Podcasts
As the language of humanity, art tells stories of inspiration, hope, and healing even as it acknowledges the hurt and despair that afflicts us all.
Episode 13: Artists Telling Stories 2024 Extended Trailer
In this extended Artists Telling Stories Podcasts trailer, please join Austin Tichenor, Aline Smithson, Joe Harjo, Vincent Valdez, Jay Tolson, Alicia Olatuja, and Jim Lavilla-Havelin in discovering the importance of stories, the language of our humanity, and the transformative power of art. Artists Telling Stories Podcasts draw out human stories in the hope that in their telling, artists will offer a new story of our shared humanity, bringing all of us closer together. Join us for a new season in 2024!
Episode 8: Hard Won Pilgrimages: Paul Elie discusses Literature, Bach’s Music, and his Journey as a Catholic
Paul Elie (from the Berkley Center at Georgetown University) talks about his two books, The Life You Save May be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (2003) and Reinventing Bach (2012), especially the “hard won” pilgrimages of Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy. Elie goes on to speak of his own pilgrimage in and around the Catholic Church, his struggle to remain within its story while writing about some “awful things”—such as the sexual abuse crisis. He speaks of Bach’s unique place as religious artist and, finally, of his work on the American Pilgrimage Project, where he has discovered the healing power of a diversity of American religious experience beyond even his broadest expectations.
Episode 7: Fake News and Truth, Faith and Irony: Jay Tolson Discusses the Big Questions of our Culture
Jay Tolson is editor of the award-winning journal The Hedgehog Review, published out of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He’s also a journalist and scholar, who wrote Pilgrim in the Ruins, a biography of writer Walker Percy. Tolson discusses our current political climate, the war in Ukraine, and the deleterious impact of “PR politics.” Say something enough, true or not, and people will believe it. He also discusses the impact of Walker Percy on his thinking about art, and the way forward (the hope) Percy’s work opens, namely a connection with others through symbols.