Podcasts about academic affairs

This month, Mary met up with Dr. Beronda Montgomery, a plant biologist, writer, researcher and scholar. Dr. Montgomery works to understand how individuals perceive, respond to, and are affected by the environments in which they live. By investigating the response of photosynthetic organisms (i.e., plants and cyanobacteria) to external light cues, she is able to identify related roles for innovative leaders in human settings.After over 18 years at Michigan State University as a Foundation Professor in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Beronda served as Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean, and Professor of Biology at Grinnell College. In that time, she co-founded the annual Black Botanists Week. Then, since 2025, she's been the Sally Starling Seaver Fellow in Biological Sceinces with Radcliffe Harvard Institute.In this episode, Mary and Beronda speak of her most recent book, When Trees Testify. As Beronda writes, "Plants don't just passively provide. They also take action. They are masters of adaptation. They 'know' what and who they are, and they use this knowledge to make a way in the world. Plants are even capable of transformative behaviors that allow them to maximize their chances of survival in dynamic and sometimes unfriendly environments." Quite consistent with the rich spirit of her words here, this HILFH conversation was rich and enlivening. You can learn more about Beronda Montgomery by checking out her books, When Trees Testify and Lessons from Plants. Also spend some time with her website and the additional writings there. Let yourself be informed and inspired by Dr. Montgomery and the love of plants.MUSICRolled Ankles. Music by Nicholas Panek from PixabayMoonlight on Your Hands. Music by Mircea Iancu from PixabayEvening Strings. Music by DPStudioMusic from PixabayOriginal theme music composed and performed by Gary Ferguson.----HILFH is an educational project of Full Ecology. Check us out and let us hear from you.

In this week's episode, we speak with Dr. Rachel Bowser of Agnes Scott College about redefining AI fluency as a core component of a liberal arts education. Rather than focusing on technical skills alone, they explore how teaching students to critically evaluate AI—understanding its biases, limitations, and role in learning—can strengthen their ability to think, question, and make meaning. The conversation also highlights how embedding AI literacy alongside experiential learning—like global travel and workplace immersion—creates more equitable, high-impact opportunities for students. Ultimately, it's a call for institutions to shift from gatekeeping knowledge to expanding access, ensuring all students are equipped to navigate an AI-driven world with confidence and curiosity. Guest Name: Dr. Rachel Bowser - Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College, Agnes Scott College Guest Social: LinkedIn Guest Bio: Dr. Rachel Bowser brings extensive academic leadership experience and scholarly expertise to her role as vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college at Agnes Scott College. Dr. Bowser provides strategic vision for the institution's academic program, faculty development, and academic support services, with leadership that encompasses curriculum innovation, faculty recruitment and retention, and the cultivation of an inclusive learning environment. Dr. Bowser's academic journey reflects a deep commitment to the liberal arts. She earned her BA in English from Grove City College, her MA in English from West Virginia University, and her PhD in English from Emory University, where rigorous training in literary scholarship prepared her for a distinguished career in both teaching and academic leadership.   - - - -Connect With Our Host:Dustin Ramsdellhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/dustinramsdell/About The Enrollify Podcast Network:The Higher Ed Geek is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you'll like other Enrollify shows too!Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This roundtable brings together scholars in cognition and neuroscience from around the world to examine the contributions, challenges, and emerging opportunities for women in the field. While women continue to advance major discoveries and shape our understanding of the brain, they remain underrepresented in some areas, particularly in senior and leadership roles. Through research insights and personal reflections, the panel considers progress to date, the barriers that persist, and how the discipline can better support diverse talent and perspectives. Speakers Yanchao Bi, Professor, School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University Ida Gobbini, Professor of Medical and Surgical Sciences, University of Bologna Angelika Lingnau, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Regensburg Liuba Papeo, Research Director, CNRS; Director, Cognitive Neuropsychology and Development Team, Institute of Cognitive Sciences Marc Jeannerod; Marie Curie Fellow Meera AlKaabi, Acting President, Executive Director of Academic Affairs, National Academy for Childhood Development; Associate Professor of Linguistics, UAEU Moderated by Claudine Habak, Associate Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Emirates College for Advanced Education (ECAE)

President Geoffrey S. Mearns serves as the 17th president of Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.   This 21,000 student institution competes at the NCAA Division 1 FBS level in the Mid American Conference.   In addition to its' acclaimed programs in the Estopinal College of Architecture & Planning, the College of Communication Information & Media, Honors College, and the Miller College of Business - the Ball State's Teachers' College is a world-renowned leader in teacher education.   After joining the University in May 2017, President Mearns helped to develop a new strategic plan. Destination 2040: Our Flight Path established a long-range vision for the University that sets priorities across five key areas: undergraduate excellence, graduate education and lifetime learning, community engagement and impact, scholarship and societal impact, and inclusiveness and institutional excellence. A refreshed version of the plan, which upholds these five long-term goals, was approved by members of the Board of Trustees in 2025.    During his tenure, President Mearns has pursued initiatives that have sustained and expanded the University's enrollment, despite the adverse impact of the pandemic, and increased alumni engagement and fundraising. President Mearns has also strengthened the University's relationship with the community, most notably through its innovative partnership with Muncie Community Schools and its ambitious plan to revitalize The Village through a $200 million mixed use academic village redevelopment.  During his tenure the University continues to invest in core academic, student life, and athletic facilities.   A former elite collegiate distance running athlete and distinguished attorney and federal prosecutor, he previously served as President at Northern Kentucky University and Provost/Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Cleveland State University.  He and his wife Jennifer have five adult children and multiple grandchildren.

In this episode of Adventures in Advising, Matt and Ryan sit down with Weston Rose, Senior Program Manager in the UT System Office of Academic Affairs, for a lively conversation about advising, innovation, and what it really takes to support student success at scale. From his journey as a first-generation college student from a tiny Texas town to leading systemwide advising initiatives, Weston shares how creativity, technology, and a strong practitioner lens can transform advisor training and professional development. Along the way, the conversation explores mentoring, career pathways, system-level leadership, and bold ideas for the future of academic advising, with a few side trips into pickleball, skyscraper office views, and Montreal travel stories. It's a thoughtful, energizing episode for anyone who cares about advising, leadership, and building better support for students.Follow the podcast on your favorite podcast platform!The Instagram, and Facebook handle for the podcast is @AdvisingPodcastAlso, subscribe to our Adventures in Advising YouTube Channel!Connect with Matt and Ryan on LinkedIn.

In this episode of PennyWise, host John Kiernan is joined by guest Brian Bastin to discuss how to buy a car without breaking the bank. Brian spent 14 years as a general manager and minority operating partner of Mercedes-Benz of Palm Beach, and he is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Program Director at Keiser University’s Flagship Campus, where he teaches automotive management and finance. He’s the perfect person to teach us how to navigate the car-buying process with minimal stress and maximum savings. John and Brian discuss how to prepare before you visit the car lot, how to deal with the sales team, and much more.   More on this episode from WalletHub:  Compare Car Loan Rates Car Affordability Calculator  Car Lease or Buy Calculator  Best Credit Cards for Buying a Car  Credit Score Needed to Buy a Car  New vs. Used Cars  If you want to take your finances to the next level, sign up for a WalletHub Premium subscription. You can get personalized credit-improvement help, budgeting tools, identity protection and more. And if you want to find the best financial products, always add “WalletHub” to your search!  

What are the experts saying about thyroid cancer treatment in 2025?  Maybe it's time to discuss deescalation of aggressive surgical care for lower risk thyroid cancers.  We can accept that less surgery may be appropriate in select cases, including more thyroid lobectomies versus total thyroidectomies, consider less invasive approaches such as percutaneous ablation techniques, and utilize more observation with active surveillance.  Early assessment of treatment may allow appropriate reduction in use of radioactive iodine ablation and more relaxed routine monitoring can reduce surveillance burden to patients and providers. Hosts:  - Amanda Doubleday, DO, MBA, Assistant Professor, Waukesha Surgical Specialists, ProHealth Care.  Affiliated with University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Surgery.  - Simon Holoubek, DO, MPH, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Surgery.  - Alexander Chiu, MD, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Surgery.  - Rebecca S Sippel, MD, FACS, Professor and Chair of Division of Endocrine Surgery, Vice Chair of Academic Affairs and Professional Development, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Surgery.  Learning Objectives:- Risk stratification system now includes 4 categories: low, low-intermediate, high-intermediate, and high-TSH suppression targets are simplified:  below the normal range if there is structural or biochemical disease and in the normal range if disease free. - Thyroid lobectomy is recommended for tumors < 2cm cT1N0 tumors and can be considered for tumors 2-4 cm. - Micro-Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma (

ACTA's Veronica Bryant welcomes David Rohrbacher, Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs and Professor of Classics at the New College of Florida. NCF made headlines after they skyrocketed from an "F" grade to a "B+" rating in ACTA's What Will They Learn? Project (WWTL), becoming this year's "most improved school." WWTL assigns letter grades based on the rigor of the core curriculum at over 1,100 American colleges and universities. This improvement was thanks to a total overhaul of their general education program in 2024. Professor Rohrbacher discusses how that change came about and the innovative academic reforms that engage NCF students in substantive, serious coursework.

Updated cholesterol guidelines introduce important changes in cardiovascular risk assessment and lipid management that directly impact pharmacist practice. This course reviews key updates from the new ACC/AHA dyslipidemia guideline, including risk assessment tools, LDL-C targets, and evolving roles for statin and nonstatin therapies. You will be better prepared to identify practice-relevant recommendations and support evidence-based lipid management in patient care.HOSTRachel Maynard, PharmDGameChangers Podcast Host and Clinical Editor, CEimpactLead Editor, PyrlsJanelle Ruisinger, PharmD, FAPhAAssociate Dean for Academic Affairs and Clinical ProfessorThe University of Kansas School of PharmacyPharmacists, REDEEM YOUR CPE HERE!CPE is available to Health Mart franchise members onlyTo learn more about Health Mart, click here: https://join.healthmart.com/PRACTICE RESOURCEReceive the exclusive Practice Resource to use as a reference guide for this episode by enrolling in the course. Click here to enroll!CPE INFORMATIONLearning ObjectivesUpon successful completion of this knowledge-based activity, participants should be able to:1. Describe key pharmacist-relevant updates in the new ACC/AHA Guideline for the Management of Dyslipidemia.2. Differentiate risk assessment and lipid-lowering treatment considerations that may influence pharmacist recommendations under the updated guideline.Rachel Maynard and Janelle Ruisinger have no relevant financial relationships to disclose.0.75 CEU/0.75 HrUAN: 0107-0000-26-156-H01-PInitial release date: 5/4/2026Expiration date: 5/4/2027Additional CPE details can be found here.

Updated cholesterol guidelines introduce important changes in cardiovascular risk assessment and lipid management that directly impact pharmacist practice. This course reviews key updates from the new ACC/AHA dyslipidemia guideline, including risk assessment tools, LDL-C targets, and evolving roles for statin and nonstatin therapies. You will be better prepared to identify practice-relevant recommendations and support evidence-based lipid management in patient care.HOSTRachel Maynard, PharmDGameChangers Podcast Host and Clinical Editor, CEimpactLead Editor, PyrlsJanelle Ruisinger, PharmD, FAPhAAssociate Dean for Academic Affairs and Clinical ProfessorThe University of Kansas School of PharmacyGET CE FOR LISTENING!Stay Compliant. Grow Clinically. Practice with Confidence. Pharmacist CE Subscription: All your CE in one convenient subscription. All episodes, CE, and Practice Resources for the GameChangers Clinical Update is included with your Pharmacist CE Subscription. But wait…there's even more!The Pharmacist CE Subscription includes: -  Compliance and licensure CE -  GameChangers Clinical Updates -  Practical continuing education across patient care topics *The subscription does not include microcredentials or certificates, which are available separately for pharmacists seeking specialized service training. Purchase Now!PRACTICE RESOURCEReceive the exclusive Practice Resource to use as a reference guide for this episode by purchasing the Pharmacist CE Subscription. CPE REDEMPTIONThis course is accredited for continuing pharmacy education! Click the link below that applies to you to take the exam and evaluation to claim credit:If you are already enrolled in this course, click here to redeem your credit. To purchase the Pharmacist CE Subscription and claim your CPE credit, click here or to purchase this course individually, click here.  CPE INFORMATIONLearning ObjectivesUpon successful completion of this knowledge-based activity, participants should be able to:1. Describe key pharmacist-relevant updates in the new ACC/AHA Guideline for the Management of Dyslipidemia.2. Differentiate risk assessment and lipid-lowering treatment considerations that may influence pharmacist recommendations under the updated guideline.Rachel Maynard and Janelle Ruisinger have no relevant financial relationships to disclose.0.75 CEU/0.75 HrUAN: 0107-0000-26-156-H01-PInitial release date: 5/4/2026Expiration date: 5/4/2027Additional CPE details can be found here.Follow CEimpact on Social Media:LinkedInInstagram

Members of marginalized communities are often told to be "resilient," but how do you bounce back when the system itself is the weight on your shoulders? When policy is the source of the trauma, the burden of healing shouldn't rest solely on the individual. Joining us for this episode is a powerhouse in the field of psychology: the President of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Debra M. Kawahara. In this unflinching conversation, we dismantle the myth of individual resiliency and confront the systemic forces shaping our mental well-being. From the healthy paranoia required for survival in marginalized communities to the traumatizing optics of immigration enforcement, we explore how sociopolitical climates act as a direct catalyst for mental health crises. Listeners will learn: why focusing solely on individual grit can lead to victim-blaming and ignoring systemic failures how society takes psychological comfort in believing people “deserve” their circumstances why viewing healthcare and education as human rights is the first step toward equity If you've ever felt like anxiety is a rational response to an irrational world, this exploration of systemic inequity and the fight for collective wellness is for you. Learn how to stay in the fight without letting the weight of the world knock you out. "Don't get knocked out because we need you." ~Dr. Debra M. Kawahara, President of the American Psychological Association Debra M. Kawahara, Ph.D., is a psychologist, scholar, and advocate for justice and mental health resource accessibility. As the 2025 President of the American Psychological Association and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Alliant University, she leads with vision and heart — shaping psychology's future through cultural humility, intersectional insight, and systemic care. Her work spans over 20 academic programs across six campuses and online, and her scholarship bridges feminist theory, Buddhist psychotherapy, Asian American mental health, and leadership grounded in equity. Internationally published and recognized, Debra brings both academic excellence and therapeutic wisdom to her teaching, speaking, and clinical practice — where she works with individuals, couples, families, and organizations in cultivating resilience and meaningful change. Our host, Gabe Howard, is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, "Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations," available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. Gabe is also the host of the "Inside Bipolar" podcast with Dr. Nicole Washington. Gabe makes his home in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. He lives with his supportive wife, Kendall, and a Miniature Schnauzer dog that he never wanted, but now can't imagine life without. To book Gabe for your next event or learn more about him, please visit gabehoward.com. * * * * Please share this podcast with your networks! Sharing the show with the people you know is how we'll grow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this bonus episode recorded live at the Collegis Education DisruptED summit in Phoenix, we spoke with Marc Austin and Reamer Bushardt to explore how partnerships between higher education institutions and employers can drive more relevant, workforce-aligned learning experiences. Through examples from healthcare and university initiatives, the conversation highlights how co-designed programs, continuous feedback loops, and shared goals can better prepare students for real-world careers.  The discussion emphasizes that successful partnerships require trust, aligned values, and ongoing collaboration—not just transactional agreements. Ultimately, when done well, these partnerships create meaningful pathways for students, improve career outcomes, and strengthen the connection between education and the evolving needs of the workforce. Guest Names:  Dr. Marc Austin, Vice Provost & Managing Director, Montclair Unbound Reamer Bushardt, Provost & VP for Academic Affairs, MGH Institute of Health Professions Guest Socials:Marc's LinkedIn Reamer's LinkedIn Guest Bios: Dr. Marc Austin serves as the Vice Provost and Managing Director for Montclair Unbound, Montclair State University's unit dedicated to extending the reach of the university through online and blended forms of education. Previously, he was the Associate Provost and Dean of Augusta University Online.  Dr. Austin has spent the past two decades launching new, innovative approaches to online, executive and adult learning programs. Dr. Austin has also been a featured speaker for WCET, The Chronicle of Higher Education, ASU/GSV and others. He holds a PhD from Columbia University, a MSc from the London School of Economics and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania. Reamer L. Bushardt, PharmD, PA-C, DFAAPA serves as Professor, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the MGH Institute of Health Professions, which was founded by the Massachusetts General Hospital and is the only degree granting member of Mass General Brigham. As Provost, he is the Institute's chief academic officer with responsibility for all academic programs, research programs, faculty, and students. Dr. Bushardt is a seasoned educator, researcher, clinician, and administrator with experience in rural, community-based practice and faculty service within four academic health centers. He is licensed as a PA and pharmacist, specializing in the care of older adults and management of inappropriate polypharmacy and drug injury. As a PA, he has spent more than twenty-three years in primary care practice. - - - -Connect With Our Host:Dustin Ramsdellhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/dustinramsdell/About The Enrollify Podcast Network:The Higher Ed Geek is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you'll like other Enrollify shows too!Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mallory sits down with Rachel Bowser, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College at Agnes Scott College, to unpack one of the most ambitious examples of AI in higher education today.  Rather than treating AI as a supplemental skill, Agnes Scott is embedding AI literacy into the core first-year experience for every student. The conversation explores what it means to redesign curriculum at scale and why institutions must rethink how they prepare students for an AI-shaped future. - - - -Connect With Our Host:Mallory Willsea https://www.linkedin.com/in/mallorywillsea/https://twitter.com/mallorywillseaAbout The Enrollify Podcast Network:The Higher Ed Pulse is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you'll like other Enrollify shows too!Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Roundtable Panel: a daily open discussion of issues in the news and beyond. Today's panelists are Executive Vice President, Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College Jonathan Becker, Preceptor in Public Speaking for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University Terry Gipson, a full professor in the History Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) Allison Kavey, and Associate Professor of Government at Dutchess Community College and since 2023, she has been President of the World Affairs Council of the Mid-Hudson Valley Dr. Karin Riedl.

Send Harold your questions!What does it take to stand out and become a competitive applicant to Touro University California College of Osteopathic Medicine (TUCOM), and what makes this program unique among osteopathic medical schools?In this episode of Admissions Straight Talk, Accepted consultant and podcast host Dr. Valerie Wherley speaks with Dr. Alesia Wagner, associate dean of academic affairs at TUCOM. Together, they explore how the school's mission shapes its curriculum, how its 100% residency match rate reflects the breadth of specialty opportunities available to students, and how TUCOM's approach to clinical education prepares future osteopathic physicians for a wide range of medical careers.If you are researching osteopathic medical schools or preparing your application, this conversation provides valuable insight into what sets TUCOM apart and what it takes to be a competitive applicant.0:00 Meet Dr. Alesia Wagner, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at TUCOM0:42 Overview of Touro University California College of Osteopathic Medicine4:56 Residency Match Data: Specialties and Outcomes6:50 Clinical Rotation Sites and Student Placement at TUCOM9:53 Primary Care vs. Specialty Matches: Breaking the Pigeonhole Myth11:13 TUCOM's Pre-Clinical Electives and the Clinical Distinction Program16:34 Culinary Medicine and Nutrition Education Electives19:56 Interprofessional Education and the Student-Run Free Clinic23:53 What Makes a Competitive Applicant29:11 Life on TUCOM's Campus in Northern CaliforniaRelated ResourcesBio for Dr. Alesia WagnerTouro University College of Osteopathic MedicineTouro's Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment Clinic at MiddletownTUCOM AcademicsRelated EpisodesHow to Get into MSU's College of Osteopathic Medicine [Episode 537]The Bryn Mawr Postbac Premed Program [Episode 614]Is There Such a Thing as Too Many Drafts? Writing a Standout Med School Personal Statement [Episode 612]Follow UsYouTubeFacebookLinkedInContact Uswww.accepted.comsupport@accepted.com+1 (310) 815-9553

From October 28, 2024: Aram Gavoor, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at GW Law, joins Kevin Frazier, Senior Research Fellow in the Constitutional Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin and a Tarbell Fellow at Lawfare, to summarize and analyze the first-ever national security memo on AI. The two also discuss what this memo means for AI policy going forward, given the impending election.To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's YOUR time to #EdUp with Dr. Enrique Morales-Diaz, Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs, SUNY OneontaIn this episode, sponsored by the 2026 ⁠AcOps Conference⁠ July 29-31 by Coursedog, & the ​HigherEd PodCon​ II happening July 16 & 17,YOUR cohost is Bridget Moran, Director of Content Marketing, CoursedogYOUR host is Dr. Jodi Blinco⁠,How does a SUNY comprehensive serving 50% downstate first gen Pell students meet differently prepared post COVID learners where they are without sacrificing rigor or quality?Why does a provost keep teaching & maintain a small faculty wins whiteboard to understand classroom challenges while bringing faculty into institutional conversations beyond academics?What makes students feel we care through finding their person on campus creating Making Connections for Life where alums return to talk about faculty & staff who made the difference?Listen in to #EdUpThank YOU so much for tuning in. Join us on the next episode for YOUR time to EdUp!Connect with YOUR EdUp Team - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Elvin Freytes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Dr. Joe Sallustio⁠⁠⁠⁠● Join YOUR EdUp community at The EdUp ExperienceWe make education YOUR business!P.S.  Want access to the only intelligence platform built exclusively from presidential conversations in higher education? Join EdUp Leadership!

When generative AI platforms first appeared on the scene, faculty had to address these challenges alone. In this episode, Kathleen Landy joins us to discuss how program-level collaboration can help educators adapt more rapidly and effectively. Kathleen is the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Genesee Community College. Prior to this, Kathleen has served in leadership roles at teaching centers at Cornell University, Queensborough Community College, and Mercy College. She has taught in multiple modalities and also has extensive K-12 teaching experience. Kathleen also served on the POD Network Core Committee from 2022 through 2025. A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.

After attacking two countries in 2026, will the Trump administration attack Cuba? What is Cuba’s relationship with the US historically and today? In this segment, we explore the island nation's history, its government and economy, and why the US is targeting Cuba. In addition, we look into the controversy of compensation for property loss for Cuban Americans, as well as the broader issues of appropriation and compensation in Cuba. Lastly, we discuss the country's political and economic challenges and the potential need for reform, and, if reform is necessary, which should come first: political or economic reform. [ dur: 58mins. ] Richard Feinberg is Professor Emeritus of International Political Economy at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Open for Business: Building the New Cuban Economy. William LeoGrande is Associate Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Professor of Government at American University, Washington. He is coauthor of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana. Guillermo J. Grenier is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Global & Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University. He is the co-author of This Land is Our Land: Newcomers and Established Residents in Miami. Sebastián Arcos is Interim director of the Cuban Research Institute in the Florida International University. He was part of the Freedom House delegation to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland and advised the U.S. Department of State on issues concerning human rights in Cuba between 1998 and 2000. This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, Maria Armoudian, Anna Lapin and Sudd Dongre. Politics and Activism, Human Rights, Cuba

It's YOUR time to #EdUp with Donald E. Hall, Provost & Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Binghamton UniversityIn this episode, sponsored by the 2026 ⁠AcOps Conference⁠ July 29-31 by Coursedog, & the ​HigherEd PodCon​ II happening July 16 & 17,YOUR cohost is Bridget Moran, Senior Content Marketing Manager, CoursedogYOUR host is Dr. Jodi Blinco⁠,How does a SUNY center receive $55 million to create the NY Center for AI Responsibility & Research serving the entire state?Why does Binghamton partner across SUNY, NYU, Columbia & Cornell to ensure AI is socially beneficial while involving philosophy, business & arts faculty?What makes liberal arts critical for innovation when Steve Jobs credited a calligraphy class for the computer revolution & vocational training fails elsewhere?Listen in to #EdUpThank YOU so much for tuning in. Join us on the next episode for YOUR time to EdUp!Connect with YOUR EdUp Team - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Elvin Freytes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Dr. Joe Sallustio⁠⁠⁠⁠● Join YOUR EdUp community at The EdUp ExperienceWe make education YOUR business!P.S. Want to get early, ad-free access & exclusive leadership content to help support the show? Become an #EdUp Premium Member today!

What if the source of your best writing isn't something you control — but something you learn to collaborate with? How can ancient ideas about the muse, the daimon, and creative genius transform the way you approach your work? And what might happen if you stopped fighting the silence and let it become your greatest creative ally? With Matt Cardin, author of Writing at the Wellspring. In the intro, thoughts on bookstores and Toppings; 20 ways authors can signal humanity and build reader trust [Wish I'd Known Then]; Learning from Silence – Pico Iyer; ProWritingAid spring sale; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn. Today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital, self-publishing with support, where you can get free formatting, free distribution to multiple stores, and a host of other benefits. Just go to www.draft2digital.com to get started. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Matt Cardin is the multi-award-nominated author of eight books at the convergence of horror, religion, and creativity. His latest book is Writing at the Wellspring: Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius, which is fantastic. I actually blurbed it as follows: “A guide for writers who welcome the dark and hunger for meaning. . . . If the page is a threshold, this book will show you how to cross.” You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes How Matt balances a full-time academic career with his creative writing life The ancient concept of the genius, the muse, and the daimon, and why creativity is about collaboration with something beyond yourself Why the silences that come into our creative lives, including writer's block and inertia, might actually be gifts rather than obstacles The stages of the creative process Living into the dark, and embracing uncertainty How Substack and blogging can organically grow into books You can find Matt at MattCardin.com or www.livingdark.net. Transcript of the interview with Matt Cardin Joanna: Matt Cardin is the multi-award-nominated author of eight books at the convergence of horror, religion, and creativity. His latest book is Writing at the Wellspring: Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius, which is fantastic. I actually blurbed it as follows: “A guide for writers who welcome the dark and hunger for meaning. . . . If the page is a threshold, this book will show you how to cross.” It is a great book. So welcome to the show, Matt. Matt: Well, thank you, Jo. It's really a pleasure to be here, especially since, as you and I were briefly acknowledging before we started recording, we have overlapping interests to a great degree. So it's really great to make official contact with you. Joanna: Indeed. So, first up, before we get into the book itself— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing. Matt: Well, I'm one of those people whose story is probably typical in some ways, in that I really wanted to do it from the time I was a child. My father was a great writer, although he was an attorney. He wasn't a professional writer. Something about books and reading when I was a child really seriously enchanted me. I was very frustrated when I was so young—and I vividly remember this—that I couldn't read, because I loved the books that were read to me. I craved being able to read them for myself. So as soon as I gained that ability in school, it was off to the races, so to speak, and for some reason, a desire to tell stories myself came along with that. Being a “writer” was one of the earliest life desires, job or career desires, that I expressed. I was one of those young people really into fantasy, horror, and science fiction. So I was reading a lot of it and trying to emulate it and write a lot of it. There was a cinematic component—I was a movie fanatic as well. I won a local Authors' Guild short story writing contest when I was a senior in high school and began trying to write stories seriously in college. Then my interest in horror and religion became dominant over time, and that's what I ended up writing about. Joanna: Has your interest turned into paid work? That's the other thing, because there's an interest and then there's making writing more of your income and your business. Matt: Right. Well, actually, although I have made and do make money from my writing, it has always, always, always remained on the side. My main career, as far as my moneymaking life, first started off in video and media production, which is formally what I got my undergraduate college degree in. Then I switched into education. I taught high school for some years, and then now for the past, good Lord, 18 years, I have been in higher education. First as English faculty who also taught some religion courses, and then now for the past several years in the administration. I'm Vice President of Academic Affairs at a college. My writing has been something that I pursued as an avocation. As far as earning money from it, that didn't happen even with my first publication, which happened on the internet in 1998, I believe, with a horror story titled “Teeth.” It was just free—I didn't get paid. That led to paid publication of that story three or four years later, when it appeared as my very first print publication in a Lovecraftian horror anthology from Del Rey titled The Children of Cthulhu. It appeared as the final story, and that was the first time I had received a paycheck. It was a professional per-word rate. Since then I've had several books published and more stories and essays and that kind of thing. I've had income sometimes from writing and sometimes I haven't. My first book came out of that story. I attended the World Horror Convention in 2001, actually before that Lovecraftian anthology was published, but it had been placed. At the World Horror Convention, which was in Seattle that year, I met one of the two editors of that book, and that led to me having my first short story collection, Divinations of the Deep, which was not for much money, but it attracted a lot of good attention and some good reviews. So it's been like that all along. I mean, I've made a couple of runs at saying I would love to just be an author, as it were, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards for me. And honestly, I'm glad it's not. I have made the most money from some academic editing projects that I've done. I created and edited a two-volume encyclopedia of the history of horror literature, for instance, for a big academic publisher. Those are work-for-hire projects that I get paid for. Making money on my own creative vision and my own creative work has been intermittent. It really has proven over time that not having my primary creative, spiritual, and philosophical drive hooked to what I earn my bread by has been a blessing. I don't want to take this thing I love and make it be how I have to grind to earn my money. I want to keep it in a protected space. That has been spontaneously what's happened with my writing career. Joanna: Yes. I think as you say, there are a lot of benefits of that, especially where you are writing at this convergence of horror, religion, and creativity. Your writing is very deep. I would say it's on the edge of academic. I don't want to say it's completely academic, because a lot of people will find that difficult. But I think Writing at the Wellspring goes very deep while still being open to non-academic readers. As you say, I think if you had wanted to make a living with your books, you would've had to have gone in at a lighter level, perhaps. Do you think that makes sense? Matt: Yes, I know what you mean. I want to specify, I know that neither you nor I are saying anything about this as any kind of criticism or condescension to anyone who does make their living as a writer. I mean, I believe you do. Joanna: Yes, exactly. Matt: And that's fine. There really are people who have had significant commercial success from books or other things they've written that don't appear to be making huge concessions to being commercial. You can make a living as a writer, I think, and really follow your muse and not feel like you have to pander or cater or cheapen it. Then there are people who have perfectly happily decided to commercialise their work and tune it in whatever way is currently popular. That's fine. Every writer, every creative person should do what is right for him or her, in my opinion. In my particular case, I think what you said is right. I do think that I might have needed to change some things, to back off, to word them differently. Whenever I've tried to exert deliberate control like that, it just turns out that it's not something that my creative spirit wants to do. I don't really feel like I'm in contact with the work anymore. I'm fine with that. I don't think I'm doing a sweet lemons type thing. It really is the way it just needs to be. If it ever proves that me doing it strictly the way I want to do it, going however deep I want regardless of trying to appeal to a paying readership—if it turns out that at some point aligns with boatloads of money coming in, that's fine. That's perfectly fine. I'd be open to that. Joanna: Yes. Matt: I would be open to that. Joanna: You mentioned muse there, and with Writing at the Wellspring, the subtitle is “Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius.” So I think this is a good place to talk about it. As you mentioned, you are leaning into your muse and your inner genius, and you use other terms—daemon or daimon. I think sometimes people find the word “genius” particularly very difficult because it has the connotation of brilliance in some form. So how can people think about this? How can we lean into this [genius] side of ourselves? Matt: Honestly, one thing that I would suggest people do is I would refer them to the TED Talk that Elizabeth Gilbert gave some years ago—was it 2009, 2010, 2011? It's one of the more popular TED Talks. Elizabeth Gilbert spoke about. I think it's sometimes given the title “Your Elusive Creative Genius” or something like that. Her whole talk is about the way in her own creative life, and as she recommends to others, it has been very important for her to seize on the older model that we're talking about. The most clear articulation of it is that it used to be the case—and we're talking about in ancient Western history, back to the Romans and even earlier to the Greeks—that genius was not something that you identified a person as being. It was something that a person had. And I would also say importantly, maybe had them too. In ancient Roman culture surrounding art and poetry and that kind of thing, the genius was the spirit that might, say, live in an artist's studio and would provide the same service to that artist as the Greek muses provided to someone who was writing epic poetry or history or something like that. That understanding of it has continued in various ways down through history. But there was a fateful transition as Western culture went through what we commonly call the Enlightenment and the Renaissance as well. This was where the term “genius,” while it didn't lose all those connotations of being an inspiring spirit—something that a person both has and maybe has hold of them—did become internalised to the point where we speak of people as being geniuses., which is exactly what you're talking about. I agree, some people listening to this probably have some reservations about this. They don't want to call themselves a genius because we tend to mean that's a super brilliant person, some kind of prodigy who is possessed of amazing artistic, creative, or intellectual skills. Again, that is the result of a cultural, philosophical, psychological, historical transition that occurred several centuries ago. And you still see the older meaning of it being attached sometimes. You think of people who we call geniuses being touched by something. Well, the older version—where you think of the genius, which in the way I use it in this book and also in my first book on creativity, A Course in Demonic Creativity—the genius is equivalent to the muse, which is equivalent to that other figure that you mentioned, the daemon or the daimon. It refers to a separate—what seems for all the world to be a separate—centre of intelligence or entity or influence. The thing that gives you both your creative drive and also your ideas, and serves as the source of what comes to you naturally to write. It's more than just ideas. When you talk about the ancient Greek daimon, there was a whole well-developed tradition of that in ancient Greek philosophy and religion. A daimon was, in one famous sense, a spirit that you were born with, that the gods had given you. It was like your double, your higher self. It was the thing that represented your character, your interests, the blueprint and the outline that your life was supposed to follow. There are great books written about that. There's a book by the psychologist James Hillman titled The Soul's Code. A lot of people have read it. It lays out the daimon theory and gives it application to modern instances. The idea is that everybody has a genius or has a muse or has a daimon. For writers, my recommendation is to say, whether you believe it or not, whether you take it as a metaphor—which is fine—or whether you want to get somewhat mystical and delve into the idea that maybe there's really a spirit or something, it doesn't matter. Productively, with practical, measurable results, you can learn to relate to your creative impulse as if you are collaborating internally with someone else. It's the centre of why you're interested in writing what you want to write, why you want to write the way you want to write, and even the types of things that unfold in the course of your career—both your creative career and the rest of your life, in the mould of the ancient daimon. I have found that to be a vein of great power and meaning in my own life. I do it exactly the way I'm describing. I don't actually believe it, but I don't disbelieve it. I find that in experience, it really doesn't matter. It works and it may as well be true. Joanna: I mean, obviously the book has a whole load of ways we can tap into that, but I did like that you talk about stillness and silence, because I feel like that is actually increasingly difficult as authors. Obviously it's noisy online and we're meant to be doing things like social media or interacting with people online. And then the world is just noisy. The news is noisy. There's lots of things. How can we use this idea of stillness and silence? Also, any other ways we can practically tap into this side? Matt: Sure. One thing that wanted to say itself in this book was some things I had been thinking and feeling about silence for a long time. As you say, it can be difficult these days to find what feels like the silence that we need to even get our work done. We're talking about the muse or the genius. How can we even hear it when it seems like the clamour of all the pulls that we have on our outward attention has become truly a cacophony? We have opted for this in many ways through our engagement with social media or other things, but in other ways seems like it's been thrust upon us. What I want to point out, that has been of extreme importance to me, is that many silences come into our lives as creatives that we resist. It's not just that we can't find the silence and the space that we feel like we need so as not to drown out our creativity. It's that we have unwanted silences come in, like writer's block. Or even if it doesn't feel like a block, just inertia. Just stasis. I don't know about you, but I have many, many times found myself grappling with what, for all the world, feels like a totally natural, organic sense of wanting to slip into complete inertia, just total stillness. And that feels like it has been in conflict with my creative drive. It's like I have this residual desire and also a sense of duty that I really should be writing. Maybe I have an idea in mind and I'm just not working on it. Or maybe I'm in the middle of a project and I feel like I'm abandoning it. Or maybe nothing's coming up, but I feel like it should be. I'm pushing myself, but there's a division in me where I also just want to leave it alone. Whether that means actually just sitting there silently at my writing table or in meditation, or maybe just going about regular daily life and forgetting about trying to fulfil this creative calling. I really think there's a vein of gold to be tapped in the silences that come to all of us. Because as I said, that can be in the middle of daily activity. We have this kind of franticness, some of us, about our creativity. We get wrapped up in it. We feel bound to it. The thing that so much of the time we want to think is a gift—we're proud of it, we cherish it, we like our writing—also becomes a burden. This fantasy of just chucking it all, of just saying, “I would love to be free of it. It's like something that's weighing me down. I'm sorry that I roped myself into it. I would love to just sink into complete silence.” This sort of meditative thing, or just muteness—hey, that is valid to hear. That's valid to heed when it comes up. I mean, sometimes we have gotten ourselves into situations where we have external responsibilities and deadlines, and it's important to try and honour those and not be a bad person on the level of just fulfilling practical obligations. It's also important to recognise you've got silence offering itself to you in all kinds of ways. The more important silence is paradoxically the one that we so often resist if we're creative people and feel like we have to be making. The more important silence is not whether or not your outward conditions seem like they're a clamour and they're chaotic and they're distracting and they're full of pressure. It's that inner silence. So I recommend paying attention to when it comes up. And for practical ways—they are endless. Take advantage of early mornings. A lot of people have found great value in getting up earlier than they are used to and making a practice of that, and either just meditating or free writing. Maybe using, for example, Julia Cameron's famous practice of morning pages, which has been valuable to me sometimes. Or doing things like—as I've said about the muse and the genius and the daimon—personify your unconscious mind and maybe write down a dialogue between yourself and your creative spirit, whether about your current project or just about your life and your creativity as a whole. There are various tricks to get in touch with this unconscious part of you, and I really am convinced out of practical personal experience that it's not necessary to have outer silence and outer spaciousness when you can find it within yourself. You can find it through some of these exercises for getting in alignment with what your creativity wants to do. You can get in touch with it if you're paying attention to what you might not recognise as a gift—offering it to yourself. If things go quiet and you think, “Oh no, I should be doing something”—why not let that be a place where things can germinate? Why not let that be the silence that you might not be able to find on the outside? Joanna: Yes, and I'm feeling guilty here because of course we are producing a podcast episode for people to listen to. I find personally that one of the places I can find silence is when I walk. It's not obviously silent outside, but I am definitely guilty of always listening to podcasts, often at very fast speed as well. Sometimes when I go for a walk, I just deliberately do not listen to anything—don't listen to an audiobook, don't listen to a podcast—and a lot comes up there. I have my phone with me, and when I get back from those walks and jot down things that come up in my mind, I will have so many notes of things that have come up in my brain during the walk. It's really difficult, isn't it? Because I know you also love input. You do a lot of research. As I said, your books have a lot of research in them, and so we both like doing the research. But also I definitely find that has to be balanced with the time for letting it come out again in some form, with that mental silence. You also talk about being uncomfortable, and I feel like sometimes that silence can be uncomfortable as well. Matt: Yes, it can be. There's no telling what might come up when you are faced with silence. Again, it's one of those things—even the outer kind that we think we crave. Sometimes it's a bit frightening when it comes up, which is why we try to fill it with things, like this podcast episode for example. There's a threshold that you can notice you cross sometimes, where what was a natural desire to connect with something that you heard about and found interesting becomes a bit frantic. Where now, really, what might be good is if you shut off—didn't go for the next podcast episode or didn't go for the next click to the website—if you just shut the browser and just sat there and did something else. You're kind of, with a little desperateness, trying to fill the void. What you described about needing to get quiet and let things happen—yes. I love reading and research, but the classic stages of the creative process—first codified, I think, by Graham Wallas, if I remember correctly—they still work. It's really good sometimes to have a model and understand how it works. You have what's sometimes called the preparation stage. All the input, all the research, all the brainstorming, all that kind of thing. Then the incubation stage can be vastly important. That can get frightening, both because the silence seems somehow threatening, like something about you is going to be exposed. Or maybe that you're going to lose the thread of whatever it was and it's never going to come out. But really, if you just stop and let your muse, let your genius do its thing, let your unconscious do its thing, it will suggest itself again. It will come up on its own. Ideas will come back. You'll realise, “Oh, I didn't know what I was going to do with that character. I didn't know how these ideas were going to come together. I didn't even know what this idea for a story, a book, or an essay was going to be.” It comes back up, and with you working with it, it shows what it wanted to be all along. This whole thing about doing the preparation and then allowing it to incubate and germinate and then sprout when it wants to, that still works. Part of the reason that we're scared of the silence, I'm convinced, is because each of us operates in our psychological selves as a closed system. It's like we each comprise our own cosmos, so to speak. I know you know that I have worked in horror literature, the literature of cosmic fear. In cosmic horror, as laid out by the likes of Lovecraft and others, the basic effect has been analysed as constituting a disturbance of the universe. That's the horror of cosmic horror—the world is transformed into this nightmarish thing in a cosmic horror story, where there's a haunting, threatening presence that's out of the ordinary and it's somehow bound up with the narrator's interior world. Life reveals itself as supernaturally or ontologically something nightmarish—there are awful forces that are about to erupt all the time. And whether anybody's into cosmic horror or not, I think it's pretty accurate to say that we each constitute our own world, our own cosmos. A lot of the noise that we make—the mental noise and the complications we introduce into our own lives—is, usually unconsciously, trying to stave off confrontation with the otherness that is outside the barrier of our personal sense of self. The weird thing is that that otherness is actually in us, and in fact, we can approach it in the figure of the daemon or the daimon or the muse. So creativity is fraught. You're dealing with something that you might want to think, “Oh, this is great, it's going to be the source of my ideas, it's going to fulfil my creativity.” Well, yes, but it is frightening to think about the fact of something about yourself being beyond yourself and perhaps being out of your conscious control and somehow guiding your destiny. A lot of people have trouble getting along with their own unconscious, which is another way to put it. There's a horror, a fear, a dread effect that comes when we feel like we are out of control. We all face that ultimately—when it comes to our death, for example. There are some spiritual traditions that talk about dying before you die, that being basically the way to enlightenment in those traditions. Recognising and coming to terms with the fact that this thing that is you, that you call yourself, is transitory. It is only there by being enclosed within and swamped from without by this thing that is not you, which is a sort of void to which you'll return. In the book, I deal with some of that, and I talk about it from a non-dual spiritual viewpoint, because ultimately for me, these creative questions have become inseparable from spiritual questions. Joanna: Yes. And obviously people know about my book Writing the Shadow, which is how we really connected around this Jungian idea of the shadow and the darkness. I agree with you—there's some really interesting things at the juxtaposition of all of these topics, which we could talk about for a long time. I do want to ask you around your idea of “living into the dark.” Because I feel like you do take things beyond just the writing into this idea of living into it. So maybe talk a bit about that. And obviously synchronicity, which is a Jungian psychology concept. Matt: Living into the dark is the thing that forms the overarching ethos or perspective for me of all this. I got the term from “writing into the dark,” which actually comes from the American science fiction and fantasy author Dean Wesley Smith. He wrote a book titled Writing Into the Dark, subtitled “Writing Without an Outline.” It's a great book. I recommend it to anyone. It is about forsaking and foregoing the felt need to outline writing in advance and trusting your creative mind to be able to make up a story in real time. That draws on the deep nature of storytelling to come out right. Therefore you write into the dark, as if you're walking down a road where you have a lantern and you can only see one step ahead. You haven't mapped out the territory. It was a great metaphor. I had already been thinking in that direction about life and about creativity for some time when I first came across that book. I devoured it and recognised it described how I had already been writing anyway, which is one reason it was so powerful for me. Then it edged out into a broader understanding for me that I had also been coming up with, that I just ended up calling “living into the dark.” None of us knows where anything is going, that much is obvious. But living into the dark goes farther than that, to embrace this understanding. I think of this in connection with what so many people, either personally or because of jobs they have where they're required to think like this. I think of this in terms of the famous five-year plan that so many of us want to draw up. There's nothing wrong with a five-year plan or a ten-year plan or a one-year plan. You can come up with that for practical purposes and try and chart where you're going, but we too often forget that that's just a fantasy exercise. We are not actually thinking into the future, nor are we ever actually thinking into the past. Remembering the past, predicting or projecting the future—both are events that are happening right now, in this moment, which is always now. It's no less now than it was when you and I first started this conversation. Past and future are projections—mental projections right now. And everything is unfolding in the present in real time, which effectively means what's going to come next is coming out of—well, we don't know where it's coming out of. Darkness. Living into the dark is living with full-on contact with, and awareness of, and embrace of this fact that we don't know what's coming up. That encompasses all of life and all of creativity. That same darkness, if it's helpful for you to take on this emotional tenor—which it is for me—can relate to the darkness in cosmic horror fiction, or to some of the rich traditions of darkness, like in Daoism with the yin contrasted with yang. Yin is the dark, moon, feminine aspect of things—the receptive source of the universe. This idea of living into the dark, of just accepting that we're all on this journey on a path where we can only see one step ahead, even if that far, has been meaningful to me. It's been meaningful to my creativity, and I recommend it to anybody to whom it appeals. It takes a lot of pressure off. I think that's a guiding meta-theme for me—trying to take the pressure off us from trying to control things that can't be controlled, and more stepping into that flow of understanding: what's going to come to me is going to come to me, and my posture toward it, whether I align with it or not, is what's going to determine my experience of it. You mentioned synchronicity. It's interesting. It's verifiable. I know a lot of people have verified it for themselves. Maybe some people listening to this have too. It's verifiable that when you really get in tune with this present-moment thing and get in tune with your creativity—and you can tell when you're aligned and not, when you feel blocked or when you feel resistance or not—when these things align on their own sometimes, strange coincidences do happen. Jung talked about synchronicity as an acausal connecting principle. That was probably due to the fact that the psyche is not separate from the fabric of the world that gives rise to it, so that we might have subjective things—impressions, fantasies, dreams—that we rather uncannily see mirrored in objective events. Like the famous thing that clarified and coalesced that for him: a psychotherapy session with a patient who was describing a dream she'd been having about a scarab beetle. Then he heard a tapping at the window of his office and he went there and opened it, and there was a European beetle—a kind of scarab beetle, much like the Egyptian scarab—that was there. He held it up and said to the woman, “Is this your beetle? Here is your beetle.” It just blew her mind. It opened new levels of the therapy that she was receiving. Those kinds of things happen. I've had them happen. Joanna: Me too. Matt: If you're a long-time writer or reader, you're familiar with the library genie—the library daemon, we sometimes refer to it as—the book that, just at the moment you think of it and realise, “Oh yes…” You're doing your study, and it doesn't have to be a library, it could be on the web or whatever. You finally realise what it is that you need, what you've been looking for, and in some cases it literally falls off the shelf onto someone's head. What do you make of those when they happen? At the very least, it rattles your cage. You might enter a state of suspended judgement about whether we really are living in a kind of magical cosmos full of real correspondences. It's a bit like the daimon or the muse: is it a metaphor? Is it just an interpretation, or is it something real? Probably the best place is one of profoundly, actively embraced agnosticism, and just take it for what it is. Joanna: Yes, and leaning more into your intuition. I think you definitely demonstrate that in the book as well, really exploring a lot of very interesting topics. Now, we are almost out of time, but you do have a Substack, The Living Dark, where you publish essays, and you've also got all kinds of really interesting books. I want people to go have a look at some of the other stuff you've written, especially if you enjoy horror and religion and all of that kind of thing. So just to ask, how do you decide when something is an essay on The Living Dark, and how do you decide when you are going to put it in a book or in some other way? I feel like a lot of authors are thinking about Substack but don't necessarily know what to put on it. I think I first connected with you on your Substack, where I was like, “Oh, this guy's writing interesting, weird stuff.” How do you use Substack as opposed to writing for your books? Matt: Sure. Let me answer by first talking about what happened previously with that first book on creativity that I mentioned, A Course in Demonic Creativity. I had all kinds of thoughts and ideas coming up, seeded over many years of practice and reading about the daimon and the daemon and the genius and the muse. In 2009 I founded a blog—it was just a WordPress blog—and I titled it Daemon Muse. I attended to it for two to three years. A lot of people ended up reading it. I really did not have any plans, not even any back-burner plans, of taking the material that I published in posts there about this way of creativity and making it a book. I did realise about a year and a half in that essentially I had a book I had already written in those posts. So it took some work, and I spent six months making it all into a coherent book. By the way, that book was only ever published as a PDF, which is still free on my website, MattCardin.com—although plans for the first-ever print edition of it are in motion right now. That was published in 2011. When I went to Substack and started my newsletter there in 2022—and by the way, it wasn't originally called The Living Dark; my first title was “Living Into the Dark,” and then I changed it about a year, year and a half in—I kind of am doing the same thing. It's been a while since I took anything and thought, “I'm writing a book with it.” I write what comes to me to write. You know how Substack Notes is Substack's own version of social media, kind of like Twitter used to be or like X kind of is now. It happens all the time that I write things that just stay in contact with people as a Substack Note—some short thing. And then I realise I wanted to say more about that. Or you have what happened just this morning. Three or four hours before you and I were talking, I started writing a Substack Note and it got so long I realised I had something that could be a post to The Living Dark. So I switched over and finished it that way. The book Writing at the Wellspring came together after I had written things for a couple of years at The Living Dark and realised that I could trace a path through about a third of the posts that I had ever published there, and had the makings of a book. So that, plus other material from earlier in my life—there are things from my private journals from years ago in Writing at the Wellspring—plus some new material, ended up turning into that book. So I'm not thinking about the difference, is what I'm saying. I find writing at my Living Dark newsletter to be a needful and enjoyable creative outlet, partly because I have some 3,800 readers now and it feels good to be in contact with them and to have that audience and to know that there's that eye on what I'm writing. That's partly because I just have the freedom to work it out to my satisfaction and publish it there. I'm already halfway forming another book that will be of a different focus, to come from things that I have published there. So for me, there's an organic relationship between Substack writing, or any kind of blogging, and the writing of books. If people haven't thought about that, they might want to consider it. If you have one already or if you're thinking of starting a blog on Substack or anywhere else, maybe you have things that can guide you to a book that already exists and you just haven't realised it. Joanna: So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Matt: Well, The Living Dark that we're talking about is at www.livingdark.net—and it does require the three Ws at the beginning to get there. Then my author website is MattCardin.com, and you can go to the books page there to get a link to all the books I've published and read about them. Joanna: Great. Well, thanks so much for your time, Matt. That was fantastic. Matt: Thank you, Jo. I really appreciate the invitation.The post Writing At The Wellspring: Tapping The Source Of Your Inner Genius With Matt Cardin first appeared on The Creative Penn.

The U.S. and Israel launched a war against Iran over three weeks ago and now President Donald Trump has indicated that the White House is engaging in talks with Iran. The President said the talks would continue during the week and that he had ordered the War Department to postpone attacks against energy infrastructure in Iran for five days. Meanwhile, there are reports that the Pentagon is preparing to deploy more troops from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East, adding to the thousands troops already headed to the region to assist with operations in Iran. FOX's Eben Brown speaks with James Robbins, Dean for Academic Affairs in the Institute of World Politics, who says plans for military operations against Iran have been discussed for quite some time. Click Here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ To Follow 'The FOX News Rundown: Evening Edition' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The U.S. and Israel launched a war against Iran over three weeks ago and now President Donald Trump has indicated that the White House is engaging in talks with Iran. The President said the talks would continue during the week and that he had ordered the War Department to postpone attacks against energy infrastructure in Iran for five days. Meanwhile, there are reports that the Pentagon is preparing to deploy more troops from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East, adding to the thousands troops already headed to the region to assist with operations in Iran. FOX's Eben Brown speaks with James Robbins, Dean for Academic Affairs in the Institute of World Politics, who says plans for military operations against Iran have been discussed for quite some time. Click Here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ To Follow 'The FOX News Rundown: Evening Edition' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The U.S. and Israel launched a war against Iran over three weeks ago and now President Donald Trump has indicated that the White House is engaging in talks with Iran. The President said the talks would continue during the week and that he had ordered the War Department to postpone attacks against energy infrastructure in Iran for five days. Meanwhile, there are reports that the Pentagon is preparing to deploy more troops from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East, adding to the thousands troops already headed to the region to assist with operations in Iran. FOX's Eben Brown speaks with James Robbins, Dean for Academic Affairs in the Institute of World Politics, who says plans for military operations against Iran have been discussed for quite some time. Click Here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ To Follow 'The FOX News Rundown: Evening Edition' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Newt talks with Dr. William LeoGrande, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and Associate Vice-Provost for Academic Affairs, Professor of Government, and Dean Emeritus of the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C. They discuss the foreign policy strategies of President Trump, including actions in Venezuela, Ukraine, and Iran, and the challenges faced by the United States in maintaining dominance in the Western Hemisphere. Dr. LeoGrande provides insights into Cuba's historical and current socio-political landscape, emphasizing the impact of the Cuban Revolution and subsequent U.S. – Cuba relations. They also discuss the geopolitical influence of Marco Rubio, U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, and his impact on Latin American policy, particularly regarding Cuba and Venezuela. The episode concludes with a new segment addressing listener’s questions on topics such as the Strait of Hormuz and the SAVE Act.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Rod and Greg Show Daily Rundown – Tuesday, March 17, 20264:20 pm: J. Christian Adams, President of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, joins the program to discuss election fraud and how large numbers of illegal aliens are voting in American elections.4:38 pm: Shawn Fleetwood, Staff Writer at The Federalist, joins the show to discuss his piece about how Wyoming has become “ground zero” for RINOs' (Republicans in Name Only) war against conservative policies.6:05 pm: Lauren K. Hall, Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Rochester Institute of Technology's College of Liberal Arts, joins Rod and Greg to discuss her piece for Real Clear Politics about how Trump voters are right in thinking the system is broken, but wrong about how.6:38 pm: Andrew Fowler, Editor of Real Clear Religion, joins Rod and Greg to discuss his piece about why George Washington's statement that religiosity is vital to society's sustainability still matters today.

Ever since Leo Strauss published his magnum opus Natural Right and History, which ends by heavily implying Edmund Burke opened the door for the evils of historicism in the modern world, a great fissure in conservative nerddom erupted between those who align with either titan. Were Strauss' criticism of Burke warranted? Did Burke disavow natural rights and pave the way for the evils of authoritarianism, fascism, Marxism, and progressivism to come? Does a careful, esoteric reading of Natural Right and History reveal the Strauss secret family chili recipe? Saving Elephants has assembled an all-star panel to answer these questions and more.   Representing Edmund Burke: Dr. Gregory Collins is one of the most celebrated Burke scholars of the rising generation. He is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and Program on Ethics, Politics, and Economics at Yale University. He recently received the Buckley Institute's 2024 Lux and Veritas Faculty Prize. His first book, Commerce and Manners in Edmund Burke's Political Economy, examined Edmund Burke's understanding of the connection between markets and morals. Greg has also published articles on Adam Smith, F.A. Hayek, Frederick Douglass, Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, and Britain's East India Company. His additional writings and book reviews can be found in Modern Age, Law & Liberty, National Affairs, National Review, and University Bookman.  You can follow Greg on Twitter @GregCollins111   Lauren Hall is an author and professor helping people combat overwhelm in an age of extremes. Her writing rejects binary and black-and-white thinking to help people lead more balanced lives, build stronger relationships, and restore individual and civic well-being. Hall is a 2024 Pluralism Fellow with the Mercatus Center's Program on Pluralism and Civil Exchange and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Prohuman Foundation. Her Substack and speaking spread the message of radical moderation to new audiences via public writing, speaking, and podcast interviews. Hall has presented her work on radical moderation at conferences including the Heterodox Academy Conference, the State Policy Network Conference, the Mercatus Center's Pluralism Summit, and various political science and related conferences and has a range of talks and podcast interviews available on radical moderation and other topics. In her "real" job, she is a Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and author of the books Family and the Politics of Moderation (Baylor U. Press, 2014) and The Medicalization of Birth and Death (Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2019). Hall has a PhD in Political Science from Northern Illinois University (2007) and a BA in Philosophy from Binghamton University (2002).   Representing Strauss: Steven F. Hayward is a fellow of the Public Law and Policy Program at Berkeley Law and visiting professor in School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University. Steven frequently writes on a wide range of current topics, including environmentalism, law, economics, and public policy for publications including National Review, Reason, The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, The Public Interest, the Claremont Review of Books, and the Policy Review at the Hoover Institution.  His newspaper articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, and dozens of other daily newspapers. He is the author of a two-volume narrative history of Ronald Reagan and his effect on American political life, The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, 1964-1980, and The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counter-Revolution, 1980-1989.  His other books include Index of Leading Environmental Indicators; The Almanac of Environmental Trends; Mere Environmentalism: A Biblical Perspective on Humans and the Natural World, Churchill on Leadership; Greatness: Reagan, Churchill, and the Making of Extraordinary Leaders; Patriotism Is Not Enough; and M. Stanton Evans: Conservative Wit, Apostle of Freedom. Steven has also served as visiting fellow professor, scholar, or lecturer at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), Ashland University, Mont Pelerin Society, Pacific Research Institute, The Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Georgetown University, The Fund for American Studies, and University of Colorado Boulder. His blog, powerlineblog.com, is one of the nation's most-read political websites.   The international woman of mystery, Lucretia, teaches at the University of Arizona.  Steve and Lucretia—along with John Yoo—host the 3 Whiskey Happy Hour podcast.  

Provost Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle sits down with Dr. Randy Wykoff, founding dean of the ETSU College of Public Health, to reflect on his decades of leadership, teaching, and service. From building Tennessee's first accredited school of public health to preparing students for real-world challenges through hands-on learning and community engagement, Dr. Wykoff shares lessons from a career dedicated to improving health across Appalachia and beyond — just months before his retirement. Find out more:  ETSU College of Public Health: https://www.etsu.edu/cph/?utm_campaign=College-of-Public-Health Podcast transcript:  Dr. Randy Wykoff We believe from the beginning that we had to be world-class. I think it's critical for students to see how what they've learned works in the community. So all of our public health students, environmental health students, health admin students have to do an internship. And that's basically a semester-long opportunity for them to take what they've learned and see, "Oh, wait a minute, this really does work. I really can go out and help this agency do what they're doing." Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle Hi, I'm Kimberly McCorkle, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at East Tennessee State University. From the moment I arrived on this campus, I have been inspired by our faculty, their passion for what they do, their belief in the power of higher education, and the way they are transforming the lives of their students. This podcast is dedicated to them, our incredible faculty at ETSU. Hear their stories as they tell us "Why I Teach." In this episode, I speak with Dr. Randy Wykoff, the founding dean of the ETSU College of Public Health and the longest-serving dean of public health in the United States. Under his leadership, the college became the first accredited school of public health in Tennessee and central Appalachia and has tripled its enrollment since 2006. During his tenure, the college has secured more than $50 million in research funding and earned national recognition for teaching, research, and community service. A Tennessee Health Care Hall of Fame inductee and recipient of the U.S. Surgeon General's Medallion, Dr. Wykoff has made a lasting impact on public health education, and practice across the region. Earlier this year, he announced his plans to retire at the end of the 2025-26 academic year. So before he retires, I wanted to make sure to feature his wisdom and his insights on "Why I Teach." Enjoy the show. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle Dr. Wykoff, welcome to the show. This is a bittersweet episode for me as we're just a few short months from your retirement, which seems like a good time for reflection. You've spent more than two decades leading the College of Public Health. What originally drew you to public health, and what ultimately brought you to ETSU? Dr. Randy Wykoff No, that's a great question. Thank you for having me today. I always tell the students that your career isn't a river. It doesn't always flow in the same direction. So I started out to be a tropical pediatrician. That was my goal. That's what I ... I'd lived in Africa as a kid, and I planned on going back. And so I went to med school, did a pediatric residency, did a residency in preventive medicine and tropical medicine. I got a certificate of knowledge in tropical medicine. I got a master's in public health in tropical medicine. And in order to go to med school, I took out a National Health Service Corps scholarship. And after interviewing at various places, for reasons that I don't quite understand, they sent me to run six county health departments in South Carolina. So two aspects of my career happened at once: one, shifting from medicine to public health, and the other was into a leadership position. So after four years, I left that and went to the FDA, where I spent a decade. I spent some time on Capitol Hill and then went to an international nonprofit. And when it became clear to me that I needed to move on from the nonprofit, I had no academic experience. I had no published research. I had no funding. So I thought, "Why not become a dean of public health?" And I saw the ETSU ad, and I had never been in East Tennessee, other than briefly to travel through it. And my wife said, "Well, if we're going to live in Tennessee, we have to live on a lake." And I said, "There are no lakes in East Tennessee." That's how little I knew about it. So that's what brought me here. I just happened to see a job. I don't know that I was qualified for it, but they gave it to me. So that's it. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle When you look back at the early days of the college, what was your vision for what it could become? Dr. Randy Wykoff Well, when we were accredited, we were the 43rd school in the country. And we were the newest, the smallest, the least well-known, and actually the least respected by at least one metric. And we realized that we had to do something different. We weren't going to be Johns Hopkins South, right? We had to figure out a way that we could be small but world-class. And if you want, I'll talk about the hotel analogy and how that played out. But we believed from the beginning that we had to be world-class, because we had to compete with these other 42 schools. All but one of them was at a large private institution or a state land grant institution. Two things I did that I'm kind of proud of. One was the hotel analogy, which was this idea that schools of public health are like hotels. Your five-star hotel has a gold elevator and doorman and uniform and a Cartier distributor and a Michelin star restaurant – more than you could possibly use in any one hotel stay and at a premium price. But large schools of public health were like that. Then your mid-sized schools of public health are like conference hotels. Good facilities, nice part of town, one nice restaurant. And your small schools of public health are like Motel 6s. They have clean washcloths. They have soap in those little plastic containers. They meet all the minimum accreditation requirements. But no matter how well you run a Motel 6, it's still a Motel 6. So our idea was there's actually three ways you can be small in the hospitality industry and be world-class. One is a bed-and-breakfast, which is about relationships. One is an adventure, like a barefoot cruise or base camp. And the other is a destination, like a safari camp. And we thought, okay, we can be all three of those. We can be one that's really known for how we treat students and how we treat each other, one that allows students to do things they wouldn't do anywhere else, and then promote Appalachia. Don't hide from it, promote it. It makes us unique and different. So that was the one thing. The other thing I did that I think was the only other thing I'm proud of, I've always had this idea that once someone shows you they can do their job, the best thing you can do is let them do whatever else they can do. And you see that you see people just absolutely go well beyond what their job description is if you empower them to do things. And that's worked really well for us, especially as a small school. We had to have people that could step up and do things that we didn't expect. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle That's great. Well, two of the secrets to the success. Dr. Randy Wykoff That's right. That's all there is. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle The College of Public Health has been nationally recognized for its innovative curriculum and teaching. How do you help students connect what they learn in the classroom with real-world health challenges? Dr. Randy Wykoff I think public health is somewhat unique in that while it is an academic field, it's an applied field. And so the students from the beginning know that they're going to learn skills that will be relevant in the workplace. And my personal theory has always been that when I'm teaching, my job is to prepare the students for the career that I had. None of them will have that career. But whatever I've learned on the way is what I should be preparing them for, because anything else is a little bit artificial on my part. I know a theoretical approach, but if I talk about here's how federal advisory committees work, here's how you work with media, the skills that I had to learn along the way. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle What teaching approaches have you found most effective when preparing students to work in communities across Appalachia and beyond? Dr. Randy Wykoff I think it's critical for students to see how what they've learned works in the community. So all of our public health students, environmental health students, health admin students, have to do an internship. And that's basically a semester-long opportunity for them to take what they've learned and see, "Oh, wait a minute. This really does work. I really can go out and help this agency do what they're doing." So that's important. And then what we do at Valleybrook is, again, it's applied skills. When we're teaching students how to make a water filter or a water pump, they're probably thinking initially, "I'm never going to do this in the rest of my life." But the reality is what we're teaching them is the process, the logistics, the ability to take what you've got and get an outcome that you need. And that's really important in public health, especially when you get to disaster response and things like that. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle As someone who's mentored faculty as well as students, and since public health professionals are educators in their own right, what advice do you give educators who want to become effective teachers? Dr. Randy Wykoff That's a great question. I used to look at all the SAIs (course evaluations), and I discovered that there were three things that you always see in a positive SAI and two things that you always see in a negative SAI. The three things are know the material, care about students, enthusiastic. Everybody knows their material. If you don't care about students, you probably shouldn't be in a higher ed. And if you're not enthusiastic, you're not thinking about how cool what you're doing is. On the downside, the two that come out are disorganized and unfair. Usually unfair is, "I didn't get any grades before midterm, and now I have no way to get my grade back up," and then disorganized is what it is. But in the College of Public Health, we have great faculty. We've won the teaching award, I think, five times. It's a real pleasure to watch people take their own natural approach to life and apply it in the classroom. You have people that are very systematic. I don't know if I can mention names, like Patrick Brown with POGIL (Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning). He's very systematic. We have others who are very hands-on and applied, like Mike Stoots. And we have others that are old-school, that get up and lecture, others who have interactive. But that's less important than knows the material, cares about the student, and is enthusiastic. Anyone who can do those things works out. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle I'll mention that right after we record this podcast, you're headed to your own class that you teach. Dr. Randy Wykoff I am. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle Yeah. I'm assuming you use those approaches in the classes that you continue to teach. Dr. Randy Wykoff I do. And what I've tried – I co-teach it with Hadii Mamudu. And what we try to do is he teaches leadership from sort of the academic side. What's the literature show? I try to walk students through, again, the career that I've had. And the whole idea is to teach the application of the skills through doing. So that's my general approach. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle It's great that you continue to teach. Dr. Randy Wykoff Yeah. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle Oh, yeah. Dr. Randy Wykoff I mean, you'd be crazy to be at an institution of higher ed and not do it, right? That's the great payback, is dealing with students. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle Absolutely. Dr. Randy Wykoff Not that I don't like dealing with everyone else, but students are the high point. They're the highlight. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle That's right. During the COVID-19 pandemic, you helped lead the creation of educational videos and public outreach. In many ways, that was teaching on a community scale. What did that experience teach you about educating the public? Dr. Randy Wykoff I think it reinforced something that is in public health and in a lot of fields. You have to speak the truth. Speak as you know it and recognize when things are unknown or evolving or changing. But with COVID, there was so much information going out. Some of it was accurate. Some of it wasn't. So I just tried to use my updates to say, this is what I believe is true at this point now. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle I think that was the way I first got to know you was through your videos, through COVID. Dr. Randy Wykoff Yes. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle Do you want to tell us what the tagline was for those? Dr. Randy Wykoff Well, that was "The Most Interesting Dean." Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle That one. Dr. Randy Wykoff Yeah, that was, again, it was an effort to make the messaging more fun. And what we discovered was that that ad campaign had ended in 2016. And there were a whole lot of students who had no idea what I was doing. And one of the people who works for me was like, "Why are you talking in that funny accent?" But the idea was make it entertaining, get the message out in a way that isn't offensive to people. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle Yeah, it drew people in. Dr. Randy Wykoff Yeah. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle And you were the most interesting dean in the world. Dr. Randy Wykoff For a few short weeks. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle As you prepare to retire, what reflections do you have about the impact teaching has had on your own career and life? Dr. Randy Wykoff Oh, it's been, I can't think of a better way to end your career than teaching. You're taking everything that you've learned and you're passing it on to a new generation. It's incredibly rewarding. It gets a little bit awkward because my dad said that when I became Dean, my jokes would be a lot funnier. And it is a little bit awkward that people accord you this status above and beyond what you feel you've earned. And I think teaching does keep you humble a little bit because you're sitting there and every time you're teaching, you're thinking, “What don't I know about this subject? Why am I comfortable talking about this issue?” And the same with the weekly updates. I almost always have to do some research. I can't just spontaneously do them. But it's incredible. It's incredibly rewarding to be a teacher. And it's amazing to be at a place like ETSU that has focused on this community. I talk to other deans at other schools, and many of them have no real deep relationship with their region the way we do. The President says it all the time. We were created in 1911. And we went from education to business to health to the arts. We really touch everything that matters in this region. And in public health, that's what it is. Public health is everything that helps people live healthier, more productive lives. And I wouldn't want to be a dean anywhere else. And especially at a place that values esoteric research over the difference that you make in your community. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle Finally, looking back, what do you hope your former students remember the most about learning from you? Dr. Randy Wykoff I hope that they are progressively proud to have come out of ETSU. I think five, 10, 15 years from now, a lot of the hierarchy in higher ed will be falling away as people start really looking at quality and realizing that ETSU really is an exceptional place. I hope they're proud of that. I hope they believe that they were prepared for a meaningful career. And I hope some of them become wealthy benefactors in 40 years. We often say that. We're creating alums for 40 years from now. I'm not opposed to alums giving back right away. It's important that they feel that they got a good education, that prepared them for the workforce, and that they can say with pride, "Hey, I went to ETSU." Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle Dr. Wykoff, thank you for joining me and for sharing your reflections on teaching, leadership, and public health. Your commitment to education and service has had a profound impact on ETSU, on your students, and on communities throughout our region and state. We're going to miss you. Dr. Randy Wykoff Well, thank you. I'm glad I'm going to stay around. I'll just have a different relationship with the university. Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle Thanks for listening to "Why I Teach." For more information about Dr. Wykoff, the College of Public Health, or this podcast series, visit the ETSU Provost website at etsu.edu/provost. You can follow me on social media at ETSU Provost. And if you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to like and subscribe to "Why I Teach" wherever you listen to podcasts.    

The Roundtable Panel: a daily open discussion of issues in the news and beyond. Today's panelists are Executive Vice President, Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College Jonathan Becker, Former EPA Regional Administrator, President of Beyond Plastics, professor at Bennington College and author of the new book "The Problem with Plastic" Judith Enck, Semi-retired, Editor at large/columnist/editorial writer, Times Union Jay Jochnowitz, and Professor in the History Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) Allison Kavey.

The Roundtable Panel: a daily open discussion of issues in the news and beyond. Today's panelists are Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Bard College, Director for the Center for Civic Engagement and Professor of Political Studies Jonathan Becker; public policy and communications expert Theresa Bourgeois; Dean of the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity at the University at Albany Robert Griffin, and Professor of Theatre at Siena University Mahmood Karimi Hakak.

In this episode of “Why I Teach,” Dr. Kimberly D. McCorkle, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at East Tennessee State University (ETSU), sits down with Dr. Kevin E. O'Donnell, Professor of English and recipient of the 2024 Stephen L. Fisher Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Appalachian Studies Association. With more than 30 years of experience teaching literature, composition, and environmental writing, Dr. O'Donnell shares insights on storytelling, writing pedagogy, the impact of technology in the classroom, and the power of honesty in writing. He also discusses teaching The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green, Appalachian literature such as Serena by Ron Rash, and his upcoming book, The Woodlands of the Mind: Rambles Through Campus Forests. Find out more: ETSU Common Read: https://www.etsu.edu/provost/common-read.php ETSU Festival of Ideas: https://www.etsu.edu/festival/ ETSU College of Arts and Sciences: https://www.etsu.edu/cas/ Podcast Transcript:  [Music] Dr. Kevin O'Donnell I love John Green's writing for one thing. It's really accessible. His voice draws you in. He starts with these quirky topics. He'll be writing about Super Mario Kart. Within a few pages, he's talking about community and luck versus skill, and these bigger issues. Dr. Kimerly D. McCorkle Hi, I'm Kimberly McCorkle, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at East Tennessee State University. From the moment I arrived on this campus, I have been inspired by our faculty, their passion for what they do, their belief in the power of higher education, and the way they are transforming the lives of their students. This podcast is dedicated to them: Our incredible faculty at ETSU. Hear their stories as they tell us why I teach. In this episode, we will sit down with Dr. Kevin E. O'Donnell, Professor of English and recipient of the 2024 Stephen L. Fisher Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Appalachian Studies Association. A native of Northeast Ohio, Dr. O'Donnell earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and has taught at ETSU for more than 30 years. His courses include Advanced Composition, American Literature, Literary Nonfiction, and Environmental Writing. He's the author of numerous publications, including Seekers of Scenery: Travel Writing from Southern Appalachia, co-authored with Helen Hollingsworth. This year, he looks forward to the release of a new book, co-written with his ETSU colleague, Dr. Scott Honeycutt, titled The Woodlands of the Mind: Rambles Through Campus Forests. Enjoy the show. Dr. O'Donnell, welcome to the show. I start my podcast with the same question for every guest. Take me back to your first day as a faculty member at ETSU, and looking back on that day, what is one piece of advice that you would have given yourself? Dr. Kevin O'Donnell Well, it's a great question. I have to think back and see if I can remember 30 years. It's half a lifetime ago, you know. But if I could give myself advice, I would say, young Kevin, trust the process. With writing, it's so challenging. You get papers from the students, especially in the first-year classes on the first day. And they've got all kinds of issues, and the first thing you see are the problems when you read them, and you want to fix everything. But just trust the process. You know, if they've got 15 weeks, if they get four or five good writing experiences, including revision and feedback, and over the course of 15 weeks, you can do a lot. Yeah. Thank you. Reflecting on your 30-plus years in the classroom here, how has your approach to teaching literature and composition changed over the years? Dr. Kevin O'Donnell Yeah, that's kind of a related question. I don't think my philosophy has changed, but a lot of the technology has changed. I mean, I kind of developed the belief in grad school that you learn to write by having an audience, writing for audiences. But 30 years ago, typically, students would print one copy, and if you were lucky, you could circulate it, do some group work and stuff, but you couldn't publish it. And then with the development of the internet, making easier access to the internet available, I started publishing my students' work on the web, and then they started publishing their own, and you get it out in front of an audience a lot more. And that's great for writing pedagogy. And then multimedia, doing this kind of stuff, like the Whisper Room over in... We were talking about that earlier over in the Innovation Commons. Yeah. I've had my students doing that, so that's part of writing now, I think, is multimedia. You can't just think of it as words on a page. Typically, anything, it's words on a screen, and then the spoken word component, recording. So that's changed how I teach a lot. I'll have my students do an audio piece and then post it on YouTube, say. That's what they did last semester. They must enjoy that. Dr. Kevin O'Donnell The response to it was great. Dr. Kimerly D. McCorkle   How do you see the connection between storytelling and how we understand our environment, culture, and region? Dr. Kevin O'Donnell Yeah, storytelling, I mean, it's... You could argue that all understanding is narrative. Like, people understand things in terms of people in places doing things, which is character-setting-plot, you know? So with the Environmental Studies minor, there's a required course that's environmental writing. We get students who are being trained in science, like biologists, who take that minor, and they come in and read some environmental literature, and you've got these science writers using narrative to make sense of the science. So I think it's a crucial component. Dr. Kimerly D. McCorkle Which literary work or author has been especially rewarding for you to teach over the years, and why? Dr. Kevin O'Donnell Yeah, I love that question. There's been a lot of them. I'm teaching a book this semester, a 2008 novel by Ron Rash called Serena, which is a super well-written, super fun novel, but it takes place in Haywood County, North Carolina, in the 1920s when the Smokies were being logged. So it's set against the backdrop of this huge natural resource extraction story that shaped Appalachia, the logging of the great Appalachian forest. But it's also really dramatic. It's got these tightly written chapters. There's some great villains and some shocking murders, and it's a great book. And Ron Rash is coming to our literary festival in April. Dr. Kimerly D. McCorkle Fantastic. Dr. Kevin O'Donnell So students are reading that novel, and I've taught that four or five times over the years, and it's a great, great book for an environmental writing class. Dr. Kimerly D. McCorkle Is he a regional author? Dr. Kevin O'Donnell He's at Western Carolina. He's down in Cullowhee. He's probably about ready to retire, but he grew up in upstate South Carolina. And yeah, he's a great writer. Dr. Kimerly D. McCorkle It must be great for students to connect to a book that's about the region. Dr. Kevin O'Donnell Yeah, and a lot of students didn't know the story that it tells, and people know the area, recognize places where scenes take place. Yeah, so it's great. That's a good one. Dr. Kimerly D. McCorkle Earlier this year, you presented an outstanding lecture to kick off this year's Common Read, The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. What about that book resonated with you, and why do you think it was a good fit for ETSU's campus community? Dr. Kevin O'Donnell Yeah, I think it was a great fit, or it seems to be getting a good response from students. And part of it, for 15 years or more, I was a fan of the Vlogbrothers. They do their YouTube science stuff. And the format is, it's basically the essay format. You've got two, 3,000 words. I love John Green's writing, for one thing. It's really accessible. His voice draws you in. And he starts with these quirky topics. Like he'll be writing about Super Mario Kart. And within a few pages, he's talking about community and luck versus skill and these bigger issues. And so I like that they're inviting, these essays are inviting and they draw you in. They're really accessible. You can read one in 15 minutes. And the five-star review format is kind of fun. Like that, my students want to write those. You give that as a writing assignment. Here's an essay, you're going to make it ostensibly a review of something. That you're going to give five stars. So your job is to evaluate. Students like it. So I think it was a good choice. I'm excited about him. Dr. Kimerly D. McCorkle That's great, yeah. I know, as you said, a lot of students are excited. They've connected to his work for a long time. Students who've said he taught them what they know about history, for instance. As you know, we are excited to be able to welcome John Green to campus in just a few days to speak at the ETSU Festival of Ideas. From your experience, how does engaging with an author and hearing them talk about their work deepen students' connections to a text compared to just reading it in a classroom? Dr. Kevin O'Donnell Yeah, I think it's a big deal. It can change your relationship to the text. It sure humanizes it, you know? One thing about reading, even if you're reading for a class, reading seems like a really solitary activity. You go to your quiet space and you're sitting by yourself. But then these students are going to come together and see hundreds of other people who have also connected with the same text and see the author. It just makes it very visceral, the sense of how social reading is, even though it feels solitary in some ways it is, but it's a deeply social act. And I think one of the things I'm excited about is it's fun seeing other people who are excited about writing that you're excited about. Dr. Kimerly D. McCorkle Right, yeah. Feels like you're in a community of readers when you watch an author talk about their work. Dr. Kevin O'Donnell Right. Yeah, yeah. Dr. Kimerly D. McCorkle As I mentioned in the introduction, you have a book coming out this year. Will you please share a preview of The Woodlands of the Mind and a bit about what inspired you and Dr. Honeycutt to write the book? Dr. Kevin O'Donnell Yeah, thanks for asking about that. So it was really inspired by the ETSU campus. We've got, well, you know about University Woods south of the railroad bypass there. We've got 30 acres of, couple dozen at least ancient oak trees up there. And it's a really special place. And Scott Honeycutt and I, for years we'd been taking our students over there to do classrooms and to do awareness stuff and to do walks. And back in 2018, I think it was before COVID, we wrote a small grant and brought an author to class, author to campus rather, Joan Maloof, who is a biologist from Maryland who's also written some very good books, including one that Scott and I are fans of called "Among the Ancients" where she goes around and visits different old, remnant old growth forests and writes about them, but also writes about regional history and natural history. So we brought her to campus. It turns out she's the founding director of the Old-Growth Forest Network. And long story short, she came to campus, did a public nature walk with people over in the woods and then did a talk in the evening at the old East Tennessee Room and generated a lot of excitement, which led to us forming an ad-hoc committee to see if we can get the University Woods to be part of the Old-Growth Forest Network. As a community forest, Dr. Noland, our awesome president, was very supportive of this. So long story short, later that spring, Joan came back on her own dime for a dedication ceremony we did where Dr. Noland spoke and read a little poem on some other people, and we designated it as a community forest. So that experience, Scott and I to look around and it turns out a lot of universities have often old-growth remnants, which are rare attached to their property, partly because of the history of universities and land use, especially in the East. So we started learning about these places. So we thought, well, no one's written about this. So we've selected 15 places from Rome up to Maine, some small colleges, some bigger schools, like Virginia Tech and Penn State. And we split them up and we went around and wrote, kind of inspired by Joan Maloof, these travel essays with history, natural history, and we package them together and sent our proposal to the University of Georgia Press, and the editor called us back the next day and said she wanted to publish it. Dr. Kimerly D. McCorkle Congratulations. Dr. Kevin O'Donnell Yeah, thanks. Dr. Kimerly D. McCorkle Look forward to reading it. Dr. Kevin O'Donnell Awesome. Dr. Kimerly D. McCorkle What books do you have on your to-read pile and do you have any favorite books or authors that you'd recommend for consideration for future common reads at ETSU? Dr. Kevin O'Donnell Right. Yeah, my to-read pile is pretty big and half of them I never get to. I own a lot of books I've never read. I'm glad to hear that it makes me feel less guilty. But something about owning them, I hope that maybe I'll soak up. I don't know. And even better if you put them on your bedside table to look at you, yes, yeah. Dr. Kevin O'Donnell Yes, one I was thinking about that I read recently is Beth Macy who is, she wrote a book called Dopesick that the Hulu miniseries starring Michael Keaton was based on, was pretty much directly from that book. And it's a great book. But more recently in the fall, she came out with a book called Paper Girl. It's sort of a memoir she tells about growing up underprivileged in rural Ohio and then goes back there now and finds a version of herself and to look at how kids don't have the same opportunities, basically, young people. And in the process she's also talking about being a journalist and how people respond or don't respond to journalism and conspiracy theorizing has sort of moved into the vacuum where journalism has moved out of and which sounds all serious, but it's a fun book and it got a lot of attention in the fall. That one, she lives down at Roanoke. Dr. Kimerly D. McCorkle Interesting. Dr. Kevin O'Donnell We should get her up here. That would be a good one. But my dream author would be Elizabeth Kolbert. She's a New Yorker magazine writer who probably about 10 years ago she published a book called The Sixth Extinction which won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction which is an amazing book. It's about the planet that is currently undergoing a major extinction event, which is a grim topic. But she writes these essays where she goes around and talks to people and they're really engaging. She's the best science writer I know and she's a best seller. I think there'd be enthusiasm about her. She's got a new book, which is a collection of her New Yorker essays. So Elizabeth Kolbert--I don't know if we could get her. I don't know if she does campus visits but she'd be a good get. Dr. Kimerly D. McCorkle Great suggestions. Dr. Kevin O'Donnell Yeah. Dr. Kimerly D. McCorkle Finally, what impact do you hope you've made on your students? Dr. Kevin O'Donnell Gosh, that's a big one. Been thinking about that a lot now that I'm 30 years into this. I would hope when my students leave my class they understand that good writing is about honesty. Because I think students come in and when they're supposed to do academic writing they feel like they need to adopt this persona that's the voice of authority. And they don't feel confident in that authority. So they put on a role. And that, as much as anything, leads to tangled sentences and unclear writing. But if you can be honest about your relationship to your material and your audience, and in a simple way, not like deep profound, doesn't have to be deep profound honesty, but that's honesty is what good writing is about. That's, I would hope students would leave my class with that understanding. Dr. Kimerly D. McCorkle Dr. O'Donnell, it's been a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you for your thoughtful reflections on teaching, literature, and the Common Read experience. Thank you for the way you engage your students with literature. I'm looking forward to adding your new book to my reading list this year. Thanks for listening to "Why I Teach." For more information about Dr. O'Donnell, the College of Arts and Sciences, or this podcast series, visit the ETSU Provost website at etsu.edu slash Provost. You can follow me on social media at ETSU Provost. And if you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to like and subscribe to "Why I Teach" wherever you listen to podcasts. (soft music)  

In the Season 8 premiere of the Williston Works Podcast, host Anna Nelson sits down with Dr. Zahi Atallah, Vice President of Academic Affairs at Williston State College, to discuss how the college is expanding healthcare programs to meet growing workforce needs in northwest North Dakota.From a new state-of-the-art facility to expanded nursing, EMT, and medical assistant programs, Dr. Atallah shares how partnerships, innovation, and local investment are helping train and retain the next generation of healthcare professionals right here at home.Learn more about Williston Economic Development:https://www.willistondevelopment.com

0:30 - School protests 14:11 - West Chicago gym teacher James Heidorn speaks 37:02 - THE HOPE: Rubio at Munich Security Conference with impassioned defense of western civ 01:03:44 - Homan responds to Frey, Walz (3,364 missing child found in Operation Metro Surge) 01:21:55 - Steven Bucci of The Heritage Foundation highlights the key takeaways from Marco Rubio’s address at the Munich Security Conference 01:46:48 - Rep. Tim Burchett on SAVE Act, MAGA voters who can't be bothered 01:54:18 - Soren Aldaco, ambassador for the Independent Women’s Forum: What I Suffered Being ‘Transgender’ 02:12:26 - Linda Denno, associate dean of Academic Affairs & Administration at the University of Arizona College of Applied Science and Technology: How voters fleeing California turn other states blueSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dr. Frank Peacock and Dr. Damon R. Kuehl join BioTalk for a focused discussion on one of emergency medicine's most persistent challenges: accurately diagnosing and predicting outcomes in mild traumatic brain injury. As Scientific Advisory Board members for BrainBox Solutions, Inc., they walk through what happens when a patient presents to the emergency department after a fall or sports injury and why current tools, including CT scans, often leave clinicians without clear answers. The conversation explores the gap between a "normal" scan and ongoing symptoms, and what missed or uncertain diagnoses can mean for patients weeks later.   Dr. Peacock outlines the HeadSMART II study and explains why combining blood biomarkers with neurocognitive testing provides a more complete assessment than biology alone. Dr. Kuehl discusses how multi-modal data, integrated through artificial intelligence, can generate an objective score to support real-time clinical decision-making and help identify patients at risk for persistent symptoms. The episode also highlights BrainBox's leadership, including CEO Donna Edmonds, a member of the BioHealth Innovation Board of Directors, and the company's role in advancing objective mTBI testing.   Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com).   Dr. W. Frank Peacock IV is Professor of Emergency Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. Chief Medical Officer at AseptiScope, and the founder of both a contract research organization called Comprehensive Research Associates, LLC and a medical education company named Emergencies in Medicine, LLC. Dr. Peacock received his medical degree from Wayne State University Medical School and completed his Emergency Medicine training at William Beaumont Hospital. He has >900 peer reviewed publications and is also the co-editor of multiple medical textbooks on heart failure, acute coronary syndromes, and traumatic brain injury.   Dr. Damon R. Kuehl is the Vice Chair of Research and Academic Affairs and Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Virginia Tech, School of Medicine. He completed Medical School at University of Minnesota Medical School and his Emergency Medicine Residency at Stanford University. He has also completed residencies in Preventive Medicine and a Research Fellowship in the Center for Policy and Research in Emergency Medicine, at Oregon Health and Science University. Dr. Kuehl's research primarily focuses on diagnostic and prognostic uncertainty in brain injury. He is a lead investigator for HeadSMART II and for HeadSMART Geriatrics, a NINDS funded 3 year study to develop a diagnostic tool for head trauma in older adults.  He is the founder of the Carilion Brain Injury Center and also an investigator with the Virginia Tech Center for Biomechanics studying the boundary conditions associated with injuries in older adult falls.

The Rod and Greg Show Daily Rundown – Tuesday, February 10, 20264:20 pm: Representative Jeff Burton joins the program to discuss his election integrity bill that would require all mailed ballots to be returned in person, with a valid ID, to an election drop box or polling location during elections in Utah.4:38 pm: Mike Gonzalez, Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation, joins Rod and Greg to discuss his piece in the Washington Examiner about how the Smithsonian is dodging efforts by the Trump Administration to audit the museum and ensure it is not pushing a woke agenda.6:05 pm: Chris Piehota, retired FBI Executive Assistant Director, joins the program to give us his reaction to the latest news from the investigation into the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of Today Show host Savannah Guthrie.6:38 pm: Linda Denno, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Administration at the University of Arizona College of Applied Science and Technology, joins the show to discuss her piece for the New York Post about how voters who are leaving California are helping to turn other states blue.

In the latest episode of Beyond the Bank, Brad chats with community champion, all-around great lady and Albany Technical College Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs in Business and Healthcare Technology, Lisa Stephens about her role at ATC, her journey into education and the deep passion she has for helping others improve themselves and, by extension, the communities they call home.

In this episode of Revolutionize Your Retirement, host Dori Mintzer talks with gerontologist, author, and longtime positive aging pioneer Rick (Harry R.) Moody about his latest book, Climate Change in an Aging Society. Rick describes how he came to link two topics many people avoid, aging and climate, and why he believes older adults have a unique role to play in responding to the “four horsemen of the climate apocalypse”: fire, flood, drought, and heat.Rick and Dori discuss how climate realities are already affecting decisions about where and how to live, home insurance, health, and the ability to “age in place.” Drawing on stories from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, wildfire survivors in Paradise, California, and his own move from Boulder to the Bay Area, Rick underscores that relocation is not a full solution, as almost every region now faces some climate risk. Instead, he argues that the key is to move from paralysis and denial toward action—mitigation and adaptation—rooted in a sense of legacy and intergenerational responsibility.The conversation highlights Rick's core message: “Here, now, you, hope.” He explains why hope is not naïve optimism but “a verb with its sleeves rolled up,” and outlines three powerful roles for individuals at any age: citizen (voting, marching, contacting elected officials), consumer (choices about energy use, travel, food, and purchases), and investor (shifting money away from fossil fuels and toward more sustainable options). About the Guest – Rick (Harry R.) Moody, PhDRick (Harry R.) Moody, PhD, is a pioneering gerontologist, educator, and author whose work has helped shape the modern conversations on positive aging, ethics, and the spiritual dimensions of later life. He is the former Vice President for Academic Affairs at AARP, visiting faculty in the Creative Longevity and Wisdom program at Fielding Graduate University, and visiting professor at Tohoku University in Japan.Rick previously served as Executive Director of the Brookdale Center on Aging at Hunter College and as Chair of the Board of Elderhostel (now Road Scholar). He has written or co-written numerous influential books and articles, including the widely used gerontology textbook Aging: Concepts and Controversies (now in its 10th edition), Ethics in an Aging Society (the first book on biomedical ethics and aging), and The Five Stages of the Soul, which has been translated into seven languages.Key Topics We CoverWhy climate change and aging belong in the same conversation, and why the title “Climate Change in an Aging Society” matters.The difference between fear, despair, and what Rick calls real hope (not optimism), including reflections from Václav Havel and David Orr.Mitigation vs. adaptation and what each means for older adults deciding whether and where to move, downsize, or age in place.How dreams can mirror climate anxiety and also point toward personal action and awakening in the second half of life.Connect with Rick MoodyMind-Body Website: https://cmbm.org/governance/Books: Five Stages of the SoulAging What to do next: Click to grab our free guide, 10 Key Issues to Consider as You Explore Your Retirement Transition Please leave a review at Apple Podcasts. Join our Revolutionize Your Retirement group on Facebook.

02/04/26: Joel Heitkamp is broadcasting live from Williston State College and is joined by Dr. Zahi Atallah, the Vice President for Academic Affairs. Dr. Atallah has a wealth of expertise in grant management, publishing and presentations at scientific conferences, and numerous journal articles and publications. (Joel Heitkamp is a talk show host on the Mighty 790 KFGO in Fargo-Moorhead. His award-winning program, “News & Views,” can be heard weekdays from 8 – 11 a.m. Follow Joel on X/Twitter @JoelKFGO.)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In a world of exhaustive binary thinking sometimes complexity offers relief.  Lauren Hall joins the show to offer her alternative living in 4D she calls "radical moderation".  In the latter half of the conversation Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis happily takes Lauren up on her offer to geek out on Edmund Burke.   About Lauren Hall Excerpts from laurenkhall.com   Lauren Hall is an author and professor helping people combat overwhelm in an age of extremes. Her writing rejects binary and black-and-white thinking to help people lead more balanced lives, build stronger relationships, and restore individual and civic well-being.   Hall is a 2024 Pluralism Fellow with the Mercatus Center's Program on Pluralism and Civil Exchange and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Prohuman Foundation. Her Substack and speaking spread the message of radical moderation to new audiences via public writing, speaking, and podcast interviews.   Hall has presented her work on radical moderation at conferences including the Heterodox Academy Conference, the State Policy Network Conference, the Mercatus Center's Pluralism Summit, and various political science and related conferences and has a range of talks and podcast interviews available on radical moderation and other topics.   In her "real" job, she is a Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and author of the books Family and the Politics of Moderation (Baylor U. Press, 2014) and The Medicalization of Birth and Death (Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2019).   Hall has a PhD in Political Science from Northern Illinois University (2007) and a BA in Philosophy from Binghamton University (2002).   Introducing Conservative Cagematches One of the most invigorating and interesting aspects of conservative history is how often luminaries on the Right disagreed and fought one another.  From Strauss' take down on Burke to Frank Meyer defending his fusionist views from the likes of Brent Bozell and Murray Rothbard to Harry Jaffa fighting just about everyone, the Right has gained vitality and endurance through the process of disagreeing well (and sometimes not so well).   In that same spirit, Saving Elephants will soon launch a new venture: Conservative Cagematches.  These livestream events will feature experts and acolytes from differing schools of thought on the Right to engage in their differences.  We're working now to put together the first panel for an Edmund Burke vs. Leo Strauss debate and can't wait to share the august line-up we have so far.  More to come soon!  

The Roundtable Panel: a daily open discussion of issues in the news and beyond. Today's panelists are Executive Vice President and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Bard College and Director for the Center for Civic Engagement &Professor of Political Studies Jonathan Becker, Senior Fellow, Bard Center for Civic Engagement Jim Ketterer, and Political Consultant Libby Post.This is an abbreviated panel that is taking place during WAMC's February Fund Drive.

The Roundtable Panel: a daily open discussion of issues in the news and beyond. Today's panelists are Executive Vice President and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Bard College and Director for the Center for Civic Engagement &Professor of Political Studies Jonathan Becker, Political Consultant and lobbyist Libby Post, and Associate Professor in the department of Sociology at Vassar College Catherine Tan.

Political Tribalism with Lauren HallPolitical scientist Lauren Hall joins Michael Liebowitz for a wide-ranging discussion on political tribalism—how identity, loyalty, and moral signalling have displaced judgment, moderation, and principled disagreement in modern politics.Lauren Hall brings a rare combination of scholarly depth and cultural clarity to the conversation. Drawing on the classical liberal tradition and her work on family, moderation, and the moral limits of politics, she examines how tribal thinking corrodes institutions, distorts public debate, and turns politics into a substitute for meaning. The discussion explores why societies fracture when politics becomes a moral identity—and what intellectual resources exist for restoring restraint, pluralism, and seriousness to public life.This episode is a thoughtful examination of ideas over slogans, and persuasion over power—an essential listen for anyone concerned with the health of liberal society.Disclaimer:The views expressed by Lauren Hall are her own, and not necessarily reflective of her employer or anyone with whom she works.About Lauren HallLauren Hall is Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the Rochester Institute of Technology, College of Liberal Arts. She is the author of The Medicalization of Birth and Death (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019) and Family and the Politics of Moderation (Baylor University Press, 2014), and co-editor of a volume on the political philosophy of Chantal Delsol.Her scholarship engages deeply with the classical liberal tradition, including extensive writing on Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, and Montesquieu.About Michael Liebowitz – Host of The Rational EgoistMichael Liebowitz is the host of The Rational Egoist podcast, a philosopher, author, and political activist committed to the principles of reason, individualism, and rational self-interest. Deeply influenced by the philosophy of Ayn Rand, Michael uses his platform to challenge cultural dogma, expose moral contradictions, and defend the values that make human flourishing possible.His journey from a 25-year prison sentence to becoming a respected voice in the libertarian and Objectivist communities is a testament to the transformative power of philosophy. Today, Michael speaks, writes, and debates passionately in defence of individual rights and intellectual clarity.He is the co-author of two compelling books that examine the failures of the correctional system and the redemptive power of moral conviction:Down the Rabbit Hole: How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crimehttps://www.amazon.com.au/Down-Rabbit-Hole-Corrections-Encourages/dp/197448064XView from a Cage: From Convict to Crusader for Libertyhttps://books2read.com/u/4jN6xjAbout Xenia Ioannou – Producer of The Rational EgoistXenia Ioannou is the producer of The Rational Egoist, responsible for overseeing the publishing, presentation, and promotion of each episode to ensure a consistent standard of clarity, professionalism, and intellectual rigour.She is the CEO of Alexa Real Estate, a property manager and entrepreneur, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Ayn Rand Centre Australia, where she contributes to the organisation's strategic direction and public engagement with ideas centred on reason, individual rights, and human freedom.Xenia also leads Capitalism and Coffee – An Objectivist Meetup in Adelaide, creating a forum for thoughtful discussion on philosophy and its application to everyday life, culture, and current issues.Join Capitalism and Coffee here:https://www.meetup.com/adelaide-ayn-rand-meetup/Follow Xenia's essays on reason, independence, and purposeful living at her Substack:https://substack.com/@xeniaioannou?utm_source=user-menuBecause freedom is worth thinking about — and talking about.#TheRationalEgoist #LaurenHall #PoliticalTribalism #ClassicalLiberalism #Reason #IndividualRights #FreeThought #IntellectualHonesty #MichaelLiebowitz #XeniaIoannou

It's YOUR time to #EdUp with Dr. Robert Wilson, Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs, Cedar Crest CollegeIn this episode, part of our Academic Integrity Series, sponsored by ⁠Integrity4EducationYOUR cohost is Thomas Fetsch, CEO, Integrity4EducationYOUR host is ⁠Elvin Freytes⁠How does Cedar Crest College treat AI as a design issue rather than a policing problem by building academic integrity into assignments & helping students understand ethical boundaries instead of just catching cheaters?How is Cedar Crest's math department using a custom LLM called Alchemy to teach students at their learning level instead of jumping straight to answers like popular AI models do & what does this mean for equity across student populations?How does a provost who's been at 1 institution for 23 years keep his fire burning by building programs from writing centers to MFA degrees to AI ready initiatives & what does he see as the future relevance question for higher education?Listen in to #EdUpThank YOU so much for tuning in. Join us on the next episode for YOUR time to EdUp!Connect with YOUR EdUp Team - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Elvin Freytes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠& ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Dr. Joe Sallustio⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠● Join YOUR EdUp community at ⁠The EdUp Experience⁠We make education YOUR business!P.S. Want to get early, ad-free access & exclusive leadership content to help support the show? Become an #EdUp Premium Member today!

Dr. Wilfred Reilly, Assistant Professor of Political Sciences and Academic Affairs at the School of Criminal Justice and Political Science at Kentucky State University (KSU), joins the show by phone to talk about his upcoming appearance at Arizona State University (ASU) on January 15th as part of the ASU School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership’s (SCETL) annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day lecture series; ‘Which Path Forward: The Two Options Facing the Black Community, and America, this MLK Day.'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Roundtable Panel: a daily open discussion of issues in the news and beyond. Today's panelists are Executive Vice President and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Bard College and Director for the Center for Civic Engagement &Professor of Political Studies Jonathan Becker, Former Vice President for Editorial Development at the New York Press Association Judy Patrick, and Executive Director of The Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York Nic Rangel.

The Roundtable Panel: a daily open discussion of issues in the news and beyond. Today's panelists are Specialist in Government and Public Services Healthcare Consulting Azmat Ahmad, Executive Vice President and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Bard College and Director for the Center for Civic Engagement; Professor of Political Studies Jonathan Becker, Founder and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities and Professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Human Rights at Bard College Roger Berkowitz, and Albany Law School Professor and director of the Edward P. Swyer Justice Center at Albany Law School Sarah Rogerson.

It's YOUR time to #EdUp with Jonathan Peri, Commissioner Middle States Commission on Higher Education⁠, & President of Manor CollegeIn this episode, recorded Live from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education⁠ 2025 Annual ConferenceYOUR cohost is David Rehm, Commissioner Middle States Commission on Higher Education, Vice President of Academic Affairs at Misericordia UniversityYOUR host is ⁠⁠Dr. Joe SallustioHow does the Follow Up Activities Committee serve as the "emergency room" for institutions facing their most challenging circumstances & work through complex cases involving financial, political & leadership issues without being punitive but instead offering guidance to help them meet quality standards?Why is transparency & forthrightness from institutions so critical to the accreditation process & how do commissioners review 50 to 300 pages per case to drill down into underlying issues rather than just superficial problems?How are peer commissioners who work at colleges & universities themselves able to help institutions improve by sharing the same challenges they face while contributing boundless energy to 1 of the most highly functioning boards in higher education despite receiving no compensation for their service?Listen in to #EdUpThank YOU so much for tuning in. Join us on the next episode for YOUR time to EdUp!Connect with YOUR EdUp Team - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Elvin Freytes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠& ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Dr. Joe Sallustio⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠● Join YOUR EdUp community at ⁠The EdUp Experience⁠We make education YOUR business!P.S. Want to get early, ad-free access & exclusive leadership content to help support the show? Then ⁠⁠​subscribe today​⁠⁠ to lock in YOUR $5.99/m lifetime supporters rate! This offer ends December 31, 2025!

It's YOUR time to #EdUp with Margery Kraus, Founder & Executive Chairman of APCO WorldwideIn this episode, recorded Live from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education⁠ 2025 Annual ConferenceYOUR cohost is Michael Fischer, Commissioner Middle States Commission on Higher Education⁠⁠, Professor of Accounting, Emeritus; former Provost & Vice President for Academic Affairs at St. Bonaventure UniversityYOUR host is ⁠⁠Dr. Joe SallustioHow does APCO Worldwide's 41 year old consulting firm with 1,200 people work at the intersection of business, government, public opinion & education to help institutions navigate troubled times & understand the "whys" behind federal policy changes?Why is now the time for optimism by reframing education through lifelong learning, non traditional students & collaboration between universities instead of perpetuating competitive institutional systems?How can higher ed create partnership between faculty & administrators, reimagine governance with accountability standards at every level & seize opportunities from policy changes rather than digging heels in?Listen in to #EdUpThank YOU so much for tuning in. Join us on the next episode for YOUR time to EdUp!Connect with YOUR EdUp Team - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Elvin Freytes⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠& ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Dr. Joe Sallustio⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠● Join YOUR EdUp community at ⁠The EdUp Experience⁠We make education YOUR business!P.S. Want to get early, ad-free access & exclusive leadership content to help support the show? Then ⁠⁠​subscribe today​⁠⁠ to lock in YOUR $5.99/m lifetime supporters rate! This offer ends December 31, 2025!

Artsakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, is a historic Armenian area located in the Caucasus Mountains. In 2023, Azerbaijan invaded and ethnically cleansed the millennial-old Armenian population. The so-called civilized West looked the other way. Looking away has been harder to do in Gaza because of the enormity of the Israeli attack and the sheer scale of death and destruction. The Israeli goal in Gaza and the Azerbaijani goal in Artsakh is cultural and physical erasure. Both Artsakh and Gaza are reported as though they are just happening in a vacuum. By not providing context and background, journalists are guilty of media malpractice. The recording was taken from a National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR)/ Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Lecture Series on Contemporary Armenian Issues webinar, co-hosted and co-moderated by Marc A. Mamigonian, Director of Academic Affairs at NAASR, and Henry Theriault, PhD, Associate Provost at Worcester State University.

The Roundtable Panel: a daily open discussion of issues in the news and beyond. Today's panelists are Professor of Political Studies, Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College Jonathan Becker, Dean of the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity at the University at Albany Robert Griffin, Senior Fellow for Health Policy at The Empire Center for Public Policy Bill Hammond, and CEO of The Business Council of New York State Heather Mulligan.