Virtue in the Wasteland Podcast

A podcast about religion, culture, and issues that truly matter. Hosted by Dr. Jeff Mallinson and Dr. Dan van Voorhis.

Ep 326 What We Learned: The Final Episode 02/15/2019

Ep 325 The Second to Last Show 02/11/2019

Religion, Empire, and Molech: Lessons from the Augsburg Interim 01/31/2019

Dutch Radicals, The Reformation, and Wackysoup 01/25/2019

Dutch Radicals, The Reformation, and Wackysoup I used to think it was really cool when people broke the 4th wall. You know, like, in Fight Club or the original Pink Panther when something happened to remind you that you were indeed watching a film reel. There is nothing as clever here, but a little twist which might make you take notice. Usually we banter for a few minutes, talk around the subject, and then dig in. Well, it seems to be only once every twenty years the Rams make the Super Bowl, so we spent some time talking about them, the game and a myriad of other things. But to get to those hot takes, you need to wade through the actual subject matter. I've moved that 30 minute conversation to the back of our first conversation about dutch radicals, the reformation and the enlightenment. And it is probably more interesting than you first think. We talk a lot about the Reformation and how it has shaped the modern world, but often we miss out on one really important link, the connection between the radical reformation, skepticism, and the modern age. We talk about the nature of radicalism, and why we all kind of gravitate towards it (and what it might teach us). Jeff talks about the Trinity. Dan throws out a few ideas which might lead to further questions. That's the whole point. Have those conversations with your friends and co-workers and family and church group. The point isn't that we come to something like a silly podcast with two professors for all our answers, or to confirm that they have the answers in the back ofd the book too, rather, it's that we start conversations and learn to talk about weighty things that matter with a bit of grace, a sense of humor, and the reminder that everything is going to be ok. P.s. Because of the way this show was edited, it can be the answer to a trivia question sometime in the future. The question is: is there a time, after ep 101, that the show didn't end with someone saying EGBOK? Yes, this one. Because I edited it, /episode/index/show/virtueinthewasteland/id/8386559

The United States of America: An Experiment in Federalism 01/18/2019

Dvorak, Anti-Natalism, and Other Unrelated Issues: We Take Your Calls! 01/11/2019

The Biggest and Best of 2018 01/04/2019

Losing Our Religion: The Lost R.E.M. Show 12/28/2018

Losing Our Religion: The Lost R.E.M. Show Little known fact: the original name of Virtue in the Wasteland was “Jeff and Dan’s Vanity Project to Explore Their Hobbies” but we decided to go a little more broad and talk about society and religion and stuff… Maybe that’s not exactly how it played out, but there is a funny bit of guilt we feel whenever we dive head first into a topic that is seemingly just tickling our fancy as mass entertainment and thus unworthy of critical reflection. But on this show we will argue that R.E.M. is not just one of our favorite bands, but the most important American band of all time. Sound hyperbolic? Check out the show and see if we can pull off the argument and join in on virtueinthewasteland.com We recorded this show from the RV somewhere between Athens, GA and Charlottesville, VA after our pilgrimage to the mecca of R.E.M. fan sites. We got to discussing the band, its evolution and role in 80’s and 90’s pop culture. On this show, which was recorded moths ago and feared lost until only a few days ago, we make the audacious argument that R.E.M. is the most significant rock band in U.S. history. 3 caveats: this is not “the best R.E.M. songs” podcast. In fact, if it was, it would suffer from being terribly mundane and uninventive as a “best of”. Doing that, using commercial success and air play to judge significance, would make this super lame and obvious. So the tracks we pick are the hits, but the ones that are indicative of the band, and tell us something about them and the society they reflected. Caveat # 2: There is a lot of music on this episode! About a minute or so of each song we talk about. Using all the actual music is allowed under the Fair Use Act, as we are playing it to comment on, and use for teaching purposes. In case you were concerned. Caveat #3 We do not discuss R.E.M. post New Adventures in Hi-Fi. This is not because we dislike later R.E.M. (listen to our show with Dave Zahl, he convinced us to give late R.E.M. more attention in our own lives. We could argue that R.E.M after New Adventures is a different band, as Bill Berry suffered an aneurysm on tour and retired, giving way to a rotating list of drummers and (unfortunately, in this case) drum machines. I have recently picked up an article I’ve been working on ,which ranks every R.E.M. song. Late R.E.M is well represented. On the Spotify list below, you can see some of our picks for post Hi-Fi R.E.M. songs. /episode/index/show/virtueinthewasteland/id/8056994

Jesus Politics and the Academy 12/21/2018

the 2018 Christmas Spectacular 12/14/2018

The Theology of the Cross and EGBOK- Live from HWSS2018 12/07/2018

The Bears and the Butterflies- HWSS2018 11/30/2018

Seculosity with David Zahl 11/23/2018

"I Survived I Kissed Dating Goodbye" an Interview with Joshua Harris and Jessica van Der Wyngaard 11/15/2018

#Churchtoo with Emily Joy in Nashville 11/09/2018

LIVE at Here We Still Stand 2018 11/01/2018

Going Conservative in the Age of Trump 10/26/2018

Character Matters 10/19/2018

Character Matters After five plus years of the podcast, we finally get around to a proper discussion of virtue ethics. We do so with the leading active scholar in America today: Christian Miller of Wake Forest University. (The Roman Catholic Alisdair McIntyre and Lutheran Gilbert Meilaender have both recently retired, so we don't think this claim is hyperbolic.) Miller is the author of several books and articles, but his recent book The Character Gap: How Good Are We? is a gem. And it is both good at handling scholarship--including scholarship from the field of social psychology--and presenting it in an understandable way to a non-technical audience. If you've been listening for a while and want a good presentation of virtue theory, this is the place to go. Miller holds a B.A. in philosophy from Princeton University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame. His main areas of research are meta-ethics, moral psychology, moral character, action theory, and philosophy of religion. He is the A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University and Philosophy Director of the Beacon Project (), funded by the Templeton Religion Trust. He was the Director of the Character Project (), which was funded by $5.6 million in grants from the John Templeton Foundation and Templeton World Charity Foundation. He is the author of over 80 papers as well as three books with Oxford University Press, Moral Character: An Empirical Theory(2013), Character and Moral Psychology (2014), and The Character Gap: How Good Are We? (forthcoming 2017). He is also the editor or co-editor of Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford University Press), Character: New Directions from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology (Oxford University Press), Moral Psychology, Volume V: Virtue and Character (MIT Press), Integrity, Honesty, and Truth-Seeking (Oxford University Press), and The Continuum Companion to Ethics (Continuum Press). /episode/index/show/virtueinthewasteland/id/7151240