can hope to win the spiritual battles of our day. Fr. Dwight talks about the way the cycle of power, pride, and prejudice manifests itself in our daily lives, the secret weapon of repentance, and the many masks of atheism that we encounter in our modern world.

Tune into our second installment of our Masterclass on Immortal Combat with Fr. Dwight Longenecker. Today's episode talks about the hero who comes to do battle with our world's conniving antagonist. Fr. Dwight talks about mimetic desire and the manifestations of the seven deadly sins in the world, how God's secret plan involves a rescue that starts from the inside, out, and the power of taking on the responsibility for the state of the world.

This past summer, we collaborated with Fr. Dwight Longenecker to offer an online course called “Immortal Combat: A Masterclass on Winning the Spiritual Battle.” It was incredibly gratifying to see so many of you gather for this two-week period, and we want to spread Fr. Dwight's illuminating ideas and perspectives even further. So, we are excited to announce that we'll be releasing the recordings of the four classes over the course of the next few weeks on our podcast. This week's episode is on “The Heart of Darkness and How It Took Over the World.” During this class, Fr. Dwight introduces the concept of “the sin of the world” as something different than personal sin — it's the dynamic of a fallen world. We get stuck in the cycles of power, pride, and prejudice, and rivalry, resentment, and revenge. We all fall into these patterns and fail to recognize it when we do. So how can we make spiritual progress and start to confront these cycles, and understand what really means that Jesus died for our sins? Throughout this session, he talks about: -The power of myth to reveal truth in our world -Where the sin of the world actually comes from -The tragic cycles of power, pride, and prejudice and how they affect our society We hope you enjoy listening in on this amazing Masterclass. Tune in next week for the next installment in this course!

In this week's podcast, we meet with Luke Burgis, the Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Director of Programs at the Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship at The Catholic University of America. In his most recent book, “Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life,” he unpacks the influences that form our desires. Inspired by the work of Rene Girard, Burgis connects the dots between the models of desire that we see in our daily lives and the desires that grow in our own hearts. When we see a desire modeled by neighbors or coworkers or celebrities, we naturally, and often subconsciously, imitate and assimilate them as our own. In our modern society of 24/7 connectivity, we are under the siege of “influencers” from social media, and our moral imagination seems doomed to constantly be in “assimilate and imitate” mode. Burgis calls these desires “thin desires” because they lack the deep, substantive roots in our true personal desires. Instead, we need the wisdom to turn off the barrage of desire-modelling so that we can tap into the true desires that God has placed on our hearts for the true purpose of our lives. It's important to understand the way mimetic desires work on our hearts, because they can lead us down very different paths in our lives. If we're inattentive to its powerful gravitational pull, we run the risk of imitating the same desires of anyone and everyone in our lives, from wayward celebrities in our newsfeeds to well-heeled neighbors and their fancy new cars, vacations, or jobs. This is how we end up sidetracked down the roads of rivalry and envy. If we're all vying for the same status, appearance, and trophies, it's no wonder we tend to bear ill will towards those who seem to be more successful their pursuits. Chasing the lifestyles and desires of others won't ultimately satisfy us. We need to silence the mimetic noise, the clanging, chaotic call to chase the same fleet-footed white rabbit. Turn off the TV. Sign out of social media. Stop peeking over your neighbor's fence. “The idea of a personal vocation is the antidote to mimetic desire. To paraphrase the words of JPII, ‘Everybody has a deep desire to become who they are. Become who you are. Become who you were created to be.' If you don't have a good idea of your personal vocation, you're very susceptible to latching onto thin, highly mimetic desires. Everything looks like a shiny object if you're not firmly grounded in an idea of vocation.” We need to awaken to the reality of our own personal callings right in front of us. Look to your own life, your own gifts, your own heart. What is God saying to you there? What openings, what dreams, what ideas has He planted for you, and only you, to make a reality? Tune into this week's episode to hear more about how our heart's desires can be the key to unlocking our destiny within God's plan.

On today's podcast, we try to get to the root of the intense division that has our nation in a political chokehold. Historically in politics, we have always been in a cycle of authoritarian governments usurping power at every level. One of the many unique American solutions to this problem was the civil society. This is what Alexis de Tocqueville called America's “daring experiment” — to wield a diverse array of political, charitable, educational, religious, neighborhood, and professional associations in the fight against the loss of trust and sense of community, and the spread of urban decay, apathy, and selfishness. But there have been two modern trends that have led to the breakdown of civil society. The first is that big government and big technology companies propose they can do things smarter, faster, and better than we could ever hope to do at the local level, so we “logically” abdicate responsibility. We've always had big government, but big, data-crunching, powerful technology is new. And big tech represents a new philosophy of life that says computers are more capable and better at making decisions than people. The second trend, which is also partially driven by big tech, is the breakdown of civil society into micro-segments that stay indoors on their personal devices. We have become niche groups living in echo chambers, timid and much less involved in physical interaction in the public square. On today's podcast we host Brian Burch, CEO and founder of Catholic Vote. Brian states that the problem in politics has always been bigger than the left or the right but can be boiled down to the problem of original sin. No matter what party we stand for, we are all trying to solve the challenge of what it means to be a flawed human and how to live in a community where everyone's imperfect. We've been in a trajectory in the digital age where we're being lulled into this siloed synthetic existence. We are losing a sense of the importance of individual interaction with real things and real people and with real stuff. But the truth is that there's a part of our humanity that demands we interact with creation. Not only demands but that we are made to delight in interacting with our fellow human beings. It's the same thing that grants us our capability to love. There is no scientific equation that we solve to achieve happiness. It's an adventure, particularly in the social dimension through family, friends, community, and government. If we were to be talking, debating, and resolving questions within smaller communities, our political climate would be radically different. There would be much more in-person lived out experience, much less tension as it would serve as an exhaust valve, and it would remake the way we think about our politics. This was the history of our country for so many years. The state was only a second-rate community that was subservient to much more foundational human communities. And to the extent that we're able to recover the sense of the importance of civil society, and are able to reinvigorate it, the better off we'll be. There are a lot of different ideas about how to do that. Brian thinks the answer to our political challenges as well as the bigger human challenge of trying to fill the emptiness of modernity with meaning, is that we need to operate at the human level more. The human journey is defined by adventure in the social dimension. Through love and sacrifice for others, our lives find their deepest meaning. Listen in to learn some more strategies and perspectives on how to reengage and restore the crucial associations that can make our souls thrive and our nation whole again.

The journey of the hero is complex. It begins through a call and heads straight into conflict. Whether it is facing trials and tribulations, fighting against the enemy, or choosing the ultimate good when faced with an ordeal, the steps along the journey are hard to take. Sure, we all want to seize the day and own our mission, but hearing about the difficult parts of the journey ahead of us can cause us to worry or feel unprepared. Instead of feeling excitement, we might be asking ourselves, “Is this really for me?” Over the last four episodes of our podcast, we talked to some incredibly insightful people about the hero's journey. Fr. Dwight Longenecker shared his insights on what we are all called to do. Fr. Ezra Sullivan taught us how to develop heroics habits. Dr. Pia Solenni examined our relationship with the enemy. And Steve and Linda Jannosy told us how to live heroically in any kind of situation. We now wrap up the series with some questions of our own. Join us as we conclude our series on the heroic journey and make our trek home.

When it seems like all is lost, and the world is being drained of all hope, it is precisely in this moment that the hero rises to take action. It is the moment when heroes are called to create something. They hunger for change and realize that the answer lies in them and they are the solution. This is the part of the story where the hero takes on the heavy load with no guarantee of success, but they straighten their shoulders and push forward anyways. In today's episode we met with Steve Janossy, who had no choice but to dare to create meaning in his life under a communist regime in Hungary. With his two brothers, he decided they couldn't wait any longer for the change they yearned so desperately for. Steve and his daughter, Linda share stories of what it cost to be daring in a time ruled by a communist regime and provide inspiration for what it means to live out of that same journey today. They provide the solution through what their family calls the three B's: the board room, ballroom, and backwoods, three landscapes of intense interaction and self-discovery. Through their stories and lessons, we learn that we can live heroically in any kind of situation and owe it to ourselves and the culture around us to do just that. Listen to the full episode for more!

Every battle is fought between at least two opposing sides. It doesn't matter if it is red versus blue, the Jedi versus the Sith, or orcs versus elves, our eyes can often identify who the enemy is in that feud. But when it comes to the battles we are personally called to fight, do we know who our enemy is? In our efforts to live out our mission we are often tempted to see those around us as a threat. We think knowing our enemy will be clear, but instead only confusion ensues. Those who are unfamiliar with us or disagree with us, become dehumanized in our eyes. Not seeing them at our church, at our kid's games at the park, and at the grocery store, creates a distance which makes it easy to objectify that other person and villainize them. In today's episode, we sit down with Dr. Pia de Solenni to talk about the model for battle. Pia is a theologian who is currently president and executive director of the Global Institute of Church Management. In our conversation, she shares her insights about how we find our mission, identify and fight the RIGHT enemy, and not let our personal lives crumble in the process. Pia suggests the answer in a simple word: encounter. Enter into the lives of others. It is precisely by entering into their lives and encountering them exactly where they are that we initiate healing and conversion of life. Only then can we be free to band against the common enemy and pave a way for conquests against the true monsters of our lives. Tune in to hear the full episode!

The secret to success is practice. Whether you're the world's greatest violinist, running the Boston marathon, acing the LSAT, or growing a company to be a Fortune 500, these accomplishments all require repetitive, diligent, and focused work. The same goes for the ordinary habits that make up our daily lives. It's easy in today's world to allow busyness to serve as an excuse for sloppy habit-making. Bad habits seem to be acceptable for anyone who is overworked, overcommitted, or just plain over it. But it's our habits that make us the kind of people we are — they determine the fabric that we are made of. So, are we made of generic, excuse-making stuff? Or are we making ourselves with the materials of a hero? Today we talk with Fr. Ezra Sullivan, O.P. from the Angelicum to find some encouragement and advice for how to keep up the fight of being who we are meant to be. Fr. Ezra defines heroic habits as those of optimal peak performance that go beyond the ordinary. He suggests that the launching point for developing these habits starts by having the desire to be a hero. Then, if a common man can make the executive choices to take prudential action, he can build himself to be the hero he is meant to be. And we can never expect these choices to be easy. There will never be a “convenient” time to start a heroic habit. It's precisely the tumultuous conditions of our time that make these habits heroic. The endurance that we build will be what helps us face even bigger battles and equip us for the fight of our lives. “There will be more difficulties to come, but if we want to be heroic, we have to just do the ordinary thing and stick with it.” Join us for today's episode.

A pivotal part of every hero's journey in life is hearing the call to action and responding. We all face this discernment. Promptings and desires surge out of nowhere during our life, and we hope that what is beckoning to us is that call. It's anything but simple. There always seem to be competing voices and variations on the call. We know there are false voices that come to confuse us and lead us off our heroic path, but can we tell which voice is which? Can we sort out God's voice from the noise? And how can we be sure we're hearing things correctly? We might think, “Am I just making this up? Do I only think this because I secretly want it to be my calling?” Or maybe we think we are only doing something because we know others expect it of us. Then, what do we do when we're into the heart of our calling and suddenly everything goes dark. We question everything we thought we knew about our mission and wonder where we took a wrong turn. When asking ourselves these questions of discernment, we looked to Fr. Dwight Longenecker, author of Immortal Combat and expert on spiritual battle and the role we play in it. Fr. Dwight talks on our podcast about how to approach the call we each have intrinsically within us. He stresses that often the first step is to admit that we don't have all the answers and reminds us that every call starts with the nudges and inclinations of our heart. We start the conversation with an overview of Immortal Combat, looking at the surprise nature of every heroic calling. He shows us how we're just a mindset shift away from countering all the toxic virtue signaling and corresponding shaming that increasingly define our society today. This episode is the first installment of a new series called The Heroic Journey. Over the next five episodes we'll explore how we discern a calling, form allies, battle through trials and tribulations, confront our mortal enemy, and return victorious to do it all again. Tune into today's episode.

Though many might confuse an entrepreneur with a business leader, the call of the entrepreneur is unique. It's about building something from the ground up versus managing something that is already there. And we especially need creators today. If we don't have inventors, then there's one less thing that can inspire the next entrepreneur and the next great idea. Managers would have nothing to lead without someone breathing it into existence first. In this episode of our podcast, we are joined by Brian Grim, the founding president of the Religious Freedom and Business Foundation. The foundation aims to demonstrate how the freedom to pursue faith creates an environment where innovation is bountiful. Brian was inspired into motion when he observed a lack of people who really understood religious freedom and how little people tried to incorporate it into the workplace and is now president of this very successful organization. He has worked on this issue all over the globe – in China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, and Europe. Many have gone before us with just a simple idea and call to help change the world. And we need more of it. Grim encourages everyone to go out and get their hands dirty. When you are in the thick of it, that is where you be able to see what you can do that no one else has done before.

Pop culture is filled with phrases like “be yourself” and “you do you”, but does this translate into me having a pass at showing all the worst sides of me? There seems to be an enlightenment in knowing my humanness, my strengths as well as weaknesses. But having knowledge of these things isn't where the battle is fought. So, what is the fight? These are questions that plague humanity. And they are so important that we asked Ryan Hanning and Tom Peterson, co-authors of The Willpower Advantage: Building Habits for Lasting Happiness, to speak to the heart of the problem. They offer a practical and inspiring outlook on how we can use our knowledge of our temperament and natural tendencies to be exactly who we are called to be. Their book is designed to help one understand who they are and how they can grow exponentially. It provides a “spiritual audit”, which allows the reader to identify their temperament and personality. They evaluate what the spiritual life will look like for different people and what virtues and vices one is naturally drawn to. From there they plot out different paths that each of us can relate to as individuals. Order your own copy right now at: https://amenalleluia.com/willpoweradvantage/ Tune into our most recent episode for more!

Change is in the air. Big change. New worldviews threatening to replace outdated narratives. Economic revolution. Robots on the rise. And now a global pandemic leading to a political reset. Have we entered an age of radical transformation? Or have we returned to historical normalcy – a world in regular crisis after a brief interval of peace? These questions dominate our minds as we follow the news, argue with family members, and examine our modern lifestyles. That's why we sat down with Jay Richards, Research Assistant Professor in the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America and author of a dozen of books including The Price of Panic (2020), Money, Greed, and God (2019), and The Human Advantage (2018). Richards has tackled the big issues of the day on artificial intelligence, capitalism, the pandemic, and he can help make sense of our suddenly tumultuous times. During the podcast, we looked at issues that have increasingly divisive differences of opinion, issues that can split a room in half. We talked about the state of the Christian faith. Is Christianity a dying institution with a tired narrative. Or are we on the cusp of rebirth? Richards holds that the current shrinkage is a purification and warns against the danger of nostalgia. “Certainly there's no way forward without retaining the truths, and those don't change. But there is always the temptation. J.R.R Tolkien talked about the danger of nostalgia. People that read the Lord of the Rings might think he was mired in nostalgia but, in fact, he wasn't in his private letters. Actually, he describes that the problem with the elves in the Lord of the Rings is that they're nostalgic because they always remember the past and they never move on. And consequently, they cease to actually be able to live in the world.” We spoke about the rise of Artificial Intelligence and big tech. Is today's rapid technological development coming to the aid of humanity, or is it threatening to enslave us to convenience and even take over decision making? Richard says the answer is one of anthropology, not technology. “Machines come from us. It's incredible how we forget this point. We're less likely to be alienated from our technology if we realize that it's our technology, that it depends upon us. Think of technology and its positive side and figure out how to adapt yourself so that you can flourish around it.” Additionally, we hit on the topic of the COVID-19 panic, the subject of his most recent book. We asked: what is the main lesson from this global crisis? “We can't change what happened in 2020. I think we can hopefully prevent it from happening again, at least in the same way. The main lesson is that you don't want the cure to be worse than the disease. You trust experts when they're talking about their narrow expertise, but there's no reason an expert that's an immunologist is telling you about the consequences of an economic policy. He doesn't know a darn thing more than anybody else about that.” Check out the episode here!

What do you focus on? Think about your day. It is near impossible to drive anywhere without flashing billboards and signs scattered about your community screaming at you left and right. News outlets are flooded with the catastrophes of today and without effort we are caught in that current of “breaking news”. Do you get tunnel vision when you walk out the door? See everything negative that's happening? Or do you let yourself see the positive events surrounding you? There's so much going on in the world and the feelings stirred in your gut are directly tied to what you focus on. Sometimes it's easier to see all the evil in the world. We dedicate our lives to creating a masterplan to defeat it. Wearily chasing it down in hopes that it will cease. Could it be that in some way we're meant to ignore it? Though never altogether forgotten, are we to spend our time obsessing over what's wrong and trying to fix it? Is our energy better spent creating what's good and trying to spread it wherever we are? These are some big questions and the topic of our latest podcast with Derek and Juliet Kulda. The Kuldas are proud parents to ten kids in Half Moon Bay, California. On top of striving to build a beautiful home, they run the Kulda group, one of the fastest growing real estate companies in the Bay area and possibly even in the world. Join us in our conversation as we tackle what it means to live a limitless life, to defeat the mindset of scarcity, and carry a fullness of life into the office and the home. Check out the full episode here!

We may have the things we need to survive, but do we have what we need to thrive?

School from Scratch — Navigating the Challenges of Home Education with the Kellys by Great & Main

The Power of the Liberal Arts in a Technical World by Great & Main

Your Temperament Is Your Training Ground with Dr. Ryan Hanning, Part Two by Great & Main

Truth from the Land with Dr. Ryan Hanning by Great & Main

The path to becoming a better person isn't always a clear one. The self-improvement shelf at bookstores is chock full of different perspectives. There are countless programs that promise to make us happier, stronger, smarter, healthier, or kinder. Underpinning all these approaches, however, is a core set of human qualities that are universally good, and universally difficult to achieve. These are the virtues. Alexander Cummings is the author of “Virtues Work,” a book about how using the virtues at work can make us better humans, better workers, and better leaders. Stemming from his experience as a marketing consultant, Alexander wanted to go beyond the values that companies tend to ascribe to their brands and into the ideals that truly fulfill us. He discovered virtues are habits that build the good within us. And they're also habits that help us to build solid, creative, successful businesses. In this episode, Alexander shares how the virtues are personal challenges that we can take up in everyday business, how best to start working them into our lives, and how motivation is the key to unlocking a better version of ourselves.

The team got together to talk about… 2020. The world is working through some serious issues right now. Racism. Disease. Financial disparity. Election year. Social justice.  And there is pressure to have opinions and take a stance on every story, every debate. It's an impossible demand. So how do we approach these national and global conversations? We came across a statement from Fr. Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute. He calls on us to “own our learning”. It means we need to be students of the issues at hand. We must ask the right questions. Learn the broader dynamics at play. Study and decide principles we can stand firmly upon, and use them as guides to seek truth in the day-to-day situations. And we must pursue conclusion as best we can, avoiding the temptation to remain in open-ended dialogue forever. We need to know ourselves, our domain of experience and knowledge, and our biases. And we need to know the things we don't know. We must seek to truly know the people with whom we engage and about whom we form opinions. Often, these conversations are not a match between intellects, but rather a messy clash of broken souls. What is the true heart of each conversation? We discussed these points and many more in this episode. Give it a listen and subscribe to hear more conversations like this!

If you like dragons and hobbits and legends of old, then you're in good company. Writers like Tolkien and Lewis have used the world of fantasy to unravel timeless truths about humanity and faith, reigniting our modern moral imagination and turning us back to the origins of story, adventure, and meaning. Rachel Sherlock, our podcast guest today, makes understanding these ancient songs and stories her business. She's a writer living in Dublin and the host of the podcast, Risking Enchantment. In this episode, we dive into the questions that sprout whenever we straddle the worlds of reality and fantasy. Why do we see our lives through the lens of story? What can we do to find and follow the adventure that we are each called to fulfill? And how can we nurture our faith in the greatest Storyteller of all?

What does it look like to be a hero today? For most of us, saving the world looks like ordinary work, and it's easy to overlook the common roles in life. In our quest to understand the modern heroic journey, we started with the vocation of parenthood by welcoming three incredible parents to our first Heroic Journey (virtual) panel. Mary McGiffin is a wife and mother of five (soon to be six!) boys in Virginia. She has a unique perspective on how we're called to mentor our children through their own heroic journeys. Leila Lawlor is a wife and mother of seven and the grandmother to 15 kids living in Massachusetts. She's also the writer behind the blog Like Mother, Like Daughter, where she delves into the meaning of family life and the challenges and joys of motherhood. Kevin Middlesworth is a husband and father of five living in the Chicago area. He's the director of Technology at a global advertising agency and talks about leadership and the wisdom that one can find through the journey of fatherhood. In this conversation, you'll discover wisdom about issues that parents are dealing with today, and how we can rise to the challenge with faith, courage, and strength. Our guests also cover some super practical tips and ideas on how to raise our families and lead them in a common mission.

For many of us, our jobs are very different from our home lives. We live in a fast-moving, digital world defined by meetings, leadership initiatives, quarterly goals, and countless challenges that crop up every day. When it comes to the practice of refining our character and improving our virtue, those ideas could fade into the background behind the noise of Slack notifications and the rumble of downtown traffic. Our guest today, Kevin Middlesworth, is a director of technology at The Designory, a global marketing agency in Chicago. He treats this job as an opportunity to coach people in their own journeys and creativity. He practices leadership at a level that puts virtue to work. We're so happy to have Kevin with us, especially since he's an advisor for Great & Main as we launch into our first year. Join us as we talk about spirit, magnanimity, imagination, and service in the workplace.

How would you define a hero? If your mind immediately jumps to superheroes battling supervillains with lightning shooting out of their fingertips, that's totally natural. Pop culture has elevated “heroism” to something only worthy for the silver screen. Which, in turn, makes us feel like being a hero is something that is completely out of our reach. But in truth, heroism isn't just what's found in the pages of comic books. Heroism is the choice to live selflessly, bravely, and with a vision for a better world in mind.

Family culture is an art. Just ask our latest guest on the podcast, Deirdre Folley. She's a wife, mother of four, homemaker, artist, and manager for her husband's fine art business. Raised in a strong, faith-filled family, she views family culture as something that is defined by the everyday choices of the parents as they introduce their children to the wonders and challenges of the world.

For Pete Searby, school wasn't just a bore or a struggle. It was a broken system. As a kid, he yearned to run free outside and immerse himself in the creative arts. But instead of swearing off the educational system for good, he went back to teaching, where he watched kids go through the same frustrating process of being told to ignore their passions and just perform well on tests. That's why, today, he's creating incredible creative and outdoor experiences for young boys in the Chicago area through his own organization, Riverside.

The conversation continues in Pete Searby and the Imagination, Part II, where we discuss one of the most exciting elements of Riverside: original musicals.

We recently had the pleasure of welcoming George Harne on the podcast (albeit from all different locations, thanks to our coronavirus quarantines). He is the president of Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts in Warner, New Hampshire, and has a deep understanding of how the liberal arts can shape our characters as we embark on each of our heroic journeys.

Calling in from the heart of Rome, Andreas Widmer joined us for a conversation about vocation, creativity, and faith. As a professor and director of the Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship at The Catholic University of America, Andreas has the opportunity to coach young students as they embark on the vocation of business. He promotes a perspective called “person-centered entrepreneurship” that establishes the idea that businesses need to be creative, supportive, and rewarding.

Welcome to the Great & Main podcast. This is going to be a show about finding extraordinary wisdom for ordinary life, discovering and deepening your vocation, and tapping into what it means to be made in the Creator's image. Meet the hosts and get a sneak peek into what this first season has in store.