Joe Cardenas on A Change of Soul: Reimagining the Purpose of Vacation
HeightsCast: Forming Men Fully Alive
Release Date: 05/22/2025
Kevin Twomey on Frantic Families: Three Questions for a More Intentional Life
HeightsCast: Forming Men Fully Alive
Kevin Twomey is a husband, father, and a principal consultant at Table Group, founded by Patrick Lencioni, which specializes in helping executive teams build a healthy operational work culture. Lencioni’s book, The Three Big Questions, brings that same expertise to bear on the modern frantic family: helping parents find their family identity, create intentional priorities, and live with more order and purpose. Chapters: 4:01 Typical family operations 9:09 Frantic families in a frantic world 14:36 What makes your family unique? 21:57 Parent leadership 26:02 What is your...
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Colin Gleason on the Father as Protector
HeightsCast: Forming Men Fully Alive
The first images of a “protector” that flash through our minds might be the warrior, the superhero, the movie star physically holding back evil from invading the world…. Our lower school head, Colin Gleason, casts a different vision: the benevolent king, the merciful brother, the knight at vigil in the sanctuary. Yes, our role as fathers is to protect—most often through a steady presence that communicates security to our children. When we do our job well, they can live with confidence. In his talk from the Fatherhood Conference last fall, Colin identified five battlegrounds for...
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Tom Cox on an Epic Education: Tolkien in the Middle School
HeightsCast: Forming Men Fully Alive
To prepare for Homer, Virgil, Beowulf, the Eddas, and Dante—The Heights begins with Tolkien. In a talk from 2016, former middle school core teacher and current upper school classics teacher Tom Cox defends the place of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in the epic tradition. He then explains why Middle Earth is so uniquely suited to the middle school, using Samwise the Stouthearted as our guide to the heart of a middle school boy. Chapters: 2:46 Rethinking “the middle” 4:01 How LotR prepares boys for upper school 7:57 How LotR meets boys in middle school 12:47...
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Michael Moynihan on the Father as a Guide to the World
HeightsCast: Forming Men Fully Alive
From utero and into infancy, babies recognize their mother as being essentially one with them. So, being placed in their father’s arms is in fact their first introduction to the “other,” the outside world. The father will continue this crucial role as mediator and representative to the outside world throughout a boy’s childhood. With decades of experience and dozens of personal anecdotes, Upper School Head Michael Moynihan addressed the 2025 Fatherhood Conference to share how a father’s parenting outlook now will shape his son’s vocational and professional readiness to...
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Fr. Thomas Joseph White on Reading into Reality: What Is Intellectual Formation?
HeightsCast: Forming Men Fully Alive
Our mission is to assist parents in the intellectual, moral, physical, and spiritual formation of their sons… At The Heights, we repeat these words often, including a paraphrase at the beginning of every HeightsCast episode. But what constitutes intellectual formation? What does educating the intellect look like? Co-founder of the Hillbilly Thomists and Rector Magnificus at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas in Rome, Fr. Thomas Joseph White, joins us for a deep-dive into the rich Catholic understanding of intellectus, habitus, ratio, and what it means to...
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Fr. Carter Griffin and Alvaro de Vicente on Vocational Discernment in an Age of Infinite Options
HeightsCast: Forming Men Fully Alive
“Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 16:25). This week we’re joined by Fr. Carter Griffin, rector of the St. John Paul II Seminary in the Archdiocese of Washington, and Alvaro de Vicente, headmaster of The Heights School, to examine “discernment.” It’s become a Catholic buzzword, applied (or sometimes, perhaps, misapplied) to a number of life situations. Here, Fr. Carter and Alvaro discuss the methods and limits of vocational discernment—and the moral courage of commitment. Chapters: 3:45 Christian discernment...
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Colin Gleason on Manners: The “ABCs” of Virtue
HeightsCast: Forming Men Fully Alive
by Robert Greving by Robert Greving Featured Opportunities: , donations for Jamaica hurricane relief at The Heights School (January 7-9, 2026 / May 6-8, 2026)
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Dan Lively on Formation for the Body: Lifelong Functional Fitness
HeightsCast: Forming Men Fully Alive
In our school communities, we talk a great deal about moral and intellectual formation. But physical development, too, has an essential place in the whole-person, long-term vision of what our sons and students can become. Heights Athletic Director Dan Lively reminds us that the goals of athletic training don’t begin and end with high school sports. In fact, lifelong functional fitness is in service to every vocation. It ensures that we and our sons are capable of having a positive impact—on the world and in our families—for as many years as we’re on this earth. Chapters: 3:22 A...
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Dr. Jason Baxter on Why Beauty Matters: The Postmodern Pressure on Our Interior Life
HeightsCast: Forming Men Fully Alive
One philosopher of our time claims that “today, the experience of beauty is impossible.” Dr. Jason Baxter, director of the Center for Beauty and Culture at Benedictine College, begs to differ. Dr. Baxter joins us on HeightsCast to unpack his latest book, Why Literature Still Matters, which looks at why such a claim might feel true in our digital age. Then, he talks us through why and how we should reclaim our experiences of beauty for the health of our soul. Chapters: 00:03:34 The experience of beauty 00:08:44 Byung-Chul Han: the possibility of beauty today 00:15:41 Marc Auge: still...
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Tom Cox on Being a Faculty of Friends: Making Schools into Communities
HeightsCast: Forming Men Fully Alive
The joy of “being known here” is not just for the students. When a faculty cultivates friendship, it benefits the entire school community. Tom Cox has been a middle and upper school Latin and Greek teacher at The Heights since 2009. Tom also hosts The Forum Faculty Podcast, now in its second year, which gives a slice of teacher breakroom culture: the kinds of conversations, rapport, and friendship that are born of our shared work and life as teachers. Tom joins us today to talk about how important faculty friendship is to making a school into a community, and what schools can do to support...
info_outlineAs we conclude the school year, parents are turning their sights to summer and the much-anticipated family vacation. We bear such hope for rest and connection on these trips—but we can too easily end up chasing a bucket-list.
Head of Mentoring Joe Cardenas offers a timely intervention for our vacation planning, reminding us to plan for people before places. Bringing his own family traditions and Crescite Week experiences to the question, he offers a new set of questions to help us plan and enjoy a truly transformative, restorative vacation for all members of the family.
Chapters:
00:02:57 The anti-bucket list approach
00:08:23 “You need a change of soul”
00:10:11 Rest
00:13:46 Linger at table
00:15:18 Soak in a limited itinerary
00:17:10 Build in time for reflection
00:19:53 Better vacation planning questions
00:23:27 See it as a pilgrimage
00:28:33 Plan for people before places
00:34:55 Naturally layer in meaning, traditions
00:42:08 Share the highs and lows
00:45:12 The key: to plan ahead of time
Also on the Forum:
Three Components of a “Great” Summer featuring Colin Gleason
Taking Advantage of Summer (for the Non-Working Boy) by Elias Naegele
A Summer Fully Alive by Nate Gadiano
Mentoring Sons to a Successful Summer featuring Joe Cardenas
Four Ways to Have an Incredible Summer by Tom Steenson
Featured opportunities:
Teaching Essentials Workshop at The Heights School (June 16-20, 2025)
Convivium for Teaching Men at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2025)